Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse

I went into Back to the Multiverse expecting the floor to be low - licensed games from 2012 rarely surprised anyone - but I was curious whether the Family Guy brand could carry a full shooter on its own terms. The short answer is: sort of, and only if you already own a Peter Griffin body pillow. The setup is genuinely fun on paper. Stewie and Brian chase the villain Bertram across seven alternate universes, each with its own absurdist theme - a world ruled by the Amish, one dominated by pirates, another overrun by giant space chickens. The show's full voice cast reprises their roles, the cel-shaded visuals hold the Family Guy look reasonably well, and the banter between Stewie and Brian is legitimately funny for stretches. If you are a devoted fan, spotting episode callbacks and series-specific in-jokes is a real source of low-key joy. The game does the fan-service half of its job competently. Everything underneath that surface, though, is rough. The core loop is a third-person shooter where waves of enemies charge directly at you, and you shoot them. Rinse and repeat across every level. Stewie carries sci-fi weapons of his own invention - laser blasters, exploding dirty diapers, a Wacky Wavy Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man as a special - while Brian leans on a shotgun, pistol, and whiskey bottle melee. The weapon variety sounds more fun than it plays; enemy AI is essentially non-existent, so the arsenal rarely matters. A weapon wheel lets you swap on the fly but feels cumbersome under pressure. Level objectives cycle through a tiny rotation - flip a switch, hit a button, move to the next arena - and the whole campaign wraps up in around four to five hours before it can wear out even its limited welcome. Multiplayer adds some local-only modes including deathmatch, a horde variant, and a capture-the-flag spin featuring the Greased-Up Deaf Guy. Characters like Lois, Quagmire, and Meg become playable here, with unlockable costumes for each. It is the one context where the shallow combat actually works in the game's favor - the stakes are low enough that goofing around with friends in short bursts feels appropriate. Worth noting: the game was removed from Steam back in December 2014, so tracking down a key through a third-party storefront is the only way to play it on PC today, which makes the value question especially worth thinking through. The honest verdict is that critics were broadly right at launch - this sits firmly in "generally unfavorable" territory as a game, even while landing its comedy moments. For anyone who does not already love the show deeply, there is nothing here that a better shooter could not do in its sleep. For die-hard fans who want to spend a few hours inside Quahog with Stewie cracking wise, it scratches a very specific itch - as long as you go in knowing you are paying for a long interactive episode, not a polished action game.

Alex · Scout Team

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