Grabbed By The Ghoulies
The fun little game with the embarrassing name.
Tags: Grabbed By The Ghoulies Categories: Reviews, Xbox Reviews
Posted by Jeff Shedden on Nov 23rd, 2003
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Grabbed By The Ghoulies (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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So here it is. Rare’s very first Xbox game. It comes about a year after the announcement of Rare’s purchase by Microsoft. Okay, granted Grabbed By The Ghoulies was originally designed for the Gamecube, and was a fair piece into development before it was converted over to the Xbox, but hey, it’s still their first Xbox game. How is it? Does it live up to the high expectations?
Does anything? It’s still a good game.
You play the role of Cooper who is wandering around out in the woods with his girlfriend, Amber. Cooper’s not very good at reading a map, so they end up outside Ghoulhaven Hall in the middle of a storm. Well, ol’ Cooper wants to pass it by and find a town to stay in, but Amber wants to go into the house to wait out the storm. It becomes a moot point, however, because Amber ends up being dragged inside by denizens of the house, and it’s up to Cooper to rescue her. He’ll meet up with all sorts of colorful characters inside the manor who will help him along the way.
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Basically, the game plays a lot like many of the action/arcade games before it. Cooper moves with the left analog stick and attacks with the right. It’s similar to games like Robotron or Smash TV.
Most of the time, Cooper will just be pummelling enemies with fists and feet, but there are also all sorts of weapons scattered around the house. These weapons range anywhere from pool cues and wooden boards, to stuffed swordfish and picnic tables. Also available are “permanent” weapons that are used to kill certain enemies like mummies, who can only be beat with fire. This is literally the bulk of the game. It’s simply going from room to room destroying zombies and imps and the like.
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Occasionally you’ll need to complete certain objectives before being allowed into the next room. For example, you may end up with only 30 seconds to kill every enemy in the room. If you run out of time, the Grim Reaper will appear to chase you around. If he catches you, poof, insta-death.
Also, from time to time, something scary will jump out, and you have to input a series of button presses before Cooper has a heart attack. Well, they call it “fainting”, but fainting is no fun. There’s also minor scares to watch out for. You don’t have to input any moves, but if you get caught scared, enemies will do twice as much damage to you.
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It wouldn’t be a Rare game if there weren’t a lot of item collecting. Scattered around the manor are 100 Rare books. One in each room you go into. There’s actually only 50 rooms, but you’ll go back into each one. And even if you’ve already collected a room’s book, there will be another one there next time you enter it. Every time you collect five books, a mini game will be unlocked. Perform well in the mini game, and you unlock goodies like concept art.
The graphics have a light cel shading effect, and are moderately well detailed. They’re not the best on the system, but they’re not bad either. It’s very cartoony, and the style is great. It actually has a feel remeniscent of Banjo Kazooie (without all the moles and bears and happiness).
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The rooms have lots and lots of unique things in them, most of which are breakable. And when somehing breaks, it stays broken until you come back to the room. It’s a lot of fun to trash a room after making sure everything in there is dead.
Sound is… Okay, well the music is good enough. Nothing to have fits over, but it’s functional and doesn’t distract. It sounds like music in pretty much any other Rare game. The voice acting, however, is well, oddly missing. I mean, I know Rare likes to use monosyllabic gibberish for their characters voices, but it really feels out of place here. Instead of talking, a character will make some wierd noise and then you read the text. On one hand, it’ll make it really easy to bring over to other countries without having to rerecord voice actors. On the other hand, we’re not under the same restrictions as we were with the N64. It just feels weird.
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Grabbed By The Ghoulies isn’t going to win any awards. It doesn’t do anything new. It’s not groundbreaking. It isn’t even the best game Rare has ever done. But it’s nowhere near the worst. Rare’s managed to put out a great little game, and as long as you aren’t expecting the second coming, Grabbed By The Ghoulies is great for several hours of mindless fun. Hopefully Rare’ll keep getting better.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
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+ Simple, yet fun + Great sense of humor |
8.8 |
| What Doesn't | |
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- No voice acting - Not revolutionary at all, in any way. |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| FUN FACT: Grabbed by the Ghoulies is a play on the British slang phrase, "grabbed by the goolies". Goolies is another way of saying "male gonads". Hooray for learning! | |
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Tags: Grabbed By The Ghoulies
Posted by Jeff Shedden on Nov 23rd, 2003 and is filed under Reviews, Xbox Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
