Guys look, it's a Garfield game in a challenge that's in a Sonic forum, along with a mixture of Sonic games! It's a real Sonic & Garfield pack revival!

Game entry of the year 2024, let's GOOOOOOOO!!!

*ahem*

I hope you all appreciated the amount of effort I placed into making that...thing - because that's about the only thing I really have to say, a bad Sonic and Garfield pack joke. This game...it is just so bland.  

While I could try and pad this game blog out with a whole spiel on my history with Garfield, I'd frankly rather leave that for the next blog, which is actually about a game I enjoyed, and one I have a history with, so let's just delve into the nitty gritty here.

So as the name would suggest, Garfield Lasagna Party is a pretty shameless Mario Party clone, where you can run around a board against three players (no, there's no online multiplayer) or AI, and compete in a selection of 32 different minigames in order to see who's the best...lasagna challenger. Unlike Mario Party however, the content is pretty lacking. The only playable characters in the game is Odie, Arlene, Garfield, and Nermal, with Jon and some dogs being simple NPC models, and that's about it, and from the little I played, there's also only one board to play through.

For the purposes of my completion, I just did the 32 minigames one after one, since this is a game that can be 100%'d within a hour, but I did try the board-game mode, and if Mario Party pisses you off with it's cheating AI, then you're really not going to like it here. Even on easy mode, the AI's luck seemed ridiculous, on top of turns taking a long time, the game not letting you skip AI turns, and so on. Even on a ten turn match, I ended it prematurely because it was just so unbelievably boring.

And really, that's how you can best describe the minigames as well. For a Garfield minigame collection, the amount of minigames that actually feel related to things within Garfield feel really low. Did you know he gets chased by cats? Then there you go. Did you know he occasionally eats in a Italian restaurant? Then we'll do a few games there. The closest the game got to actually feeling like it's utilising the license for something actually interesting is two minigames where you need to steal Garfield's beloved teddy bear, Pooky - from others' camps, while the other feels inspired by the intro of Garfield and Friends, with the group playing instruments on a fence under the moonlight. 

Otherwise, the rest of the games are filled by pretty generic games. Run around a room vacuuming spiders. Cut a pizza with exactly three pepperoni on each slice. Move around a vet's office finding specific objects. Roll a snowball as big as possible. Even some of the minigames is a straight up clone of other games, such as one that copies the Mario Party minigame where everyone's on boulders, rolling around, and trying to knock each other off the platform.

About the only real positives I can throw the game is that the graphics are incredibly nice. Garfield as a license has always had a fun artstyle, and I think this game is one of the absolute best at replicating it, making it bright and colourful, even as limited as it is, helped by the fact it seems more inspired by the comic strips rather than a particular show. But even the music and sound design is bad. The soundtrack is a pretty bland and generic 'jazz' sound, which is a shame when you stop and think about the sheer amount of iconic songs from the series, from all of the original specials to Garfield and Friends, to even the Garfield Show, there's just nothing that sticks in your mind.

On top of that, the cast is completely silent, which is pretty dire when even the Nick crossover games could get Frank Welker to come back to do some new Garfield material, yet the party game that's based solely on this license couldn't even be bothered to do so, and without Garfield's witty dialogue and snarky comments, frankly the game loses out on something pretty big. It doesn't feel right to have a Garfield game where he's silent (2D platformers aside). It just feels wrong.

The AI on top of that is also just really bullshit in some of these minigames, and the minigames have some real stinkers in there. The pizza cutting one and spider cleanup minigames in particular is the absolute pits, the former feeling really random and annoying to do in the short time you have, and the latter controlling plain horribly.

About the only thing I can give the game is if you have some friends, it can be a little fun to riff on it. Having thought ahead, I invited a few friends to watch me stream my platinum playthrough of the game live, and @Failinhearts and @Lady Marie joined in, making what would've been a otherwise dull, and utterly boring 2 hours a lot more fun, if only to mock the game for how kinda shit it is.

But still, it's a crying shame given how much potential a game like this has. Garfield has a lot of unique concepts that could've been applied to minigames, based off various strips, or even episodes of Garfield and Friends. There could've been a minigame based around avoiding Binky the Clown, or dodging the dangers of Mondays, or even trying to steal cookies off Jon without him realising, all based on episodes or concepts of the comics/show, and instead, the closest we get is something that's probably a accidental reference to Garfield and Friends' intro, and the fact that Garfield likes Italian food. Honestly, it's a total waste.

Least the next Garfield game I have to talk about is one I'm a lot more passionate about.