Operation Garfield

Wolves are better than cats!

I've been browsing through the Floppyshop archives and stumbled upon a game called Operating Garfield by Dave Brankin. As you might imagine, it's inspired by Operation Wolf but sparked my curiosity because its an Atari STe game. The Blitter pushes the 8-way scrolling and sprites. Not only that but the audio is played using DMA stereo hardware.

Okay, so how is this different from Operation Wolf? Well, it's a shameless ripoff and is also a crosshair shooter using the mouse. The story is different! Time, aliens are invading Earth but they have been watching and figured us easy prey if they disguised themselves as Garfield. Yep, that lazy cat from the TV, so I think they made the wrong assumption!!

The action takes place over a cityscape with its skyline littered with invading Garfield's heads firing rockets. Using the mouse for control, blast the rockets and Garfield heads. It's that simple but, while you're frantically blasting away in this pseudo-3D missile command, look out for ammo caches and smart bombs that will aid your progress. There is also a Defender-style map of the enemy at the top/left but I found that near-useless if I'm honest!

This game is good and a bundle of fun for a few plays. Sadly, the difficulty is extraordinarily high so rarely did I get the chance to see later levels. I also thought the scrolling (framerate?) could have been smoother considering the hardware. It's better when using a real computer but nothing like Asteroidia, and this would have helped tremendously. However, the worst are those T2 samples which are ... good ... but grate after a short while. Gimme chip any day!

Operation Garfield isn't to be taken seriously and provides a few minutes of stress-busting action! Just take it as a cheap Op.Wolf ripoff with loads of pointless yet gratifying Garfield-killing. Not great but a good game worth playing.

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