Garfield Kart: Furious Racing is the second game in the Garfield Kart series. Based in the “Kart” genera of gaming you will have to pick your favorite character from the amazing Garfield cast of: Garfield, Jon, Woman, Odie, Pink cat, Nermal, mouse, and homeless cat.
Let’s talk about the Kart stats. You have three main stats. Speed, handling, and boost speed. They are all as simple as they sound and the only one I would recommend caring about at all is handling because, especially if you play on keyboard like I do, the maps all feel like ice. I have found that turbo/boost speed also is good. Now adding onto your karts can be a thing known as perfect combos. Perfect combos are using the right character, kart, spoilers, and hat that all match the character. Perfect combos add onto your stats a quite large amount, and make your hats also increase its stats for items. A final thing to consider is the medal on unlockable hats and spoilers. You will unlock hats by getting 1st place on single courses. One race of any difficulty, 50cc, 100cc, and 150cc. The difficulty you do it at will decide the medal rating you get. Besides boosting the stats higher, I don’t know what they do. To get the spoilers it’s the exact same but you must get first on all the courses in grand prix mode. So, four back-to-back maps 1st place, not just overall.
While speaking about grand prix, lets go over the game modes you have. There are three game modes in Orange Cat Racing Sim. Single Race, Grand Prix, and finally, Time Trial. All self-explanatory I would say. If you are to play this game yourself, I recommend doing some solo races to get hats and then grand prix mode to get the spoilers. Time trials just gives medals so no use for items. Now, I have been talking a lot about the modes, but let’s get into some game stuff!
Where else to start but items, what are we dealing with? There are an astounding nine items in this game. While playing, you can pick up two at a time. Items have 2 ways they can be used, thrown ahead or thrown behind. Some items aren’t affected by either way you use them, and some do completely different things. If I do not mention the two separate things, just know they do one thing no matter which key you press. The items go as follows: Lasagna, Perfume, Spring, Pie Missile, Homing Pie, Magic wand, Diamond Bell, Soft Cushion, and UFOs. I will now go over every single one without making any references to plumber racing game.
The Lasagna makes you speed up for a short time, like a drift but no drifting needed. Perfume is the same as lasagna but for a much longer time. Spring has two mechanics; you can use it by throwing it ahead of you and instead of it throwing it will make you jump high. Perfect for short cuts and dodging items. Or you can throw it behind and it will sit on the track and stun other players who run into it. It does remain stationary on the ground, don’t expect it to bounce like a spring. Pie Missile can be shot out in front of you and will go in a straight line. If it hits another Kartist it will stun them. If thrown behind you it turns into a Pie Bomb, not at all bomb like, completely like the spring when tossed behind. Homing Pie will track down a character and hit them. When thrown backwards it acts like the other pie. Magic wand is one of the coolest items just because of how unique it is. When tossed it will go into a straight line and if it contacts another player, you will swap places. Really neat item, not great in execution but fantastic idea. Diamond Bell can be thrown forward and when it hits the ground will explode stunning anyone in the area it effects. When tossed behind it starts a timer and will blow up when time is up. Soft Cushion will make everybody fall asleep but the person using it. The final item, UFOs. Besides proving that there are aliens in the Garfield Kart universe, they are thrown ahead and when they get far enough ahead of first place the fun will begin. Three UFOs will make a line along the track, one will light up green, the other two red. If you go under the green one you will go by with no issues. If you pass under the red, it will grab onto you and stun you for some time. Now, for the maps.
With four cups you can get and each cup having four courses, math would tell us there are 16 courses you can play on. There are a few types of track themes, spanning across all the cups. City like, country/woodland, and Egyptian because sure. There is a single snow map that barely sits into woodland and is one of the best maps in the game by far. Putting that aside though each map has one thing in common. Each course has three puzzle pieces you can find and obtain just to get an achievement. The maps are truly where this game fails a bit, mainly because the mechanics of this game falls flat.
The mechanics of this game are overall fantastic for a plumber-man kart game type clone. Am I calling this a mario kart clone? No, it is unique enough to be its own type of game, however it is also clear this game would’ve never have come out unless plumber boy did it first. The only reason I mention Red-M character, clearly not by name except for once because it is funnier to not mention him or his game by name, is because those types of games are obviously what the designers of this game looked towards for inspiration and how to do this genera. The one place they fall flat is hitboxes. You will certainly have issues with this if you play and it is the one thing you will despise about this game. If you hit a character, you will stick to them. If you ram them in the back, you will go nowhere unless you stop and then go and get out from behind them. You will be stuck on their rear unless you force the collision to stop. The walls will suck you up and makes being near any of them a miserable experience. This leads into the next thing I want to complain about. The item balance. There is clearly an item balancing thing in this game. Based on the position you are in, certain items will appear, that is all well and good. However, since there are not that many items, and so many item boxes on each course. If you are leading in first, expect to take about 2,000 Homing Pies to your face during the entire course. Now this wouldn’t be a big deal if you could hold a pie or spring behind you like other kart game, but you can’t do that. The item blocking in this game isn’t that good, there are times I throw an item behind me and it will block, but I do the same timing again and this time I get hit. It is truly a gamble. Also, a niche complaint but springs are the hardest item to find. I don’t know how to get them consistently. The only times I’ve gotten them are when I am in first and that is rarely at best. The only reason this matters is because you need springs to get to most puzzle pieces. The pieces also usually show shortcuts on the map so if you want to do short cuts you will care about this too. My final complaint is about the difficulty. On 150cc you will have to genuinely try hard to get all 1st places in grand prix, the other racers will be fast, and as I have said items and walls will ruin your life. If you aren’t in 1st out of the first few turns just restart, the item spam being in the middle of the pack will slow you down so much you won’t catch up.
In conclusion, I do like this game. Get a few buddies online and mess around and it is a great pc game if you don’t have that other console that plays Luigi F1 with pals. The game has some flaws with maps but overall, it is fun. Also, Garfield, so how can you not enjoy it? Genuine rating is a 7/10: not much to do but decent kart game. Meme review is 100/10 because Funny Orange cat goes vroom. Thank you have a great day.