Geist Updated Hands-On

Game Developer's Conference, San Francisco--At this year's Game Developers Conference, Nintendo is on hand to show off a few of its upcoming games, not the least of which is the n-Space-developed Geist, a first-person action game that puts you in the role of a soldier whose spirit has been separated from his body and that lets you take possession of people and animals within the game's world in order to get back to your proper, corporeal form. In our previous coverage of the game, many of these spectral abilities were on display for us to play around with. That wasn't the case today. The demo on display at GDC was actually the first full level of the game, which featured our hero in earthbound form, shooting his way through the halls of the clandestine Volks Corporation.

At the beginning of the demo, we found ourselves teamed up with a group of elite non-player character soldiers, who were there to protect us while we scoured the Volks Corporation's laboratory for information. Once we found what we were looking for, and uploaded the data to our PDA, it was basically up to our team to blast our way out, as Volks security guards began popping up all over the place. Armed only with a basic handgun, we found it a tad difficult to really dish out much damage. It typically took only a few well-placed shots to bring any given enemy down, but the aiming with the GameCube controller's C stick took some getting used to. Apart from a basic duck mechanic we could use to hide behind corners and avoid enemy fire, it was straight-up run and gun from room to room against hordes of enemy security guards, right up until we found ourselves face-to-face with the first boss.

In a rather gruesome sequence, this initial boss basically swooped down from the ceiling of a tightly enclosed room, used some kind of bodily spike to impale one of our comrades, lifted him up, bit his head off, and tossed the remains of the corpse away. This creature, with a huge, fanged mouth, multiple tendrils, and the nasty ability to throw blue fireballs at us, seemed to be a formidable foe--at least at first. However, in typical first-boss fashion, once we got a handle on the creature's movements, it was a piece of cake to simply blast away at the fiend with our trusty handgun and ultimately make short work of him.

After this boss fight things seemed to get interesting. As we were preparing to make our escape via an awaiting helicopter, one of our teammates was suddenly jerked to the ground by an unseen force. When another team member went to go check on him, he was rewarded for his trouble with a vicious stab wound. After that, our evidently possessed teammate came after the last remaining soldier and our hero, seemingly doing away with both of us. After that, we were treated to a cutscene of our character awaking to find himself strapped into some kind of bizarre contraption. After a few moments of writhing in pain, it seemed that our soul was literally ripped from our body. And with that, the demo came to a close. Talk about a tease.

Graphically, Geist seemed to have a good look going on, though we can't say we were exactly blown away by the visuals. The character models, though not exceedingly detailed, moved around nicely in a pretty natural fashion. Similarly, the lab we found ourselves wandering around in wasn't exactly bristling with brilliant textures, but it still helped create an enjoyable, creepy atmosphere. The whole thing seemed to run at a consistent clip, with no frame rate issues to speak of. All told, apart from a couple of weird animations here and there, it really seemed like the graphics were in pretty much complete form.

In fact, with only two months between now and the game's release, it seems as though Geist may be nearly ready for prime time, a fact that actually has us all the more puzzled about why so few of the game's main draws--namely, the possession abilities and ghosts-versus-soldiers multiplayer mode--were shown in this demo. The first level seemed perfectly serviceable as first-person shooters go, but if we didn't already know what we know--which is to say, that there's a lot of cool stuff to be found in Geist that wasn't shown in this demo--we'd be hard pressed to explain what all the hubbub was about. We'll be sure to bring you more on this promising game as its release draws closer.