When I heard that a Family Guy video game was in production I became instantly excited due to my obsession with the long running TV show that almost always hits my funny bone. Seeing it was developed by Heavy Iron Studios, whom I recognise from my playing sessions on Spongebob Truth or Square” and “Up”, I became sceptical at how they will manage with a rather mature task considering that most of their titles are child friendly. With Activision as the publishers for Family Guy: Back To The Multiverse they have a marketing/distributing giant to push it as far as it can go, how did it turn out though?
The concept is based on two episodes in the Family Guy TV series, one where Stewie & Brian travel various universes each with a rather big difference to our own and one where Stewie’s evil Bertram attempts to erase Stewie’s existence. In the game Bertram from another universe comes to brag that he’s going to destroy Stewie and his universe. Are you still with me so far? Well Brian and Stewie must follow him through the multiverse to stop his despicable plans.
It allows you to control one of the two characters at a time in third person shooter style during the levels, each of which has a theme and there’s at least one in there that will offend someone. I’ll tell you how all but one of the levels play out, you talk to someone or get a quick brief beforehand for example go collect an item then bring it back or take it somewhere else. Along the way you’ll encounter masses of enemies that aren’t difficult to kill using an array of weapons, for Stewie there’s Ray Guns, Lava Guns, Rocket Launchers and Brian gets the more conventional Pistol, Shotgun, Sniper etc. Although not difficult they are extremely irritating because as one wanders towards you, more will follow and you end up just bashing shoot a whole load of times and wishing for a machine gun to end it quickly (whether to use on enemies or yourself is up to you). With all good level based games we have a boss at the end of each, whether it’s a giant chicken popping out more alien chickens whilst you try to kill it or a giant disabled transformer (yes, they went there). It reminds me a lot of the Spongebob game in style, easiness and the monotonous repetition of lame enemies just with different skin.
But that would be fine if your children were playing it, the pure offensiveness within the game rule this out as a possibility though, unless you have no morals. I was willing to overlook the simplicity of gameplay a little as long as it made me chuckle. Despite hearing well spoken (voice acting is spot on) lines that I can almost relive from the show immediately, it just wasn’t as funny because the timings were nonsensical and meant nothing. The level designs missed a trick or two as well, having a whole level of disabled people might have been a good idea on paper but it seemed if was going for just plain offensive (didn’t offend me as such but I can’t see it going down to well). They also went down the route of pirates, alien chickens, mercenary Santa, Amish and I don’t think they thought outside the box enough.
The best part of the game, excluding when it ended, based almost entirely on nostalgic reasons... the Chicken Fight! For once you get to be Peter Griffin to take on his evil nemesis Giant Chicken in a fist fight, again it wasn’t very tactical or tough but the fight went all through an airport from the café to the run way with little cutscenes in between. One for memory lane than anything else but the one I enjoyed.
Speaking of the cutscenes, this is their thing as animators and writers for a quick animated link between levels surely they can make that entertaining. Boy oh boy was I wrong, I laughed at the first one and after I saw more I realised I was trying to laugh all along rather that it actually making me laugh.
If you are glutton for punishment there is a Challenge Mode to venture back into those environments you’ve already played and do a timed based challenge usually e.g. taking pictures of girls using Quagmire whilst getting attacked at the same time. Don’t, just don’t do it.
On the positive side this game has multiplayer, wait it has LOCAL multiplayer only which means you can invite friends round to torture them with it and they’ll never want to visit you ever again. In case you fancy that there are versions of deathmatch, horde and capture the flag (or greased-up deaf guy).
In short just because you love/like Family Guy doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy this, it’ll make you appreciate the TV show a whole lot more. It’s a childish and simple game to play, aimed at mature gamers and it doesn’t work at all. You know how it goes in the opening tune “Lucky there’s a family guyyyyyyy”, in this case we are not, avoid it unless someone pays you to take it and even then only for achievements.
