Graphically speaking, Grabbed By The Ghoulies is one of the most distinctive and original games yet to grace the Xbox. Thankfully, as you would expect from a Rare title, there is some surprisingly addictive and challenging gameplay to back up its gorgeous looks and plenty of laughs to be had as well.

From the moment you start up Grabbed By The Ghoulies and the excellent, over-dramatic theme tune starts up, with ghouls and spooks popping up everywhere, you know you're going to have fun. Upon starting a new game the introductory sequence, and indeed all of the cut scenes, unfold in a storybook style that I've not seen before in a game and it works very well. A heavily bound book opens its page to reveal a series of pictures. The screen focuses on each picture in turn, which comes to life for a few seconds, then freezes again as the screen moves to the next one. The direction of the cut scenes and the angles used are spot on and you can't help but be sucked into the narrative. The story begins with our heroes, Cooper and his girlfriend Amber who are hiking through a storm in the middle of nowhere. They come upon a very spooky looking old mansion and while Amber thinks they should take cover from the storm, Cooper wants to try and make it to the next village. The evil Baron Von Ghoul, owner of the mansion, overhears Cooper saying there could be all manner of creeps living inside and to teach him a lesson he brings a couple of gargoyles to life and they kidnap Amber. It's up to Cooper to rescue her, but that's only the beginning of the tale.

Upon sneaking into the mansion you are greeted with a totally gorgeous and fully destructible environment. The cartoon style of the whole game is so slick and stylish that it's one of the nicest looking games on Xbox. All of the furniture has exaggerated angles and the whole place perfectly captures the haunted house feeling of old movies. Cooper is attacked by a bunch of imps, the first of over 25 enemies you'll encounter on your adventure. These little purple creatures have red eyes and sharp teeth, they're pretty nippy too and charge forward, punching and biting whenever they get close. Fortunately Cooper is more than adept at defending himself and so the game begins. Your first task is to knock out all of the imps and this is done using a very easy control system that I've seen before but rarely this well implemented. You use the left thumbstick to move and the right one to attack - simply hold it in the direction you want to attack and off you go. This flexible system means that when there are loads of ghoulies all around you can fight them off and keep them at bay, punching one way then kicking the other. The imps are particularly good fun to beat, as you can kick them flying across the room or dive on them with your elbow.

Once you've defeated the ghouls you meet Crivens, the old butler who lives in the mansion, known as Ghoulhaven Hall and he aids you on your quest. He's the first of several kooky staff around the mansion and epitomises the old English butler stereotype. He pops up from time to time to give you advice and direct you to locations in the mansion where you'll find things you need to solve puzzles and beat challenges. There are dozens of big rooms to explore around the mansion, although most are blocked off by plant-like tentacles at first, thus steering you in the direction you need to go to progress. The range of locations is superb and every conceivable kind of room is here that you would expect to find in a huge mansion, including a ballroom, billiard room, laundry room, store room, freezer, servants' quarters, bathrooms, bedrooms and extensive grounds with greenhouses, stables, the groundskeeper's cottage and even a lighthouse. Every room is full of furniture that you can smash up and the way things smash and the wreckage that is left scattered on the floor makes this cartoon environment far more versatile than many games that are actually trying to be realistic.

The amount of variety in scenery and location keeps things fresh, as each new location is as gorgeously depicted as the last, teeming with little details and full of secrets and weapons. That's right, there are over 100 objects you can pick up and use as weapons to defeat the multitude of enemies. Close range weapons include chairs, tables, legs of ham, brooms, shovels, stuffed swordfish, pool cues and even Wellington boots, which you grab and use to whack the enemy and knock them flying. Each time you hit an enemy your weapon partially breaks and on the third hit it smashes altogether. Throwing weapons include glass bottles, buns, toilet rolls and cups, which you can throw from afar and each pile has six objects to throw. Finally there are other objects such as lamps, cakes, bowls of fruit, trophies, barrels and many more, which you can throw just once. However, these bounce along the floor and knock all enemies in their path flying before smashing against a far off wall and are great for stopping a group of charging enemies in their tracks.

That's not the end of the weapons though, oh no! In certain rooms there are objects that you can use once or twice to take out a whole group of enemies in one go. The first of these is in the billiard room, where skeletons burst out of pictures on the wall and run at you with surprising speed. After you smash a few with the pool cues you'll quickly find yourself overrun but fear not - just grab hold of the billiard table and with a mighty effort you swing the whole table around in a big circle, destroying all the skeletons that it hits. There are also enemies that can only be killed with certain weapons - groaning, bandaged mummies can only be killed by knocking them into a fiery furnace whilst fiery imps must be put out with a fire extinguisher! Vampires and vampire chickens (!) can only be killed with the rapid-fire garlic gun you'll pick up later and zombie pirates can easily be taken out using a super soaker filled with holy water.

Although the scenery all looks lovely it's the ghoulies themselves that really steal the show. Each one is so lovingly designed and such a humorous stereotype of a traditional monster that it makes you laugh again and again. The animation on every creature is fantastic, from the way the skeletons explode in a shower of bones to the hilarious zombies, who swing an arm round and round then run at you to bash you flying. However, if the zombie misses you its arm falls off from the effort and it looks shocked and dismayed, groaning as it sees its arm lying on the floor. If you don't stop it, the zombie will reattach its arm and come at you again but if you're quick you can pick up the arm and use it to beat the zombie to death! It's witty touches like this, which are scattered liberally throughout the game, that make it so much fun to play.

Ninja imps turn up, jumping in the air and doing all manner of martial arts moves to try and take you out. Flying imps dive bomb you and haunted furniture such as chairs, pictures, coats and even doors come at you with a vengeance. The vampire chickens look very funny and vampires themselves are even more amusing - they are all busty female vampires who run around in coffins with only their feet showing, then when they reach you they open the door in your face (which stuns you) then whack you with a big bat (the mammal, rather than the baseball variety!) Other enemies include scary medusas that try to catch you in their gaze, hunchbacks that cry and cover their faces as you beat them up and warlocks, who appear at different points in the room and shoot you with their magical staff. The fun and variety in the enemies never ends.

However, the real reason Ghoulies manages to keep your interest until the end (and it will take you a while as the mansion is huge) is the way each room provides a different challenge. Most rooms, when you get near the only open door, will present a challenge to beat. The door slams shut and icons appear telling you the conditions you must stick with to win. Conditions include beating only a certain type of enemy without beating others, beating a certain number within a time limit, fists only, weapons only, not taking any damage during the challenge, not beating the same kind of monster twice and (toughest of all) not smashing any furniture in the room. This last one is particularly tricky as if you knock an enemy flying into furniture it will break and you can't use any weapons either. These challenges mean there is always something new to do and they keep you on your toes, as whilst the gameplay starts off in a fairly relaxed manner the later levels can be surprisingly tough to complete.

The best part is that if you fail the challenge you still have a chance to win. Break the conditions of the challenge and Death appears at the door you're trying to reach, then he floats around the level trying to touch you with his finger (which results in instant death, strangely enough). However, there is a good chance of escape as you can knock him over with weapons and there are certain power-ups that keep him away from you, but best of all if you lead him towards enemies and he touches them they will be killed. Death then plays his scythe like an electric guitar for a moment, giving you a chance to get further away. It's a brilliant idea that hearkens back to the original Gauntlet and works very well indeed.

The power-ups that I've mentioned give you a wide range of powers, good and bad. They come from Ma Soupswill's, the friendly cook who has scattered her broth all around the mansion in cans. You can see what a can does before you pick it up and using these can make all the difference between winning and losing. Power-ups include one-hit kill, invisibility, turbo, miniature Cooper (where a mini you runs around beating up all the baddies independent of the real you!), special weapon (making your weapons unbreakable for a short time), extra health and even invulnerability, whilst the bad ones reduce your energy to 1, put you into slow motion or reverse your controls but only for a limited time in each case. The power-ups only last for 20-30 seconds but can be hugely helpful if used carefully. Other than Ma Soupswill (who helps you gather ingredients for a potion that will restore Amber to her former self after the evil Professor Krackpot transforms her into a hideous, hunchbacked monster) characters include Babs Buffbrass, the grumpy housekeeper who complains when you make a mess and Fiddlesworth the groundskeeper, who provides you with the weapons you need to get through certain rooms and says the funniest things.

There is no voice acting in the game, which might come as a disappointment to some but when characters do have something to say this happens in a storybook picture that is styled like the old silent movies; you read what they say, hearing only grunts and noises for each one (Cooper says "Yeah" or "Uh oh" whilst Crivens makes an old butler groaning noise and Fiddlesworth goes "Arr" like a country farmer type would. The sound effects are fantastic all around from the death moan of imps and groans of zombies to the pitiful high-pitched "eeeeee" noise that the spiders make as you kick them flying, which sound a lot like Mini-Me from Austin Powers as he gets blown into outer space! The sound makes you laugh as much as the visuals and the game's sense of humour is witty enough to keep you chuckling all the way through. The music too is as stylised as the graphics, with spooky strings during tenser moments and faster tunes when you're under attack, all with a haunted mansion vibe using old style instruments too. The whole game is really reminiscent of the old school generation of Nintendo 64 but with a new millennium makeover for the graphics and sound.

If the huge game itself wasn't enough there are books to be found in each room and every 5 you collect unlocks one of the 20 bonus challenges, which are very tough, especially if you want to get the Platinum medal for each and unlock the concept art that's available. You can go back and replay any scene (the levels are split into chapters and scenes) if you missed the book too, which is very handy. Once you've restored Amber, a new quest begins to rescue the many poor souls locked up around the mansion, who you see on your travels from time to time. Although the game will last for a while there is a danger of things becoming repetitive despite all the effort Rare has made to throw in as much variety and depth as possible, but it's so accessible and easy to pick up and play whenever you fancy that this shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Grabbed By The Ghoulies is the first proof that Rare are well worth every cent that Microsoft spent in acquiring them. This game takes a simple and fairly original concept, presents it in a gorgeous cartoon world wrapped up in a storybook style and throws in bucketloads of locations, weapons, challenges and of course ghoulies to keep you playing and laughing all the way through what is undoubtedly only a taster of the great things to come from Rare in 2004.

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).