Stale
However, I was dissapointed by the repetitive game play. At times, some of the missions were downright stale. As Peter, the missions are a side-scrolling fighter similar to Final Fight, which is a cool premises. However, the attacks and get-hits of your character as well as the enemies don't have the type of impact that Final Fight had. This sucks becsause enemies attack you while you're attacking them (they take damage when you hit them, but at the same time walk right through your attack). So while you're pummeling a bad guy, he is also pummeling you. It just doens't feel natural, and causes you to die suprisingly quick. The brawling lacks a certain "smack" that you feel in other brawlers such as Double Dragon.
Stewies mission are more balanced and tend to thrill more, but again, after a while it gets bland. Jump-on-the-platform, double-jump here, shoot-the-guy, collect-the-powerup. The plat-form based action really isn't that bad at first, but the levels become similar in nature and don't offer much chanllege. A few missions where you're "sliding" on water or Peter's innard fluids (which incidently is very difficult to control as you lose your ability to control your velocity and move at a constant pace, allowing you to only steer your character with a light delay in response time). It just doens't feel very immaginative.
Brian's games are the least fun. You simply try to sneak past people by waiting for them to turn their back at you. A lot of the times, it gets pretty frustrating since everytime someone sees you, you have to start at the beginning of the scene and listen to the opening objectives again (it will happen a lot). Often, being spotted is inconsistent, since sometimes you can seak right past an enemie, but other times get caught at each attempt. Ther'es no way to really judge if the enemie is able to see you in his line of sight or not. The player can only bleed the camera left/right, which can become a problem in Brian's and Stewie's levels. Brian's levels are definately the hardest, but it becomes quite frustrating instead of challenging. Again, it frankly isn't very fun. .
It does have some merits. The amount of inside jokes that allude to the show literally in every thing you see. While sneaking around in one of Brian's levels, you'll see prisoners in the shower chasing each other, ala, the episode when Lois remembers seeing "Oz." In the police station, you'll find the remains of Daggermouth, Chris's hot teacher (who killed her husband), and many of Peter's trade-mark quotes. The cutscenes in the TV show are also present in the game, which takes you into a brief, 5 second to 1 minute mini-challenge in the same vein as Wario Ware. The cell shading, lip syncing, and character animation is very failthful to the cartoon, and the vignettes are definately the best part of the game. The game is packed with Family Guy humor. If you have $30 dollars to spend, I'd say you're better off just buying one of the season's on DVD and watching that instead. You'll get more laughs, and it'll last longer. The game's presentation, graphics, and cut-scenes are all pretty well done for what it is. But the actual design simply just gets tedious at times, and utterly monotonous. Sometimes, you'll feel "aw man! not this again!" when you find you have to play as Brian and sneak your way to the next door, yet again. It does have a few funny moments, but if that's all you want... just get the DVD.