Grabbed by the Ghoulies Review
From the creators of Banjo-Kazooie comes a fantastic romp set in an appallingly haunted house that is sure to set you on edge. Perhaps this takes on a more literal note than intended, as Grabbed By The Ghoulies has been universally panned by critics and gamers alike as Rare’s worst title released. Is this title truly deserving of such negative reception, or was the majority of criticism stemming from the fact that Ghoulies was Rare’s first release under Microsoft and many fans thought that it effectively broke a steady string of triple AAA titles for Nintendo?
In this review we hope to take on Ghoulies with a new perspective, one without bias for what the gaming gods have said, and instead focus on the title for what it is; an oddball style ghost story that’s meant to invoke laughter rather than genuine screams – as some critics were quick to debase the Beat ‘Em Up for after failing to deliver what it never intended. Hopefully this review will help shed some new light on the play experience, and maybe entice a few people to give it a try rather than dismissing it from their Rare library entirely.
On a dark and stormy night as most tales like these begin, Cooper Chance and his girlfriend Amber happen across a massive manor at the edge of the woods as they attempt to get their bearings. With the rain beating down from above, Amber suggests that they take shelter inside the manor while Cooper takes note of its benevolent appearance and suggests that they try to make it to the next town. Leering like a raven above, the owner of the Hall, Baron Von Ghoul watches from the highest window of the manor as the duo make a decision. As Amber begins to walk towards the gate, Cooper warns her that the place could be filled with creeps…or worse…
Unfortunately this comment is heard by the Baron and in a fit of rage he sends his Ghoulish minions to snatch Amber up and bring her inside. After watching his girlfriend get grabbed by the Ghoulies, Cooper gives chase and finds himself in the Main Hall, alone and defenseless in the darkness as a thousand beady eyes light up around him…
While this sort of progression is anything but unheard of for the likes of Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda wherein your love interest is dangled in front of the protagonist like a carrot, Grabbed By The Ghoulies is quick to set itself apart from the rest with a few twists that will help to shake up the monotony a bit.
In this case, a reunion with Amber is rather short-lived with the introduction of a sinister character named Dr. Krackpot who manages to transform Amber into a Ghoulish shadow of her former self. With each of these developments come a new objective, and it helps to hold your interest and solve the current problem at hand.
That said, the title can be incredibly linear at times when tasking you with reaching far-flung corners of the house for desirable items and then working your way back through the same rooms twice over to arrive where you started from. It’s entirely possible to finish Ghoulies in a single sitting, and the title seems to do whatever it can to help pad out the length and keep you playing.
The title is somewhat hindered when it comes to variety in objective, as your first task after Ambers transformation is to gather three widely distributed ingredients to create a cure. Once you’ve done that your next objective is to locate three pieces of a discarded rhyme to have your showdown with the Baron, which seems to come much too quick without enough exploration of more varied rooms of the Hall.
Luckily this is somewhat remedied with the interaction you’ll have with the Ghoulies in each room – which is the games shining feature – its aims can be quite translucent as they lead you through the Hall with a number of rooms appearing time and time again with very few rooms that you’ll only see just once.
Borrowing heavily from a cel-shaded style, Grabbed By The Ghoulies mixes a perfect blend of vibrancy and subtly to create dark brooding landscapes of green and purple and the more saturated palette attributed the Ghoulies you’ll come across in the hall. The attention to detail that Rare has managed to squeeze out into Grabbed By The Ghoulies is highly impressive, especially when compared to their releases on the Nintendo 64 prior. Each room looks effectively lived in, and there’s plenty of objects to suggest so, from shirts laid over chairs in the Servants Dormitory, labeled tins cluttered on the cabinets in the Kitchen and toys strewn about in the Game Room. In keeping with Grabbed By The Ghoulies’ humor, the art style takes on something of a cartoon, with its windows and doors uneven straying away from being proportionally rectangular, shelves unbalanced and each ceiling high and skewed as well.
Interacting with the Ghoulies will definitely show how deep the engine is, with each creepy creature reacting to every punch, kick and headbutt in appropriate fashion. Each breed of Ghouly has their own particular personality and watching a Skeleton moan when you’ve destroyed a gaggle of his brethern with a swinging pool table, or a Zombie break wind as it enters the room is a real insight to how complex the engine truly is. An absence of any lag is also present when dealing with a large number of Ghoulies, and considering this is possible during the final scene wherein you’ll be swarmed with 100 Imps is saying something!
One final detail to take note of is how each environment in Grabbed By The Ghoulies is an accident waiting to happen; slam a Zombie into a cupboard and watch as the drawers collapse under its weight, send a spinning kick to a shelf and you’ll spot a few tins rattle off onto the floor below. It’s a real treat to watch as you break a room apart in your journey or use the objects you find within to send crumbling over the Ghoulies’ heads as a real piece of furniture would.
If Banjo-Kazooie won you over for its brilliant musical score than you won’t be disappointed with Grabbed By The Ghoulies as it features the same quirky style of composition and variety of overture themes that you’ll listen to as you explore the Hall. Each breed of Ghouly is immediately recognizable by its own tune, which remains bouncy while at the same time employing staples of horror music like theremin sequences and fast paced strings. Have a listen to the Zombie Pirates theme and you’ll hear something akin to a haunted shanty that will set the scene for an undead salt, and the Vampire Chicken theme even integrates a bit that sounds like the Psycho theme into its plucky chorus.
Wandering around Ghoulhaven Hall is a real treat when you haven’t any Ghoulies to fight as well, with an atmospheric score softly playing away while a multitude of sound effects pop up in a 3D space around you. Was that a werewolf howling to the left? Did a large door just creak open to the right, or was that a far off clap of thunder to accompany the flash of light from the skinny window? These subtle additions add to the entire experience, and to search around a room knowing that a challenge is about to spring up without warning leaves you in a state of vulnerability while chains rattle and witches cackle off in the distance.
When the challenges do begin you’ll manage to hear moans and groans from the Ghoulies, who all have their own unique voices and yelps of pain; whether its the nautical nonsense of a Zombie Pirate who’s promised to “Run ye through!” or the trailing shriek of a tiny Imp as you punt him across the Hall and through a well-placed window.
The objects that you pick up and destroy are also fitted with their own authentic sound effects as well, and if you’ve ever wondered what a Paint Can might sound like after it’s managed to collide with the hipbone of a rouge Skeleton, or what a turkey leg might sound like after it’s beaten around the face of a Mummy than look no further than a psychiatric ward, with Ghoulies following close second likely. You can hardly fault the title for its music, which is just as polished as the music featured in Banjo-Kazooie.
First and foremost, the most irksome aspect for many a reviewer for Grabbed By The Ghoulies was the controls, which they attributed to being confusing and difficult to manage. While I don’t agree that Ghoulies was hindered by this set-up, it does take a little while to get used to dictating your movement utilizing only the left and right analogue stick. Once you’ve managed to sort yourself out however you’ll understand why Ghoulies needed this sort of control scheme to keep Ghoulies off of your back.
While the left analog stick will determine how you move Cooper around the Hall, the right analog stick will serve as your means of attack by effectively pointing in the direction of the nearest Ghouly. In this regard the system is seamless in delivering a well-timed kick to your front and an elbow directly behind to deal with two Ghoulies on either side of you that would have else required you to spend some time trying to face your adversaries first by turning around on the spot and then hammering away at the face buttons.
This also comes in handy when you’re dealing with a weapon like the Water Squirter wherein you’ll have to control the direction and intensity of your stream and allow for Cooper a chance to move as well, which would have been difficult to manage if it were to follow the tried and trusted route. Give Ghoulies a chance and eventually you’ll find that the control scheme works for your advantage.
Controls aside, Grabbed By The Ghoulies’ main element of play is its distribution of challenges across the Hall. Nearly every room in Ghoulhaven Hall tasks Cooper with completing an objective or two before he’ll be permitted to exit, whether this be simply defeating all of the Ghoulies in the room, finding a hidden key inside a bit of furniture or escaping without succumbing to any damage. This really keeps the game fresh, as you’ll be on your toes trying to defeat Ghoulies while at the same time thinking critically on the easiest and most effective route of solving a challenge. For instance, if you’ve found yourself in a room with a number of Flying Imps and you’ve only been alloted 5 hits to take them all out, there are a number of ways to take on the challenge to see it to completion. Will you file them into a nice little line up by leading them around the room and toss a large Record Player through the center, or will you rush over to the couch in the center of the room and spin it around to take care of them? Utilize your options well and you might discover a route that saves you grief in the most difficult of rooms.
It’s also worth your while to rummage through the assorted junk that clutters the Hall, as you might come across a tin of Super Soup; Ghoulies method of a power-up that will aid in defeating your adversaries. Some Soups will allow you to power yourself up and pack an increased wallop behind your punches, or make the Ghoulies turn on one another. Other Soups pertain directly to the challenge itself, providing you some extra time when the clock is ticking, and even solving the challenges outright so that you can move through to the next area unhindered. It’s not about trying to collect all the Soups you can in a single swallow, but taking a step back and thinking your available Soups over to best complete your challenge at hand. It’s this element of strategy involved that will have you zipping through each room without issue where otherwise you’d have spent upwards of around ten minutes toiling with an unnecessary challenge.
The Ghoulies that you’ll meet also require a bit of strategy to effectively take down, as every breed is unique and have their own strengths and weaknesses that you’ll see play out as you explore Ghoulhaven Hall. Mummies for instance, must be cast into a source of fire if you’re to properly defeat them, so if you haven’t got a torch handy this will mean knocking them to the floor and gingerly kicking them into the mouth of an open flame. Vampires that you’ll meet later on will hide in upright coffins, effectively sealing themselves off from Cooper. If you can manage to get close without putting yourself at risk of getting pulled into the coffin, the Vampire will open her door to peek out just quick enough to allow for a few cloves of your garlic to find their way inside. It’s certainly satisfying to execute some crowd control as you plow through a crowd of Ghoulies, there’s such gratification from clearing out a room and leaving only broken objects in your wake.
Once you’ve managed to complete Grabbed By The Ghoulies there’s very little to entice you back to start a new file and see the adventure to its end a second time. If you’ve been exploring each and every room vigilantly however, you’ve likely come across a few large thick books that feature Rare logos on the front cover. These are Bonus Books, and there are a grand total of 100 hidden in the game with one finding an often-devious hiding spot in every room. Each time you collect any 5 Bonus Books you’ll unlock a Bonus Challenge that will see you completing a task against the clock for a bronze, silver or gold medal based on how well you’ve carried it out. The handy Scene Selection will enable you to quickly scope out a scene that you’ve neglected to collect its respective book inside which will replay any single room in the entire game making the process simple and painless.
If you can manage to complete a Bonus Challenge in expert fashion you’ll receive a Platinum medal which in turn will unlock an piece of Concept Art that details the development of Grabbed By The Ghoulies. There are 20 pages of Concept Art to unlock, each showing a behind the scenes glimpse into the game with canned characters, removed rooms and a plethora of Ghoulish sketches and Ghoulhaven architecture.
If you can manage to complete all 20 challenges with at least a gold ranking you’ll unlock the hidden 21st challenge, which will task you with completing the entire game over as Coopers girlfriend, Amber. This mode of play is incredibly difficult with only 10 health being alloted for each room and the absence of any and all Super Soups leaving to rely on your own mettle and the objects around the room. There’s a bonus exclusive video from E3 2001 if you can manage this mammoth task, so it’s worth it seeing Amber through each room.
It’s not necessary to unlock these bonuses if you’re content with giving Ghoulies a casual playthrough however, and if you just want to try out the campaign for what it’s worth you’ll find that it’s very easy to pick up and play and complete in jut a few short hours.
If you can get your hands on this title you’ll likely find it considerably cheap for a retail version with an Xbox Live Arcade port also readily available. Ghoulies is tragically misunderstood really, so your best bet is to step into it with an open mind, ignore its slanted criticisms and formulate your own opinion. You’ll enjoy it considerably more so, I assure you.
Overall: 8/10