While Microid’s Garfield: Escape from Monday is probably one of the best Garfield games ever created, it is nothing more than a shameless Super Mario 3D Land clone that checks boxes. Colorful landscapes filled with whimsical elements? Check.
Tons of things to collect that eventually unlock new paths and items? Check.
Lower difficulty and easy controls to appeal to a wider audience? Check.
So then why does this entire experience feel like nothing more than busy work?
After Garfield eats some bad lasagna, he gets warped to a dream world where he needs to collect enough items to confront Chef Monday. The story is a weak glue holding the campaign together but what can you expect from a game about an orange, lazy cat who likes to eat noodles and cheese. Also, all characters or voiced but each actor doesn’t align with the character. Even though I have not seen the original Garfield cartoon in decades, I can still hear those original actors and they sound nothing like this modern version. In fact, the voice work, especially of Garfield, is often so quiet that the only way to understand the cutscenes is to read the captioning. Plus, the constant fourth wall breaking is painfully eyerolling.
Speaking on not aligning with the characters, Garfield is quite the nimble feline for constantly being portrayed as a lazy, fat cat. Running, jumping, wall jumping, dashing, swipe attacks, and there are also power-up suits that grant temporary abilities like a Mario game. Unfortunately, levels are too long, contain a ton of collectables that quickly becomes tedious, and enemies offer no challenge and repeat throughout. The worst part comes from the requirement of collecting multiple lasagna pieces in each stage. Miss one and you’ll need to tediously replay the entire 10-minute stage without the ability to start at a checkpoint or indicator where the missing piece might be. In addition, there is an optional Time Trial mission for each completed stage which does nothing more than artificially extend the play time. These time trial segments don’t mess around either; one mistake can cause you the run, requiring another full restart.
Garfield: Escape from Monday reminds me of a recently released Smurf game as it contains the same overall look, feel, and gameplay. However, this 3D platformer checks all the boxes on paper but lacks soul. The more I played, the more it felt like work, like a chore, and just wanted to power through it. For a licensed IP platformer, it isn’t terrible but why play this when there are so many Mario games that do it much better for a similar price point.
SCORE: 5.5/10
By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
X/Twitter: @ZackGaz
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