Fantastic concept plagued by linearity
But don’t put down the controller yet - there’s fun to be had past this 90’s era shooting (including Half-Life PC-era graphics that look like they were made for a PS1 or N64 game rather than a Gamecube game). As you get used to the shooting, and as the game insults your skills but not only pushing mindless, idiotic enemies in your direction but also planting health packs all over the place as if you were going to actually need assistance, the game comes to a halt and kills your character. That’s right - within the first five or so minutes of gameplay, the main character is already dead. This isn’t just a death that you can re-spawn from, either - it takes place in a cinematic, so you know it’s the real deal.
But this is actually probably the best thing that’ll happen to you in the game. Because of this small misstep in you plan, you’re now open to a whole new way of playing the game - you get to be a ghost. Suddenly you realize why you got the game in the first place - you’re a ghost. The moment you take control of the ghost, you’re put through a tutorial that basically tells you how to beat the game. Wait, what? Unfortunately, the puzzles (which make up the majority of the game) are so simple that each and every one of them can be explained in this small, two minute tutorial. You learn how to possess objects and living creatures. There’s your answer.
Generally, this would be a bad thing in a game - such a simple concept that it’s not even a challenge to play anymore. Thankfully for Geist, you somehow get to have a fun time doing it. It’s oddly familiar to Goldeneye - exploring while mowing down dumb bad guys every once in a while. Yes, that’s a nearly 10-year old game that we’re comparing Geist to, but it’s the addition of the possession gameplay that makes all the difference. Why gun down enemies when you can possess a turret and mow them down with a weapon of their own? Sure, you could just pull a gun on that bunch of men coming right at you, but along their path there’s some explosives, so why not get a little messy and possess that? The game presents so many simple delights such as these that it’s almost never noticeable that what you’re doing is extremely redundant.
Almost never. That isn’t to say the game is all good fun - there will be multiple moments in-game that will have you wondering just what the heck you’re supposed to possess. Take this scenario - you need to freak a guard out so that you can take control of his body and explore the area with a weapon. He’s standing right by an elevator, why not take control of that and make it shake or something? Oops, never mind - the game won’t let you. But hey, there’s a trash can he’s walking by, and the game will let me take control of that. Why not possess that and shake that one up? Oops, wrong again - though he walks right by it as I shake like there was an earthquake going on, he doesn’t even notice a thing. Looks like I need to possess something else first to get him a little stirred up before I can use that to freak him right out.
That is one of the major problems in Geist - what you’re meant to possess is almost always not only pre-determined, but in a pre-determined order. Why not give us some freedom with our powers? Why not give multiple solutions to an end? Geist steers far away from this open-ended gameplay and sticks strictly to the linear side - find specific object A, use it to scare Guard/Scientist/Dog, find specific object B, use it to knock all sense of reality out of them and go for the possession. The majority of the fun is finding ways to hurt the enemy by possessing non-living objects that don’t need to be scared in order to be controlled.
That’s right - all living things need to be scared in order to be controlled. While it forces you to go through the previously stated dull formula for most human characters, it offers some creative exploring for the animals that can actually be quite fun. Take, for example, a point where you take control of a dog. As a dog, you can move around the area you’re in, but if you’re caught, it’s back to your cage. So you could go all stealthy and move around like Sam Fisher… or you could find a way to scare the rat in the new room you’ve entered, take control of it, and move around the complex without any issues at all.
Again, the choices. The times when the gameplay hides it’s pretty strict linearity by offering a more fun method of going about things. I wouldn’t dare call the game open-ended because of a couple of situations where you get more control over what to do - these are too rare for that. That’s the unfortunate thing about Geist - there’s a fantastic concept that we’re being teased with, but it’s never really fully realized.
Among the possessing are the bosses of the game, most of which are actually pretty fun and tough - in these times you’ll actually be happy that the game litters the areas with health packs. Though the early bosses are too-easy bouts that make what’s meant to be done to them too-obvious, further bosses aren’t quite so revealing of how you’re supposed to bring them down, and this is a definite plus for the gameplay - I only wish there were more of these encounters in the game.
And there lies another pitfall - or the game’s savior, depending on how you look at it. The game is short. It isn’t Timesplitters short, but a good 10 or 12 hours of gameplay will finish the single player mode. This is great with the gameplay that’s there - it would begin to get unbearable if it went on any longer - but at the same time, short game means less bosses and less of those great moments that make playing the game really worth it.
That’s what you’ll be asking yourself in the end, anyway, isn’t it? Was the game worth it? Did I have a good time playing it? Yeah, the graphics are blah with a shocking similarity to oldies like Half-Life (PC) and Unreal Tournament (original) (translation - the graphics such, the models such, and it’s not anywhere near the standard) and the voice acting can be laughable (it’s a tad tough to take the story seriously, or grow an attachment to any of the characters), the gunplay is pretty bad (only worsened by a horrific soundtrack of soothing noise played to shoot-outs. Yeah, soothing to shoot-outs. You ok there, N-Space?). However, the bosses and a decent amount of the possession gameplay do make it a worthy play-through, given you don’t cough up $50 for the game. If you’re not gonna wait for a price drop of some sort, or don’t like buying copies used (the recommendation), then a rental is worth the payment. One aspect not discussed, though, the multiplayer, may make it worth more than a rental, may make it a must-buy used. The Multiplayer is all fine and dandy, but it’s really just the shooting of the one-player mode taken split-screen. You can still possess objects, but if your friends have brains then they’ll know to avoid such things as exploding objects, which basically just gives you the option to possess other humans, each with a different gun. It’s mediocre fun at best, but the jump from rental to pre-played is still worth it with this in mind given the price is acceptable. Other games are worth your money so much more than this game, but if you’ve played those and need another FPS fix, then Geist gets enough right to be a contender, if just barely.