Reviewed: November 16, 2003
Reviewed by: Mark Smith
Publisher
Microsoft Games
Developer
Rare
Released: October 21, 2003
Genre: Action
Players: 1
ESRB: Everyone
8
9
9
7
8.4
Supported Features:
When anyone in the gaming world mentions the name, “Rare”, a wealth of visions are likely to flash through any avid gamer’s head. GoldenEye, Banjo-Kazooie, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Perfect Dark and more than 50 other titles have put Rare in the lucrative position of being one of the most sought after developers in the gaming industry.
It should come as no surprise then that Microsoft was quick to snatch them up along with all of their franchise characters, and while we wait for Conker and Banjo to make their Xbox debut Rare surprises the Xbox community with a delightful little platform-action title that oozes the charm and irreverent horror of your average episode of Scooby Doo.
Grabbed by the Ghoulies is an instant classic, both in its storybook page-flipping presentation and its simple premise. Guy and girl go for walk…girl gets grabbed by ghoulies…guy enters haunted house to save girl. It’s not going to win any awards for originality and sadly neither is the gameplay, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a ton of fun to be had in Rare’s debut Xbox title.
You play as Cooper, the young man who must search the massive haunted house room by room, hall by hall, and even into some exterior areas for his kidnapped girlfriend who has been turned into a hideous, yet very amorous ogre.
Grabbed by the Ghoulies is all about the action. There really isn’t a lot of thinking or exploration. You basically wander the mansion going from location to location. Each new room or area will present you will a specific action challenge that revolves around defeating a certain amount of enemies using a variety of rules. This creates the games only attempt at being a puzzle solver.
Control and combat is pure arcade in a Robotron 2084 sort of way. You move around with the left stick and fight with the right allowing you to move in one direction and attack in another. It’s very fluid and intuitive. You can use the triggers to pan the camera around in either direction but you have no control over looking up or down which can present a few problems of its own. Cooper will auto-target the nearest enemy, which can be both a blessing and a curse.
To defeat the ghoulies in each of these areas you are required to punch, kick, or grab items and use them as weapons. Just about everything in the game can be interacted with in some way, even if it’s just to smash something. Some items will spawn new monsters when you smash them and others will give you a valuable power-up.
The combat in each area is subject to certain rules whether it being a certain pattern of enemy destruction or the restriction of weapons you can use. If you break any of the rules the Grim Reaper will appear and chase you around the room with his bony finger pointed at you. One touch and you are dead. It’s sinister and humorous at the same time and reminded me of a certain South Park episode where the Grim Reaper was chasing the kids down the street. If you can avoid the Reaper and complete the challenge you can cheat death, but this is nearly impossible to do in most situations.
The variety of power-ups gives the game a lot of potential, both in finding them and using them. I was particularly fond of the black Xbox boxes scattered about the mansion. There are some interesting instant-action challenges that crop up from time to time. These are often as scary to the gamer as they are to Cooper, at least at first, but soon you learn to anticipate them. Even then, the designers will try to psych you out and have you second-guessing yourself. When one of these “scare moments” occur a random sequence of buttons will appear and you need to enter that sequence to avoid losing valuable energy.
I really enjoyed the visual style of Grabbed by the Ghoulies. It has a distinctive cel-shaded style to it, but there is a lack of the traditional heavy black outlines, so the game looks more like an impressive Saturday morning cartoon than a computer game. The presentation supports this artistic style by showing the movies as a series of animated comic book panels. The camera zooms around the book focusing on each panel whether it is action or captioned text.
Character design is fun and wacky just like we’ve come to expect from a Rare game. The monsters are more impish and fun that horrifying. While there are several types of monsters in the game you will often face massive amounts of the same type and things can get a bit repetitive.
Animation is stunning with Cooper showing off some impressive melee skills that result in some hilarious deaths for the ghoulies. Cooper has a devastating 1-2-3 combo that will send skeletons skittering across the floor in pieces and imps flying out the window. Interacting with the various pieces of the environment often produce surprising results. Swinging the pool table around in a huge arc and smashing a dozen skeletons in one swoop is most satisfying.
Despite the cartoon-like graphics and environments there is a surprising amount of polish and special effects incorporated into the design. Shiny floors offer up a nice reflection and there is real-time lighting that creates a creepy mood. Particle effects are abundant every time you smash an item, break a window, or dispatch a ghoulie with comic book flair.
As previously mentioned, the camera can be a bit troublesome at times but for the most part works quite well. The auto-lock can often have you running into the screen, but it also helps you fight enemies, even those that aren’t easily visible. The first-person segments where you are walking down the halls are a nice touch with the camera zooming in on each of the trophy heads, and you never know which one is going to come to life and snap at you.
The framerate is flawless for most of the game with only a hint of slowdown in a few of the more complicated encounters that involve lots of enemies in larger detailed rooms with reflections. Ghoulies also supports HDTV Progressive Scan and looks amazing in this mode.
The music is a lot of fun complete with traditional pipe organs, eerie chanting, ghostly choirs, and just a lot of music you would expect from a Disney scary movie or any episode of Scooby Doo. A lot of the music is quite subtle; creepy off-key strings, eerie piano chords, chimes and other interesting instrument choices.
Sound effects are all excellent but limited to the sounds of breaking objects, shattering bones, and the moans and groans of the mansion’s minions. I found the decision to avoid actual speech to be a bold step for the genre. Any dialog or narration is read as captions in the storybook, and anything spoken in the game by the human characters are a series of grunts and other unintelligible sounds. It reminded me of the noises Dirk the Daring made in Dragon’s Lair.
The entire sound package is presented in Dolby Digital which surrounds you in sound, giving you audio cues to the location of certain enemies, and doing a great job of scaring you with sudden noises from random directions.
Grabbed by the Ghoulies grabbed me and kept me interested for about 8-10 hours. There was certainly room for improvement on many of the chapters and you are free to return to any of them and try to better your score and unlock the bonuses and explore the hidden modes. Hardcore gamers can probably milk this title for 20 hours before exhausting its potential.
Despite the excellent presentation, Grabbed by the Ghoulies really didn’t have much of a story or a linear progression. It was more like a series of ongoing monster-bashing challenges – even the ending was rather anti-climatic. After a few hours it starts to get repetitive which is why this title is bested enjoyed in short spurts or you could easily burn yourself out.
Grabbed by the Ghoulies might not be for everyone and it certainly isn’t what most of us were expecting for Rare’s first Xbox title, but the game still maintains the same eccentric charm and flawless presentation values we’ve come to expect from Rare and will give you that necessary fix until Conker and Banjo arrive next year.