Review: Geist

Originally posted December 1st, 2008:

Let's go ahead and start this with a bang. This is, admittedly, old stuff - I wrote this a bit ago, but I feel just as passionate about it now as I did then. It's about a Gamecube game that most of you probably haven't heard of, much less actually played, called Geist.
Geist is a pseudo-FPS made by Nintendo, of all people, on the Gamecube. Its main feature that I want to talk about and remember in this is, well, its main feature.

In Geist, you are a ghost who can possess people and objects name John Raimi (silent protaganist), with the ultimate goals of stopping the BBEG and reclaiming your body, which you were separated from at the beginning of the game. During the game, you learn more about the BBEG by exploring his base and interacting with his ghostly sister, Gigi, who is an appropriately creepy (and quite helpful) little ghost girl. But the possession aspect is what makes this game so great. I want to talk about it on two levels – on the level of it, specifically, and on what I can learn from it in regards to the genre shuffle style.

The possession mechanic, first and foremost, is brilliant. You can possess various people, and thus gain various abilities that allow you to move on in the game, or combat foes in new and special ways. It also allows an element of stealth – after all, it’s not always easy to tell when someone is being possessed.

However, the idea is not taken as far as it could be. Only certain people can be possessed – usually, those who are next to objects that you can possess in order to frighten them. It feels like a “necessary” cop-out – the game designers liked the premise, but couldn’t figure out a way to make it work logically without being overpowered. Frankly, this is really annoying – if possession of others is my superpower, then I should be able to use it, gosh darn it. This is somewhat subverted, however, in that you can detonate explosives to kill enemy soldiers, or control gun turrets to shoot enemies. However, by the same token, shouldn’t you have been able to possess guns to make them fire, or doors to make them open?

One particularly brilliant segment is defending your black friend from many soldiers by possessing various objects and using them to defeat the soldiers attacking him. You control gun turrets, detonate explosives, and even manually roll grenades to their feet, detonating them.

Unfortunately, the next segment is somewhat more limited – though awesome in concept, its execution is lacking. Your aforementioned black friend is on a motorcycle, attempting to escape the complex that is the setting for much of the game. You can possess his motorcycle, moving him, you can possess explosives, detonating them in an attempt to halt pursuit – or you can mostly just possess the gun on the back of the truck in front of him, using it to gun down all other problems. Blah – while an interesting use of the possession mechanic, the possession mechanic itself felt paradoxically underused in the scene. Perhaps a more appropriate setting for such an event would be on a helicopter turret, or some such.

The rat segment is again a bit of brilliance – you possess a rat and attempt to return it to its owner, and in order to do so, you must avoid a series of mousetraps. However, your possessed host, the rat, is drawn to the cheese on the traps in an almost magnetic fashion. So in order to escape, you must avoid the traps and make your way safely back to the rat’s owner. It’s a brilliant use of the possession mechanic (even if why you can’t possess the mousetraps and set them off beforehand isn’t adequately explained).

The rat example brings me to my next point – the use of repeated genre swapping in this game. The thing is, though, it doesn’t feel like it is. Each use of the possession mechanic in a new way feels natural – the rat, the various people, missile turrets. To further this idea, your hosts are given different weapons – some hosts have shotguns, some (one, disappointingly) have a sniper rifle with a heat-vision component, some (one, again) have rocket launchers. The overall effect is that each host, animal, human, or usable object, feels like a new experience – and it’s pulled off brilliantly. This is emphasized by the fact that animals see limited to no colors, and your ghostform has its own blued-out vision as well – human hosts and mechanical objects see normally, though the perspective of inanimate objects is often entertaining. (Of course, your own body is the best form for combat – a very nice automatic weapon and anti-ghost grenades, along with the ability to go bullet-time – quite awesome, though a bit of explanation as to how that last part worked would have been nice.) As an added bonus, despite the fact that the final boss is fought in a moderately different way than anything before him, it doesn’t feel forced – in other words, it manages to (to some degree) avoid the annoyance of Star Fox Adventures, Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, and Banjo-Tooie with the “random genre swap” final boss, by setting up a reasonable premise and keeping the shift moderate.

Lessons to be learned:

Possession is an excellent, underused mechanic with a lot of room for unique growth in future games. Taking control of your enemies = awesome!

Rapid genre swaps can work (in a non-party game setting) if you set up a logical premise for them, and don’t make the shift too dramatic.

If I were to remake the game:

Make pretty much everyone and everything possessable. While the “scaring” mechanic is a good start for limiting possession, it’s too limiting – set up circumstances that can be used to scare any given NPC (save bosses, of course, unless that’s the trick). Possessing a soldier’s gun, for example – or simply the light fixtures or PA – would be a viable way to make this work. This would also mean that, in the example of protecting the black friend, for example, that while possessing the actual people doing the shooting would be possible, it would be much more practical to do it the way that was intended. It would also give the game a much-needed sense of “more than one way to do things.”

Alternately, be able to possess anyone, but if they are not scared first, then you have only limited control over them, as well as only temporary control, similar to when ghosts possess you towards the end of the game.

Make more objects possessable, preferably everything. I’m on the fence as to whether simply not allowing doors to be opened in ghostform with no explanation is worse than trying to provide an explanation for it. If most everything is possessable, give a way to turn on/off seeing the auras around what’s possessable, in degrees – objects, people.

Spend more time in the simulator at the beginning, and when we go back, let it complete and only maintain your individuality by Gigi sneaking into the sim and helping you fight the brainwashing, or your memories of her/your family/whatever.

Things used to scare people would be possessable in any order. (Ladder, extinguisher, and pipes in any order, not just that order.)

Dear God! Higher difficulty levels! I mean, really!

Co…op? Somehow? Maybe? *shrug*

Grenades! Throw->Possess->Roll->Explode.

Flying hosts – invertable

Possessions should be quicker to initiate. I loved simply being able to slip out of a body – slipping back into one should’ve been just as natural.

The story would be deeper, and Raimi wouldn’t have been silent.

The game would have been 2-3x as long.


Multiplayer Changes:

Online, online, online. Bigger maps – this game could be the next Halo if done right.

Better ammo/gun system. Direct Halo rip?

Capture the flag.

Ghost Barriers!

Vehicles! Possessable, of course.

New Toggles:
Ghosts – invisible to non-ghosts
Ghosts – invisible on radar
Ghosts – damageable
Ghosts – pop out of hosts when the host dies, or respawn back at their base
Hosts – damage transfer between them
Hosts/Vehicles – possessable only by certain teams
Ghosts – limited possession of already possessed hosts
Objects – indicator of whether or not the object is being possessed