"Garfield: Caught in Act? Ooooooohhhhh, tough call!"

Trying to determine whether or not this is a good or bad is hard. This game has a lot of high points, but it also has huge drawbacks. I'm making my review as fair as I possibly can.

So, here's the deal: Garfield was watching TV, just like always. But then, Odie came up from behind Garfield and barked really loud, causing Garfield to jump in the air out of surprise and crash into the TV, smashing it to pieces. In order to avoid getting in trouble with Jon, Garfield tries to reassemble the TV, but it goes horribly wrong. Garfield got warped inside the TV, so he has to battle enemies to make it out. Yeah, the story's off beat.

GAMEPLAY: 5/10
I didn't know whether to give this section a good or bad score, so it gets an average score. You obviously play as Garfield, going from TV station to TV station, trying to find a way out. (wow...it seems classic movies like "Count Slobula" and "Catsablanca" are the the only things on TV now) There are some puzzles to solve, but nothing you can't figure out in more than 30 seconds. Oh, about my favorite part of any game...the bosses. The bosses are all Odie in some costume! The first level, Odie is a vampire. Good luck figuring out how to beat him, hope it won't take you 8 YEARS to finally figure out how to hurt him like it did for me!!!!

The boss battles are plain annoying (either too easy or too hard) and the puzzles are extremely easy. However, this doesn't mean the gameplay is purely awful. Sure, the levels are sometimes a little short, but it's nothing too awful. You can get weapons to throw at enemies, and that's pretty cool. I really don't know, there's just something about this game that makes it fun to play.

GRAPHICS: 9/10
The graphics look great. Garfield looks exactly like he does in the comics, and all the backgrounds and scenary look well done. Yes, in some levels the backgrounds get a little repetitive, and the appearance of enemies is just weird at times. But, no serious problem with the graphics.

SOUND: 6/10
At first, the sound seems fine, but it goes downhill as the game progresses. The background music to level 1 is appropriately played by organs and instruments that you'd hear in an old horror film. Unfortunately, that's the best it gets. The background tracks later on get worse and worse as you go along. The sound effects are something else. Sega has had a bad reputation for good sound effects, but this time, they didn't do a half bad job. The only sound effects you really hear are the sounds of a TV turning off when you kill an enemy, but it's appropriate to the game and sounds fine. There are also some sounds that play when you throw an item and little ding dongs when you retrieve a power item. Yes, Garfield makes a weird sound when he gets hit, but it's nothing too awful.

LENGTH: 5/10
Well, if you can figure out how to beat the first boss, (the 8 year thing was NOT a joke!) then the game should go by pretty fast. The game has a password system, so if you need to stop playing the game, you can always just remember the password or write it down (or in this game's instance, draw it) to pick up again later. No real complaints about the game, it would probably take you a few days to beat if you didn't play it through straight. (it would take you maybe about a week or one day)

REPLAYABILITY: 2/10
Sorry, Garfield, but after playing this game, there's no reason to go back to play it again. The only reason you would want to play it again is if you liked it. But as I've said, there's nothing to do a second time through that you can't do on the first.

BUY OR RENT?
Finding this game in a store will be a rare find, and you can't even rent Genesis games anymore. If you're a Garfield fan and you find this game, you should buy it, considering it won't be too expensive. That's probably what will determine if you like the game or not: if you're a Garfield fan.

Total Score: 27/50
Averaged Score: (5.4, rounds down to 5)

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 10/28/05