The story, told as if you’re reading an animated comic book, introduces you to Cooper and his girlfriend Amber. You’re on a romantic hike in some unspecific region of the world, a little lost, cold and soaked by the rain. Spying a foreboding mansion you decide to seek refuge. Cooper, not being the most prudent when it comes to voicing his opinion, offends the resident Baron Von Ghoul who promptly instructs his Ghoulie cronies to go grab the girl, and so the adventure begins.

The first level of GbtG introduces you to Crivens, the butler. Mr. Crivens instructs you on the game mechanics, and continues to guide you throughout your adventure. The idea is very simplistic. Cooper must clear a room of ghoulies by pummeling them into mush, either by using his fists and feet, or by using the furniture scattered about the place. Things however, are never going to be that easy.

You control Cooper’s movement using the left analogue stick, and his attacks with the right analogue stick. This feels a little awkward at first, as if the right stick should be controlling the camera (which is done with the left and right triggers), but it soon becomes easy enough. The attacks are directional, meaning if you push left, Cooper will attack left. Push back and Cooper will perform some rear guard action. If you watch the intro it explains the different moves available, although you don’t have any real control over the type of attack that’s performed.

You will have to adventure through many rooms in the mansion, and for each room that Cooper enters, a different twist on what you must do to defeat the Ghoulies applies. In some it is a simple case of defeating a certain number of monsters, or having to kill ghouls of a certain type whilst leaving the rest alone. In others, Cooper must avoid getting hit for a certain period of time, or avoid breaking any furniture. These tasks fluctuate in difficultly; some can be infuriating with others being a walk in the park.

One particularly irksome undertaking is that of defeating a room within a strict time limit. Fail to achieve this and the Grim Reaper makes an appearance. One touch from the dark hooded one spells instant death to poor Cooper. Another peculiarity is that the Baron decides early in the game he’s going to mess with your heart. This provides the means to give you a random health level at the start of a stage. It adds nothing to the game.

Cooper can use items in each room to help him smash the fiendish foes back to goo, an animated white hand next to the object indicates which these are. From paintings, to chairs, plant pots and stacks of empty bottles, the type of object will determine its use; bottles can be thrown, a chair can be swung around like a baseball bat. These have a limited life span. As you destroy them, pounding into a nasty, they break apart eventually falling to bits after a few uses. Cooper can also utilize larger items, such as sofas or pianos, by swinging them around half a circle. This takes out a greater number of enemies at once, but are only single use so must be used wisely.

The resident ghoulies Cooper meets are many, varied, interesting and funny. The first creeps you bump into are the Imps, fragile little critters that are normally destroyed with a single attack. You will also encounter haunted doors and televisions, hunchbacks and skeletons, the like of which will even use their own bones to attack you with. It’s this level of attention to detail that impresses most of all.

Scattered around each room are a number of power ups in the shape of Ma Soupswill’s cans of soup. These mostly have positive effects on Cooper, such as making him invisible, or giving him super knockdown abilities. There are others that can be detrimental, such as control reversal or slow Cooper.

At certain stages of the game, Cooper acquires special weapons that recharge themselves. These are given to you by the friendly non-playing characters you meet in the game, and are needed to defeat a certain type of monster. Most have two modes; you can either swing the item by quickly flicking the stick, or fire the weapon by holding the stick in the attack direction. The controller doesn’t make it easy; you can often end up firing when you meant to swing.

The first of the special weapons is a candle; this only has a swing attack. You happen upon a mummy, only to discover he’s impervious to a normal beating. They are, however, cowards of the flame. A meter at the bottom of the screen shows the charge of the weapon. The more you swing the candle, the dimmer the flame becomes, stop and flame becomes brighter, essentially recharging.

As you swing the candle about you can’t help but notice the dynamic lighting effects against the environment. The presentation of GbtG is quite stunning, keep an eye out for posters on walls and the contents of shelves, you might recognize some of the subject matter. Graphically the game is almost beyond reproach, everything in this stylized comic book world is how you’d expected it to be. The polished floors give reflections; the lights cast eerie shadows against the walls. You could almost believe they were real. The ghoulies are especially well animated, you will notice them doing things that will make you smile if not laugh. Likewise the aural experience is pleasurable, it has all the creepiness one would expect when visiting a secluded, haunted mansion.

The environments have a certain level of interaction to them, albeit a little limited. Cooper can happily go about the place smashing shelves, cakes, vases and chests, but you can’t help but feel cheated when you swing at heavy solid object, only to find nothing happens. You do need to be careful with what you smash. Some can release additional monsters, some power ups. Others hide the Rare book stashed away in each level. For each five Rare books collected, a bonus game is opened up, reached from the main game menu, all more of the same.

It’s not quite all about bashing Ghoulies. At certain points of the game you will happen upon a scare, and these are of two forms. The first happens when you walk to a certain part of a room, triggering a translucent ghoul to appear. You then have just a few seconds to run away before the scare area hits you, represented by an expanding red glow. Should you fail you will receive double the punishment from any hits you take. The second is akin to the quick time events in Shenmue. These usually occur when entering or leaving a room. You have a time limit in which to press a combination of buttons shown on screen. Fail and Cooper dies, requiring you to restart the level. It’s a welcome diversion from the pummelling, but sadly it is very little more than that.

Grabbed by the Ghoulies is beautiful, there’s no doubting that. The game oozes style out of every orifice; the problem lies with the repetitive nature of the game. It’s not something you can play for great lengths at a time, though these short periods can indeed be fun. Whilst there is a modicum of problem solving in places, it's no more than a token effort, it is an action game at heart. Rare have tried to extend the wear by having differing mash the monster tasks, but it’s like turning underpants inside out, it only partly works. It’s worth a look but it’s not enough to convince the masses that Rare is still the ultimate in playing games.