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If you're up on your pop culture trash, remember that Austin Powers deleted scene where Michael McDonald's generic evil security guard gets smooshed by that steamroller? His wife and kids, at home in their suburban WASP paradise, receives the bad news and must start a life without their #1 bacon-makin' henchman. It's a show-stopping joke, so hilariously out of place it's obvious why it wasn't originally included. Though the joke's more effective now in our random, Family Guy zeitgeist, it's also prescient in that it asks that question we often ask today: Who are these people that are trying to kill us?
As part of some non-descript government arm, you take control of John Raimi, literally a human shell. When his soul is ripped from his body after a mission gone haywire, is there a reason you should care? He has no personality. He does not speak. He has no past. In the office where he learns he's to raid the Volks Corporation compound that's running these experiments, there aren't even any family pictures on the desk or plastic fish mounted on the wall. As easy it is for him to jump into other people, we're never given that privilege into Raimi himself. Apparently, as far as we should be concerned, revenge is plenty.
The first few levels are truly dreadful, most of it taking place inside of a possessed security guard with a machine gun. Raimi, as a free floating spirit, can possess the employees and animals inhabiting Volks, but only once they hit their boiling point. This is done by possessing inanimate objects and doing things like making paint buckets pop or melting people's reflections melt when they look in the mirror.
Being able to jump from person to person lends itself to a variety of genres, but Geist's first person shooter sections are among the worst ever conceived. Not only can you float ahead and see where the enemies are place, but they barely move around, like they're wearing cement clogs. Most of the time, you just have to peek around a corner and keep on shooting as they stand there, absorbing bullets until they fall over.
The last third of the game is where Geist finally picks up because an actual plot is introduced and they ditch the brainless 'you're good, they're bad so kill them' attitude. Combing through a hidden library and solving puzzles like a classic adventure or first person survival horror game, you learn exactly what motivates Volks Corporation.
Up to this point, the game relied solely on your desire for blood: something bad happened to you, and everybody has to pay regardless of their involvement. It's a pretty shaky grip on what's right and wrong: Raimi is portrayed as right, even though he possesses, slaughters, poisons, and degrades people without caring how complicit they are. Some people are obvious innocent, like the dog trainer or the chef, but they're tossed aside and killed at the end anyways.
So tossing aside your capacity to care (despite the fact you're supposed to sympathize with Raimi's plight), once that reverb of an actual backstory starts bouncing you forward, the evil ways of the game become easier to digest. Ultimately, it culminates into the most surprising and harrowing final boss battle since Sin & Punishment.
Modeled after films like The Thing or Fallen, Geist strives to get the player to run that gauntlet of anger, fear, and paranoia. The spirit possession film remains a highwater Hollywood mark; as ridiculous and distant the premises may be, often they're effective because if there's one thing they can do, it's putting a face on your emotions and then punching it in. Even Patrick Swayze could get us feel misty-eyed over throwing pottery. Though Geist never finds its human stride -remaining a black and white take on what should've been a complex, ambiguous subject - it takes one movie maxim to the end: pack in a finale that's all fireworks.
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