How i didn’t cover this one here yet i don’t know, but the spooky-ookie climate is here and now i feel there’s no escaping it, as a self-confessed Rareware/Rare nut, so time to dust off the X-Box One , insert Rare Replay in, and giving it another go after a literal decade and more since i’ve played and completed the game on the original X-Box. I’m not bustin that one out of its drawer/tomb, sorry.
Grabbed By The Ghoulies it’s more than the fairly obvious choice for the “Halloween game” feature review, as its still hails from the disastrous era when Nintendo simply sold Rare to Microsoft, killing a lot of the company’s projects…. or in this case making them shift the originally intended platform (in this case the Gamecube, as one could guess), as this one was actually the first Rare game to be shipped under the X-Box banner, and honestly i’m kinda sad that i pine for that era of Rare games nowadays, but i do, especially considering the post-360 stuff they did… or didn’t.
For better historical context, it was also the early 2000s, and more specifically, it was that brief period in gaming where – for whatever reason – action games wanted to implement a different control scheme for combat, as in, trying to simplify and skip the old way of combined button imputs to do moves… by making you control the melee combat with the right analogic stick, which since inception had been created to control the camera, a usual problem many 3D games had.
Actually, scratch that “for whatever reason”, as it was probably this game to kick off this short lived trend, since the very next year we had a Jet Li game, Rise To Honor, implement a similar control scheme, then in 2005 the Tekken spin-off Death By Degrees did too… and later Too Human, and also Neverdead, because some lessons are never to be learned by certain people.
It’s not that inusual since the first Ape Escape did use the right stick for controlling all the gadgets, including melee weapons, but despite the developer in question and educated guessing, this isn’t a platformer, it’s basically a beat em up with an unusual control scheme that’s usually implemented by twin stick shooters, but serving a melee focused action affair.
Grabbed By The Ghoulies it’s actually pretty straightforward in terms of actual gameplay, as it’s pretty much a linear 3D beat em up game, as you explore and fight through the various challenges each room of the haunted mansion throws at the young protagonist, Cooper, bent on saving his girlfriend Amber after she was kidnapped by Baron Von Ghoul, irritated by Cooper calling him a creep to his face. As you do to random strangers living in places called Ghoulhaven Hall.
That’s basically the plot. The various colorful folks living or working at the mansion, helping also other people kidnapped by Van Ghoul, and explore the surprisingly big extent of the creep’s villa and related pieces of land of his possession, while you gawk at the smorgasboard of self references to Rare’s past, like framed pictures of enemies from Banjo Kazooie, spiders that look like the ones in the Donkey Kong Country sequels, a stuffed dead Enguarde from the vary same series, and other – then recents – ones like It’s Mr Pants (remember that?).
Just to name a few of the MANY, many, maybe too many self-references.
Presentation is excellent, going for a very Scooby Doo and Hanna Barbera saturday morning cartoon mix of children media and Halloween horror (it’s all spooky as it could ever be, love that), enhanced by the still quite good cel shading style, with limited animation cutscenes as its all portrayed like reading an illustrated story book, with the occasional crass humour and puns Rare had been dealing since Banjo Kazooie (and would continue to in Yooka-Laylee later down the line).
Speaking of which, there’s no real voice acting, as they kept the distinctive “Rare gibberish” for the characters, which mumble stuff, cackle or produce noises, which i have a fondness for and honestly i think it’s for the better, aside from personal bias, since the dialogues that are here.
Music is also great and perfectly fits the “Halloween monster mash party” theme, of course composed by one of Rare’s legendary musicians, Grant Kirkhope (better known for his work onGoldeneye 007, the Banjo series, Donkey Kong 64 – yes, he created the now legendary Monkey Rap -, Blast Corps, Starfox Adventures), as he was still at the company at the time.
While it might lack some of the variety of his Banjo Kazooie compositions, it’s still a great OST that’s full of spooky bangers to accompany the many goofy monsters you battle, hardly a soundtrack against a horde of vampire poultry (or haunted TV sets shocking you when touched) has been this good, and it’s complimented by excellent sound design as well, with every creak and noise created by the mansion and its titular ghouls audible in crisp detail.
While you often traverse back and forth certain areas of the mansion, there’s no real exploration (there’s an useless idea of map you can gander at in the submenùs, dunno why) as in there’s always one open door in the room leading to where you need to go, but it’s worth smashing things or go out of your way to get the Rare branded collectable books hidden in every single challenge/room (even rivisited ones) as you unlock extra challenges.
And in retrospect, it works. There is a satisfaction to the feeling of mimicking a good old kicking a zombie in the ass my moving the right analog stick in that fashion, elbowing a fallen enemies as a follow up, or kicking back to avoid being hit from enemies behind you, and you get also throwing weapons, like bottles or burgers, or even a long range gun of sorts in some sections, which doesn’t break after the indicated amount of uses like the others, but has an overheating system.
Often you can use stuff that’s a more fixed part of the enviroment like billiard tables to swing around and clear a group of skeletons, and even arms left behind by zombies so you can beat them with their own limbs.
And it’s always a good thing to use every item possible as enemies are often many and the game always keeps on your toes to avoid you becoming too overconfident, not only by introducing new enemies, new type of challenge objectives (only killing the indicated monsters, no damage, no weapons, a time limit before Death itself spawn to instakill you), but also by the darned baron himself being a meta-ass and changing the health you have at the start of each room, often giving you very little, or barely any.
It’s a very arcade style experience, not only by the way the room/challenges have these variety of objectives needed to “clear “ the current room and progress, but because of the many modifiers/health pickups/power ups found in the soup cans sparsed around, which can grant you double the durability for picked up weapons, freeze the monster in place, extra health, or even maluses like the classic “ reverse the controls”, slow motion just for your character, etc.
One thing that aged like fine curled zombie ass is the “scare system”. Well, not entirely, i like that some enemies can project a frighting aura that makes Cooper afraid and more vulnerable as he takes double the damage, but more often than not the scares are just random (or enemy triggered, like the Medusa monsters) QTEs to avoid the scare taking away some of your health.
This is also often used as a filler kind of activity during some first person auto-strolling section where the game is basically on a POV and in autopilot, but these are few and shortlived.
While it works here because Rare did realized what they could do with the idea and systems… it’s no real wonder this never caught on, i mean, it’s ironically more limiting than just using the normal buttons, and if tried to do anything more complex, like blocking, parrying… it would become an utter mess that would call for some button usage outside of the camera adjusting and picking up/dropping weapons-items. Simplicity is both a beat em up strenght and weakness, and Rare spooky wooky title is no exception, as it’s easy to pick up and play, but after the initial fresh feeling due to the control scheme, to many GBTG will feel a bit too simple and repetitive, lacking the depth expected for modern beat em up games, even back in 2003 and with the game trying everything it can to mitigate it with the challenge rules and monster types, it’s just trying to spice a gimmick.
Again, they did basically all they could to keep some variety or the feel of it with this type of controls and design, because the gimmick of using the analog stick for melee combat is ultimately just that, a gimmick, not completely devoid of merit, but when you adjust to it… you just notice there’s very little to it in practice, once the novelty of the idea wears off, and in the long run even the attempts at keeping things interesting are self-sabotaged by having a Grim Reaper show up if you break the rules, which at times is so nearly impossible to do it’s just frustrating you often just wanna try and cheese it by escaping the fucker instead of wasting time trying to play by the rules.
Heck, in late game the developers subtly encourage you do it that way by hiding power ups that stun the reaper, make you run faster, give you one hit kills, sometimes even all at once, as a kind of band-aid on balance.
Plus, late in Chapter 3, i’ve encountered a challenge where its rules literally contradict each other, so aside from using a power up that creates a small Cooper clone that attacks for you, there’s no way to avoid the Grim Reaper being an annoying pain in the ass.
I’m not surprised they didn’t try stuff that could have worked even with the set up, like combos changing by the timing of inputs, as the analogic stick melee controls are just limited when you have to deal with many enemies, and since it’s contextual, there’s no melee spin attack for you just fhighting with your fists…though it would have helped as thing get chaotic often, and the auto-targeting employed to get the whole combat work may lead to you breaking a rule of the challenge, summoning Death. Plus, even with the triggers to rotate it around, the camera can be often troublesome, and will often make you wish you could zoom in or zoom out.
That and the game basically always reducing your health to a ¼ feels leads to more frustrating deaths than actual challenge, though there is that too, but the game trying to make you feel on edge and to pay attention all the times to avoid death… this way it’s a bit more frustrating than necessary.
In terms of lenght, it’s 6/7 hours dealio, with maybe a couple, max 3 more hours to unlock all the extra challenges (you can easily revisit chapter or scenes where you didn’t get the hidden Rare book collectable) and getting the best rank for them, and also beating it on hard mode, if you want.
The Rare Replay version does help a little with some achievements for the games laid on top, for what’s otherwise a good graphical remaster of the original X-Box version (for whatever reason this one, of all the games included in the collection, is the one remastered to run natively on X-Box One, so it’s not emulated), with enhanced resolution and framerate, without any changes into the contents of the game itself, which include an “easy mode” toggle for younger or less experienced players.
I’m not complaining about the lenght, because 12 hours of the game with this style of combat system and progression wouldn’t have magically made it better, quite the opposite, to be brutally honest i feel the game would have benefitted in cutting out some stuff, as it pads itself out with some bullshit you have to find as an excuse to revisit many old areas of the mansion.
It would have been interesting to have co-op, but as Rare fans might already know, this was one of the many things (including some bosses) axed during production, which weren’t easy, a common denominator that i believe Rare fans already know in excruciating detail, thanks to the many essays detailing the indeed messy productions that befell the many Rare games planned before the Microsoft acquisition, and its aftermath of changes and cancelled projects.
I really want the new Rare to get a second krack at it with a sequel (for which the studio had some ideas, including a non-linear or open world style, again, remember, it was 2003, everybody wanted open worlds but often couldn’t realistically do them), but it might never happen because i don’t see this “analog stick based melee combat only” NOT being a dealbreaker in the planning stage alone, and changing it to a more traditional combat system… just won’t do, so much the game’s identity is tied to this short-lived relic of PS2 era design trends, i feel.
And the saturday morning cartoon visuals enhaced by then maligned (i remember vividly the hate Wind Waker got) but now aged like fine wine cel-shaded graphics, which look even better in HD.
So maybe, a Grabbed By The Ghoulies 2 shouldn’t happen, and we could simply enjoy this as a flawed yet fun, decent quirky beat em up game with plenty of the studio’s distinct style, that was maybe treated too unfairly at the time (due to the studio’s illustrious past and some sensibilities at the time, especially about cel shading) as a singular little happy yet slightly underrated, flawed but interesting title from the early X-Box era of Rare titles, a little bit of an experimental one.
Even though i’m willing to admit it’s a bit of an acquired taste.
Not to worry regardless, given what Microsoft is doing with the studio today… even less than before. Somehow.
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