Family Guy

"Hey! Remember the time I bought that mediocre video game based on a hilarious animated TV show and felt ripped off after I played it?"

Ahhh...Family Guy! One of my favorite TV shows, and one of the few that I actually like to watch. I had heard things about a video game coming out, and was quite skeptical of it. But, the faithful fan that I am, I bought the game when I saw it at the store. I was looking for a solid game mixed in with raunchy adult humor. Well, I got one of those things. The other, sadly, I never received.

Story: 4/10
There are actually three stories in this game. One each, revolving around Stewie, Peter and Brian. For Stewie's story, his "brother" Bertram is bent, once again, on world domination, and Stewart Gilligan Griffin must stop him! His journeys take him to numerous places inside Peter Griffin, as well as Bertram's Secret Lair and the playground. Brian's story is this. Lois's father's dog, Sea Breeze, is pregnant, and Brian is to blame! In order to clear his name, Brian must sneak around and collect evidence that he is not the father of Sea Breeze's puppies! Finally, we come to Peter. After watching a 5 day long marathon of "Mr. Belvedere," Peter gets hit in the head. When he wakes up, he believes that Mr. Belvedere is trying to kill him, and everyone else. I thought Stewie's part of the story was the strongest out of the three, but all in all, these storylines were pretty much just repeats of episodes of the animated series of the same name.

Gameplay: 3/10
The controls for most of this game are atrocious, the least atrocious of them all being Stewie's control set.

In the game, Stewie fires a ray gun, which can be powered up by collecting pieces and parts, giving it various boosts, from homing missiles to a blast radius. His control set was the most comfortable for me. They were pretty simplistic, but the camera was awful. There is no rotating camera in this game, only side to side and up and down movement. This became quite frustrating when it came time to do some of the platforming that this game required. I couldn't tell where I was jumping to half of the time!

Peter's control set was more frustrating. Peter handles the platform fighting part of the game, and throughout the game, he gets new special moves. To use some of these moves, there is a gauge in the top left of the screen that shows how much food Peter has eaten. That gauge goes down whenever he uses certain moves, which were somewhat hard to pull off anyways. There is a lack of food for peter to eat in this game, which means a lack of doing certain moves that will make or break any level of his. The controls in Peter's levels were unresponsive and felt very groggy. Then, the sheer number of foes that you have to take down just adds fuel to the fire, some of which can take down half of your energy with one hit.

Brian's control scheme seemed like it was as bad as Peter's. Brian has absolutely no moves besides "crouch." Since all of his missions are stealth based, he has to sneak around, hiding in shadows and under tables and the like. Sometimes, if he gets too close to a certain object, such as booze, he has a "bone meter" that fills up. When this meter fills up he will pee on whatever it was that got him excited, or attempt to do something else if it is a woman or a female dog, which leaves him exposed and much more likely to be seen. I personally had the hardest time on Brian's missions. I got so frustrated, I was ready to just give up on the whole game more than once. His controls seemed to be unresponsive some of the time as well. Sometimes he wouldn't crouch when I pressed the button, and sometimes he wouldn't even move when I moved the control stick! AARGH! Let us move on to a lighter subject now.

You know those cut-away's in the show that seem to have no place in the story, what so ever? Well, they are in the game as well. All of them are interactive, of course. But...they are mostly just the same cut-aways that are in the show, and I mean the SAME ones! It would have been nice for some more originality with these, since they seem to be the trademark of the show. But, they are kinda fun. some consist of button mashing, while some consist of timing, and all are funny, even if you have seen them a million times, like your's truly.

Graphics: 6/10
Graphically, this game is just a bit above mediocre. The whole game is cel-shaded, as it should be since it is based on a cartoon. The environments looked pretty good, almost exactly like they do in the show. But, on some of Stewie's levels, there would be an object that you could jump on, and when you would go to jump on it, you would fall through it. But worst of all, in one instance, I was playing as Stewie, and I had a major glitch! I had him jump up, and when he did, he kept going up...and up....and up, which made it nothing but a black screen with Stewie walking around. I had to restart my PS2 because the menu wouldn't pop up when I pressed start.

Sound: 5/10
The music in this game is dull, to say the least. The voice acting, though, is quite good. It is the same people from the show voicing their characters. Even Mayor Adam West is in there! I do feel that I have to put something negative in this though. The characters will get cut off from what they are saying from time to time, whether it be from a load screen or someone else coming in and talking. But the biggest annoyance comes from the repetition. I really don't want to hear Jesus saying the same thing over and over again!

I decided to mention the humor in the game under "sound" as well, since most of the humor is through the dialog. Quite a few times, I laughed during this game. Whether it was from Quagmire's sexualy offensive one-liners, the old pedophile guy, or the Greased Up Deaf Guy, every character in the game has something humorous to say, and it was in those things that were spoken, where the true humor comes out of the game.

Buy or Rent?
Well, let us dispel of the Buy option. This game isn't worth the $30. I have trouble even saying that you should rent this game. Most likely, a lot of Family Guy fans will be turned off of this game, with its non-responsive and clunky controls. It is a frustrating game. I say, if you are a die hard fan of the show, then rent it. If you are just a casual fan, don't even bother, because you most likely will absolutely hate this game. If you aren't a fan of the show though, then you are probably not even reading my review. but if you are, stay far, far away from this game....unless you want to break your TV out of frustration.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 10/25/06