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Oh, but there's a catch! Not only is each room filled with baddies, but there are also restrictions on how the room can be completed. Some rooms may just require a quick run-through, though these are pretty rare and tend to be filled with some of the tougher monsters. The requirements aren't too bad at first; you might be asked to kill a set number of skeletons under a minute, or to only use weapons to defeat the monsters. But these early objectives are but child's play when you consider how the difficulty ramps up: kill only zombies with no fists, no weapons, all under twenty seconds, and all this while the zombies are joined by skeletons, fire imps, and vampires. Failing to complete a timed requirement - which most are - will result in the grim reaper making an appearance. Boy, if you thought he was funny in Bill and Ted, then you'll find him hilarious now as he makes his way across the screen, killing anything with but a single touch, and following up his victory by using his sickle as a guitar, complete with 80's thrash metal music playing in the background. The reaper, as well as the other ghoulies, can be fended off not just with weapons, but also with the various objects within the rooms. Featuring some of the most destructible environments in any videogame, Grabbed by the Ghoulies allows you to use just about everything as a weapon. Books, paintings, frying pans, umbrellas, and brooms are just some of the things that can be used to whack baddies, not to mention bigger items like dumpsters and laboratory beds. While dumpsters and beds can only be used once to swing around, the other objects can be used for a limited number of times before breaking. When there's nothing to use as a weapon, then it's time to break out the Street Fighter moves. Featuring a rudimentary fighting system, the game allows players to utilize single blows and limited combos to fend off the ghoulies on all sides; this is particularly interesting since the game is 3D, but the combat is done only in terms of front, back, left, and right, though a generous targeting system allows for contact even if the monsters aren't necessarily in the exact hit location. For added help, destroyed objects also result in bonus goods that can increase health, offer invulnerability or invisibility, or also hurt by causing only Cooper to go in slow motion. With violence and animations that resembles those in a Warner Bros. cartoon, there's a great light-hearted look and feel to everything. A particularly brutal room can end up looking like a war zone. With monster bodies evaporating in green smoke and sludge, broken wine bottles everywhere, destroyed chairs, cabinets, and dressers, the details never fail to impress. There are others in the mansion who will help Cooper, including the grouchy maid, Babs Buffbrass. Babs, along with the groundskeeper Fiddlesworth, the butler Crivens, and the cook Ma Soupswill, will all aid in getting rid of the Baron and helping Amber, along with the other prisoners. Their main assistance will come in the form of special weapons, like a soda can gun (the game's BFG) and a supersoaker that shoots holy water. Each character is a little stereotypical, but it's nothing too bad, and there's also a little 'grown folk' humor to be found during the conversations. All the weapons and fighting in the mansion can't help Cooper in every situation, however; namely, during so-called "scare moments." Minor and serious scares can either drain his energy or leave him so scared that enemy attacks count for triple damage. Minor scares, the ones that leave Cooper open to more damage, are the result of seeing sudden apparitions and other spooks that let loose a bomb of sort that, if he's caught within its radius, leads to him biting his finger nails and walking around with wobbly knees. Serious scares are normally giant hands grabbing Cooper, and these require the player to press a sequence of buttons to calm down, otherwise a decent chunk of energy is taken away. Though they sometimes come at really bad times (when a room feels more hair-tearing than fun), this aspect does offer some fun variety. So, with a wide variety of weapons that are fun to use, an environment that looks great before and after being annihilated, and an enjoyable cast of friends and foes, it seems Grabbed by the Ghoulies has it all. Well, it almost does. But there are two major problems and a few minor ones that do a real number on its fun-factor. One problem is that, whenever Cooper is near an enemy, he turns and faces them, running slowly backwards to get away. The problem with this is that the only way to get him going at full speed again is to get enough distance between him and the monster. Sometimes, this doesn't happen, most notably with the grim reaper, which just makes it incredibly frustrating to try and get away, knowing it's futile because he won't just turn and run. The other problem is that there is no block button. This can be a serious pain, considering how some of the requirements to beat a room jump the line from ingenious to needlessly aggravating, and there's little more the player can do than swing wildly and hope the enemies start hitting each other (which happens, but is rare for monsters to do it when they aren't designated as traitors to their own kind). Considering the camera doesn't zoom up, and objects like curtains can easily cover an entire viewing area of the television, not being able to block is a serious pain and a pretty big oversight. At
times, Grabbed by the Ghoulies feels like genius: the look, the style of
the overall presentation, the combat, the humor, it all feels exactly how one
would expect a cartoon to play out as; some room requirements are ingenious and,
when everything like that clicks, it's a fantastic experience. But frustration
is never too far behind because of the controls, difficulty (with some requirements
being too obscure), and lack of defensive moves. There's also the fact that the
game only clocks in at thirteen hours or so, and although there are unlockable
challenges that add to the replay value, a basic experience will barely last beyond
fifteen hours.
Graphics: 9/10 Sound:
8/10 Control:
6.5/10 Overall:
7/10 [ top ] | |||
