Garfield - Escape From Monday, the latest 3D platformer from OSome Studio, heavily leans into the iconic feline's love for lasagne and disdain for Mondays. Set across a series of "foodie nightmare worlds," the game tasks players with guiding the famous tabby through levels filled with aggressive snacks and fewer vegetables, all in an effort to awaken him from a "fiber-fueled fugue state." However, like many video game adaptations of beloved cartoons, Escape from Monday proves to be a dull experience, marred by overly familiar platforming mechanics and writing that feels more tiresome than witty.
The game's premise begins with Garfield mistakenly eating a veggie-laden dish, leading him to pass out and enter a dream world called Dreamland. This inner world is presented as a series of board-game-like courses, where a vegetarian TV chef named Monday has transformed Garfield's food fantasies into obstacle-filled stages. Garfield's available moves include a kick, a jump, and a forward boost, supported by a forgiving health bar, as he navigates these levels to wake up.
The narrative rarely ventures beyond this initial setup, offering little more than the simplistic message that "bad food is yummy" and "veggies are gross." This feels like a missed opportunity given Garfield's established personality, which is often characterized by sarcasm and wit. Instead, the game presents an unlikable protagonist who spends much of the roughly nine-hour runtime complaining. Garfield's constant grumbling and meta-commentary on the game's own repetitive obstacles and uninteresting puzzles become increasingly grating. Even when his friends appear to provide exposition, Garfield continues to disparage them. This cynical, almost fourth-wall-breaking humor, intended to be akin to characters like Deadpool, begins to feel like a crutch rather than a source of genuine amusement.
The Platforming Pitfalls
The most disappointing aspect of Escape from Monday is the platforming itself. The controls feel sluggish, as if Garfield is wading through honey. This lack of responsiveness is at odds with the game's level design. Players frequently overshoot ledges or make premature corrections due to delayed actions. While this sluggishness might be overlooked in earlier, simpler levels that involve riding wind gusts or jumping between slow-moving windmills, the unearned mistakes become frustrating as the obstacles become more complex. This issue is exacerbated by an erratic camera that frequently dictates the player's field of view. Although the tutorial suggests camera freedom, the in-game camera often snaps and twists without warning, especially during challenging maneuvers. At times, an irritating camera icon appears, indicating that the player cannot adjust the view, forcing them to continue along the main path.
Collecting and Cosmetics
Throughout the levels, players can collect slices of lasagne to furnish a virtual version of Jon Arbuckle's apartment. This metagame requires finding hidden slices and gathering enough snacks to fill an on-screen "Yum-o-meter." While these tasks technically offer additional goals, the system feels disconnected from the main gameplay, making it easy to forget about the apartment furnishing altogether.
Thankfully, the game's art style offers a much-needed distraction. Escape from Monday features a delightful aesthetic that evokes the blocky simplicity of PS1-era platformers. The Dreamland is divided into three themed overworlds: Veggie Nightmare, Sweet Kingdom, and Barbecue Desert. Each area includes a basic bullet-hell-lite miniboss. The game cleverly fuses confectionery with adventure tropes, such as pirates and western frontiers, to capture the tone of the classic comic strips. Notable visual elements include spinning radish stepping stones, Twizzler grind rails, and ketchup-covered french fries.
As players progress, the obstacles become more varied, moving beyond basic platforms. Players must contend with flipping meat panels, angry corn cobs that hurl kernels, and giant graters that launch them into the air amidst a shower of flames from chili peppers. While these combinations are not particularly challenging, especially since most enemies can be defeated in a single hit, the deliberate care in their placement is evident and contributes to the spectacle.
The game introduces thematic outfits that grant Garfield unique powers. A turkey costume allows temporary flight, beachwear equips him with a surfboard for water traversal, and cowboy garb provides a lasso for swinging across ravines. However, these power-ups are not particularly imaginative, and the game explicitly dictates when and where they should be used, discouraging experimentation. This leaves players simply moving toward the finish line, with the only variation being Garfield's attire.
Generous Checkpoints, Limited Progress
Despite the platforming issues, Escape from Monday is generous with its checkpoints, saving the player's progress frequently. This allows for quick retries after falling off a map. However, these frequent checkpoints, like the collectibles, feel like a band-aid to make the experience frictionless rather than a solution to the game's core platforming problems. They prevent excessive frustration but also distance players from the satisfaction of true progress and success.
Verdict
Garfield - Escape From Monday is a mediocre 3D platformer. Its relentless self-deprecating humor and sluggish controls drag down the experience. While the power-boosting costumes and visually appealing, food-themed environments attempt to evoke nostalgic joy from the Garfield comics and cartoons, the protagonist himself is a bitter imitation of those beloved depictions. Coupled with largely pointless collectibles and a camera that requires frequent battling, Escape From Monday feels like a step backward in a genre currently brimming with original and experimental titles.