Garfield – Escape from Monday Review – Platforming Paws

Garfield – Escape from Monday Review

Garfield is back in a brand new gaming adventure, Garfield – Escape from Monday. This action platform sees the beloved ginger cat navigating a food-inspired dream world, controlled by the evil Chef Monday. This fully-voiced adventure see’s Garfield tackling a variety of platforming challenges in a meaty-sized game filled with many levels, including optional bonus levels. Let’s paws to see if it has serious platforming chops.

Jon and Garfield are watching TV when an ad comes on featuring Chef Monday advertising his new vegetarian lasagna. Disgusted, Garfield makes his way to the kitchen to enjoy some real lasagna. After eating the lasagna in the fridge, he suddenly realizes that Jon had already purchased some of Chef Monday’s vegetable lasagna – and he just ate it! This sends Garfield into food coma where he awakens in a nightmare orchestrated by Chef Monday. Garfield must survive Chef Monday’s devious plan, and over abundance of vegetables, to escape the nightmare and wake up.

Moves like Garfield

Garfield – Escape from Monday is a classic 3D platformer style game. The combat is terribly simple; Garfield can either swat at enemies or butt stomp them. Getting hit by an enemy knocks your health down by 1/3. Lose all your life, and you’ll start at one of the many, many generous checkpoints. Death really isn’t a factor here. Health is also restored by collecting any of the food items strewn throughout the levels or dropped by enemies. Honestly, you won’t be low on health for very long if you do take a hit. Fortunately, combat mostly takes a backseat in Garfield – Escape from Monday, as enemy placement is quite sparse. Enemy variety is also quite limited, usually only a few different types of bad guys in each of the three worlds. Bosses, however, can present a slightly more difficult challenge, but not by much.

Platforming is really the bread and butter of Garfield – Escape from Monday. Levels are generally quite large, but very linear. You’ll navigate obstacles, jump between platforms and so on as you work your way to the level end. Garfield has a few movement abilities. Running and jumping will be your main movements, but occasionally you’ll come across specific areas where you’ll need to wall jump up to a higher area. Garfield has a roll ability which gives him some added speed, helpful for speed runs. Aside from platforming and taking out enemies, you’ll also be hunting down snacks and Lasagna’s.

Added Bonuses

Collecting Lasagna’s will reward you with items to design Jon’s home when you’re not in a level. It’s a minor reward, as you’re not even really customizing Jon’s home, you’re just making the object appear once you unlock it, and in some cases, you can choose between two variants of the same object. Besides the standard levels, there are also some optional bonus levels that generally are shorter and have some unique twist to them. One such bonus level was Flappy Cat, which sees the 3D platformer from a 2D perspective and you navigate obstacles a little like the classic Flappy Bird game, but by utilizing Garfield’s variety of moves. There are some clever moments like this throughout Garfield – Escape from Monday, which was largely appreciated.

Beyond the general combat abilities, Garfield will occasionally get costumes that provide added movement options. The first costume you get is his turkey outfit, which allows him to jump multiple times, but with diminishing heights. It allows for navigating bigger platforming gaps. Another costume is his surfer outfit, which let’s him ride a surf board in the water areas. I actually had quite a lot of fun with the surfing sections, including grinding rails and dashing off water geysers.

On the Prowl for Lasagna

While levels are generally quite linear, there are some secret areas hiding Lasagna’s strewn throughout. Some of these secret areas can be a bit challenging to stumble upon, so careful observations are needed. And in some cases, you might see an obvious secret, but it’ll take some platforming finesse to get to them. The overall challenge for platforming is definitely catered to a younger, less experienced gaming audience, and yet, even I had some struggles from time to time.

I adored much of the visuals in Garfield – Escape from Monday. Most of the levels had a unique look to them, often with different foods incorporated into the surrounding areas. The character models, especially Garfield, were well done. It’s clear a lot of love and care went into designing Garfield – Escape from Monday.

Very Chatty Catty

Another aspect that really surprised me was the amount of voicework done in the game. Almost every level had some moments where characters interacted with each other, fully voiced. Whether it was Chef Monday taunting Garfield, or some of the many Garfield support characters like Jon, Squeak, and so on making appearances. While the humour is pretty lowkey – and sometimes the conversations went on FAR too long, it was great to see the game not taking itself too seriously. There were many fun references to Garfield being in a video game. The voicework was mostly decent. The actor who portrayed Garfield clearly had the direction “sound like an annoyed Will Forte”. It’s no Bill Murray, but hey, for the most part, it works. The supporting characters voicework for the most part worked well too.

Garfield – Escape from Monday is a fine enough platforming adventure game. It’s not going to win any awards and really doesn’t bring anything new or fresh to the table. But there were some moments that I genuinely enjoyed. The visuals are mostly quite good, especially the variety in levels and Garfield himself. The voicework is fine enough and the game does a great job of not taking itself too seriously. The game does suffer from a lack of gameplay variety and can feel a bit repetitive at times. This is not Super Mario Odyssey or Astro Bot, but if you’re a fan of platformers and/or Garfield, you might find Garfield – Escape from Monday well worth your time.

***Garfield – Escape from Monday Xbox Series X code provided by the publisher for review.***