Geist is back in a brand new form at E3 2004. While last year’s demo showed the game as mostly a first person shooter, this year the game has a very large adventure aspect. Previously only people could be possessed. Now anything is up for grabs. Players can possess animals, computers, and even crates now.

The demo begins in spirit form and the objective is to take out a large machine in order to get closer to the goal of the story, regaining your body. While in spirit form, the health meter constantly depletes, so you’ve got to take control of something fast. The first thing you need to possess is a bowl of dog food, and it really shows that Geist is definitely not the standard first person shooter. From here you can scare a dog and then possess it. As the dog, you’ve got to sneak past a couple of guards and possess an engineer in order to gain access to the deeper portions of the base. What’s really cool is that n-Space has put a ton of detail into the game. Most people think dogs see in simple black and white. Actually, they see a few colors, mostly yellow. So, when inhabiting the dog, the camera turns to a black, white, and yellowish view.

Later on comes a portion where you must possess a rat. It turns out that rats have really crummy long vision. So the in the rat view, everything up close is fine, but after a few feet the image is really blurry. It's little touches like these that make Geist a better, more immersive game.

Possessing the engineer involves a little bit of work. Humans cannot just be possessed at any time. First they must be scared. This can be accomplished by taking control of his computer work station. First comes a series of spooky pop-up windows and then the whole lab starts going haywire and a giant robot arm picks him up and tosses him around a bit. It’s a fantastic scene, watching everything from the hazy view inside the monitor.

Next, the action shifts from puzzle solving adventure to a full-on first person shooter experience. You’ve got to battle your way down a stairwell and into the inner workings of the base. On the way you can take control of various items like ceiling mounted turrets. From the turret view you can fire two large machine guns. While zooming in with the turret, the camera view becomes extremely pixelated due to the blown-up image. That’s just another of Geist’s little details. The stairwell is also littered with explosive crates which can be possessed and then detonated.

After mopping up the stairwell, it’s on to the final confrontation. On you way though, you get stopped to do a little manual labor. So it’s time to pick up a rivet gun and get to work. In this sequence there are a series of quick rivet mini-games. Walking up to a wall panel, certain holes light up. You’ve got to follow this sequence of lights and fire rivets into the metal plate. It’s pretty simple, but shows an example of the kind of things you’ll be doing in Geist when you’re not shooting stuff up.

A boss fight waits at the end, against a captain and the guards with him. There are a couple turrets that can be controlled, as well as a few explosive crates. The guards can also be scared and taken control of. The captain will be looking for you so after he discovers what you’re controlling it’ll be a mad dash to grab something else before he starts shooting with his crazy red ghost busting rifle.

Taking out the captain triggers an alarm and the room begins to fill with gas. There’s only two minutes before you’re finished. The engineer will have to be used to shut down the facility’s giant machine and then it’s a mad dash in spirit form to the end of the level.

The end of the demo shows a story sequence wherein the man in charge of the facility shuts down the machine you set out to sabotage. It also shows off Geist’s violent side when he blows a hole right through the operator’s head after the poor guy refuses to comply with the order.

Geist also includes a multiplayer mode with a unique twist. It combines standard style first person shooter multiplayer modes with the game’s original possession gameplay. Where most shooters have players running around a level picking up weapons, Geist has spirits floating around levels possessing different bodies. Currently all uninhabited bodies stand around waiting to be snagged, but hopefully they’ll be walking around the levels in the final version. That alone would change things up immensely. Imagine a first person shooter where the rocket launch didn’t sit in the same spot waiting to be picked up. First you’d have to hunt it down.

After grabbing a body it’ll change to your player color. From here it’s just like most other shooters. You run around and blast your friends, and it’s a lot of fun. There are various powerups around the levels. Some alter your defense and offense but there is another very cool one. The hijack powerup can be picked up while in spirit form and can be used to take control of one of the bodies another player is inhabiting. It’s a total blast when you grab your friend’s body and he’s left vulnerable, floating around in spirit form.

The changes that the possession gameplay make to multiplayer create a very fresh and new experience. Geist stands out on the show floor as a change for the better. It takes all the fun core elements of a first person shooter and twists them around with a totally new concept. The result is a very original game that’s a blast to play. While it could use a little bit of work in the graphics department, Geist is on track to be one of the most innovative and fun games of 2004.