Geist Preview

You eventually see your actual spectral form trapped inside some huge mechanical contraption that is seemingly meant to keep you in there. You are eventually lowered down into some kind of chamber, when the military assistant of that freaky looking man complains of having to clean up “ethereal mess.”

The game then shifts to an apparent fantasy world where you begin your “possession training.” You are talked to by an unknown female voice on the basics of your skill, and in the tutorial, you end up draining various plants to replenish your energy and taking control of a rabbit. You have to drain energy from various “nutritional” sources because in pure spectral form you slowly lose energy. It’s just a little bit about every five seconds, so you never really have to worry about dying in that form too quickly. In the possessing of the rabbit, you get a really freaky look of the world that is seemingly the “rabbit’s perspective,” and you get to use its special ability of jumping!

You then have one final shift into the actual game, where you meet your seemingly ghost friend in “Gigi.” She’s rather scary looking but she is indeed there to help you. In this, you will learn how to pass through walls, possess various objects to manipulate them in whatever way you wish and finally possessing actual human beings! Passing through walls is a no-brainer. You see an area of a wall where there is a small crack, and it has an eerie “glow” letting you know that it can be passed through! When it comes to actual objects. I possessed a paint can and made it explode. I possessed an electric generator and made it create some cool looking electricity effects. I possessed a crate full of explosives and took a wall down by blowing it up! Possessing is done through the simple pushing of the A button when you see the icon of your “spectral body in a circle.”

After using the left shoulder button to “float and glide,” I came across a sleepy looking janitor. Gigi took possession of a nearby trash can and you take a telephone station that is located across from him. When you possess the phone, you obviously cause it to ring. The guy gets up, wondering what’s going on. Then he begins hearing a whole bunch of voices and becomes scared to death! Gigi then comes out of the trash can and tries to take him over. You can then dispossess the telephone and be the one that takes him over because Gigi is “too small” to be able to do so!

After that, there wasn’t much for me to do. I just ran through some of the proceeding areas and talked to a couple of people. I eventually made it to another security guard that is sort of freaked out because of the alarm that went off, but I couldn’t figure out how to scare him for possession. I don’t know if I was supposed to be able to, but it was still cool going through the various environments the mission offered!

Unfortunately I didn’t have the motivation to try out the multiplayer feature, but from what I heard from the store’s manager, it’s pretty entertaining when there’s a good diversification to the battles. Smaller areas tend to suck, but open ones with lots of detail tend to be truly entertaining.

So all in all, I actually had some good fun with the first two single player missions the demo offered. The music is really cool and there is spoken and unspoken dialogue. The unspoken dialogue is a little weird though, because characters don’t move their mouths to it at all. But nevertheless, the somewhat stiff but entertaining controls with great graphics and good music should make this to be a very fun game! Possessing anything you wish at virtually any time to find out what the Volks Corporation is really all about while searching for your original body, all this makes up the upcoming Geist! Look for it come August 15!

Updated: I actually decided to go back to the store where I played the demo and I just got back from pwning people in SSBM. But nevertheless, I have some more details to add to this!

I did say the controls are somewhat stiff at first, but when I first picked it up and began playing, I didn’t have any problem whatsoever, and it helped me thorougly enjoy the first mission even more. What I said about the graphics may also not end up being true in the final product. I decided to play the Resident Evil 4 demo on there as well and it was really blurry compared to my television. So I’m guessing their screens there weren’t the best quality so just about any game you would play on them wouldn’t display as best they could. I’m thinking Geist is going to be one beautiful game!

Also, I actually took a hack at the multiplayer features available on the demo. I must tell you I had an absolute BLAST even though I was only up against one computer bot. One scenario allows you to “float” around an arena in search of a host with a unique weapon. This could be various assault rifles, standard rifles and shotguns. Then when you possess a host, you simply go after the other person(s) who took control of another! To make things a little more daring, if you leave a host, your spirit is vulnerable for three seconds so you can actually be shot in spectral form!

There was also a mode that had you basically possess a host and take it to a designated point in the arena. You were free to kill your opponent whenever you encountered him or her, but the only point of that mode was to dispossess it at the designated area and receive points.

You also have the option of killing unpossessed hosts, but that is sort of a waste of time since you actually want to keep them alive so I didn’t really understand that.

One more thing about the mission in which you infiltrate the Volks Corporation and get captured. I thought the sudden “ending” of the beginning of the sequence in which Raimi lost his spirit was just a teaser. Well that was just the demo timing out. I actually witnessed the cutscene since I got through the mission a lot faster and I must tell you, that whole animation is really sweet to look at!

So that is my update, hope that clears up some things that may have caused confusion!