In the on-again-off-again attempt by Nintendo to make its console more appealing to an older audience, there have been a few worthy efforts by Nintendo itself to publish games geared toward the more mature gamer. Geist, developed by n-Space, is their latest attempt. Superficially a first-person shooter, Geist also has many adventure elements in it. And while the game has some very interesting aspects to it, Geist just has too many problems to achieve greatness.

In Geist the player takes control of a man named Raimi. He has been sent into the Volks Corporation with an assault team supported by the Center for Disease Control to assess the company’s biological and chemical weapons activities and extract an undercover operatives with whom they have lost contact. (Yes, it is a little far fetched for the CDC to be involved in such an operation.) Raimi is not a trained soldier, but rather is an expert on these types of weapons. The team is there to get him in, let him accomplish his mission, and then get out with the data. That is the plan, but things do not go as expected. Raimi is shot, captured and subjected to a process whereby his spirit is separated from his body. Volks plans to use these disembodied spirits as weapons. But things do not go all Volks’ way either. Raimi’s spirit escapes from its confinement and now must find its way through the complex and attempt to put body and spirit back together again.

Of course as a spirit just wandering around the complex Raimi has little he can do, but he quickly meets another spirit who teaches him the fundamentals of being a spirit entity and getting things done. To a spirit the most important power is that of possession. As Raimi the player may take possession of both animate and inanimate objects. Of course on the animate side are things like people and animals. On the inanimate side are all manner of things that are just lying around the facility. People and animals are great for moving around the complex and manipulating the environment. What happens in the possession of inanimate objects vary. For instance, after possessing a crate of explosives the player can make it explode.

Before Raimi can possess a person or other creature it must be in a state of fear. The player can read the level of fear in a creature by the color of its aura. When red, Raimi may jump into their body and take control. The possession of inanimate things and making them behave abnormally usually does the trick for scaring the locals. Sometimes the string of events that you must go through to scare a person can be lengthy. Each thing possessed and manipulated pushes the poor person closer to terror and thus being capable of being possessed. Discovering the right sequence makes the game much more like an adventure.

It is the possession play mechanic that really sets Geist apart from other first-person shooters. The ability to jump around a group of guards in a fight or wander around as an animal is really different. And in reality, the game is more about figuring out ways to possess the right character to move forward through the game than it is about being a first-person shooter. Good thing too. The FPS portions of Geist are singularly uninspired and are not a lot of fun.

Once you find yourself in a firefight, possessing a weapon and ready to lay down the smack on the baddies, the game becomes less enjoyable. Most notably, the FPS controls just don’t function that well. The Cube’s C stick feels floaty and it is often hard to lineup a shot. Generally the possessed character only has one weapon with a single mode of fire. At least that one weapon does have unlimited ammo, so blazing away works pretty well in most cases.

The FPS portions of the game where there are many enemies on the screen at once caused the frame rate to chug noticeably in some areas. The animation of living things leaves a bit to be desired and they are about as wooden acting as David Caruso. But most of the time the game looks pretty good. The textures are especially nice. The support for both progressive scan and 16x9 widescreen are also nice additions for a Cube game. Too bad the cables to make this happen are near impossible to come by.

In the sound department things are a little better. The music is more orchestral in nature and works well for a soundtrack to the action. Sound effects are okay but not outstanding. In-game voiceovers were the big annoyance. For whatever reason, n-Space decided there had to be some voices in game but then left them feeling half completed. For example, walking up to a guard and initiating a conversation will usually elicit a spoken “sir” and then text for the rest of the communication. I think it would have been better if n-Space had just made the whole thing text. The few words that were repeated all too often just called undue attention to the incomplete voice work.

In addition to the single-player story mode, Geist also has a multiplayer mode that uses the possession play mechanic to good effect. Up to four human players can participate. AI bots can also be added to bring the number of players up to a maximum of eight. The possession of people and objects makes for some interesting play variations. Unfortunately the graphics frame rate takes a hit when a full compliment of human and bot players are used.

To me, Geist represents one of the harder games to grade: one with flashes of brilliance weighed down by less-than-stellar execution. This game was in development a long time and perhaps it needed just a little more development time. The spiritual possession adventure/puzzle solving aspects of the game were very fun and refreshing. Unfortunately the game’s engine just could not quite deliver on the other elements of the game that strung it all together. Since the GameCube is so short on first-person shooter games, I’d have to recommend it to people who only own that system. Multi-system owners who have access to better shooters should probably stay away. But for the flashes of brilliance it does possess, Geist earns its B- score.