The Griffins have made the jump to games after they made a successful comeback earlier in the year. And luckily Family Guy just happens to be one of my favourite TV shows EVER…
In Family Guy the game you play as Stewie, Peter and Brian in 3 separate mini stories. Stewie (the highly intelligent evil genius baby) has to shrink himself and go after his rival inside Peter’s body (which happened in the series). While Peter is going on a rampage because when he awakens from being unconscious he believes it’s all the work of a character in a TV show, and that every person is a minion (even grannies and kids) – it’s funny having to kick and punch kids and grannies!
Finally Brian (the quick-witted talking dog) has been accused of getting ‘busy’ with Seabrease (again seen in the series). Stewies game play is all about shooting and platforming with an overhead viewpoint. You’ll have to power up your ray gun by collecting parts located around the place. You also get to use a mind-control device to make other characters do things for you.
Peter’s sections, as I hinted to earlier, are about fighting your way through the levels in the style of old’skool side scrolling beat’em ups. You’ll have kicks, punches, headbutts and the ability to pick things up and throw them. Certain attacks have to be used for certain enemies though. Brian’s gameplay is about sneaking without being spotted. These sections can get very frustrating. You have to use disguises and crawl under desks to avoid detection from the randomly patrolling people. Sometimes during the levels you’ll be introduced to one of the famous “cut away” scenes from the show where you’ll cut to a completely different place to play a mini game for a bonus. They are just as funny as in the TV show. You’ll also find references to the show all over the place, which brings a smile to your face. But even with the charm and humour of the show it still can’t hide the fact that the game is pretty stale, frustrating and sometimes buggy – in fact I got totally stuck on an empty screen during one of Peter’s levels.
Graphically the game looks remarkably like the show, the only giveaway being the angles around curved objects. But the characters are nicely animated and all look bang on. The sound is very good due to the fact that all of the show’s cast are providing voices, which adds to the Family Guy experience. The score is also the same from the show (which was always nice).
Overall the look, feel, charm and humour are all here, which is great and what I was hoping for. But underneath that lies the truth at it’s just a bog standard game with repetitive levels and dull game play. Maybe worth a purchase for the die hard fans.
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