Grabbed by the Ghoulies

Leave me ghoulies alone

Twycross. A small village in the country on the arse end of nowhere. Oh, and home to one of the UK's finest developers: Rare, formerly known as Ultimate Play the Game.

Although prolific developers for the Spectrum in the 1980s, they are far more known for their exploits on the Nintendo 64 and are often credited with 'saving' the N64 in the West. It is probably safe to say that just about everyone has heard of GoldenEye.

Rare have jumped ship once again (although 'pushed' is probably a better description) and Grabbed by the Ghoulies is their first game to be released on the Xbox.

The background story is fairly simple fare. Two teenagers are wandering around in a wood and stumble across a mansion. One of them (the girl) gets captured and her boyfriend takes it upon himself to rescue her. Upon entering the mansion you realise that it is haunted and all manner of supernatural beings are out to get you.

Attack the Messenger

Does the madness ever end?

The game itself is as simple as the story that has been attached to it. You enter a room, you bash the enemies that attack you and then you leave the room. And then do the same thing in the next room. And then the one after that. Imagine Robotron or Smash T.V. without any guns and you will get the gist of what Ghoulies is about.

There is a bit more to the game than this, though. Many of the rooms will require you to complete a challenge before you can move onto the next one. Whilst the first few rooms will just require you to defeat all the enemies later ones offer more varied tasks, like asking you to only kill one type of enemy whilst not harming another. Failing these requirements does not result in a loss of life, but the appearance of the Grim Reaper. If he manages to touch you then you will lose a life and have to start that room again, though careful manoeuvring will allow you to avoid his touch and complete the challenge anyway.

The controls are as simplistic as the rest of the game. One stick controls your movement and the other controls the direction of your attacks, and you can use the triggers to rotate the camera around yourself. For the most part you can only punch and kick enemies though you will be able to pick up chairs, hammers and bottles to use as weapons. Some of the more friendly characters in the game will give you a gun of some sort to use for a while, though never for more than a couple of rooms.

Ghoul Delights

Crash, bang, WHALLOP!

That this is a Rare developed game is obvious very early on. As with most of their games the graphical polish in Ghoulies is superb and just has that Rare 'look' about it. At first glance the graphics look very basic but once you get into the game a bit more you can see that they are actually very rich and deep. All of the textures are clean and sharp with lots of detail, and the amount of light and shadow being thrown about is impressive in places. The animation of your character and all the enemies is excellent and the frame rate is also very smooth. There is not one single dodgy texture or 'floating' polygon to be seen anywhere.

Likewise with the sound everything is top notch. The music changes constantly according to what is going on and each enemy has it's own vocal signature. From the ninja imps shouting "hey-YAH!" to the moaning mummies shuffling along it is all very crisp, not to mention highly amusing.

Whilst many games manage to succeed with their simplicity, Grabbed by the Ghoulies is let down by it. Whilst everything looks and sounds fantastic, there is very little to keep you playing. The combat is merely a case of holding the stick in one direction to keep attacking something and you have no say over what moves are carried out. Yes you can pick up objects and swing them around but there is very little difference to them all. Part of the problem is that you have no real target to reach other than the end of the game. There is no scoring at all in the game, which is a very strange omission. Perhaps the most limiting aspect of the game is the fact that you are unarmed. Other games of this type give you rapid-fire weapons that a skilled player can use to manoeuvre their way out of trouble when surrounded by multiple enemies. When this happens in Ghoulies it just tends to get frustrating.

A Funny Ghoul?

Those imps should be fired (groan)

As a whole, there is nothing actually wrong with this game. It is possibly one of the most polished games of the year and the amount of effort that has gone into it is staggering. The controls are solid, the graphics are excellent, the sound is top notch and it just oozes class. The enemies are very well realised, are full of character and the game is actually quite funny in places. However, it really is just too basic and too repetitive not to mention being very short - some people have completed it in eight hours. The only thing that might keep you coming back are the bonus levels that are unlocked by collecting the blue 'Rare' books in each room, but these are merely extensions of the main game and nothing to get too excited about.

As a full priced game, this is not really worth buying. No doubt a young child would love it and so could make an ideal Xmas pressie this year - but for anyone else it really cannot compete with the rest of the Xmas Xbox line up.