Geist Review

When you actually do possess something, the in-game cutscenes that show you pulling it off all look very intriguing. They basically show the various forums of light floating around you as a full form ghost actually compacting you into nothing but little rings of light as you eventually make your way into whatever your target may be. If what you’re possessing is an inanimate object, the screen will tend to spin around adding a rather unique affect to the final action. But with humans and animals, it can be quite a rush to witness the somewhat “struggle” of whatever your target is to your taking them over. But if they are indeed scared enough, their body is indeed yours!

Another great aspect in terms of the looks of Geist are the weapon designs. Now it would be incorrect to say the game has a wide variety of weapons that you will use throughout the game. But the selection also isn’t terrible either. You have your standard 9mm pistol at the beginning, and throughout the game you will also get your hands on a sub machine gun, assault rifles, a shotgun and other more advanced ones. Each weapon really does look awesome in their own unique regard, and the only one you may get tired of at some point is the sub machine gun because you get that weapon more often than not. But just how each weapon looks incredibly cool and very different from each other really helps keep the shooting aspect of the game fresh.

A sort of good and bad feature of Geist with the graphics are the character models. There are a few really good looking characters in the game, including both Raimi and Alexander Volks, but overall most of them just don’t look as detailed as they really could be. It seems like Nintendo and n-Space took the time to focus on making all the “required hosts” throughout the game as the best looking ones since you would interact with them the most, but that shouldn’t have been an excuse to make everyone else look a little dull. Sure your enemies will be diversified in the various suits and armor they where, which is indeed nice, but overall most of the people you don’t have too much interaction with don’t look impressive. It really doesn’t help that a lot of character faces look like nothing more than simple texture layers slapped with human features on top. That doesn’t go to say they look weird or anything, but like stated before, the detail isn’t exactly there all the time.

That brings us to the overall look and design of the actual levels. There are a total of nine missions in Geist, but about half of them actually feature more than one playable stage. Geist definitely does a great job bringing the game a lot of diversity in terms of the environments that you will encounter. You will indeed haunt the halls of the main corporation building, but you will also find yourself outside at some points and even at one stage in the game, a virtual simulator! As for the good and bad in this regard, the good comes with what you mainly interact with, and the bad comes with the detail on the outside. Geist is a game that heavily focuses on your possession ability, and in each area of every level you encounter, you will see a lot of detail in the objects around you. Whether they may be computers, exploding crates, trash cans or even various lights, they are all well-designed. There are actually a ton of computerized devices in the game, and they all look like futuristic kind of equipment which is really cool. The area in which environments suffer is lack of elaboration with natural aspects of the world and walls. There are points in Geist when you will be outside, and it really just doesn’t look like anything special. The in-game cutscenes actually do a great job bringing some natural aspects that you may see to life, but there aren’t too many of them that do that. You will encounter hills, mountainous regions and all sorts of different areas, but they look like they were sort of hurried in design and won’t do much to impress you.

Finally we come to what many feel is a detrimental part of the game, and that’s the frame rate. Many have said that in heavy action sequences, you will notice a really big lag in the controlling of the game. That personally only happened to be a minute bit at one point in the game that I can remember, so I don’t understand what everyone is talking about. The game really runs quite smooth throughout the entire time, so unless I’m really blind, I didn’t say much of a problem in that regard. It seemed fine to me, and I think many others would feel the same when playing the game for the first time.

Overall, Geist has some great graphics. Just the feelings that you get while in ghost form as you experience the world like we’ve never seen it before is really awesome. Even experiencing the world as a rat, dog, or other animals is really something different and unique for a change. Geist does have its shortcomings with lack of detail in some character models and level design, but in all honesty, they are easy to look past with the entertainment value this game has.

You would think that a game like Geist that has you being a ghost as the main character would have creepy and eerie music right? Well, it isn’t entirely wrong to think that way, but it’s also very incorrect for the most part. A lot of the music in this game seems to have some kind of “military” theme and does a great job of keeping up the pace of the action. This music is normally showcased when you’re either faced with a lot of enemies to take out, or if you’re experiencing a very important part of the game story-wise. It also happens to show up a lot in the multiplayer features of this game, and that’s cool too. But really, if you’ve heard the music in the demo of the game, it is also very much in the final product, and with better sounding quality. If you have a stereo system for your GameCube or tv, you are bound to hear some awesome stuff when this music comes on in the game. It almost sounds like a mixture of techno and rock music, and it’s just plain awesome.

Now there actually are a number of stages in the game where it tends to be a little creepier. It really shouldn’t scare players at all, but just the tone and atmosphere of those stages can really send a chill down your spine. The music for these situations was done incredibly well, as it sounds sort of similar to the typical themes you might hear during horror movies.

You also hear slightly different music when fighting the game’s many bosses. It is very much based on the “military-like” themes that you will tend to hear a lot during the course of the game, but they are sort of redone to be more exciting and fast paced. It’s always nice to feel the adrenaline of fighting a challenging boss, and the music is always there to help the player feel just that.

Geist also features a bit of voice acting. Most of the heavy talking is heard during the game’s cutscenes, and some is heard outside in little chunks. The voice acting in the cutscenes is actually very good, as the voice given to each character really matches the particular personality they portray very well. Raimi will unfortunately never say a word, but it really doesn’t take away from the experience. Most of the people you’ll hear talking are Commander Rourke, Alexander Volks and some other random important employees. It’s a good thing those are the main characters featured with voices too, or else it probably wouldn’t have been very entertaining.

The rest of the voice acting is done through the use of those dreaded one-liners! Not all of them are corny and stupid, but for the most part, they really could’ve just been done without. Any time you are given the chance to talk to a random Volks employee, pretty much all of them will say a random short sentence or fragment to make it seem like they really care to let you know of their feelings. Such things as “Sir…”, “Ma’am…” or “How can I help you?” are what you’ll hear them say the most, and sometimes you can’t help but laugh at how dumb they sound. Although the most enjoyable one to hear even though you’ll hear it quite often is after you kill someone and they say “Aw crap!”