GEIST is an exclusive game for GameCube, which was released in 2005, when everyone was already waiting for WII and Xbox 360. A game that showed great opportunities, interesting mechanics and multifaceted gameplay in demonstrations. I propose to recall how it was presented before the release, get acquainted with the final product and look at the technical implementation of this game from N-Space.
The disadvantages are all old and represented in full.
At the exhibition E3 in 2003 The second time was shown for the second time DOOM 3, Half-Life 2 and Halo 2, shown Metroid Prime Echoes trailers, remake of the first Resident Evil and Resident Evil Zero, Metal Gear Solid 3. Among these promising teasers and trailers there was Geist. The project, which at that time was already about a year in the development of N-SPACE company. Then they showed Nintendo the early prototype of their Fear game, and on E3 2003, the game with some modifications from the new publisher appears as an exclusive for the GameCube game console under a new name – GEIST.
The trailer was demonstrated by the Poisoning System, which promised great opportunities in the game.
Spirit (blue-white glow) captures the girl’s body
And in general, the game looked interesting – interaction with objects in the style of Advent, manipulation of NPC behavior to achieve their own goals, strange hostile creatures, clearly not foreshadowing anything good for the main character.
The truth looked somewhat clumsy, but in general the audience liked it, and Nintendo promised to release the game in the same year.
But the game in 2003 did not come out, but was not forgotten either. IN 2004 The game was again shown at the exhibition E3. You could see the changed locations, the change in the accents of the video and, most likely, the gameplay from the shooting component even more to the research. From the demonstration, one could not understand so much, but it seems then it was for Nintendo to be some hope for a serious help for GameCube, the game was supposed to become a strong exclusive platform. But Geist still caused some fears – in everything there was some cheapness and the already mentioned clumsy of what was happening. In addition, the game has always been shown little and in fits. Nevertheless, the main mechanics with the seizure of objects and living creatures were still fresh and unusual. Indeed, add all the features of a good adventure game here, some variability and the output will be an interesting and unusual project.
Plot shootings from the game trailer
But this variability was not shown. In general, the trailer, as a year earlier, showed the concept of the main mechanic rather than the possibilities of the final product. Nevertheless, albeit already with
great fear, but the game was waiting.
But even in 2004 the game did not appear on store shelves.
2005. The development of N-SPACE continues. To demonstrate painstaking work, a video comes out in the spirit of developers’ diaries and the game is shown for E3 for the third time, and the release date is once again announced – the end of 2005.
From the materials shown, we can conclude that the game was again significantly redone. But at the same time, the problems remained old, which they expressed anxiety, for example, IGN in their preliminary review.
The player is preparing to move into the door control panel
Even before the game, it became clear that she could not become a large exclusive GameCube. Almost 3 years have passed since the development of the development of the Xbox 360 from Microsoft by that time, and the home console from Nintendo has long surrendered its positions and in the same 2005 at the same exhibition where the final trailer for the game was shown, the WII console was demonstrated, then even under the name Revolution.
Nevertheless, there were vague hopes that Geist would be just a good and fascinating first -person adventure, because the ideas in the game were intriguing.
At the end of 2005, the game appears on store shelves. GameCube owners could finally evaluate this long -building with great potential and the same ambitions. But … were in no hurry to do this. Why? Let’s figure it out.
General Game Still with his own body
The protagonist of the game is an employee of a special detachment to fight terrorism named Raymy – At the very beginning of the game, he loses his body. The game offers to be a spirit, a ghost if you want, capable of instilling people and things to manipulate them, to achieve the required goals with their help. To get a person with a special day, a military man to break through with fire, to become a mouse for secretive penetration, an industrial robot for intimidation of workers or a jar of dog food, in order to finally feed it and divert from the protection of the passage. Sounds like a great scope for ingenuity and imagination. Or at least just as a variety in the solution of the same problem. But take your time with conclusions.
So, Raimi’s ultimate goals are to save a friend, to return their body and prevent the bad guys from building their army of the same ghosts that can control a variety of people with a variety of consequences. I will not touch the plot, suddenly someone will decide to get acquainted.
The gameplay is a mixture of the first -person shooter genres and adventure. And the game is fresh in both directions.
Managed to capture the armed man
With shooting mechanics, everything is simple – weapon Just Not felt. Regardless of whether the pistol is in the hands of the protagonist or a grenade launcher, nothing changes for you, as a player. The return is not felt, every firearm is like a fluff in the hands of Raimi. It is not felt either to get into enemies, why shoot them not very exciting at them.
This is doubly offended by the fact that there really is a choice of interesting weapons. Standard pistols, machine guns, shotgun, rifles and grenade launchers are adjacent to nails, stationary machine guns, a certain amount of biological weapons and even medical equipment.
They are so attented to situational use, but in fact, if the game did not force you to use a certain weapon in a certain place of the game, then you would cost one or two views. All because the weapons are not so different and the enemies are susceptible to all weapons the same.
Inanimate https://mindepositcasino.co.uk/casino-minimum-deposit-1/ objects are also subject
And this is also a shame, because there is a variety of enemies here. Simple guards, mercenaries of different levels of preparedness, snipers, workers with heavy pneumatic grounds, special detachments to combat spirits, as well as a small number of different animals.
As for the adventure part, then everything is ambiguous. On the one hand – to solve current problems, you need to look for the right things to manipulate, choose an approach to people to capture them. Because while you do not scare them enough, subjugate them
will not come out of the will.
We scare the scientist
Sometimes it is required to build a whole chain of actions, as if building a script of the behavior of everyone around to get the desired result. On locations, you can often find many things that I would like to play with. But the game gives only the illusion of choice. Most often, 3-4 items are available for interaction, but all of them lead to the same decision-the only one that the developers provided for. In addition, the farther in the game you are moving, the more often the interaction boils to one subject to the room.
In the body of the dog you can quickly run into some small holes
In general, with variability there are problems and creatively approaching the solution of the issue simply will not work. The game in this matter is completely linear. Yes, when there is a choice of at least 4 items per location, it begins to think about what the captured object will cause the reaction we need for a particular type of NPC, when it is possible to apply the method of trial and error, it becomes .. Interesting. Yes, ultimately this is still another solution to the current problem, but it does not lie on the surface, giving the player the opportunity to play a little in the researcher and move a little with gyrus. Even in this form, it already revives the game and carries away.
For example, we need to eliminate all the guards who are now gathered in the dining room for lunch, but the cook is in no hurry to feed them.
Hungry men
We go to the warehouse, where 5 minutes ago we saw a jar with poison for rodents. We take it under control, quietly rolling into the kitchen. We manipulate the stove to spoil the cooked dinner and, using the control of the fan, direct the air so that the cook smells the smell of burnt food and draws attention to this.
I noticed at last!
With the help of cutlery, we intimidate it, subjugate it to ourselves, take the poison that we carefully placed in the kitchen, and add it into food for the guards and finally feed this mixture of hungry people.
Here we will feed.
Yes, I, too, could not believe that the game wants it from me, because it is cruel, but this is what is in Geist. Unfortunately, even such opportunities are not manifested in all game situations and often all reduces to banal piercing of objects within the location to find the only one (!) an object for interaction. And when the first points described are replaced by the second option, it’s just Disappointing.
We use engineer in a special design to pass through excavations
The fact that the game was supposed to be a good adventure with the study can also be judged by the map or study of locations.
Three -dimensional card with freedom of rotation. If you do not take into account a little illogical management, then it is very informative. For such a linear game, it is clearly redundant and more
It will come in handy for games with extensive locations, where you really need to walk in the corners and engage in a back -for.
Card of one of the locations
And you simply will not use this card. There is no need for it, so its usefulness strives for zero. For everything, not a short passage of the game, I opened the card about 6 or 7 times. Of these, half of them – this is when I wanted to see the current task and pressed the wrong way, opening the card by chance.
Locations, given that the game is quite straightforward, have many branches that are either not used, or the paths to them are closed. Moreover, there are places where, according to intuition, the player will go in the direction where the passage is closed or littered. As if before it was there
Something important, but in the end is cut out, the passage is covered with fragments of the ceiling, and previously the secondary path has become the main and only.
The locations themselves are often very worked out and have a good number of details, rooms, various things and structures. They delight the eyes, arouse interest, give the feeling that everything here is not just like that and has its own purpose. And … it’s not. There are many items that cannot be captured, and in the current situation I would like to and would be logical to try. Much of the entourage of locations is not used to interact with the world.
Riddle with light in a very interesting location
There were regular places where seeing all the decoration, I thought: “Wow, it looks like some kind of puzzle that you need to solve in order to go further. And here so many interesting things, you need to understand ". In the meantime, the fact turned out to be here or a mystery "Turn the mirror twice so that the light is reflected" or there was nothing at all and the main character simply rushed forward past all these potential opportunities!
Toward the end of the game, there was a feeling that the game was in a hurry to finish – a lot of missing animations, a lot of where the models began to fall beyond the walls, here and there invisible walls. Repetition of tasks that cannot be called even children’s puzzles. For example, include six generators in a certain sequence with a time limit.
One of the bosses
Artificial intelligence does not shine either. I went up to the diagonal support and some enemies of the detachment behind the detachment ran to this support point blank to my coordinates in the plane of the X-Y axes and calmed down on this.
It is normal
You can look out from around the corner, seeing the enemy’s leg and calmly kill him, shooting his foot. And if you do this with a nearby associate, then he will not even lead. But it costs only a certain point of your carcass, which is used for tracking, to appear on the horizon, as the enemy will immediately begin to shoot from the automatic weapon from the other corner with the chance of hitting almost 100%.
With the planes, the engine, apparently, generally works poorly. Shadows regularly break – enemies under the diagonal support discard the shadow on it. The spider around the angle above you will be heartily hit in your direction, but it will not go around the corner and will not go down – the search for ways in the game
(at least for this type of enemies) simply does not give him the opportunity, as if
The height for AI is not taken into account at all.
Look for a shadow on the stairs
Spiders, by the way, separate disappointment. When I saw these invisible enemies for the first time, I started. It was something new and interesting. But they were stupid, predictable and they are simply uninteresting to shoot. You find one pattern and follow him all the skirmishes with them in the game.
The same happens with bosses. It is regularly found as the game is going. Sometimes these are representatives of the human race, but most often monsters from the depths. And most often the battles with them suffer from repetitions.
Seriously, this boss is found three times per game and all three times his behavior is changing no way. Moreover, the scheme of the struggle with him is the boring-a shot, hid behind the shelter, waited 3-4 response shots, at the time of the silence came out, a shot, hid behind the shelter. And so 2-3 minutes, before the murder of the adversary.
Interesting boss
This boss is found for the game twice, but they approached it with more responsibility. At the first meeting, he behaves like the previous boss, but after several hits he changes tactics sharply, for the first time forcing you to panic to look for shelter and a convenient position for the attack. By the end of the battle, he again changes tactics and here it is useless to finish the firearms and have to use grenades.
Repeated meeting
During the second skirmish with him, which is already closer to the end of the game, you will have to rush around the large hall with some columns, then pursuing the boss to attack, then running away from him and hiding in shelter. The enemy accelerates and slows down, changes the trajectory. When he understands that you are pursuing him, he produces toxic gas behind him. If you are lurking, he begins to scour around the territory, looking for you to apply an attack. True, I found a narrow place in its AI and used it all the second half of the battle. But until this happened, this boss in a good way forced to strain. Yes, and the use of error in his behavior required a certain sequence of actions into certain (rather strict) timings, so sometimes he still managed to inflict damage to me, go to another branch of the pattern of his behavior and then again had to rush around the area, trying to introduce it into the behavior I needed.
If we talk about the technical component, then it, and like the gameplay, led me to a slight confusion. The game can work in a progressive mode, displaying the picture in resolution 480p and renders the image in the same actual resolution. Here are very good for such a console the effects of particles, reflections, glossy surfaces. Good shadows and high resolution textures (for the platform). But at the same time, animations are sometimes unnatural to horror, the textures of active areas of objects against the rest of the rest are depressing. Detailing locations are adjacent to meager rooms as if from Goldeneye for Nintendo 64.
But I was especially confused by performance. The frequency of personnel is simply unstable. This is manifested already in the prologue, the game sometimes falls up to 15 frames per second. In fairness, I will note that this does not happen constantly, but enough for you to remember this.
The main part of the gameplay proceeds with a framework between 20 and 30 frames per second. Especially when the game completely goes into the regime of the corridor action, trying to display the enemy behind every angle of numerous rooms.
But this is not all the problems. In fact, the game targets 60 frames per second and apparently has adaptive synchronization (we are talking about software implementation, and not about hardware technology). Video analysis showed that the game most often does not rise above 30, displaying a linear schedule, but there were also results showing from 45 to 60 frames per second.
I thought that the algorithm of my program on something is very mistaken and began to check manually. But it turned out that the game in small non -loaded rooms really begins to aim at 60 frames per second and really gives them out.
But after the load appears, for some time it jumps between 45 and most often 50 and then sharply fixed on 30 frames per second. But, as I said, and she is able to keep them not always. With the effects of fire or a large amount of geometry in the frame, performance falls below 30 so that you will feel it without special analysis. Also, the theory of synchronization is confirmed by the absence of turing with such a floating framework.
Contradictions – this is the whole game. A bunch of good ideas, but their implementations are found as good, so boring, predictable, monotonous and poorly technically realized. The trouble is also that I really felt that moment in the game on which the developers began to rush, leave a bunch of deficiencies, pushing the mechanics that are not used or are also not brought to mind and do not develop, although this was not enough for me, as the player was not enough for me. Excellent ideas that have not found proper implementation. It is also incomprehensible and strange technical solutions. If in any gameplay moments the game does not reach 60 frames per second, then it would be more logical to aim at 30 frames per second.
Game Geist – a set of contradictions, where good ideas, along with a good implementation, are adjacent to monotony and lack.
