The Features

It took one heck of a lot of cash for Microsoft to purchase ex Nintendo lovelies Rare, designers of games such as Sabre Wolf, Goldeneye and Starfox. It is understandable as to why Microsoft thought they would make a good company to have on their books, but for the amount they paid out for them - they will be expecting a lot more from Rare in terms of gameplay than they have got here. Here is a short feature list:

• Ghoulies galore. Players will encounter more than 25 types of ghoulies to keep them on their toes, including vampires, zombies, mummies, skeletons, haunted furniture and many more. Each ghoulie has its own movement, personality and style of attack, and they all fight dirty. Gamers could be electrocuted, bitten, burned, cursed, thrown around and even vomited on.
• Superscary surprises. Spine-tingling events will happen without warning to test players' resolve and reactions, such as faces appearing in windows, ghostly figures and disembodied heads materializing from thin air, and ghoulies leaping out from almost anywhere. Gamers must avoid these scares to keep young Cooper in control or risk being overwhelmed by debilitating fear or fainting.
• Wide variety of weapons. Players will have more than 100 household objects at their disposal to use as weapons. They can bash ghoulies with chairs, pool cues, tables, pictures and nearly anything else they find in the house. For example, they can take on vampires with a garlic-firing blunderbuss and douse Fire Imps with a fire extinguisher. Players also can look to the downtrodden staff of Ghoulhaven Hall to provide them with a variety of weapons for battling the ghoulies, such as pop cans that can be shaken up and thrown like exploding grenades.
• Sophisticated yet simple gameplay. Featuring an easy pick-up-and-play style, "Grabbed by the Ghoulies" offers something for gamers at all skill levels. Players can grasp gameplay basics quickly, and refine and improve their fighting strategy as they progress through the game.

Gameplay

If there is one thing that Grabbed by the Ghoulies does well, it is the presentation, but more of this later. Let's get down to what really matters, the game play.

Now then, Grabbed by the Ghoulies is quite a simple game, but then again it is a title that is aimed toward the younger generation, so i guess that is far. But just because kids are likely to be playing this, doesn't mean you should make it overly simplistic. You control the movement of your character with the left thumbstick. The kicking and punching with the right thumbstick (pressing the various directions does a different move each time. The top left and right trigger direct the camera.

The idea behind all this is simple, as Cooper - you enter this haunted mansion, run by the "Ghoulies" in each room you visit you must complete a set out set of goals such as find a key hidden in a breakable object, defeat a certain amount of ghoulies to open up a blocked door, defeat a certain type of ghoul before the time runs our on a level.

The game starts off well, thanks to great presentation that has become tradition with Rare games on every machine they have graced. The game is presented in a book style, with cartoon style graphics. When the game begins, it actually feels fresh and different, mostly due to the graphical flair and the excellent atmosphere the game gives off, but once you are past the first 10 rooms, there is very little variety to be seen in the game, and this is its biggest downfall.

Each room or area you enter is quite tiny in size, in each of these areas you can destroy a lot of the scenery to release little extras such as extra energy, speed boosts, a mini cooper (a mini me version of yourself who helps fight the enemy), an extra that freezes the enemy so you can beat them up without being beaten yourself and more. Objects in a room such and brooms, burgers, chairs etc can be picked up and used as temporary weapons too.

Kicking the enemy is a lot of fun at first, seeing them fly across the screen and smash up various pieces of the scenery is cool, but there is only so much of the same gameplay you can take, and the lack of variety really hits home when you realize you are doing the same thing over and over again.

Graphics & Sound

Graphically Grabbed by the Ghoulies is superb, its use of cel shaded graphics is as good as Zelda's on the Gamecube, if not better in some places, just a shame it doesn't have the gameplay to go with it!. There are some excellent uses of color and design in the levels of the game, some brilliant characters designs too, with a lot of variety in creatures you come up against.

A word has to go to the presentation of the game, it is a superbly designed front end, with pages of a comic style book being turned for menus and such like, it works really well and looks great, just what we expect from Rare games.

The sound is ok, but not as good as it could have been with too many similar grunts from zombies and such like being used over and over. Musically it is excellent though, it's just the lack of what could be comical voice-overs that lets the game down on this part if you ask me, although some people seem to enjoy reading text in rare games, personally I don't.

Final Comments

Rare's first Xbox title is nowhere near as good as Microsoft should be expecting from their 300 million pound deal, unfortunately not only does the gameplay lack variety, the game hasn't been selling well anywhere either which is probably an even bigger let down when you consider that Microsoft expected this to be quite a seller. Graphically the game is spot on, with some superb designs, but as I've said again and again, the game is far too repetitive and it can get boring very quickly, not what you want from a game you have just spent some hard earned cash on.

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