Garfield: Escape From Monday review

Garfield has been a pop culture icon for as long as I have been alive. Something about being lazy, gorging yourself on unhealthy food, and actively disliking everybody around you seems to really resonate with the world. As a child, I vividly remember going to the library to borrow his comic collections, spending hours watching his various TV shows, and checking out the plethora of video games released starring him. All that said, his star power has faded in recent years, though there does seem to be a determined group of investors attempting to keep him in the spotlight via movies and video games, culminating in the release of his latest 3D Platformer, Garfield: Escape From Monday.

Despite his disdain for Mondays, Garfield isn’t actually attempting to escape from Monday, the day of the week. Rather he is attempting to escape from the dreaded Chef Monday, who has convinced Garfield’s dopey owner Jon to begin filling his fridge with vegetables and even (GASP!) replacing Garfield’s lasagna with spinach lasagna. 

Escape From Monday takes place in Garfield’s dreams, where he is haunted by the ghost of Chef Monday who is intent on making Garfield eat healthy. Level design closely resembles a modern 3D Mario or Crash Bandicoot title, featuring multiple worlds traversable via an overhead world map, a mixture of 3D and 2D side scrolling in levels, a ton of platforming, basic combat, and multiple items to collect. Despite the chef’s best attempts at forcing vegetables into Garfield’s diet, you will spend the game collecting cheese, baked goods, and lasagna as you desperately struggle to wake up. 

The dream setting is often a cop-out in games and TV shows, but here it works as it allows for the game to continuously throw new and more fantastical situations at you, with one of my favorite settings being an early one which places you in the middle of a live TV show where the audience is dead-set on you failing and a late area involving lassos and mine carts. Besides, If this didn’t all take place in a dream, then it’d be a pretty boring adventure just running back and forth across Jon’s small house.

Escape From Monday is extremely tongue-in-cheek. It never shies away from acknowledging that it is a video game. Garfield, the Chef, and even Jon constantly make fun of the writers, developers, and even the player. This is a welcome approach, as I'd suspect anybody hopping into a Garfield game above the age of ten is most likely expecting a childish experience. While the game is certainly catered to a younger audience, the writing and level design is decent enough to keep it entertaining for adults.

There are three worlds and 40+ levels. Levels are what you’d expect from a 3D platformer, and mostly consist of navigating increasingly complex platforming sections while fighting off enemies, who in this case are mostly sentient vegetables, marshmallows, gumball machines, and kebabs. Thankfully, bosses do break this pattern and often involve well-known Garfield characters. Garfield has multiple abilities, including a punch attack, a ground pound, wall jump, diving, and rolling. Most enemies can be defeated by simply punching them or utilizing the ground pound, though some can be defeated by launching other enemies at them or punching projectiles in their direction. 

Helping levels not just be a grind to reach the exit are the lasagna and various food pieces strewn throughout for Garfield to collect. The lasagna is typically a hidden item, often requiring venturing off the beaten path, completing various time based challenges, or finding multiple layers to acquire, while the food pieces are readily available like coins in Mario or fruit in Crash Bandicoot. Neither is required for completing the game, though the more you collect, the higher your Yum-O-Meter fills, and the more furniture you unlock for Jon’s house. 

Yes, you read that right. For some inexplicable reason, collecting valuables unlocks furniture. At any time you can visit Jon’s house from the mini-map and decorate his lounge, kitchen, and bathroom. Why, you ask? I don’t know. You can’t do anything in these rooms aside from change the color of furniture and various display pieces depending on what you’ve unlocked. But hey, if you’re a completionist, at least it gives you something to strive for.

To help Garfield navigate the increasingly treacherous levels, various suits will become available which provide temporary power boosts, allowing him to fly, surf, or even wield a lasso. These suits are often required to progress, though they are abandoned upon completion of a level. Unlike in Mario games, you do not lose the suit if you take damage. In fact, taking damage or dying is rarely a threat at all. Garfield has the ability to withstand three hits before dying, but collecting food or defeating an enemy will provide him with health refills, meaning you will rarely perish from anything aside from stumbling off a ledge. Death has no recourse, and even falling will only result in you reappearing right back where you fell from. This does take away any semblance of a challenge, but hey, It’s Garfield, so I didn’t really expect Dark Souls levels of difficulty.

The platforming does get a bit trickier by the third world, which I found to have the most interesting setting of them all. From minecart rides, to running towards the camera ALA Crash Bandicoot, to platforms that swap positions every time you jump, this world was the first time I  truly felt the need to use the platforming skills I've honed over countless years playing Mario games. I wish the rest of the game was as creative as these late game areas are, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that the game is still quite enjoyable as is. 

Overall, Garfield: Escape From Monday is an enjoyable, albeit far too easy, adventure, catered toward children but boasting a refreshing tongue-in-cheek approach to its story. Children will most likely have a great time with Escape From Monday, and thanks to the aforementioned furniture to find and a time attack mode, will have a reason to replay levels. Adults may not find much here to love, but at least should be sufficiently entertained for the 8 hours or so it takes to complete.