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Techtite's X-Box Game Reviews |
"It's as if the game's design staff wants to make your every death 'cute' in nature. Oh, look: the Grim Reaper plays his scythe like an air guitar every time he kills you; isn't that sooooo cute? Yeah; nothing is quite as bad as 'death' in a game until you have to see a rip-off from Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey at the same time..." ---from the review ----------------- Strategy Guide Also Available:
Grabbed By the Ghoulies: Prima's Official Strategy Guide ----------------- Sidebar:: ----------------- Why does this "X-box exlusive" title look so much like a Game Cube game...? It was inevitable that when Microsoft bought out Rare as an exclusive-to-Xbox game manufacturer, that they would catch Rare in mid-production of their latest project. However, what if that project was intended for...Game Cube? Consider the obvious disc- space- conscious design of Grabbed by the Ghoulies, which almost screams (no pun intended) that this was originally supposed to fit in a tiny Nintendo Game Cube mini disc: limited different characters, lack of any voice acting (?!?), limited variations of background music, and other disc-size concerns. This all seems to have been intended to make the game fit in a Nintendo Game Cube mini-disc, not the world of X-Box internal hard drive goodness. Sure, the comic-book style cutscenes are amusing, with each comic book window animated one at a time to tell the ongoing story. However, the silent-film style narration can get annoying at times, and it isn't very rewarding, either. After defeating a dozen bad guys and running past the Grim Reaper, I'm not too satisfied by a silent movie as "reward." Sorry. ----------------- Feel free to contribute. As always, review submissions are accepted! ------------------ |
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Grabbed by the Ghoulies
Click picture to order this game (X-BOX) A Techtite ReviewWhen you read on a game box "From the creators of Donkey Kong Country and Banjo Kazooie," huge expectations surface. Both of these games were crowning achievements for the Nintendo systems they were released on. Unfortunately, this will never be said for their latest X-Box release, Grabbed By The Ghoulies, but to be fair: the problem isn't the overly high expectations. It's simply not very good.
What went wrong here? I sense this is a case of the left hand of game designers not knowing what the right hand was doing. The art department clearly thought they were doing a "cute" game, right down to the opening screen's Sesame Street style "monsters" surrounding the game title. Yet the programmers added rule after rule after rule, to make this game challenging even to the most diehard of adult gamers. This is a mistake to the highest degree. Older kids will be turned off by the saccharinely cute adversaries and storyline; young kids will be too frustrated by the excessive rules, to want to play for very long. What sort of rules...? Well, how about an unstable health meter...??? Go into a room and your health meter is reset, no matter how well (or how poorly) you're playing. Some rooms start with 15 health points; others start with 5, while some even start with as little as one! Sure, you can search for health boosts, though given such "boosts" are often one health point themselves, this is immaterial. The point is that this game's health meter is, quite frankly, totally screwy. Hey, guys; how about a health meter that's really a health meter...? The uncanny rules continue. Here's one: no jump button. In fact, there's no jumping of any kind (!), which is actually quite bittersweet. On the one hand, this means no jumping puzzles (yay!), no jumping over platforms in mid air (yippee!), and no cliché lava level while jumping over rocks while avoiding instant lava death (huzzah!). On the other hand, no jumping means no easy way to jump away from enemies (awwww!). This is annoying, when many monsters can easily outrun this guy. In fact; even my 5 year old niece could outrun this guy. You'd think that a guy with a one point health meter would run faster than this. You'd be wrong. So, with a peculiar health meter and no jumping, you may ask what you're supposed to do in this game. Well, said hero has entered a mansion where his girlfriend has been kidnapped, and you must help him save her. A butler helps you learn the basics, which involves moving with the left control stick, while fighting with the right control stick. You fight in one room at a time, and what's best of all; not a single room is "static." Just about all visible chairs, plates, wall hangings and even bottles and pieces of food(!), can be used in a fight. Other items in the room can be smashed, where there is often a hidden power-up, like "enemy freeze." That paragraph could have been the template
for a very amusing haunted house game, though as the old saying goes, too
many witches spoil the broth. It's as if too many game designers had too
many ideas for this game, and instead of abandoning the stupid ideas, they included them all. Consider how on various occasions
--very annoying occasions-- your character gets scared by a
"super monster."
All this would be mildly acceptable, if the game wasn't so "cutesy" about things. No; this is a game "from the creators of Banjo Kazooie and Donkey Kong Country," which means you're defeated by cute characters, making all the instant deaths even more infuriating. It's as if the game's design staff wants to make your every death "cute" in nature. Oh, look: the Grim Reaper plays his scythe like an air guitar every time he kills you; isn't that sooooo cute? Yeah; nothing is quite as bad as "death" in a game until you have to see a rip-off from Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey at the same time. My, how cute you are, Mr. Instant Death....NOT! One parting thought: as the opening movie spoils in advance, the "big bad" is The Baron. Huh...?!? This is a haunted mansion, and the main villain is some cross between The Red Baron and a total dork?!? This could make sense only to someone who's, say, watched It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown 500 times and just loves the scene where Snoopy acts like his doghouse is a fighter plane in WWI. Otherwise, making a Red Baron Reject into the main "monster" of a Halloween-style game makes little sense. I guess that's to be expected, however, in a game design that makes little sense at all.
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Burnout
Near
Miss
Small
Crater
Large
Crater
Deep
Impact
It's not like I didn't give this game a
fair chance. So many times I tried to like this game, only to have my
hopes shot down, again and again. As soon as I got used to one annoyance,
another one popped up. As soon as I got used to those two
annoyances, two more popped up. When it comes to the worst game
design mistakes possible, this game has
them all. That's a shame, because when looking at the cute graphics and Banjo
Kazooie style storyline, things could've been much better.
No, you don't ever get to defeat these
super-monsters(???), but instead you must press a
random selection of 10 buttons on your game pad, in only 5 seconds, in order to make
our hero calm down. Allow me the courtesy
of being blunt; this is stupid. Ghoulies is difficult enough
without an inane quick reflexes test, which if you fail takes away 10 health points; this, when that inane health meter has probably given you
a mere ten health points to begin with.
Had enough rules yet...? Sorry; there's
more! Welcome to the worst rule of the game: The Grim Reaper. Disobey the
rules of any room --the time limit, for example-- and out comes the Reaper; an invincible
specter whose very touch means instant
death. Yes, there is some mild amusement in how this Reaper will kill anything in its path, including any boss-character who may be giving you trouble. However, the reaper is a-comin',
and considering how your character can't outrun him, can't jump away from
him, and has little or no way to avoid instant death: yes, this is
as annoying as it sounds.