perspective shot of the house

peter is sitting on the couch, typing on his laptop
Brian: "Hey Peter what are you doing"
Peter: "Oh hey Bri, I'm reviewing our video game on this neat website, it's so freakin' awesome"
Brian: "Sure, but don't you think writing about your own work would come off as a bit narcissistic"
Peter: "No way, internet celebrities do this all the time. Just like my distant cousin and soulslike v-tuber, Ashley Griffin"
cutaway to Ashley Griffin
Ashley Griffin: "Rap isn't real music"

perspective shot of the house

peter is again typing on his laptop, but is now laying stomach-down on the couch and swinging his legs back and forth while twirling his hair through his finger
stewie walks in
Stewie, chuckling: "Well well well, somebody must be making breakfast 'cause I see an egg cracking!"
long pause
the camera gets a close-up of Stewie
Stewie, looking at the camera with a straight face: "That was a gay joke."
another long pause
the doorbell rings
Peter, yelling towards kitchen: "Hey Meg, make yourself useful and get the door"
Meg: audibly makes this noise
Peter: "Shut up, Meg"
meg falls over and remains there for the duration of the scene
lois answers the front door
Lois: "Well, you must be Cyndi Lauper!"
Cyndi Lauper: "Hello, Lois. It is I, Cyndi Lauper, from 'that one music video your parents won't stop streaming to the tv while guests are over' "
peter walks on-screen
Peter: "What's goin' on""
Cyndi Lauper, hands on hips: "Peter, I'm here as a representative of the Lotta Paragraph Games Committee, and we've been receiving some very unhappy messages about your so-called 'review'. Many of our group chat members say it's in poor taste"
Peter: .
Lois, laughing nervously: "Ohhh, I'm sure it can't be that bad,"
Lois, now with a straight face: "Trust me, I know Peter and poor taste"
cutaway to peter sitting in a high chair wearing a bib. Lois is angrily feeding him peas on a spoon
Peter, crying: "I don't wanna! it doesn't even have any Styrofoam marshmallows shaped like my morning cartoons!"
Lois, fuming: "You'll eat it and like it!"
cut back to scene
Cyndi Lauper: "Now, it's perfectly reasonable to be defensive about it, but that's the group consensus going around"
Cyndi Lauper, whispering to Peter: "I even hear them calling it pick-me behavior"
Peter, gasping: "What??? Pick-me behavior??? That's ridiculous! I haven't done anything of the sort! Well, not since high school, anyway"
cut to joe, cleveland, peter and quagmire, in high school, sitting at, each holding a glass of milk
Joe: "My glass is half-full"
Cleveland: "My glass is half-empty"
Peter, doing pensive emoji face: "My glass feels like everyone treats them like a ghost and wishes they would invite them to parties and give them free affection but it's ok it's not really bothered by it it's just venting :("
Quagmire: "My glass is still warm! Giggity giggity giggity giggity!!!"
cut back to scene
Cyndi Lauper: "Well I'm sorry, but if you want to give a better impression to those people, you'll have to put up a new review expressing how you really feel"

shot of the clam

peter, joe, and quagmire are sitting at their booth
Peter, looking at the camera, unimpressed: "Cleveland isn't here with us today so I'm going to say something racially insensitive. Seth will not comment about this for the next 20 years, then reply to a callout tweet about it with the 'clenched teeth oooooh' reaction gif"
Quagmire, looking at Peter: "So Peter, you're saying these guys are upset at your review"
Peter: "Yeah, they say it's not a real review and it's just me bragging about me having my own game"
Joe: "Well Beter, if I were you, I'd update it to include a lengthy manifesto about the idiosyncrasies between our show's cutaway format and the sequential structure of game
Quagmire: "Or you could be like me and name all the characters you wanna bang!"
Peter, excited: "Hey, that's a great idea!"
Joe: "Which idea, the uhh, my idea or the other one"
Peter, now straight-faced: "The other one"
Joe, looking downwards: .

sweeping shot of guadelahara

cut to stewie and brian eating granola and sitting on a rock
Stewie, chewing: "This is the B-plot where we try to make you forget we don't have any other gags about gamer culture"
Brian, also chewing: "I read yaoi during the cutaways"

Two more plot-threads occur over the next 15 minutes, entirely unrelated to the first.

There comes a time in every man's life where at some point, his hope for the future fades. Everyone on this dying planet wilts; turns into a cynic. He fears for his grandchildren in this day and age, remembering how the good times have come and gone and will die with them. It feels like all is lost, until they find something that gives them that same hope. Some find art. Some find culture. I found Family Guy Video Game.

People will always have their opinions on the value of art in the real world, and I feel as if Family Guy Video Game is the definitive proof that not only do games deserve to be art, but they deserve to be heralded as the future. In this modernistic society of blaming our problems on the media poisoning our children, I think we as adults need to step back to look closer and understand the media we consume. I believe Family Guy Video Game to be a perfect starting point.

Down to the opening cutscene. Peter Griffin (voiced by the endlessly talented Seth MacFarlane) is sitting in his garage watching a televised broadcast of the Mr. Belvedere show, specifically the episode where the aforementioned Mr. Belvedere sits on his own nuts. Brian comes in and criticizes Peter's taste in television, only for him to be shushed and ignored. I think this speaks volumes about our society.

It says something about how selective our memories are. How the modern American can sit idly by and laugh at the pain of others on television, but children innocently playing their video games bought by their responsible parents will be unfairly ridiculed and shamed for partaking in something they had no choice in. They only grew up with it, same as Peter with television. It's a repetitive cycle, and one we may never learn from due to our own cynicism.

Also, at one point, Stewie Griffin (voiced by the endlessly talented Seth MacFarlane) steps on people's butts. That was pretty funny

I streamed this game the other night, haven't played it since I was a child; it's just as shite as I remembered it being

Stewie levels are boring, the Brian levels are fucking annoying, the Peter levels are actually somewhat fun y'know, until the game decided to fucking softlock and wouldn't spawn the enemies, leaving me unable to progress without the possibility of a full restart... fuck that

Game is also ugly as sin and has that classic seth mcfarlane cringe, stay away

It's not good.

Game-development has trended away from my preferred genres over time, and playing this in 2024 has inflated the relative quality of this game.

I like the genres represented here: platformers and STGs are, of relative intensity, represented in Stewie's sections, Peter gets the beat-'em-up portions, and Brian gets some straightforward stealth-gameplay. None of these are executed in particularly fleshed out or polished ways, and it's not fair to expect them to be since these 3 types of gameplay should be the sole focus of 1 individual game and not all be part of the same game. Though, the dev should be blamed for including the 3. It's an ambitious undertaking, and, even if all 3 were executed to perfection, the game shouldn't be alternating between them. They have to be this simple by necessity since they're all here. The game was doomed to fail by their simultaneous inclusion.

Stewie's sections are the best. They have the most variety and polish, and I imagine they got the most dev-time. He's got a double-jump, a glide, multiple charged shot-types, an upgrade-system, and a very deliberate sliding-mechanic. There's also a context-sensitive grapple-mechanic, but, aside from latching on for some optional collectibles, it basically just moves you to point B for free with no strategy behind it.

Peter's sections are next best. Enemies and objects are susceptible to a variation of attack-types and combos. Some enemies only take damage from punches, some only from kicks, vehicles only take damage from the head-butt combo, etc. He's got a meter that builds from item pickups, and allows use of a few special attacks. The early game spin-kick does high enough damage that it'll clear crowd-fights in 1 use, and can even take out the entire health-gauge of most boss-fights. His tackle knocks enemies over, and downed enemies can be picked up and thrown to instantly kill them and any enemy (enemies?) hit by them. The final super attack seemed to do high damage, but it's rare that you'll have the time to get it out in an actual fight due to its high-charge time. A spin-kick can usually achieve the same effect instantly.

Brian's sections are the weakest. Even as a fan of stealth-games, they're simplistic to a fault. You have an extremely limited set of options for manipulating "guard" patrols. There's a gauge that fills when they see you that leads to being caught as opposed to just instantly being seen, and you can briefly appear in their sight-line to stop them in place. I didn't personally find a use for this in my 1 run. The other option is to interact with a context-sensitive prompt that'll automatically move the guards somewhere else for you with no other input required from the player. You have a variety of disguises (cosmetic in terms of variety, not function) that just cause "guards" to ignore you, or not be able to see you when you're standing still. You have a simple crouch that allows Brian to hide behind walls or get under objects to hide. The last gimmick are objects that cause Brian to take control of the player to waste time with the added penalty of losing whatever disguise is equipped until Brian enters shadows. Shadows make Brian undetectable to all "guards". That sounds like more than it is, and there isn't a single section that puts it all to use at once.

The cutaways return in the form of minigames. They're sometimes placed at incredibly inopportune moments, like the beginning of a difficult section right after the checkpoint, but they're typically worth winning. Stewie's especially for upgrade-parts, Peter's vary in usefulness (they give meter, so it depends on if you need it or not), and Brian's give temporary invisibility (sometimes let's you skip entire sections, sometimes doesn't do much).

This game was not worth playing in 2006, but I'd take it over the majority of today's AAA releases. That opinion is based on what I grew up playing and my own sensibilities, and definitely may not apply to you. Again though, it's not good. Just good enough to finish. 2/5

Stewie - Good
Peter - Okay
Brian - One of the worst things I've ever played in my life

Because of its short playtime, you either like or hate this game based on your enjoyment of the FGU (Family Guy Universe) 5