Geist



Geist is a video game for the Nintendo GameCube video game console, released on August 15, 2005. It has been billed by its creators as "The thinking man's first-person shooter". This is the second game published by Nintendo to receive an M-rating (the first being Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem). Shigeru Miyamoto was the producer for this game and contributed many gameplay ideas to the team at n-Space.

Gameplay
It is set in the year 2005. John Raimi is a civilian scientist and a member of a counter-terrorism team sent to investigate the Volks Corporation. After meeting up with his best friend Bryson, Raimi and the team of marines take over the science facility and are forced to battle their way out. On the way out, a monster takes the head off of one of Raimi's squad members, and the monster is unlike any living thing ever seen before. At the end, one of the agents seemingly becomes possessed and kills the marine team with the exception of Raimi (he just gets badly wounded and later finds Bryson is still alive). He is captured and his spirit is torn from his body by one of the secret experiments. Soon after, Volks, the leader, puts Raimi into a machine to brainwash him (a fact that returns later). However, a young girl no older than 7 or 8 years of age, blows the machine's power to save Raimi, who he gets help from recurringly. He now must wander the Volks Corp. while trying to get his body back. Raimi can take over other humans, animals, and even machinery to achieve his goal. He has to battle an unknown environment, dangerous hostiles, and save his best friend from the same experiment he was exposed to.

Geist Powers
As a disembodied spirit, Raimi cannot generally interact with the physical world except through possession. He seems, however, to have some degree of mass and substance, as gravity still affects him (though he floats and can elevate himself for short periods) and he cannot pass through solid walls (chain-link fences are another matter, and he can slip through small cracks.) He is otherwise invisible and intangible, though other ghosts can see him and animals, particularly dogs, can sense his presence even when he's possessing something. When Raimi possesses an object, such as a dog food bowl, he sees things from the object's perspective even if the device has no visual apparatus. He is able to provide motive force on an ordinarily immobile object, activate electronics, and alter an object's appearance (for example, turning water from a possessed faucet red, or changing the reflection in a mirror.) Creatures can only be possessed when badly frightened or startled. Raimi sometimes gains glimpses of a host's recent memories immediately upon possession. Raimi has the same control over a host body that he would over his own, the only exceptions are an inability to make the host approach something which frightens him or her very badly and possibly speech (certain cutscenes seem to suggest than he cannot talk in a human body, though other game aspects indicate otherwise.) If a host is killed or destroyed, Raimi is unharmed and returns to his ethereal state. However, he cannot remain outside a host indefinitely; his spirit is continuously pulled towards the afterlife. Only by possessing an object or creature can Raimi "re-anchor" himself to the world, though absorbing life from small plants grants him additional time in this world.

Human hosts have no memory of what occurs when Raimi possesses them. They seem to recall only being badly frightened, and then suddenly being in a different room, possibly surrounded by carnage. The opposite goes for Raimi, where he actually gains memory from his host and can use this memory to find objects or places.