Grabbed By The Ghoulies is certainly one of 6 out of 10 games of all time. Grabbed By The Ghoulies was the first Rare game developed for the original Xbox and as debuts go, this wasn’t a great first impression. That said, choosing this as the first game from Rare Replay, which was purchased for £3, to play through, was probably a good idea as it means any future games I play from Rare Replay will likely be of better quality as many of Rare’s games in the collection are seen as classics.
While Grabbed By The Ghoulies isn’t a great game, it is a decent enough game held back mainly due to some interesting design choices made by Rare. This is because Grabbed By The Ghoulies as it leans heavily on timed challenges and the variety of combat modifications do get a bit overwhelming as discerning what is required does at times get a little convoluted through all the different icons within the game. There is also on occasion, the game design does cheese some of these encounters requiring me to undertake multiple attempts to clear some rooms. The Rare Replay version of Grabbed By The Ghoulies is most a solid performer, through there are sudden short periods of drop in the frame rate from the 60fps target even when being played on more capable hardware than the launch Xbox One, in my case, the Xbox One X.
The most interesting part of Grabbed By The Ghoulies is how the combat is designed. As all combat it is all done by moving the right analog stick in different directions, much like EA’s Skate series. While the camera is moved by using the back triggers. This makes the combat and general movement different to what I was use to and it did take me a little time to get use to but once I did, I discovered it quite well, even if camera didn’t always give me a clear angle at times, which did occur occasionally.
Adding in traditional British humour, did increase my goodwill towards the game and helped slightly in reducing the negatives within the some of the design choices taken by Rare, which has meant that Grabbed By The Ghoulies, has not aged that well in the 22 years since its release. Grabbed By The Ghoulies is a fun even if it becomes annoying and at times frustrating game. When this game cost only 30p those issues do matter a lot less.