Another game from Shin'en whom I know for their contributions to good music for licensed games, as well as for their decent game Maya the Bee: Sweet Gold for Game Boy Advance. Unfortunately, Garfield's Nightmare for Nintendo DS is a pretty dull 2.5D platformer. The level design feels very safe and samey, and while the game does introduce new mechanics as you progress and there are some cool ideas that have potential, they're used in pretty basic ways or aren't used very often. I'm not asking for Donkey Kong Country levels of execution, but at least something to keep my engagement. The levels are also lengthy to a detrument, and I've noticed that since the very first level. The bosses are pretty inconsistent, the first boss is kinda cool, although after one hit the bombs that explode spawn a fireball that flies towards Garfield and it comes out of nowhere which is pretty frustrating, but otherwise it was neat. The boss of the second world on the other hand is really easy and short, the fire attack only targets one spot and it's easy to get out of the way. The third boss is similar to the first boss in that it drops projectiles to avoid, but they bounce this time, but otherwise it's still pretty easy. And the last boss, the snowman, who I thought was overwhelming at first due to their snowball attacks, but once I figured out how to avoid the barrage it was pretty easy. While the game does get a litle more challenging with each world, it's still not very difficult, though I can imagine kids having trouble. The lives are fairly plentiful, there are donuts scattered about with 100 granting an extra, and every level has a hidden door to the "sleepwalking" mini-games, instead of 2.5D, they're small 3D areas where you smash trash bins or spiders for extra lives. Speaking of 3D, the graphics are honestly fantastic, and the game runs very smoothly, it might be 60FPS and it rarely drops frames, which isn't surprising if you know that Shin'en is a bunch of people from the demo scene, so they know their stuff. The music is pretty decent, I liked the tracks in the last world and the final boss the most, but overall its quite solid. There are mini-games available at the title screen and they utilize touch screen, and they aren't too bad, in "Spider Phobia", you simply avoid spiders and collect coins, in "Midnight Morsel" you collect donuts and avoid bombs, and "Tap a Pet" is a whack-a-mole game, but the board spins starting from level 2, which is an original take on the old hat. But overall, the game is still incredibly mediocre, the aesthetics are nice but they can't compensate for the repetitive gameplay, which is a shame. No surprise this is Garfield's Nightmare.