Geist (Hands On) (GameCube) Preview

The demo level we played was the same one that Alexi got his teeth into at E3 2004. It all starts off with a very detailed and excellent looking FMV sequence that explains a bit about what is going on. You are inside some sort of military base as a spirit, nobody can see you and they have no idea that you are actually there. Some guards put a dog in a cage, one walks back out the room through you and the game kicks into action. From here we had to work out what to do, the most obvious thing was to take a good look around.

Moving about in your spirit form is a weird experience. The controls feel very floaty and light, and you can even levitate above the ground, which is something we are sure will come into use at points during this game. After floating through the cage where the dog was being housed, we decided that possessing the dog food seemed like a fun idea. After sitting about as chicken in jelly pieces for a few minutes the dog comes over. In the top right hand corner of the screen there is a little interface. It has the A Button, Y Button, B Button and X Button. The actions assigned to these buttons change depending on your situation. We are given the option to scare the dog, which involves the spirit flipping the food in the dog's face...odd.

Now that the dog is scared he can be possessed (this is the same with possessing everything, you can only do it if the person/thing in question is scared, unless it is dog food...which we reckon might not have the intelligence to get scared). Now you have possessed the pooch, the controls still feel excellent and very 'dog-like'. Moving out of the cage we go up to one of the guards and by jumping about and barking persuade him to let us go and have a run about the complex.

Now we can run about the place, but will have to avoid being spotted by any of the guards. Sadly the game still has some major glitches and it kept on crashing at the same point so we were not able to progress.

Not wanting to give up we decided to have a crack at the multiplayer, and we were very surprised by it all. Seeing as this game doesn't directly post itself as a shoot-'em-up title, the multiplayer makes out to be a bit different as well. Basically you have to shoot to win, but interestingly you start off as a spirit. First of all we all had to find someone to posses, when that bit is done everyone can start shooting each other, great fun!