Garfield: Escape from Monday, from developer OSome Studio, was released this week. It finds our favorite rotund feline battling tomatoes and big bosses while collecting his favorite food—lasagna. The game is a decent 3D platforming adventure built for a younger audience that doesn’t want too much of a challenge. Is it enough for adults? Only if they want to relax from their Call of Duty days or just need a reminder of how 3D platformers felt back in the day. But honestly, this game feels like it was made for younger gamers.
Anyway, let’s get right into this feast of a review.
The story behind Garfield: Escape from Monday is good. Jon feeds Garfield spinach lasagna, which puts the big cat in a very deep sleep. To wake up and move on, Garfield must traverse a dream world filled with dangerous tomatoes, big bosses, and plenty of good eats. If he successfully makes it back, he might just have lasagna waiting for him in the waking world.
Not a bad story to kick off a simple 3D platformer. It’s goofy enough to fit a Garfield storyline, and strong enough to carry a bigger adventure. It’s not bad at all; like the gameplay, the story does enough to warrant the journey.
Speaking of the gameplay journey, it’s quite simple in its construction. The game relies on the typical 3D platforming mechanics: run, jump, ground pound, and punch. These drive Garfield and help him traverse big, creative maps that feel like a dreamy world. I started with the mechanics because I have to give major kudos to the devs for the control design; it feels and works outstandingly. The controls are precise, can be combined, and work well in enemy encounters. They are comparable to the controls in fantastic platformers like Mario Odyssey, where the player doesn’t have to think about execution because it’s so smooth to pull off, and the actions are properly mapped to the controller. For example, Garfield will sometimes encounter enemies separated by a gap between platforms. Garfield can jump, hit the rush button to propel forward, and finish off the move with a ground pound. You can do it all in one quick, precise move that hits when you want it to and performs as expected.
I am not sure I have ever started a review by complimenting controls, but they stood out that much. They brought back some good memories from the 90s, when 3D platforming was just starting, and when the genre started kicking on all cylinders. It sounds weird at first, but it’s quite good and deserves praise.
Anyway! Controls aside, the gameplay has Garfield jumping from platform to platform in a multi-level world structure, like Super Mario 3D World’s. The worlds are creative and themed, and the environments match those themes. For example, the first world Garfield runs into is a farm-themed level, a nod to Jon Arbuckle’s family history. So, the player will find barns and farm-themed environmental constructs everywhere. The game offers plenty of level variety, so the environments never get boring, which is also a staple of traditional 3D platforming adventures.
Beyond level design, most of what the feline does is fight tomatoes and the occasional nut, needing to fight his way out, and he just keeps moving forward toward an end goal that propels him to the next set of levels. It’s a typical platformer and doesn’t go beyond the genre’s blueprint at a basic level. That’s not a bad thing, especially for an IP-driven video game experience, but don’t go in expecting anything beyond the genre’s construct, since it introduces little new and pushes few boundaries.
The game does try to give some variety to Garfield’s character by throwing in special suits (the turkey suit is hilarious), which add extra mechanics and open up different adventure opportunities, but nothing beyond that. Again, that’s not a bad thing, but it doesn’t introduce anything innovative to the genre. It does try, though, especially with the bosses.
Making the bosses stand out helps keep Garfield’s adventure fun. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and feature familiar faces in Garfield’s world. For example, the first boss is a mouse-driven giant robot that has a kill switch on top. It’s a departure from fighting tomatoes and nuts, and offers a brief breath of fresh air in the gameplay. While the robot isn’t difficult to defeat, the way to defeat it is a bit confusing, which may be intentional.
As I said at the beginning of this review, the game seems built for a younger gaming audience. The mechanics and fun levels drive that sentiment home. How this relates to the boss is simple: adult gamers will overthink the fight, which makes it confusing. Staying with the first boss, when the robot fight begins, the metal beast throws bombs at Garfield. The bombs have a circular glow and are timed before they go BOOM, which suggests Garfield should pick them up and throw them back. It really makes logical sense. BUT! That isn’t the solution. Garfield simply has to avoid the explosions over multiple throws and wait for an opening to jump on the robot and press the button at the top. One press and the fight is done. I have 45 years of gaming experience and didn’t realize this was the solution until I died a fourth time. The solution was a shot in the dark, but it was easy, which also reinforced that this game was made for a younger audience without seasoned preconceived notions. All of this ramble just to say the boss fights aren’t complicated, but it’s interesting to see how much they change up the action.
Beyond tomatoes and boss fights, the game adds more flavor to the journey with collectibles and cheese gathering. These tiny side quests determine whether Garfield fully completes a level. It’s similar to collecting coins in Super Mario 3D World: you don’t need to finish a level, but finding the items gives it a fully completed status. It also gives the player places to explore, making it more than just punching enemies and winning fights. Like everything else in this game, this isn’t a new concept, and it doesn’t add anything innovative to the finished product. It is just there to extend the gameplay and make it feel more than it really is.
The only real downer is the lack of creative common enemies, since it can feel like the game is just throwing the same enemies at the player over and over. This lack of variety also contributes to the game’s thin enemy presence, as there is more terrain for Garfield to travel than enemies to dispose of during gameplay. And don’t get me wrong, the terrain is well-designed and fun to navigate, but Garfield punching and disposing of enemies is also a blast. Just not as often, or at least not as much as in other 3D platformers of this type.
All this said, Garfield: Escape from Monday is still a fun platformer. It is built with old genre ideals and constructs, and it works more than it doesn’t, especially if you’re a younger gamer looking for an entry-level platforming experience not named Mario. It’s fun, but not as fun as it could have been.
With that, let’s wrap up this review.
Conclusion
Garfield: Escape from Monday from developer OSome Studio is a good game that meets the standards of a 3D platforming experience. While it could have used a bit more enemy presence, the controls, levels, and overall game are still fun and make good use of the IP.
