rather shallow and pedantic but some good features
The first thing you notice when you fire up this wayward soul is that the developers have tried to recreate the distinct look and colour scheme of the cartoon in a wobbly, looks-like-they-rushed-it, cel-shaded kind of way. The lines are all out of shape and the characters don't look quite right, like those cheap imitation toys you find in Poundland. You've probably seen a Darth Evil from Planet Wars, or perhaps an Indiana Evans. Okay, so they don't look quite like they were made in an Indian sweatshop, but they don't look like they were drawn by sober people either.
After a small cut scene we're playing the game, controlling Stewie (the maniacal homosexual baby hell-bent on world domination, you know, the one with the head shaped like a football). This is a platform game and you're looking inside the Griffin household at something near a 45-degree angle. You must collect things, spinning yellow things to be precise, and once you've collected enough of them you can leave. These things will apparently enable Stewie's ray gun (yes, the baby has a ray gun) and then you can dispense with Stewie's arch nemesis, another maniacal baby that ordinarily lives in Peter Griffin's testicles. With me so far? Okay, so after you've collected our set number of yellow things, craftily hidden in wardrobes and on high shelves, you run downstairs. Here you see your first puzzle - Lois is in the kitchen fixing dinner and Stewie needs to leave via the kitchen door, but bless him he's too small to open it. Donning a football helmet, he proceeds to fire some kind of mind-control ray at the unsuspecting housewife and now she's in your control. As Lois you can roam the house freely, apart from near the microwave, which unfortunately sits right near the exit you need her to open. The microwave seems to be emitting some kind of signal that, if approached, wakes Lois from her hypnosis. So what do you do? After looking in a couple of cupboards, one of which contains an octopus, you discover that there is a sleeping dog in the living room and a waiting vacuum cleaner nearby. Once the vacuum is switched on you can chase the petrified and slightly drunken dog out of the house. Mission accomplished.
Get used to this kind of mentality if you're planning on playing this game. As a platformer it has some rather interesting challenges, some of which will make you laugh, some of which will make you raise an eyebrow in a questioning manner and some of which will make you want to find whoever made this game and see him spend the next thousand years FROZEN IN CARBONITE!!!
Now, I love Family Guy - I love its ridiculous, over the top, way beyond the line humour and I even love the surreal, completely unrelated in-jokes that it seems to love splicing into an episode's story. The game has tried to capture that magic, that twisted underbelly of a seemingly innocent cartoon, and to a small extent it has succeeded. Look no further than the level where, as Stewie, you must negotiate a maternity ward in a hospital and jumping on pregnant women's swollen bellies you cause babies to fly out of them, one of which is a mini Quagmire (the local pervert, gigiddy gigiddy). Or how about the level where, playing as Brian (the alcoholic dog who has a taste for Martinis and sniffing bottoms) you must escape a prison shower block where naked inmates are chasing each other around. The levels have an inherent sickness, the likes of which we haven't seen since the days of Ren & Stimpy on the Mega Drive, but unfortunately its not enough to make up for how irritating the levels are to play.
There're three basic modes to the game - play as Stewie, armed with a laser gun and on a mission to find his way into his father's testicles so that he may battle his nemesis, voiced by Wallace Shawn, who played Rex in Toy Story and Grand Nagus Zek in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Then there are Brian's missions, where he apparently seems to be in a police station/jail looking for documents, which will help him solve the riddle of Sea Breeze's puppies. The third mode is as Peter, who seems to believe a TV show character called Belvedere has taken over the world and that everyone is involved in some kind of conspiracy against him. He retaliates in the only way he knows how and proceeds to batter anyone who crosses his path, including old people, kids and local law enforcement. This mode is the most satisfying and yet the most irritating; it is hilarious walking down the street and punching old ladies in the teeth (in a virtual, Family Guy type environment of course, I'm not a bruiser down the local retirement home), but it's also fairly bland after not a long time, and supremely difficult. You find yourself swarmed by people who, although their real-life counterparts would probably be quite weak and feeble, are actually quite strong. Different characters can only be damaged by certain attacks - for example little kids can only be taken out by kicks and middle aged parents by punches, so when you're surrounded you can only hit both attacks in succession and hope you come out the other side of it in one piece. There are a couple of combos you can try and you can even pick things up and throw them, but as a kind of modern Double Dragon with humour, this is weak. Crowning moment: outside a church, God is picking up chicks - attack him and he'll smite you with a lightning bolt.
Brian's sections are stealth missions that involve sneaking between shadows, dressing as a lampshade and being chased by naked inmates in a prison shower. These are very frustrating because they're very long winded and as soon as you're spotted you have to start from the beginning of the room. Again, there's plenty of humour dotted around the place, like Mayor Adam West complaining about somebody stealing his water and the distracting of cops by throwing a witch's hat on their unsuspecting friend, who they then burn. Somehow though, it just doesn't seem to make up for how angry it makes you.
Stewie's sections are probably the most varied, although they most resemble the traditional 'platform' dynamic. Run here, jump up these eight thousand platforms while we move the camera so you can't really see where you're going to land, ever destined to fall from the second platform from the top and have to start all over again. All the while collecting dozens of shiny little objects that you're sure do something…
There are some fairly fun levels that resemble 3D space invaders and one where you have to slide around uncontrollably in liposuction fat, but for the most part it's jumping, collecting and shooting things with your laser. You can upgrade the laser, but it means collecting hundreds of those little yellow things. There's more mind control where you must guide other characters though sections that Stewie cannot access, but they're all fairly simplistic stuff. Throughout each level, regardless of who you're playing as, there will be 'humorous comments' made. They are funny the first time you hear them, but the third or fourth time you're just thinking, could you not have recorded a couple more? By the tenth or eleventh time you're just plain infuriated, especially when you keep dying, and as you start the level again it repeats itself. The music is barely noticeable, which I'm fairly sure is a blessing, because if there was a prominent score, no doubt it would be irritating.
I'm quite annoyed by this game because I'm such a fan of the TV show. Sure its playable in an 'oh if I have to' sort of way and it does have funny moments, but they seem to be shoehorned in around a badly made game. I feel for the writers of the show that have tried to make this funny and there are some genuinely funny moments, but no more than you would get from an episode of the cartoon. The difference here is that you must torture your mind with infuriating levels of jumping, sneaking or fighting between jokes. I was completely under-whelmed by the way this has been put together and occasionally I wanted to find the man responsible for it and burn his feet. Sure there are laughs, but not enough to justify the time you'll spend playing it. What surprised me is that this was made by 2K Games, a subsidiary of Take Two Interactive (the legends behind the Grand Theft Auto series). Even more surprising is that 2K themselves have been responsible for excellent titles such as The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Civilisation IV. How have they managed to bugger this up so royally?
Lots of people will buy this because it is the Family Guy game. Lots of people will be disappointed. Some won't be, but these are the people who bought the Knight Rider game and then went out and bought the sequel. Don't be one of those people.