Thursday, January 26, 2017

Operation Garfield



Wolves are better than cats!

I've been browsing through the Floppyshop archives and I've stumbled upon a game called Operating Garfield which was (shock) inspired by Operation Wolf. Developed by Dave Brankin, it sparked my curiosity because of its support for the Atari STe as it utilises the Blitter for 8-way scrolling and the sprites and audio is played using the DMA. Basically, he was tired of the commercial gaming companies ignoring the enhanced computer!

Aliens are invading Earth but this time they've oddly disguised themselves as the fat lazy cat from the TV. Why do I hear you cry? Well, because they have watched our broadcasts and felt that we would forgive them if they were cute and cuddly invaders. Yep, the storyline is a stretch, and very silly, but whatever works, right?

The game takes place over a cityscape littered with invading Garfields who fire bucketloads of rockets!! Use the mouse to avoid or kill these whilst also looking for ammo caches, smart bombs, and even the England flag proudly flying. To help, there is a near-useless Defender-style map at the top/left of the screen - but I didn't care for this.

What lets the game down is the difficulty level which is extraordinarily high so rarely did I get the chance to fully appreciate the game before dying! I also thought the framerate should have been a lot better considering the hardware being used but most irritating of all was the T2 sample which grated after a while.

Of course, Operation Garfield isn't to be taken too seriously as it provides nothing more than a few minutes of stress-busting gun love! However, I fear the gameplay has little to offer other than a short, albeit gratifying, Garfield-killing spree.

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