Rare, a little company in England that built a mountain of a business on Nintendo consoles over the past decade. This past year Rare was bought by the newcomer in the industry, Microsoft. Obviously the purchase made all Rare games exclusive to the Xbox. Gamers everywhere wondered what games would leave the Nintendo console and go to the new Xbox. Over time those answers were made public. The next question was what would Rare's first Xbox game be? Would it be Perfect Dark? Perhaps Banjo-Kazooie? Maybe a Conker game? The answer to those questions was "none of the above". Rare decided on a little game titled Grabbed by the Ghoulies. The only question left was, is it good?

Grabbed by the Ghoulies begins by introducing Cooper and his girlfriend Amber. Cooper and Amber are on moonlight walk through the woods. They stumble upon a crossroads in front of a mansion. As Cooper takes a look down at his map, Amber gets snatched up by the Ghoulies that reside in the mansion. Obviously, Cooper runs to the mansion to rescue his girlfriend and here we begin the game.

The game's story is told through a very charming story book concept. Each part of the story is contained in a comic book like frame within the book. Your journey through the mansion is recorded within these frames and helps to make up the story. The graphics within the book and within the game are filled with vibrant colors and life. The cel-shaded style that Rare has chose for the game is second to none. It works very well for the game and gives it a sort of Tim Burton (creator of Beetlejuice) feel. The game's charm immediately sucks a player in, but soon after many players will be feeling a bit let down.

The gameplay is simple; you enter a room and have a simple mission, beat up on the Ghoulies. Typically when you enter a room the doors will lock and you will have to accomplish a specific challenge. More times than not you will have to clear the room of all the Ghoulies to unlock the room's door. Other times, icons will appear on the screen to give you a specific challenge. Some of these challenges include beating up only one type of Ghoulie, clearing a room within an allotted amount of time or beating up Ghoulies with weapons found in the room. When these challenges are not met an annoying character called the Grim Reaper will appear. The Grim Reaper can kill you with one touch, sucking all the life from Cooper. He can be avoided while you complete the rest of your challenge, however due to a poor camera system and clunky controls, the Reaper will kill you more times than not.

Beating on Ghoulies is really all you do in Grabbed by the Ghoulies. Because of that you would assume that Rare would have incorporated a first class battle system. Unfortunately they didn't. Here is where the game starts to fall short of the high expectations. You control Cooper with the left control stick while you kick, punch and elbow drop with the right control stick. Simply point the right stick towards and enemy and Cooper begins punching and kicking at random. The system for battling is not only shallow, but it becomes a nuisance more often than not. For a game that is based on battling alone, I assumed we would have seen more substance than pushing the right control stick around. Unfortunately we don't. Fortunately, the rooms are littered with weapons such as cans, chairs, sticks and even hamburgers that make the battles a bit more fun. Unfortunately these weapons work the same way. Point the right stick at a Ghoulie and the weapon will be thrown or swung in that direction.

Cooper also immediately and automatically locks onto the closest enemy in the room. There is no way to break the lock, and he begins to run backward more slowly, always facing the enemy. This becomes quite frustrating as there are many times that a battle is not necessary and you just want to run away rather than go toe-to-toe with the Ghoulie, especially when the Grim Reaper appears. It is just one more thing that makes Grabbed by the Ghoulies frustrating to play.

The camera system also hurts the game in a big way. The camera swings to the right or left by pushing the right or left triggers on the underside of the Xbox controller. The camera occasionally gets hung up on walls in tight areas, however this is the least of the camera problems. Because of the battle system, (pushing the right stick towards an enemy) your attack direction will change when the camera moves. For example, if the camera is positioned behind Cooper and you are attacking to the right, moving the camera in front of Cooper will have him attacking to the left. Many of the battles in the game involve an onslaught of enemies. Keeping the camera in position to see all of them while attacking is nearly impossible. Throw in the annoying Grim Reaper chasing you with a one hit kill while being stuck in a "lock on mode" and you have the ingredients for frustration. Dying become a regular thing in Grabbed by the Ghoulies. Dying doesn't have to always be a bad thing in a game, however when you die repeatedly due to flaws in the game's design...it becomes frustrating to say the least.

The game's final shortcoming is its repetitive nature. Simply put, you walk into a room and beat up Ghoulies over and over and over again. There is no real high point in the game. Beating up Ghoulies does have some fun moments. Rare has done a decent job of making the Ghoulies entertaining and filled with character. Each and every Ghoulie has plenty of personality, something Rare has always been good at. However, even this doesn't make up for the repetitive nature of this game. Many of the rooms feel the same and much of the music sounds the same. You never feel like you entered a new stage of the game. Ghoulies does try to add depth by having players collect books in every room to unlock special features, but even that adds to the repetitiveness of the game.

I know much of what I said above is negative, but Grabbed by the Ghoulies is not a horrible game, it's simply average. Many people will like Grabbed by the Ghoulies, it provides some fun moments and it is very charming in its own way. For many gamers it will lack depth and just become a frustrating romp through a haunted mansion. It's worth taking a look at and giving it a spin on the Xbox though. There certainly is not a game like this in Microsoft's library. I suggest renting this one before you make a decision to spend your hard-earned money.