Garfield: The Search for Pooky

Garfield: The Search for Pooky

Not all the Mondays in the world can be worse than this Garfield game.

Protagonist(s):	Garfield the Cat
Genre(s):	Platform
Platform(s):	Game Boy Advance
Release Date:	EU: November 2004 NA: November 14, 2005
Developer(s):	InterActive Vision
Publisher(s):	The Game Factory
Country:	Denmark
Series:	Garfield

Garfield: The Search for Pooky is a 2004 platform game developed by InterActive Vision and published by The Game Factory for the Game Boy Advance. It is based on the Garfield comic strips by Jim Davis.

Plot

One night when Garfield is sleeping, three mice come and steal Garfield's beloved teddy bear, Pooky. The next morning, when Garfield finds out that Pooky is missing, he sets out to find out what happened to Pooky and get him back.

Why It's An Eternal Monday (But, In a BAD Way)

Poor graphics and animation, even for 2004 standards, with the graphics being grainy and very pale in comparison of other better looking Nintendo Game Boy Advance games, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus, Mega Man Zero 3, Super Mario Advance 3 which look better and these were released in the same year.
- Not to mention that the sprite could have been decent looking but instead, it is so grainy that it's ruined the sprite and they are bad due to this reason.
- Some of the early 2001 GBA games also look better than this, such as Klonoa: Empire of Dreams, Bomberman Tournament, Doraemon: Midori no Wakusei Dokidoki Daikyushutsu! and Sonic Advance.
Horrible 2D animation, with very few frames of animation for Garfield, or any character in fact, making the animations extremely terrible, and some of the worst in any of the Garfield games, almost more than the infamous game, A Week of Garfield.
- Trying to do anything in this game with Garfield will feel really awkward. Especially considering that the other Garfield game for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance, Garfield and His Nine Lives, which was released 1-2 years later, had much more expressive character animations.
To pad out the runtime, all the levels are split into 3 screens. On some of these levels, the difficulty, even on easy mode, is often comparable to other hard Garfield games, like the Japan only game, A Week of Garfield.
Clunky and horribly unresponsive controls, even for a Garfield game, as Garfield is very unresponsive, and won't jump before one second delay, making the controls even worst than even A Week of Garfield, even the movement is very unresponsive.
- The animations is also what caused the controls to be so clunky and unresponsive, as due to how horrible they are, It is possible that it's ruined the entire game and especially the controls.
It contains some of the most broken, lazy, and horrible level designs in any Garfield game made to date. It's worse than even the studio level in Garfield Gets Real. This can result in a lot of cheap deaths. This is one of the worst ways of implementing artificial difficulty in a Garfield game possibly ever, even more so than Garfield Gets Real, or A Week of Garfield.
- Speaking of which, the way that enemies and obstacles are coded into the game is so lazy that it can result in many, many cheap hits and instant deaths.
- In the second screen of level 2, a butterfly will instantly hit Garfield, no matter what. This can result in one of, if not, the cheapest deaths in the game if you have one bit of health left. Even worse, this may even cause a game over, if you only have one life and one bit of health left, forcing you to start the whole level again, or even the entire game from square one, if you don't have the password on hand.
- The liquid textures are so lazily placed into the game that it may even dangle over edges, and if you were to even attempt walking over them, you would fall anyway. One of the butter textures is placed so badly it doesn't even affect Garfield at all, so removing that particular one would not change anything in the slightest.
- Also, it is so nonsensical with the liquid textures and glass shards being randomly placed out of nowhere in every platforming level that it makes the Garfield world unintentionally look more polluted than the real world.
- Sometimes, Garfield may fall through the floor and fall onto a lower part of the platform.
- If you finish the final screen on the third last level of the game on the bottom floor, you will most likely lose a life, while Garfield does his victory dance, no matter what, we're really not joking. Also, if this were to be your last life, you'd have to do the entire level over. If you have more than one life, the animation will play twice.
- In some areas, you can't even reach the food, making it impossible to complete the game.
What should've been a simple story is dragged out to contain tons of filler, like Garfield catching some chickens, and the story having a lot of plot hole, such as when we never actually see Garfield leaving the house after he caught every mouse or even a cutscene where Jon thanked Garfield for doing this chore, this is a small plot hole, but, still...
The fighting mechanic is so poor that you may end up taking damage before killing the enemies.
For some reason, the enemies make dog barking sounds when they die.
- All the other sound effects are either serviceable at best or just plain abysmal at the absolute worst.
- What's more, is that sometimes, certain sounds don't work as they should.
Mediocre music most of the time, such as the second level, as it sound Incredibly generic and bland, although as expected from a Garfield game, the music can be catchy at times.
For a 2004 game, it heavily relies on password saving, despite first party Nintendo Game Boy Advance games that have been around as long as the actual console itself using flash saves, or even games as old as the original The Legend of Zelda on the Nintendo Entertainment System using button cell battery saves. If you didn't write the password, lost, or forgot it, if you get a game over, you would have to start the entire game over from the beginning.
- This is made even worse due to the fact that there's no continue, and if you doesn't write the password code in a paper as said before, you will have to restart the entire game to the beginning, making the password system at its absolute worst.
It is very hard to gain lives in a single run, even for a kids game in the 21st century. The easiest way to replenish them all would exit out of the game, by losing all your lives, or resetting the game, and follow the instructions found on in the "tips" section below. Another way this can be done is to grind, and collect all the food in a very easy platforming level of the game, as for every 100 bits of food you collect, you get 1 life, for a maximum of 9 lives.
Horrible boss battles. They can be too easy, or too difficult depending, on whether you know what you're doing or not. In fact, they don't really qualify as bosses at all, let alone good ones. To add insult to injury, there is no boss music at all, not even for the final boss at the end of the game, despite an extra cutscene playing right before the final boss.
The fetch quests are tedious, as it requires you to go through the entire level, and back several times to collect animals, one at a time, and then put them in the cages, while trying to run across the abysmal level design, without dying up to 9 times through 3 different screens of each of these levels. In the second last level, you have to collect bones scattered throughout the level for the dog on the third screen in order to escape.
Absolutely terrible hit-detection, as sometime Garfield will be hit, even though he doesn't make a contact with an enemy, or the said fighting mechanics, it also doesn't help that the second Garfield game for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance, Garfield and His Nine Lives Lives would have a better hit-detection, despite that it wasn't the best either, but still better than this game.
The game is very poorly rendered sometimes, in which case the animations and graphics don't load properly, and glitch out, even during cutscenes. For example, after you beat the chicken level, part of Jon's head is missing in the first part of the cutscene.
Poor logic: Why do some of the women in the car levels carry bombs? Are they supposed to be terrorists in disguise?
When you beat the game, all you get is an ending cutscene, where Garfield retrieves Pooky, no credits, no post-game content at all, nothing. Even Garfield's Nightmare has three minigames you can play at any time despite you not being able to replay any of its 20 levels without starting over on a new save file even when you beat it.
In some of the areas, the level design is so bad, you can't even reach the food, making it literally impossible to complete the game under any conditions, let alone legitimately. It's anyone's guess at this point on what the game does, if you ever collect every bit of food in the game, as no single person, not even the absolute masters of this game can actually do it. Even if someone invented a "flying" cheat for the game, and somehow managed to beat it 100% with that, or figured out how to access a 100% completion password, via guessing one of the millions of possible combinations, you'd still be likely to get zilch for it, making it completely pointless.
- This problem would later be seen in the Nintendo DS version of Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, which at least had only one collectible that can't be reached but not more than 10.
The character sprites are lazily copied and pasted, including the background people, and enemies. This results in them looking completely identical to each other.
The use of the famous quote "I hate Mondays" by Garfield feels very out of place in this game because of how this game implements such quote.
It has one of the worst level select UIs to date, with it being extremely hard and overall terrible to navigate to.
The coins found on the left side of the level select UI means absolutely nothing. Why put it there if it does literally nothing to help the player?
The second last level tricks you into thinking that it's entirely a standard platforming level, but on the last screen, it's actually a collectathon, as you will eventually find a bone, and realize that you have to take it all the way to the end of the level to give to the bulldog, and then repeat that a few more times, until the bulldog breaks the gate open for you.
Spelling mistake: When you beat a level, the game is supposed to tell the player congratulations, but the real issue here is that they spelled it as follows: "congratulattions", with an extra, "T", near the end of the word. This further proves that the game is incredibly rushed.
On the second last level of the game, it tricks you into thinking that its a standard platforming level. Once you get to the last screen, it makes you collect several bones, one at a time, and you have to give them to the dog to complete the level.
Every time you boot the game up, you are forced to sit through the opening cutscene, even if this is not your first time playing the game. However, this can be skipped by pressing start, not that the game lets you know.
Some parts of the level music are reused during the password and game-over screens. To add insult to injury, instead of looping the music, it immediately skips over to the next track.
Speaking of the chicken level:
- The fetch quests here are at its absolute worst, as the level design is so poor that Garfield will have to make leap of faith jumps over the void.
- On that topic, you have to traverse through these screens 8 times each, going all the way to the end of the level and back again, while trying to avoid death, most likely by falling into the void.
- Like with all the other levels, you are not able to see what is below you at high places.
- The way the obstacles are placed here does not make this any better, it makes it worse than it has any right to be.
- The enemies found below the floor are almost invisible, to the point where Garfield may get hit by one for no reason.
- The sunflowers on the final screen look like they were ripped straight out of the Sonic the Hedgehog games.
- Also, this has zero context of the story, and exists to pad out the game.
- This is the level that has the infamous cutscene where part of Jon's head goes missing if you somehow win on this level.
- To put the final nail on the coffin, you get a garbage boss fight at the end of the third screen.
- Because of these points made, this level makes the game so much more tedious, to the point where it can qualify as the definition of artificial difficulty. Get a game over on this level, even on the boss, and you have to go through the entirety of this hellhole of a level all over again from the first screen. Therefore, it's the worst level in the entire game, and even the Garfield video game medium as a whole, right next to the studio level of Garfield Gets Real: The Game.

Redeeming Qualities

Passable cutscenes that in some ways resemble the comic strips, except for one, where part of Jon's head is missing.
The music is easily the best part of the game due to them being catchy, especially the two mall themes, as those are the best songs in the entire game, despite the fact that the music is somewhat mediocre.
Some platforming levels, case in point, both mall levels, work just fine as they should when it involves going from point A to B, without the endless pits.
The car levels are some of the best levels in the entire game, as it is really easy to pick up and play if you know what you are in for.
Some of the levels are visually appealing, especially the first and second level, if you ignore all the hazards placed in the level.

Reception

The game received overwhelmingly negative reviews by critics, with them criticizing the awful controls, the poor graphics, and criticized the platforming.

The game also has received criticism for its level design, as the levels are often extremely large, with many blind jumps. This, coupled with the fact that many levels require the player to take items to a drop-off point, with the player able to carry only one of these items at a time, can cause many levels to be tedious. Every level in the game makes heavy use of honey, oil and broken glass, which are difficult to avoid and have been described by critics as "more of an annoyance than a genuine obstacle".

Trivia

This is the first of two Garfield games on the Game Boy Advance, with the second, and last one being Garfield and His Nine Lives.
This is the third Garfield game to be released on a Nintendo console, after the Japan only Famicon game, A Week of Garfield on the Japan, and the Europe only Game Boy game, Garfield Labyrinth. This is the second Garfield Nintendo game to be released in English, and the first one released in the United States, and in more than one country.
This is one of the few Garfield games to never officially released in Oceania, not even through European imports like several other Garfield games like Garfield's Nightmare and The Garfield Show: Threat of the Space Lasagna.
A Garfield graphic novel coincidentally named after the game of the same name, released in 2018, 14 years after this game released. It follows a similar premise from the story of this game.
The spiders found at the last level of the game is coincidentally similar to the ones found on the first world of Garfield's Nightmare. Also, Garfield's hit sounds in both games sound very similar to each other.
Some of the sprites have been taken from actual comic strips, although they have not been optimized for use in the game, causing numerous goofs. One notable instance is that the sprite of Jon's mother is about the same size as the Garfield sprite. In another instance during the stage 10 after-stage cutscene, Garfield's arm is drawn to be nearly three times as long as it usually is.
The game has a large amount of dialogue, yet, much of it appears to be poorly-translated. In one notable instance, stage 10's objective description is "find Eddie, and go Chinese".
A glitch causes the music which plays during stage 9, and the "new password" screen to abruptly transition into the stage 10 music before a full loop of the song can complete, preventing the entirety of the stage 9 music from being played in-game.
In most stages, the number of food items that the player must collect in order to achieve 100% completion is equal to the number of food items that exist in that stage, meaning that the player must collect every food item in the stage in order to achieve 100% completion for that stage. However, in stage 2, the number of food items that must be collected does not account for the food items which are unearthed by Odie. Because of this, it is possible to obtain more than the required number of food items, which is not possible in any other stage. If the player does this, their completion score for the level will be erroneously listed as 0%, as if they had collected no food at all.

Tips

To replenish your lives without grinding, click here, and then type in a code according to the level you are currently up to to replenish most, if not, all your lives.
If you somehow get a password with a save that has less than 9 lives, the fastest way to grind for lives manually is to go to any of the 2 mall levels, have you got this far into the game, and grind for lives there, by collecting all the food across 3 screens.

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