Day 77, Game 77 - Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse

With the God of War Week firmly behind me, I needed to switch gears a bit. I needed to play a game with a little more humor and lightheartedness, just to cleanse my pallet a bit (despite sinking in a few more hours tonight of Ascension, because man, that game is so fun).

I figured I could get some laughs and fun from playing Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse, which I have been sitting on all week since GameFly sent it to me. I hoped it would be fairly on par with the show, which I don't love, but enjoy from time to time.

Man, was I wrong and sorely disappointed.

This game is nothing short of a cash grab where they stuck the Family Guy name and characters on to to a sub-par third person arcade shooter, tossed in some completely uninspiring levels and missions, littered it with crude and offensively repetitive jokes and one-liners and tried to pass it off as worthy extension of Family Guy universe. They couldn't even animate it decently, much less good. It is the exact opposite of how good Ni No Kuni looked as an animated game. It's choppy, rough around the edges and looks like a bad PS2 game at times.

Aside from that, it's just not fun. The first level is nothing but fetch quests with shooting everyone in sight you're main objective. It's not even challenging, as health and ammo is almost found within 30 steps in any direction. There is never a sense of challenge or skill needed to do. It's just like trying to get your wheels out of mud; it's slow and tedious and eventually you get it, but in the grand scheme of things, all you did was spin your tires until something gave. The game doesn't even get better from there, despite the weapon upgrades you get as you progress.

The Family Guy characters are all found throughout the game, and as you pass them, they call out cheesy one-liners and offensive jokes, but the worse part is that they say the same thing over and over again, every time you pass by them. The jokes aren't funny, and it just seems like the writers (if there were any) didn't even try. This is a game perfect for muting it and listening to podcasts, watching Netflix on your Wii U GamePad or bashing your head against the wall.

I know everyone has a different sense of humor, buy I can't imagine anyone could or would enjoy this game for what it is. I don't even think die-hard fans of the series could say they loved this game. And trust me, I understand when games just don't turn out as expected, but when it's clear the developers didn't even try to make a fun game, I take issue with it. This could have easily been a PSN and XBLA game, and even with a $10-15 price point I would feel cheated. Honestly. It's that disappointing.

Maybe playing God of War all week just made me bitter and overly angry. Or maybe this game just sucked. I'll go with the latter on this one. Now if you excuse me, I actually have some good games to play.

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