Grabbed by the Ghoulies
Ages: Everyone

It was a dark and stormy night and Cooper and his girlfriend were looking for shelter from the rain when up on the hill appears the dark forbidding shape of a decrepit mansion. And so the game begins. Cooper's irreverent attitude gets his girlfriend kidnapped and he races through rooms and rooms to find her -- battling vampires, zombies, mummies, skeletons, all the way. Weapons include anything you can pick up -- fire extinguisher, chairs, pool cue. As you conquer the monsters in each room you can enter the next one -- and do it all over again. Doors sprout constricting vines making your path obvious. The rules are different for each room -- some are timed, some require you vanquish all the monsters, some allow no damage points on you. This is an obvious attempt to vary the game play but is doesn't work and soon the game becomes repetitious.

Kids might tolerate the repetition. The cartoon-like graphics make the ghoulies more amusing than frightening. I had a good time crumbling skeletons.The pace of the gameplay is frantic which makes some of the battles more difficult than they should be. This is a Xbox only game.

Reviewed by: Editor - 06/05