Grabbed By The Ghoulies – player skill enhanced by power-ups

by Lerako on Feb 15th, 2012

Released in 2003 by development studio Rare, known best as the team behind Donkey Kong Country series and Goldeneye 007, “Grabbed by the Ghoulies” stars an unlikely protagonist by the name of Cooper, who is tasked with rescuing his girlfriend who is quite literally grabbed by the Ghoulies and taken captive inside a massive mansion.

As Cooper, the player will need to explore all 100 rooms of the elaborate haunted house and survive the challenges inside in order to reunite with his beloved at the end of the game. This of course is easier said than done as each room features a cavalcade of creatures that you’ll need to take care of, along with a strict set of rules that are enforced the moment you’ve stepped past the threshold that go toward hindering your progress. In some cases this means not allowing Cooper to succumb to any damage, or completing the room under a tight time limit which further complicates matters, though there is a little help if he looks in the right places…

Breaking apart the scenery found in each room has a tendency to reveal hidden powers-up in the form of a Soup Tin which Cooper can then pick up and use against the Ghoulies and the challenge at hand to maximum effectiveness. Certain “Super Soups” will allow Cooper to freeze time, render himself invisible and allow him to defeat any potential enemy with one solid hit. Beyond aiding Cooper with getting out a particularly rough spot, each Super Soup goes toward formulating a strategy, that when executed correctly, will allow Cooper to escape the room in a much more efficient fashion than toiling away at defeating every Ghouly individually.

In this regard, it isn’t so much finding a power-up and using it straight away as an unfair advantage, but rather using the power-ups in accordance with one another to develop a solution to the problem at hand. For instance, if Cooper has been tasked with defeating a particularly challenging adversary there are a number of power-ups found in the room that can be utilized to make things marginally easier such as the Miniature Cooper and Invulnerability Tins, which will allow to Cooper to send forth minions in his own likeness and keep out of harm’s way respectively.

As you progress through the game and the challenges start to ramp up in difficulty, the Soups will appear fewer and far between, and hidden in much more devious locations. If you can manage to find these sleuth Soups however, they’ll prove to be absolutely indispensable with the challenge at hand. It’s in these later levels that a player may stumble across a Challenge Complete Soup Tin, which allows Cooper to pass through the room after only spending a few seconds inside. When compared with the minutes spent otherwise if the Super Soup hadn’t been utilized, this element provides both an easy out in tow with a fair bit of thinking involved.

Generally the Super Soups can be broken down into four categories: Player Effective, Increased Offensive, Immediate Ghouly Effective and Challenge Specific Soups.

Player Effective Soups go toward bulking up your defensive prowess, such as giving Cooper a boost in his total energy, increasing his speed as to avoid unwanted confrontations, and granting him invulnerability for a limited time. On the other side of the spectrum, Increased Offensive Soups aid in packing some punch behind your attacks, with choice Soups providing Cooper with One Hit K.O’s and nimble minions sent out to do his dirty work. If you’d like to kick back and let the Soups do the work for you however, there’s also Immediate Ghouly Effective Soups which as the title suggests will go into effect the second you pick them up, with effects ranging from freezing all of the Ghoulies in the room to making them turn on eachother leaving Cooper unscathed. Possibly the most desirable Soups in the bunch fall under the Challenge Specific category, which includes the aforementioned Challenge Complete Tin along with Soups granting extra time to get the Challenge solved and Shocker Blocker Tins to get you through quicktime events automatically.

If used strategically, you’ll manage to complete Grabbed by the Ghoulies in under 3 hours optimally, while avoiding the Soups altogether or using them without reason or rhyme will see you completing the game in 6 hours in excess.

Categories: Features