"From the makers of Donkey Kong Country and Banjo-Kazooie" the front of the box proudly states. Not from the makers of Golden Eye, Killer Instinct and Perfect dark Then? I Umh Interesting.

When Microsoft paid something in the region of £98 million for British Development company Rare there's no doubt they where expecting great things - and with Rare's track record (stretching back to their days making games on the ZX Spectrum as Ultimate - Play the Game, or something like that) who could blame them?

Their relationship with Nintendo, from whom Microsoft brought the controlling 51% share, produced great things. So surely here was the company to decorate the coffee table power house that is the X box with a bit of Nintendo-est cuteness?

And so we have Grabbed by The Ghoulies - a 3d cartoon beat 'em up, which on the surface could be good, hey it's by Rare it could be great, no scratch that, it's by Rare it SHOULD be great. But it's not.

Phil does not rate the ghoul squashing XBox effort.

The aim of the game is that old chestnut of having to rescue your girl friend (from a spooky mansion, ohh etc). Obviously it's not going to be as straight forward as ringing on the doorbell and asking for her back (besides which we don't live in those sort of times -she's not your possession you know).

So you gotta kick some ass. Each room of the house features a self contained challenge - kill this many beasties, find a key, use weapons, don't use them etc, some with time limits and some without. And that's pretty much that.

Oh no, what am I thinking about theirs also the sections of the game where it removes control from you totally only to 'scare' you in someway, and when this happens it's a case of pressing the a, b, x and y buttons in accordance with the on screen prompts and to make this tedious intrusion even more fun it's got a time limit - brilliant.

To be fair this only happens at the start of the game - after that you'll get 'scared' during the flow of the game which is great, especially when it happens FOUR times in one room.

I don't want to be totally negative about the game, there is some fun to be had here. The graphics are great and some of the characters featured within are genuinely amusing - the first time you see them at least.

The ability to pick up various objects from each room and use them as weapons (from shovels to hamburgers, and other stuff) adds some element of variety to the gameplay. The first time you bitch slap a zombie with a broken bottle it's hard not to enjoy it. By the 40th - you can see where I'm going here.

To say it has. Sub Wind Waker Graphics clashing head first with sub Knight Lore game play would be too harsh - but not by as much as it should be. Disappointing.

5/10

Phil Utility