Quickie Review: Grabbed by the Ghoulies (XB)

This game sucks hard.

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I’m sure there’s proper etiquette when opening a review of a game that sucks, but man, this game is really bad. This is not Bubsy 3D bad. It’s not even Superman 64 bad. What it is though, is Grabbed by the Ghoulies bad.

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The basic fundamentals of this game are missing. The biggest one being good controls. Right analog controls what direction you want to attack. Left analog stick lets you move around. triggers let you pan the camera left and right, but if you play most other good platformer games, the right stick controls the camera. You’re going to be attacking when you’re trying to pan the camera around. Even with a lot of time invested in getting used to the controls, you’re going to attack by accident. In the heat of battle, you’ll be finding yourself throwing a punch and pretty much killing yourself. I supposed it might be beneficial to someone that has never played a 3d platformer title to map the camera to triggers and attacks to the right stick. But what’s so hard about designating a button for attacks, in conjunction with pressing the direction you want to attack? It’s not a button masher, it’s an analog smacker. This scheme worked for Ape Escape  because the rest of the game was built properly to support such a control scheme. Why does it feel like I’m skating around when attacking? You also move around pretty slow, with no type of sprint action to be found.

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While it doesn't look particularly poor, Grabbed by the Ghoulies is as rich as the money in these skeletons pockets (hint - it's piss poor)

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Why can’t I skip cut scenes? If by some chance I wanted to torture myself some more with a second playthrough, why couldn’t I lessen the blow by skipping these cut scenes? While the game looks passable, the animations come off as just weird. When there are enemies on screen, you’re always facing the closest one, with that slippery skating like movement. The human characters look good for how they are portrayed as, but the enemies look ridiculous. Why does the music sound horrible? Why does the intro theme make me feel like punching a baby clown in the mouth? Why are there voices, yet nothing is spoken other than one word every so often?

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With this being a title from Rare, I’m sorely disappointed. Rare, for at least the Nintendo years, stood for premiere gaming. GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, Banjo Kazooie, all games with critical acclaim, and rightfully so. Grabbed by the Ghoulies feels like a failed experiment at innovation and story telling. Too much loading, too frustrating a control scheme, too ear deafening bad music. I spent 2 bucks on this game. I could have spent those 2 bucks on a slice of pizza, which would have given me countless more satisfaction than this game. I’d be cliche and say that the only good thing about this game is that you can turn it off, but for it to power on at all, disproves that notion. Avoid Grabbed by the Ghoulies by all means necessary.

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Rating: 3.3