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jack19
Well, I guess it was inevitable. Ever since Fox resuscitated Family Guy to once again make an attempt to cash in on The Simpsons viewership, it seems logical Seth MacFarlane would try to market his product in as many platforms as possible. And The Simpsons have had a video game. Several, in fact. So it must be profitable.
I mean, The Simpsons have never made a misstep, not in its countless years on the air, not since those first cave drawings of The Simpsons were projected against the wall of The Red Sea to entertain Moses and his followers as they walked across – Okay, it's not that old, but seriously, can someone please put that show out of its misery? I mean, Bart should be around 27 by now (perhaps even older if you factor in their appearances on The Tracey Ullman Show) and as those conflicting flash-forward episodes have told us, he's either unemployed, a demolition contractor or perhaps he has cleaned up his act and is going to law school. Meanwhile, Lisa would be on the fast-track to the presidency. And Maggie, well not much is usually said about in her in those shows, but she'd be legal and probably running her own personal porn web cam, because with a sister in the White House and a brother who will one day be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a girl's got to make her mark somehow.
But Family Guy hasn't been on the air nearly as long and being cancelled twice has provided a nice break for its audience and creators. So the content for a video game should feel fresher. The 2K Games release is divided into three different storylines: Stewie's out to foil his evil half-brother Bertram who tricked him into destroying the Griffins' satellite dish, Brian has to once again prove he did not impregnate Mr. Pewterschmidt's dog, Seabreeze and Peter is on the warpath to take out the sinister Mr. Belvedere... Yes, that Mr. Belvedere. The creepy British butler to the Owens family whose relationship with the youngest, Wesley bordered on paedophilia. Peter thinks he kidnapped his family or some such thing.
Each of these storylines are almost games unto themselves as they each have their own distinct style of play. It reminded me a lot of X-Men: The Official Game which I reviewed a few months back. Like Wolverine, Peter basically just goes around beating people up. Like Nightcrawler, Stewie has various objectives he must achieve on top of just fighting. And like Iceman, Brian is just annoying to play. As him, you have to sneak around and collect evidence proving you're not the father of Seabreeze's pups and occasionally stop to pee in a potted plant.
Peter, Brian and Stewie are all voiced by the original cast, which to be fair isn't really difficult as MacFarlane does all three of them. But in fact many of the talent from the show seem to have their done voicework here, including Patrick Warburton as Joe Swanson, Wallace Shawn as Bertram and Adam West as well – Mayor Adam West.
Despite being primarily arcade-style in format, a lot of effort has clearly has gone into trying to recreate the show and make you feel like you're playing an episode and not just a game with Family Guy characters. The graphics are reasonably good. The cut scenes, although slightly cruder in look, do resemble the cartoon. And while you're playing you even get interrupted by various non sequiturs, such as Stewie playing Marco Polo with Helen Keller and Brian burying a reel of The Blair Fist Project, starring Quagmire. If you play these “mini-games†successfully, you receive a bonus. I wouldn’t say they're enjoyable to play, especially when you have to replay them because you died or got caught. But non sequiturs are big part of the show. So I guess the game is being authentic.
The two-dimensional cartoon look is also a little problematic with the three-dimensional environment. Depth perception, specifically with Stewie becomes an issue as he attempts to jump back and forth to various platforms which appear to be directly in front of one another, but aren’t.
Still, Stewie is the most fun to play around with as his levels and plotline are more elaborate. And his boss levels are clever turns on classic video games, such as shooting at doctors and nurses in a Space Invaders clone, and going to war in Peter's insides in a version of Centipede.
Earning its “M†rating, the game also includes sequences that range from the disgusting, Stewie jumping on pregnant women's stomach to birth babies and launch missiles to the downright disturbing, Peter dropping children into a pool of acid and walking over their skeletons' to get safely across.
So the game has its moments, but in the end it feels like watching a second-rate episode.
I mean, The Simpsons have never made a misstep, not in its countless years on the air, not since those first cave drawings of The Simpsons were projected against the wall of The Red Sea to entertain Moses and his followers as they walked across – Okay, it's not that old, but seriously, can someone please put that show out of its misery? I mean, Bart should be around 27 by now (perhaps even older if you factor in their appearances on The Tracey Ullman Show) and as those conflicting flash-forward episodes have told us, he's either unemployed, a demolition contractor or perhaps he has cleaned up his act and is going to law school. Meanwhile, Lisa would be on the fast-track to the presidency. And Maggie, well not much is usually said about in her in those shows, but she'd be legal and probably running her own personal porn web cam, because with a sister in the White House and a brother who will one day be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a girl's got to make her mark somehow.
But Family Guy hasn't been on the air nearly as long and being cancelled twice has provided a nice break for its audience and creators. So the content for a video game should feel fresher. The 2K Games release is divided into three different storylines: Stewie's out to foil his evil half-brother Bertram who tricked him into destroying the Griffins' satellite dish, Brian has to once again prove he did not impregnate Mr. Pewterschmidt's dog, Seabreeze and Peter is on the warpath to take out the sinister Mr. Belvedere... Yes, that Mr. Belvedere. The creepy British butler to the Owens family whose relationship with the youngest, Wesley bordered on paedophilia. Peter thinks he kidnapped his family or some such thing.
Each of these storylines are almost games unto themselves as they each have their own distinct style of play. It reminded me a lot of X-Men: The Official Game which I reviewed a few months back. Like Wolverine, Peter basically just goes around beating people up. Like Nightcrawler, Stewie has various objectives he must achieve on top of just fighting. And like Iceman, Brian is just annoying to play. As him, you have to sneak around and collect evidence proving you're not the father of Seabreeze's pups and occasionally stop to pee in a potted plant.
Peter, Brian and Stewie are all voiced by the original cast, which to be fair isn't really difficult as MacFarlane does all three of them. But in fact many of the talent from the show seem to have their done voicework here, including Patrick Warburton as Joe Swanson, Wallace Shawn as Bertram and Adam West as well – Mayor Adam West.
Despite being primarily arcade-style in format, a lot of effort has clearly has gone into trying to recreate the show and make you feel like you're playing an episode and not just a game with Family Guy characters. The graphics are reasonably good. The cut scenes, although slightly cruder in look, do resemble the cartoon. And while you're playing you even get interrupted by various non sequiturs, such as Stewie playing Marco Polo with Helen Keller and Brian burying a reel of The Blair Fist Project, starring Quagmire. If you play these “mini-games†successfully, you receive a bonus. I wouldn’t say they're enjoyable to play, especially when you have to replay them because you died or got caught. But non sequiturs are big part of the show. So I guess the game is being authentic.
The two-dimensional cartoon look is also a little problematic with the three-dimensional environment. Depth perception, specifically with Stewie becomes an issue as he attempts to jump back and forth to various platforms which appear to be directly in front of one another, but aren’t.
Still, Stewie is the most fun to play around with as his levels and plotline are more elaborate. And his boss levels are clever turns on classic video games, such as shooting at doctors and nurses in a Space Invaders clone, and going to war in Peter's insides in a version of Centipede.
Earning its “M†rating, the game also includes sequences that range from the disgusting, Stewie jumping on pregnant women's stomach to birth babies and launch missiles to the downright disturbing, Peter dropping children into a pool of acid and walking over their skeletons' to get safely across.
So the game has its moments, but in the end it feels like watching a second-rate episode.
