Garfield’s Nightmare Review

Most people are aware of Garfield, that fat orange cat who likes to do nothing but eat and sleep all day. Although Garfield’s popularity is not at the peak it once was back when he had his own cartoon series, the two recent movies starring the feline have brought him back into the public eye. Game Factory has realized the staying power of the Garfield name and has been releasing games starring him for years. The latest in this series of games is Garfield’s Nightmare.

In Garfield’s Nightmare, your objective is to repair Garfield’s alarm clock which he broke while sleeping by getting four pieces of it back from four different worlds in the bad dream Garfield is having. Okay, so it’s not the most creative premise or the most deep, but it does explain the random change of scenery between each world. So, is Garfield’s Nightmare a good DS platformer? Read on to find out.

Graphically, I must admit I was somewhat unimpressed. The graphics seem a bit bland and a bit duller than they should be. I am not saying that they are bad, but they certainly could have been done better. The main problem with the graphics, especially near the end, is that sometimes the elaborate 3D backgrounds blend in with certain obstacles in Garfield’s path making them difficult to see. Still, although the game is a 2D platformer, it is obvious that Game Factory tried to create the feeling of a 3D world around Garfield, which is a definite plus.

One other thing I noticed is that the game lacks a frame set for Garfield hitting the ground when he does his ground slam move. When he hits the ground it is like, poof, he is standing. That certainly does not make sense. Overall, then, the graphics have some depth, but not the level of graphical polish that one might expect from the DS at this point in its lifetime.

In terms of sound, the sound effects are a pretty generic lot. There is nothing to really complain about with them, but they are not going to inspire awe from the player either. The music is reasonably good though and generally appropriate to whatever environment Garfield should happen to find himself in. As is the case with most games released by third parties on the DS, there is no voice acting, with what little text there is being displayed in thought bubbles, although, in this case that is somewhat appropriate since most of the text is in a style of Garfield thinking to himself anyway. So, overall, the sound is competent, but not extraordinary.

But do these average aesthetics hide an otherwise good game? Not really. That is not to say that Garfield’s Nightmare is bad, because it is not that either. As with the aesthetics, the gameplay is average. Garfield’s Nightmare borrows its main layout pretty much from Super Mario Bros. Each of the four worlds contains four levels followed by a boss, all centered around a certain theme. You go through the levels in order. There is no opportunity to skip levels, or even, it seems, to go back and replay levels you have already beaten unless you start the game over in a different save file.

Although the levels are reasonably lengthy, there are only sixteen of them, and your only real objective in them is to get to the end. Each level has a hidden spot with an extra life and a hidden spot with a door to play a sleepwalk minigame, but these minigames are for extra lives as well, so there is no real motivation to search too hard for them except to get a quick change of pace from the 2D platforming in these quick isometric challenges. You certainly will have little need for extra lives since this game is both easy and short.

But not only is the game easy, it is also repetitive. Garfield can do four things: he can walk, he can jump, he can crash into the ground from the air to break some objects, and he can crawl. As you can probably imagine, such a slim moveset does not give much hope for a game full of creative platforming ideas. Indeed, everything in this game has been done before, many of the elements having been done to death by now, and many of the things you have to do you have to do multiple times under the exact same circumstances. Doing the same thing over and over does not add any challenge to the game as most of the things that repeat are the easier things, while the few sections that are actually reasonably difficult tend to only occur once and then never be seen again.

The levels do have checkpoints so you can restart from the middle of the level if you die, and they are often enough that you do not have to make it through long stretches between them usually but not so often that they occur after every obstacle. The checkpoint balance is actually pretty good. Unfortunately, this option to start in the middle of the levels only makes an already short game seem shorter. The game also saves after every level you beat automatically.

So, for the main game, we are looking at maybe three hours if you take the game at a slow pace and try to find the door in every level, and even shorter if you play the game just to get through it. The game does offer three stylus minigames, one unlocking for each of the first three bosses that you beat, but they are not anything to get too excited about and do little to add to the replay value of the game.

What then is the conclusion? This game definitely is not worth paying full price for, but someday when it is reasonably cheap it might make for a relaxing couple of hours for the Garfield fan. If you are not a fan of platformers, though, this most certainly is not the game to change your mind. Please note, however, that the reason the score is so low is primarily the lack of creativity. The game is not really as bad as the score would make it out to be.