Geist Review

Geist also has some pretty great sound effects. When you’re navigating through the Volks halls as a ghost, the sound you hear sounds just like when ghosts travel through the air in movies that involve the same. It’s sort of like that barely audible wind blowing right next to your body. When you actually possess something, you hear a rather unique sound effect, and it’s really impossible to describe. Just like how the sound of healing yourself in Second Sight is indescribable but VERY cool, so is this one! When you possess a human, it’s rather enjoyable to hear them make a slight “yell” when seemingly trying to resist your takeover. When you possess an animal, you may hear one of their “whimpers” just as you’re doing it, which is heard alongside the humans’ “yelling”.

Finally, we have the weapons. Most of them actually sound very good. Although it is a little strange to hear some of the firing of them seem “muffled” sometimes. But regardless, your pistol sound very good, the automatics sound great and the shotgun just sounds awesome! Really, the only thing that doesn’t sound the greatest is the explosions of the rockets and grenades. For some reason the ending explosion of a rocket or grenade sound an awful lot like flash bang grenades. There’s just really no “boom” sound to them, even though it is very much enjoyable to use them!

So all in all, the music and sounds are really excellent. Sure the one-liners could be stupid and unnecessary and the explosions could’ve sounded a lot more powerful, but other than those things, there is really nothing wrong with the game’s presentation in this regard!

Without a doubt, the gameplay mechanics is the area in which Geist shines the most. The possession and the shooting are coupled so well to drive the already great story that it could be the defining moment of the genre on the GameCube. Possession of people, inanimate objects and animals is always entertaining, and then shooting your enemies in either the main game or multiplayer is always a rush!

In terms of the possession mechanic, it was done incredibly well. When it comes to inanimate objects, you simply have to examine all the lifeless things around you to discover whether anything is vulnerable. This is done by looking for the green “eye icon” that denotes you’re able to view the item’s description. Then if you can indeed possess it, the object will have a red glow around it allowing you to know. These objects include anything from trash bins and fixated lights to laptop computers and turret guns!

When it comes to humans and animals, it’s just a little bit different. To be able to take over a Volks employee or animals contain within their buildings, you have to scare them first. How do you do that? Well, that’s usually through the possessing of inanimate objects! No matter who or what you see, there is always something around a human or animal that you can possess in order to scare them! Whether this means taking over a bowl of dog food to scare a cunning canine or taking over a ladder, fire extinguisher and gas pressure gauge to scare a human, there is always something there! Sometimes it’s not hard at all to scare a human or animal as it only take a little act of fear to make them vulnerable. But some humans take a little more effort to make a little bit on the uneasy side. Like mentioned with the ladder, fire extinguisher and gas pressure gauge, some humans take a few objects acting out of control to be scared than others. It definitely offers a very nice mental challenge on your part since you have to think of how to get the job done, and that just adds to the entertainment value of the possession mechanic.

Another nice thing about possession is the fact that it’s REALLY hard to die or fail in the game. There are only two ways in this game that you can die. One is if you have a required host for a certain stage or stages in the game, and you let that host die, the current mission will fail because you simply need that person to complete your objectives! Another is if you technically “phase” out in ghost form. When you are in that form, you have a bar of “spirit energy”. This is basically how long you can last outside in the actual world before dieing out completely. To prevent this from happening, you can drain the life from the various plants that are distributed throughout the corporation OR take over a living organism. Doing either will replenish your energy a good bit or completely.

That’s just about it for possession, so let’s get to how it’s like to have control of a human or animal. When you take over a human, one of two things will happen immediately. One may be that you actually see a brief flashback of something they were involved with recently that will help you complete one of your core objectives. The other will be that you just immediately see the world from their perspective. Generally when you first take them over, you will see yourself looking at your hands. Then if the particular person has a weapon, you press Y to draw it and hold the button to lower it in a less threatening position.

When your weapon is drawn, the FPS mechanics work similar to the controls of all other popular FPSs on the current market. You use the two sticks for your movement, L to either zoom or crouch, R to fire, Z to reload and a simple tap of Y to reload your weapon!

Now when it comes to animals, it really is awesome how n-Space and Nintendo chose to go about making these perspectives come to life. Now obviously no one really knows how animals perceive this world through their own eyes, but based on all the scientific data available to us, it is just awesome! When you possess a dog, you see some color, but it’s mostly black and white. You can also run incredibly fast and jump just like a real dog does. When possessing a rat, your vision is more in the form of a “tunnel”, it’s completely black and white and also somewhat blurred. You then scurry along like the little rat that you are and can fit into really small holes in the wall! There are other animals in the game that you will be able to possess but we’ll leave that to surprise you!