Delay upon delay upon delay have stacked up, eventually making for a Tower of Pizza-esque slant; at a mere glance, no doubt it brings back memories of the tilted head of a condescending adult, talking rubbish to you as child, when all you really want to do is eat chocolate, roll around in mud and generally get on with your own thing. Geist has been similarly frustrating; while it seems like a lifetime since it first entered the radar, over the years it has shown very little in terms of improvement, despite release slips as likely as the sunrise when Nintendo are at any sort of helm.

Things start all very generically; some government agency has found a secret lab, and you, John Raimi (a good Rambo-esque hero name, I thought), are the only man they want on the job. The opening level acts out as a pre-cursor to all the ghostly goings-on; letting you get to grips with the control set-up, the objective, map and other menus (conveniently mapped to the directions on the D-Pad) and even gives you a chance to kill a couple of things here and there. By the end of this little training level, though, you'll come face to face with an ugly buck-toothed beast, intent on a bloodbath. After that, things start getting weird; your allies start attacking, and our heroin Raimi gets in trouble.

He gets hooked up to a typically evil looking machine and turned into the ghost we end up playing as for the majority of the game. From then on, the plot doesn't seem to get much better. From a Project Z, a typically over-zealous partner and overly evil evil-doers, Geist slaps on the storyline clichés like cheap make-up and tries to fill in the gaps with unexplained monsters of the under realm. After being treated to epic mind-benders like Killer 7, Geist certainly seems like it's missed a trick. It all just feels like a bad excuse to get down to business.

When it gets down to gameplay, though, straight away there are problems. As soon as play begins you'll notice that the controls are far from responsive; playing as Raimi just doesn't seem at all fluid, moving around is so awkward, even more so when it comes to combat. Precision aiming, for instance, is nigh-on impossible thanks to the fiddly crosshairs, and the auto-aim feature doesn't help much either. It just doesn't feel weighted and smooth. After playing Halo, TimeSplitters, Goldeneye, you just take it for granted, and when a company doesn't get it right, you really notice. It is something you'll get used to as the title progresses, but it's always a problem.

The gameplay isn't exactly highlighted by the enemy AI (or lack of it), either. For some reason, everyone in Geist seems to be chronically stupid. In the current day of console gaming, you'd definitely expect more than Geist offers. You can be shooting some evil worker from afar for ages and he'd never notice, neither would anyone surrounding him. It doesn't help that everything is completely pre-meditated, either. There are ambushes and the like all around the game, but even if they do catch you out you'll have no problem when you try it again. It just takes away all of the challenge, it's almost as if n-Space just couldn't be bothered doing the AI so they went out for lunch instead.

The main hype behind Geist was the fact that you can play as a ghost and possess people and objects. While a large amount of the game is taken up with fighting and shooting and the like, there's a fair share of sneaky, floaty ghost action too. Occasionally there'll be some mildly clever ideas, like poisoning guards waiting to be served by possessing the cook, or navigating various thin tunnels with different animals, but Geist's problem here is that it's far, far too linear. There is always only one set way to possess someone; you just have to figure out the order, and it doesn't even matter if you do it in the wrong order. It makes puzzles that could have actually been puzzling horrifically mundane and dull. It's so annoying that such a great concept has been so stupidly wasted, even if there were just a few more choices, it would have made things at least a little better, but the game's giving you a helping hand throughout the entire game. The only time that these ghost-orientated puzzles seem to work is when they're incorporated into a boss. For one of the first boss' you meet, for example, you must dispossess your host when he dispatches a grenade towards you, possess it and detonate it next to him, then rush back to your host before he's damaged. It makes for fast paced and interesting play, sorely lacking from the rest of the title.

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To its credit, Geist doesn't do everything wrong; the one area it really excels is atmosphere. When floating around forlorn corridors, airy caves and run-down buildings as a ghost, it's really quite an intense atmosphere; because everything's slower when you're a ghost and there's a constant sort of white noise playing, it's all satisfyingly creepy. Even when there isn't any action whatsoever going on and you're just getting to the next part of the game, it seems so exciting. These are the most memorable parts of Geist. It's definitely something n-Space should try to hold onto if Geist does ever get itself a sequel.

Graphically, Geist is an odd one. In places, it can look quite impressive, other times fairly average and often quite abysmal. It's caught somewhere in between the sci-fi realism of Halo and the comic violence of TimeSplitters and doesn't really know which one it wants to be more. It certainly makes for a contrasting looking game, and quite awful in places. Movement and animation is definitely not too great, looking extremely stiff and forced, while their faces look like they're made of rubber as they try to talk. A lot more could be done on the GameCube, and with all the time they've had to tweak it, I don't see why it hasn't.

Multiplayer is another case of a great concept with poor execution. While most of the game modes are nothing special, and maps too big to have frantic battles of any sort, there's one game mode that stands out as something really quite clever. There is a team of ghosts and a team of humans; the humans have weaponry that can damage the ghosts, and the ghosts can possess the humans. There are various traps scattered throughout the levels; flaming pits, big sets of spikes and things that would generally hurt if you fell onto them. While the humans try to dispose of the ghosts by shooting them, the ghosts try to possess the human push them into the obstacle, thus killing them. It's a great, great idea, and almost a bit of fun as it is, but once again let down by poor controls. It's just far too hard to actually hit the ghosts with the weapons for it to work, because of fidgety aiming. It's another great shame, and something I could no doubt see myself wasting hours on if it was a little more polished than it is. It's the one reason I really hope n-Space at least attempt a sequel, as unlikely as it may be.

Sound-wise, Geist has your typically epic-sounding score. While not orchestrated, it does the job fairly well and certainly not the worst around. The voice acting is also surprisingly quite good; while the script is all very clichéd, as well as the characters, the actors are pretty good, and add to the authenticity a little.

It terms of length, Geist is a pretty average title. It won't last you long, but you certainly won't be begging for more once it's over. There are collectibles to be found around the place, but nothing to make you come back for a second time.

While we all wanted it to be the fairytale return of the great FPS to Nintendo, Geist never looked like it had it in it to do any sort of damage. It's mildly distracting while it lasts, but with Fire Emblem, Mario Kart, Battalion Wars and the like out at a similar time, Geist just leaves a bad taste in your mouth, and in your wallet.