When Microsoft and Rare announced that the developer had parted ways with Nintendo and joined up as an Xbox-exclusive house, there was some surprise. Its first game has arrived, and anyone who's been paying attention to the half-hearted buzz around it is probably prepared for the worst. The truth is, that's not what you'll get; in a lot of ways, Grabbed by the Ghoulies is an enjoyable, stylish game. In many others, though, it just doesn't work.

Though the game comes from the team behind the Banjo-Kazooie series, it's a brawler, not a platformer. In fact, the hero Cooper can't jump at all. After an introductory cinema that has the fresh-faced lad and his main squeeze Amber seek refuge in a mysterious mansion to get out of the rain -- shades of The Rocky Horror Picture Show? -- and into the grasp of a crazy baron and his army of supernatural heavies, Amber's instantly kidnapped and thus Cooper must seek her out. Things aren't that simple, though, as the plot takes various twists and turns (and eventually boils down to, yes, collecting something -- other captured kids).

The soda gun makes a sticky mess.
The main gameplay mechanic for GBTG is beating the snot out of those rapacious ghoulies. You control Cooper with the left analog stick, and fight with the right, by simply holding it in the direction you wish to attack. This is not a very fun play mechanic. In the early stages of the game, it means the game is mindlessly easy, and in the more difficult later bits, it's actually more of an impediment. Getting Cooper to do precisely what you want, in the direction you want, at the right moment, can become a bit more challenging than it should be.

Moreover, this level of detachment made me feel at times that I wasn't playing the game so much as that it was playing itself -- it just needed me to be there so it could get on with its business. If a tree falls in a forest with no one around, does it make a sound? I can't say. Does GBTG play itself while I'm not home? It might.

Fortunately, there's more to the gameplay than that. As the mansion is a series of locked rooms, you need to beat enemies to get from room to room -- which, as Rare is clearly aware, would quickly become simplistic and repetitive. More and more as the game progresses you have to fulfill certain conditions to make it through the room, or fight enemies that have specific weaknesses. Both of these elements can be a lot of fun, but also can sometimes feel arbitrary or unbalanced.

For example: The hunchback can only be defeated by hitting him in the face, so he guards it. This is entertaining, as he's tricky to defeat, but when the condition appears that you have to beat him within a minute or you'll be paid a visit by the Grim Reaper, it becomes irritating. Often the rooms have die-and-retry gameplay, where you have to play through them repeatedly until you figure out where the hidden items that allow the task to be tackled are, and how to use them; if you don't, you simply have no way to pass the level. Viewing it as something of an old-school arcade/puzzle game helps, but this mechanic can become irritating as much as it helps spare repetition.

The mummy says "Whasssaaaaaap!" as he's well behind the times.
What's really criminal is that when everything comes together, the game does shine. The graphics and music are pretty much perfect; it's a good-looking game with a spooky Halloween style -- colorful, humorous, fun. Its storybook presentation is appealing, and its double entendre-laden dialogue is worth a sly grin (or, when it gets too obvious, a grimace). The characters and monsters look great, and their animations are entertaining. When the gameplay works, everything gels. There's something so satisfying about looking back in a room where you've wreaked total havoc, broken the furniture and smashed the ghoulies, and there's nothing left but peace and wreckage. But in the big picture, the game lurches from easy and dull to irritating as its difficulty ramps up.

In essence, GBTG is simply wasted potential -- a game that's less than the sum of its parts. What could have been a shining example of spooky fun ends up being Microsoft's answer to Nintendo's Luigi's Mansion; like that game it takes a well-tested team and results in a short but attractive and spookily cute game with strange play mechanics that never quite works right. Unlike LM, though, GBTG is not a launch game -- although it has all of the hallmarks of one. I'd love to see a significantly reworked sequel; there's so much misused potential here that there's probably enough for another, much better, game.