Photo by: 20th Century Fox
“Family Guy,” the popular animated television show on the Fox network, is a smart, sharply funny and irreverent take on American life as seen through the eyes of the Griffin family.
Mixing toilet humor, crude sexual innuendo, and jokes targeting such subjects as Christianity, American politics, and pop culture, the series is a bona fide hit among younger demographics.
Perhaps for this reason, the makers of the show, with the help of game company 2k Games, have decided to release a video game version which went out Oct. 16 on Xbox, Playstation 2 and PSP gaming systems.
But compared to the television series that is so wonderfully entertaining, the video game version of “Family Guy” misses its mark.
The game centers around three main characters from the show, namely Stewie, Brian and Peter, as they travel about the Griffins’ hometown, Quohog.
Stewie, the scheming baby, battles an arch-nemesis baby and his army while collecting upgrades for his ray gun.
Brian, the family dog that incidentally speaks and drinks alcohol-attempts to find the true father of his girlfriend’s litter of puppies by collecting clues and stealthily making his way through a maze of people and environments without being discovered as a dog.
Meanwhile, Peter fights and bashes anyone and everyone-including the elderly and small children-while trying to find the elusive criminal mastermind Mr. Belvedere, who has taken his wife and two kids hostage.
But while the game’s plot appears to be action-packed, it proves more frustrating and boring than exciting and gripping.
Sticking with this lackluster theme, “Family Guy” fails to connect with users for a host of reasons, the most central being that the game alienates every group of people that might want to play it.
For the serious gamer, the game is too shallow, fluffy and predictably easy to be any good.
The three main plot lines, with each following one of the three central characters, create a jumbled mess that episodically jumps from one to another.
Each episode is so disconnected from the others that the gameplay seems to drone on mindlessly, without rhyme or reason, and without a set goal.
At this level, the game is neither entertaining nor original.
For the hardcore fan of the television version, the game is an abandonment of the spirit of the show, and ultimately fails as an interactive extension of Quohog and its characters.
“Family Guy” should have taken cues from the video games based on the other successful Fox animated TV series, “The Simpsons.”
In the two video games centered on that long-running show, “Hit and Run” and “Road Rage,” users could explore the show’s setting, Springfield, and the show’s title characters intimately and thoroughly.
Overall, those games added to the experience of the popular series, but in the case of “Family Guy,” the video game detracts and cheapens the experience of the television show.
Ultimately, the “Family Guy” video game is an uninteresting and unplayable paradox.
The game play is too boring for older gamers, but the content, rated “Mature” for adult humor and partial nudity, is too hot for anyone younger.
While that content is too intense for some of the only users who would enjoy it, it is not spicy enough to entertain true fans of the show, the only other members of that group.
So unless you’re an older fan of contrived, boring games that loosely resemble original and funny television shows, stay away from this one.
