Grabbed by the Ghoulies (Xbox)

CNET editors' rating: 3.0 stars Good
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Gamespot editors' review

• Reviewed by: Jeff Gerstmann
• Reviewed on: 10/24/2003
• Released on: 10/21/2003

With Halloween just around the corner, the time is right for games with a slightly spooky flavor. Microsoft's answer to the holiday question is Rare's first game for the Xbox, Grabbed by the Ghoulies. It's a haunted mansion romp that looks and sounds really impressive, but it's ultimately marred by repetitive, overly simple punch-and-kick gameplay that's compounded by the game's lack of length.

While the gameplay in Grabbed by the Ghoulies gets old fast, the look of the game really goes a long way.

The game is light on plot, but the story is beautifully told, using stills and video that plays like moving pages from a book. You play as a kid named Cooper. Cooper and his girlfriend get caught in the rain, and only the nearby Ghoulhaven Hall offers any sort of immediate shelter. Upon approaching the mansion, Cooper's lady friend is kidnapped by monsters, so Cooper sets off to get her back. Since the mansion is haunted by a menagerie of imps, haunted televisions, zombies, mummies, spiders, undead pirates, haunted doors, and more, Cooper will have to fight his way from room to room to find his girlfriend and others in need of rescuing.

The gameplay in Grabbed by the Ghoulies is deliberately simple. The left stick moves Cooper, and the right stick controls Cooper's attacks. Tapping the right stick toward an enemy executes a punch or kick in that direction, while holding the stick keeps up the attacks by executing combos. The A and B buttons also come into play, as A picks up nearby objects that can be used as weapons, and B drops any weapon you might be holding. The triggers are used to rotate the camera. The way the right stick is used makes the game pretty simple to master, as you really only have to hold the stick in the direction of your foes to knock them out, occasionally switching directions as monsters come up from behind. The game has a ton of different weapons to pick up along the way, including tables, chairs, fire extinguishers, vases, and more.

A butler appears early on to guide Cooper, and his tips essentially act as brief tutorials. At first, Grabbed by the Ghoulies is merely a simple beat-'em-up, asking you to clear a room of enemies to proceed. Each room you enter gives you a different amount of starting heath, so there's no need to conserve your health from room to room, but more and more restrictions do pile up as you continue. Some rooms ask you to find a key to proceed. Others have time limits, forcing you to eliminate enemies quickly. As you get deeper and deeper into the game, you'll find rooms that forbid you from getting hit, rooms that require you to inflict all of your damage with weapons, and so on. Violating these rules brings out the grim reaper, who will kill Cooper with one touch if he gets close enough. Dying in Grabbed by the Ghoulies is really only a temporary setback. Upon death, you're placed at the start of the current room, and you'll have to play the entire room over again. A "butler's brew" option sits in the menus, and it's marked as a mode for younger players. When it's enabled and you die, you're given the option to retry the room with double your normal health. Since the game is already pretty easy, with most of the difficulty coming from the grim reaper's restrictions, the double health isn't as much of a bonus as you might think.

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