I have very fond memories of Super Mario Bros. The running, the jumping ... the run-jumping. It set the video game industry standard on character movement.
But this isn't an article about Super Mario Bros. This is an article about how, two decades later, the video gaming world is undergoing a revolution. No longer will players run and jump as they please; they will walk, and they will be able to jump some, but not all of the time.
This is the bleak future promised by the Family Guy video game.
Every element of the Family Guy game can be sorted into two categories: nearly broken or strikingly unoriginal. The game puts you in the roles of Peter, Stewie and Brian, switching between characters frequently. Peter's levels are button-mashing brawlers, Stewie platforms his way through gross-out environments and Brian has to sneak through his levels. Not so bad, right?
Wrong. The game switches between boring and unplayable. Stewie's levels are completely standard platformer fare -- kill enemies, get item, move to next room. They're also the high point of the game. Peter's brawling levels are repetitive, and his set of attacks is annoyingly small. Yet if you don't focus on pressing the same three-button combo over and over to kill your enemies, expect to die and be sent back to the beginning of the area.
Brian's levels are a slice of hell. Again, you're collecting items, but to do so you have to sneak past all kinds of foes. Brian can't run, and enemy detection is unpredictable and spotty, so some of the time you'll get away with almost walking in front of enemies, and other times they'll bear down on you as if they have psychic radars. Then you'll be caught two seconds from the end and forced to start over. This is compounded by the genius gameplay element of trying to keep Brian from -- not making this up -- peeing. Brian has to be steered away from trees, fire hydrants and other elements, or else he'll lose control. Expect to take a lot of leaks.
On top of monotony and reused ideas, the difficulty level swings from mindless to incredibly frustrating with no real middle ground. You'll breeze through the game for 15 minutes, then spend 10 tackling the same scene over and over until you beat it. There's no way to skip cut scenes you must sit through multiple times, and character dialogue gets repeated until it loses all novelty.
If you were hoping that Family Guy's humor would carry the game, look elsewhere. Even if you're just a casual fan of the television show, you'll recognize quickly that much of the material is recycled. The game is generally over-the-top, and while you may get a few chuckles out of Stewie sliding around on giant lard pools from broken liposuction machines or Brian putting on the banana suit and recreating the Peanut Butter Jelly Time dance, the mindless violence and sloppy level design will suck most of the fun out of it. The cutaway mini-games that try to recreate those found in the TV show don't help entertain either -- you probably won't be able to figure out half the games before you lose them.
It would be foolish to spend 30 bucks on a game that offers about six hours of dull, hackneyed entertainment. If you're a Family Guy fan, then spend your money on DVDs and you'll actually get both laughs and replay value. If you're simply looking for a decent video game with the same gameplay elements, pick up a title like Sly 2: Band of Thieves for 10 bucks less. Anything is better than experiencing the unoriginality incarnate that is the Family Guy video game.
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