Geist: A True Out of Body Experiance (GameCube)

Geist sounded like a neat concept when I read the back cover and for much of the game I was fairly entertained, but it failed to ever become anything I would classify as an amazing game. The second I started playing I thought, “Man, these controls sure are awkward.” Unfortunately this happens in many console FPS games, but I eventually got used to it.
Geist starts where you are the tech expert member of a covert team trying to gain top secret info from some crazy lab facility. Stuff goes wrong and you end up being put as a test subject in a highly dangerous experiment that separates your soul from your body. You end up escaping where you are held captive with the help of another spirit. Thus the adventure to scare, posses, and shoot your way out of the facility begins. In order to posses a living animal or person, it must first be scared, which leaves its mind more open. Scaring can be quite interesting and fun since it is done by possessing inanimate objects and using whatever action is available. You never know the action until you possess the object so this can add quite a bit of fun to the game as you discover all the neat things you can do such as shooting dishes, making people see things in mirrors, or making showerheads spray on the women in the ladies shower (aw yeeeea boyeee!). You also get to possess several types of animals throughout the adventure as well.
As I said before, the controls are a bit awkward, but gun fighting is made easier at the beginning of the game since you can always possess another host if the one you are using dies (and there is a way to scare him). The soldiers are not too hard to kill so dying is usually not a problem, until very late in the game when you have to take on a bunch, but by then you gain a neat time-slowing power that makes it much easier and quite goofy. Many of the soldiers yell, “AW CRAP!” as you kill them. I doubt those would be my last words.
The storyline was somewhat neat for a while, but the end was a bit too happy and perfect. It felt to me like the writers suddenly got VERY lazy. The ending boss battle was also very ridiculous and hard to get used to at first, but can be very easy once you figure out how to dodge attacks easily. So in the end this was a pretty neat idea that was trapped inside a shell of not very thought out storyline and sometimes awkward controls. The game did have some voice acting, which helped to make the little characterization a bit better, but the game was also quite short. I did enjoy myself and I bought the game for about $8 used at my local Blockbuster so I consider my money fairly well spent.

As of 5-31-08
www.half.com- there is a copy up for only $2.99, but there were quite a few for only 4 or 5 dollars.
www.switchplanet.com- none available to switch at the moment.

In conclusion, I would say my chances of jumping in front of a moving vehicle to save the last copy of this game are at 77%.