When I was a kid in the 80s, Garfield was huge!  Newspaper comics strips were a popular form of entertainment for all ages back then, and the fat orange cat was right at the forefront.  Not only that, but he had countless merchandise, Emmy award winning TV specials and a Saturday morning cartoon!  So yeah, Garfield was a big part of my childhood.  So good or bad, I’m always happy to review a Garfield video game.  So here comes Garfield Kart 2: All You Can Drift, a typical cartoony kart racer featuring the fat cat and his friends.  I’ve never played the first one, so I don’t know if this one improves anything in any way, but the sequel is available on all current consoles and PC, but reviewed on Switch here.

The first thing you’ll do is pick your character.  Unfortunately there are only 8 racers.  You’ve got Garfield, Odie, Nermal, Arlene, Jon, Liz, Squeak the mouse, and the Big Dog.  I think the game could’ve used more characters.  Why not the rest of Jon’s farm family?  Or heck, even the gang from U.S. Acres.  Even better, bring back Lyman!  Then you pick your car and choose its color, paint job, hats, and other parts.  You unlock more as you play and earn trophies.

There are single player and multiplayer modes for up to four racers.  In single player you can do a cup race where you do four tracks and earn points as you place.  The tracks are grouped by themes.  There are city tracks, pirate tracks, and western tracks for each cup.  You can also do a quick single race or time trials for each track.

If you’ve played a kart racer before, you’ll feel right at home here.  A button to go and B to brake.  The right shoulder button makes you jump and the left shoulder button lets you use an item.  These are typical kart racing fare, and include speed boosts, homing projectiles, and more.  If you jump and then turn, you can do a power-slide similar to how it’s done in Mario Kart.

As a big Garfield fan, I hate to give this game a bad review, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to.  The biggest problem is the difficulty.  I had the game on the easiest setting and still could barely get above 7^th place!  And I’m pretty good at Mario Kart!  Also the tracks are uninspired and the visuals look worse than some GameCube games!  And the characters don’t even have voices, just grunts and noises that don’t even sound like them!  There are so many much better kart racers out now or soon that you can get instead.

Kid Factor:

Nothing too violent or objectionable here.  You can hit other racers with silly weapons but they just tumble around with dizzy stars above their heads and that’s it.  Reading skill isn’t needed, but younger gamers may find it too difficult.  Garfield Kart 2 is rated E for Everyone.

Tags: Game Reviews, Movies with Children, Television