Reviews// Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse

There’s been one question on everyone’s mind since the very start. Since the dawn of Family Guy time; does Stewie say ‘Laugh and cry’ or ‘effin cry’ in the theme tune? We may never know.

Now the way I look at it, there are two types of people that are likely to go out and buy Family Guy: Back To The Multiverse; Diehard fans of the series, and mums that are stuck for something to buy their teenage son for Christmas, but is there more to the game than that?

Well some of you will have seen the FG episode Road to the Multiverse and, as the game title suggests, Stewie and Brian are heading back there. Stewie’s evil twin brother Bertram has returned. Armed with his very own Multiverse remote and a relentless hatred for Stewie, he plans to travel the Multiverse and lead an army to destroy Quahog and kill Stewie in the process.

Some of you may be wondering what exactly I’m blabbering on about. Multiverse, Multiverse remote? What? In case you're not a sci-fi buff - the Multiverse remote allows the user to travel to parallel universes – same place, same time, but something in history has been altered and has caused the present time to be completely different.

You jump straight into the shoes of Stewie (or the paws of Brian, whichever you decide) and make chase after Bertram through the Multiverse – each different universe acting as a level in the game. Your weapons range from a laser gun to a sniper rifle, a flamethrower to a pistol - some of which can only be used by Brian, and some by Stewie. This adds a ‘character-swap’ option while playing. If you’re playing as Stewie, and you switch out to a shotgun, Brian will jump in and take over.

If you’ve got two pads and a mate, you can sacrifice the ‘character-swap’ and enter splitscreen co-op mode with player two taking over as Brian. As well as a variation of different weapons, you also have power-ups and other items at your disposal - for example, you’re able to throw a ‘Wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man’ to distract your enemy’s fire, or a ‘Rupert in a box’ to fire back at them.

Now I’ve just said a bunch about your ‘enemies’, and I never actually explained who they are, did I? Well as I mentioned earlier, Bertram is trying to recruit an army, and in each universe he seems to be succeeding. Your foes vary from Amish guys that need Bertram’s ‘instant tree growing seeds’ to handicapped guys lead by Joe Swanson.

Each different universe (or level) features well known characters from the series. Sometimes these characters play a major part in the level, sometimes they’ll be hidden away somewhere in the background with something humorous to say as you get up close to them

And there we go! The entire point of the Family Guy series is to make its viewers laugh, and Back to the Multiverse definitely isn’t lacking in the humour department. There have been a few occasions during gameplay where I’ve found myself having to hit the start button to pause the game while I laughed hysterically to myself for a minute or so. Don’t get me wrong though, not everything about the dialogue is funny.

There have been a few memorable quotes thrown into the vocab list such as “All I need is a midget and some gin and I’ll be in business!” – Yeah, it’s funny, the first couple of times you hear it. When you realise it cropping up every few minutes, you find yourself ready to sacrifice any other dialogue and mute your TV in an attempt to retain your sanity.