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Anachronistic game engine spoils otherwise innovative Geist

Normally when I die only 10 minutes into a game, it's not something I tell others about -- it hurts my pride. But with Geist, your death is intended. Sort of.

As John Raimi, a biological and chemical threats special operative, you're sent into France to investigate the Volks Corporation's shady research into cellular properties. Inevitably, your covert operation goes horribly awry and, after capture, you're subjected to an experiment that, more or less, kills you and steals your soul. Such a pleasant backstory.

Developed by N-Square for the Nintendo GameCube, Geist is a first-person shooter with a twist. Because the shooter genre has become a tad hackneyed, N-Square took some liberties with the genre's ethos. Their ingenious tinkering with conventional gameplay created one of the most innovative concepts ever to hit the FPS market: possession.

The idea is simple: You are an ethereal spirit, a soul ripped from your physical form with the ability to possess other people, objects and animals in order to fulfill Raimi's mission objective. Living entities (like animals or other humans) need to be "scared" before you can possess them, so it's necessary to manipulate the objects in a room to do so. For example, at one point you must

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