Family Guy stays faithful to TV show
Family Guy isn’t your average run of the mill family cartoon. The award-winning adult animated comedy is a huge hit amongst those with a twisted sense of humour. The intelligent digs at current affairs, toilet humour and political incorrectness have resulted in huge ratings on Fox’s Cartoon Network.
How on Earth can this hit TV show be made into a videogame? Well 2K Games and High Voltage Software have put their heads together with show creator, Seth MacFarlane, who has lent his expertise and script writing talent, to bring us a game that plays as an extended episode of Family Guy, blending the platforming, stealth and beat ‘em up genres and ultimately creating a humorous journey into the animated world of the Griffin Family.
The visual style of Family Guy is accurately recreated; the lines are clear and defined, colours are accurately mapped and the characters are identical to their TV counterparts. In fact, Family Guy the videogame wouldn’t have worked at all if the style wasn’t spot on and furthermore the whole cast from the series have lent their voices to the games’ characters. While the game offers nothing new in terms of innovative gameplay, there are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments and fans of the series will enjoy the witty and intelligent one-liners and satirical content of the dialogue. Ultimately, these belly laugh moments are numbed by the lack of invention in the linear levels and dull objectives; resulting in that broad grin occasionally turning into nothing more than a wry smile of discontent.
In Family guy you have the opportunity to play as three characters from the Griffin family (each character has their own unique moves and special abilities) You’ll switch between these characters at certain stages in the game and take part in platform missions, where you’ll collect items, side-scrolling fighting missions, where you’ll pound those buttons in order to punch and kick your way through old age pensioners, children and policemen, stealth missions, where you’ll assume the role of Brian the dog and need to get from one end of the screen to the other without being seen, and a number of mini-games. The subject matter and locations of the missions and objectives are handled well, as is the humour, but fundamentally the gameplay is more fitting for an audience younger than the game is intended for; after all Family Guy carries a 15 rating so we expected to be challenged far more than the game manages.