#2: A Week of Garfield

The lovable, lazy, and always to the point cat from the comics could have been a best selling game on the NES. I mean, with such a famous figure as Garfield, you'd really have to mess things up to not have a release in the U.S. and elsewhere. How can a game with Oldie and Jon Arbuckle possibly be bad? HOW? The Smurfs and Asterix got it right in Europe, hell, Felix the Cat wasn't all too bad either. What happened? I'll tell you, and without any sugar coat on it.

I want to put up as a warning now, Garfield reached the very pinnacle of gaming frustration and slowly took a toll on me while preparing this article. I won't be held responsible if fans of the comic strips get offended.

This game nearly stole my soul. Now, I ask, how many times have you heard those words before in a game summary? But it's painfully true. A Week of Garfield manifested itself into my worst nightmares of nuclear meltdowns, raining fires of the Armageddon, republican national conventions, and icky spiders. I felt as if I was playing out a modern-day adaptation of Dante's Inferno. I cannot express enough words in the English dictionary to disrespect this game. There's just aren't enough synonyms in a thesaurus for "sadistic".

I won't bog down my analysis with the heaps of control issues; let's get right down to it. This game looks, sounds, and feels like shit. I can't cut the butter any thinner, that's the whole experience--shit.

Upon playing for a minute or so you'll come across a hanging spider. Garfield tries to pass, but the critter has other plans for the feline. It mimics very move forward to make crossing without a scratch very difficult for being such a simple obstruction so early in the game. Wait, maybe "scratch" is too weak of a word. You just won't make it through alive. (Also I should note that there's no '4 second invincibility rule' when a hit is taken, which means the player can nearly die without even knowing you've been hit in the first place.)

I think moving along this screen literally took me over 10 times of silent death. Here's what you have to do: Go to the farthest right of the table, jump up, and pass through the string of web. You'll lose power but that's the best strategy I could come up with. Now that's shoddy programming.

Don't worry folks, the gameplay carries on in piss-poor execution. Garfield "claws" at walls, and later thin air, to reveal items. What are dozens of coffee mugs and fish doing in walls? This is the programmer telling us that they don't give a damn, and you shouldn't either. Well, not in MY AMERICA!

Stalking feces from Garfield's litterbox

Also, as you can tell already, backgrounds and sprites look lame and wholly generic. Garfield is on crack, his feces come to life, and Mr. Arbuckle has a fucking collection of the same cabinets on almost every single wall.

It only gets worse, my friends. A Week in Garfield is filled with bugs. And not the fun talking kind, I mean software bugs. Take, for example, the first table at the start of the "kitchen", as guessed by where one wallpaper ends and another starts.

If you jump underneath the table and have low power, you'll die. I first thought the sharp point of the table was "deadly", or the game had a glitch. I found out later that there's actually a hidden fish bone, which depletes health, and there's no way to avoid it when coming down from the jump. Great placement!

When you somehow manage to get past the obstacles and bland environment in a stage, a door prevents you from continuing. Claw at the wall, or the air, to magically reveal a key. Again, super logic used throughout this title.

The next stage lets Garfield roam free, in restraints to 2-D, outside.

The birds. No, I don't mean one of Hitchcock's films, I mean these awful looking things right here.

They're fucking frustrating pieces of fuck. I had to reach deep inside of me to come up with that perfect description. These bastards will make Garfield's life a living hell.

Oh, and I almost didn't mention this, there are no continues in A Week of Garfield. When you die, you start back at the title screen. This is certainly not a kid's challenge at all. It's better for mentally stimulated brainchildren hopped up on caffeine pills.

I died a lot. Then I learned, if this game wants to cheat its difficulty by throwing bogus obstacles like ridiculously difficult spiders and annoying birds, I'll counter with some cheating of my own! And so I was forced to use save states causing me to quickly restart certain areas of levels. If it wasn't for F7, I would have never survived.

I almost forgot, Jon looks pretty stoned in the game too. He'll pop up at the end of stages to quickly shout out 1 or 2 sentences before escorting me off to another hellish stage.

This is level 3. It looks like level 1, except for the new "office table" graphics. You'll see the same exact table at least a dozen times. I'll save you from whining about the cheap deaths and horrible gameplay--because I cheated my way through!

I almost forgot to mention the story's plot. Odie ran away. There.

The 4th level begins out near a door with crosses punched in. That must be a church! Or a foreshadowing that this stage is going to get the best of me.

Aside from some cheap enemies, this isn't so hard. Hey, look-a-me!

Ohhhhhhh shit. Dead.

This is when the programmers said to another in broken English, "We fail much miserable. Towa Chiki Corporation not like! Must make kill player in fourth stage to prevent continue. Add many birds!" And so they did.

I honestly think there is no 5th level to this game. If you ever make it past this, the screen then freezes up and goes blank. I'm sure of it. This game has worn me out both physically and mentally, I need it to end.

I share your pain, Garfield. Every moment of it.

If Garfield were a restaurant it would be an Applebee's. If it were a wine; boxed. A gallon of ice cream--Breyer's. And if it was a breakfast cereal, Garfield would be a supermarket bargain brand. All of the above things are "okay" by standard, but in the end, it all comes down to quality issues. What I'm trying to say is it ain't the same eating Peanut Butter Captain Crunch and Acme Jungle-O cereal. Jesus H. Christ. You see what happens to people when they're forced to play games like this one? YOU SEE!?

The Garfield franchise is good, the game with its name isn't. There. Fuck off, fatty.

..Number #1