Family Guy scores well on its first video-game adaptation

The tradition of video-game spinoffs from popular animated TV series is long and less than proud. The Simpsons franchise has pieced together a few enjoyable gaming experiences (to accompany more than a few duds), but for the most part, these games are behind their times and lean more heavily on one-liners than actual gameplay. So it was with some trepidation that I decided to check out Family Guy's initial foray into gaming on the Xbox (also available on PlayStation 2 and PC). The game slightly exceeded my expectations in that it's thoroughly enjoyable, but it does still suffer from some of the common problems of the genre.

As one might expect from Family Guy, the premise of the video game is scatterbrained. Players switch between playing as Peter Griffin, Stewie and the family dog Brian, each of whom is on an adventure wholly unrelated to the other. Peter is on a demented quest to find and eliminate Mr. Belvedere; Brian is trying to prove his innocence in the impregnation of Peter's father-in-law's dog; and Stewie re-enters into battle with his unborn brother Bertram.

The basic format of the game is that of a side-scroller, which would be amusingly retro if it weren't obvious that the game was produced on a limited budget allowing little more. It's surprisingly glitch-free, but it's also a very limiting format, leaving the user two dimensions in which to operate for the most part. At completely random (and sometimes inopportune) moments, the games will enter a "this reminds me of..." non-sequiter cutscene where the user has to complete a ten-second challenge to earn some kind of reward. As in the show, these are some of the funniest moments in the game.

There are annoyances in the show beyond the side-scrolling format. Predictably, the game is loaded with one-liners from the many characters in the Family Guy universe, and most are genuinely amusing, but they also get tiresome when you have to replay a particularly difficult stage more than a few times through. Also, many of Brian's levels involve sneaking around behind the backs of stationary characters and through shadows, which as a format gets very tiresome after a few go-rounds. Also, a few levels (especially Stewie's) try to use a quasi-3D format that is near-impossible to gauge when you're jumping between floating platforms.

Still, the primary value of this game is humor, and as with the TV show, it's loaded with the edgy variety that frequently scores big. In storming through a hospital, for example, Stewie is required to jump on the bellies of pregnant women and use the babies (and other emissions!) as projectiles. If that's not funny, then you're probably taking life too seriously to enjoy this game. Peter has to take out casino staff at an Indian reservation, many of whom come attacking with weapons like a toxic peace pipe or a deck of sharp-edged playing cards. There's even a non-sequiter where Stewie plays "Marco Polo" with Helen Keller. Politically incorrect to be sure, but ridiculous enough to get away with it.

All in all, this game plays pretty long and pretty funny, but it's about what you might expect from a first-time video-game translation of a cartoon: technologically behind most of today's games, but frequently funny. The fact that the gameplay is somewhat diverse and the non-sequiters are frequently hilarious bumps the game from adequate to quite acceptable. Fans of the series won't want to be without this game, even if its audience is probably limited to that group.