Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse Message Board

Penned by the show’s writers and brought to life by its original cast of talented voice actors, Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse is a Family Guy game made for true Family Guy fans. The result is a title that stays authentic to the feel of the series. It’s bursting with characters, references, in-jokes, absurdities, and obscurities made specifically for Family Guy’s most ardent followers. Here are some favorites:

1. The Best of Quahog’s Worst

Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse’s antagonists may come from parallel dimensions, but many hail directly from Quahog and the show’s rich history. In addition to Bertram, whose universe-jumping scheme sets the game in motion, Brian and Stewie will have to battle with Crippletron, Evil Stewie, Mayor Adam West (and his cats), Long John Peter, and many more. And there are dozens of notable appearances from other Family Guy figures throughout the story along the way.

2. Unique Character Abilities

Each character in Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse brings their own unique set of tools to the battlefield, specific to their in-show personalities. Stewie wields a golf club and a flamethrower (reminder: never borrow money from Stewie), Peter dazes enemies in a cloud of noxious gas, and Quagmire uses an inflatable ‘lonely man companion doll’ to shield himself from incoming attacks.

True fans should appreciate this classic running staple from the show just from looking at it. Meg, widely considered to be the most, uh, beautiful Family Guy character, can flash her opponents in-game, causing them to vomit in adoration, presumably, at the sight of something so majestic and lovely. Classic.

3. Obscure References to the Rescue!

Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse aids players by putting to good use some of the show’s most inane and tangential moments. Ipecac grenades. A Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tube Man that taunts enemies away from you. In a pinch, you can even summon the Giant Chicken to fight by your side… that is, if you can stand to hear another second of “Surfin’ Bird,” which ceremoniously plays when he appears.

Stewie’s ursine companion Rupert is around, too. And he’s seen some things, man.

4. Costumes! Costumes! Costumes!

There are dozens of unlockable goodies available to endeavoring players across Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse. You can throw Brian in his tux from “Brian Sings and Swings” or dress Stewie up for a Sexy Party. Each character, including those available in Challenge and Multiplayer modes, has a unique set of outfits to choose from.

5. And So Much More…

That’s just a taste of the fun and surprises awaiting diehard Family Guy fans – the rest you’ll have to find on your own. For instance, keep the game paused for a minute and listen to what happens to the theme song… Also those flagellum-propelled spaceships used by the chickens should be very familiar to anyone who remembers Bertram’s origin story from “Emission Impossible.”

So invite some friends over for a game of late-night Capture the Greased-Up Deaf Guy. Like Peter’s injured knee, there’s just so much to stumble upon (oh yeah, THAT’S in the game, too).

Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse is on store shelves now.

Great news, racists, misogynists, homophobes, and generally terrible people! After a year in which your kind spent much of its time being maligned by people with annoying traits like "sensitivity" and "empathy," you now have a video game with which to vent your frustrations toward people with handicaps, women, a wide variety of ethnicities, and homosexuals. Finally, right?

"Finally, a game that understands my sense unique sense of humor!" -- A terrible person playing Back to the Multiverse.

Sure, you get some of that stuff on the Family Guy TV series, but there, Seth MacFarlane's tendency toward offensive humor is too often slathered in that dicey concept known as "parody." Sometimes you just want to laugh at hateful words being used to demean others without all the bullshit, you know?

This is what makes Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse so perfect for the asshole on the go. If you simply don't have the time or mental capacity for "jokes" with "punchlines," then by all means, engage Back to the Multiverse for its liberal use of insults and offensive words for what I can only assume was a half-cocked attempt at shock value. Then again, shock value would also imply that you could actually be shocked by any of this stuff. If anything, the only shocking aspect of Back to the Multiverse is how haphazardly said offensive terms are doled out over the course of the game's brief adventure.

While there is a story in Back to the Multiverse--which features Family Guy stalwarts Stewie and Brian teaming up to save the world from a dimension-hopping villain baby--it largely plays second fiddle to the simple act of running around an environment filled with some minority or another, shooting everything in sight, while frequently repeating lines from the show.

Yes, there is a lot of recycled dialogue in Back to the Multiverse, most of it unremarkable, barely-remembered one-liners from its main characters. You can tell the difference between what's old and what's new by the fact that the old lines occasionally feel like they were part of a larger joke. The new dialogue doesn't even know what a larger joke is. If it takes more than ten seconds to set up, deliver, and forget about, Back to the Multiverse doesn't even bother.

With that said, I don't know that Back to the Multiverse was so much "written" as it was "hastily slapped together," but no matter, because the most important thing is that you're being horrible to those that are probably different from you. The game literally opens with a rapid-fire assault highlighting the grossness of Greek people and the sluttiness (and requisite daddy issues) of sorority chicks, and then dovetails into a lovely little level-length treatise on handicapped people and their terrifying sense of entitlement.

To be fair, not all of Back to the Multiverse is obsessed with calling things queer and the hilariously slutty antics of women. Later in the game, things move into more decidedly bizarre territory, featuring long stretches where you're killing Secret Service agents tasked with protecting Mayor McCheese, and space chickens that behave similarly to the Xenomorphs from Alien. So there's your referential humor, I guess, if that's what you're after.

Regardless of who you're killing for what reason, you will do it with haphazard shooting mechanics that qualify as functional, if utterly uninvolving. There's no real challenge to Back to the Multiverse. You'll die if you get shot up, but unless you've completely run out of the game's collectible currency, you'll always start right back where you got shot. Well, until the last few levels, which inexplicably have a tendency to start you way further back than seems reasonable. But otherwise, you're just running around, blasting wildly until everything's dead.

Some might think that Back to the Multiverse is just emblematic of its source material, but it's not. The TV series looks nuanced, compared to this garbage.

Keep in mind that Back to the Multiverse's gameplay design isn't really set up for anything more strategic than that. The mechanics function more like a lousy arena shooter than a typical third-person adventure, so there's a lot of running and shooting, and not much else. If we were talking about a game with a challenge level similar to, say, Serious Sam, that might have worked out better. But Back to the Multiverse isn't interested in challenging you so much as it is killing time until its next offensive one-liner.

This all makes a bit more sense when you try out Back to the Multiverse's barely existent multiplayer. Yes, there's two-player co-op in the campaign, but if your desire to force Back to the Multiverse on people requires more sacrifices, there are offline deathmatch and "capture the greased-up deaf guy" modes to play around with. Incidentally, all relevant humor in the "capture the greased-up deaf guy" mode can be found in the title "capture the greased-up deaf guy," so really, you don't even have to play it to get the joke.

If you're the sort of person who doesn't inherently find the concepts of greased-up deaf people, Amish people commenting on their sex lives, older women grotesquely demanding group sex from frat boys, people in wheelchairs falling over, or "the gays" completely hilarious, do not get angry at Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse. This is not a game that deserves your anger. If it in any way felt deliberate, focused, or frankly invested in its own sense of humor, then maybe it would be deserving of such ire. As it is, Back to the Multiverse is a game that those with any modicum of taste should simply forget ever happened. To attempt to highlight its existence beyond a mere blunt dismissal is to give it entirely too much credit. Which I suppose I just did. Crap.

Family Guy™: Back to the Multiverse is Now Available on Steam!

Everyones favorite foul-mouthed baby Stewie stars alongside his faithful booze hound Brian in the Family Guy event of the year - Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse!

Save Quahog from utter annihilation! Stewie and Brian team up in an original Multiverse-spanning adventure to stop the evil Bertram from destroying everything!

Stewie and Brian rock.

Come find out if the TV show's game is looking decent.

Hey, remember that time we learned when Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse was coming out?

(flashback)

Activision sent out a press release today naming a November 23 release date for the UK version of Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse. The North American release takes place on November 20, according to a stealthy Facebook announcement.

In addition to a campaign that takes Stewie and Brian through parallel universes, the PS3/Xbox game includes cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes that let you choose from a variety of Family Guy characters. For example, you can see Quagmire in a diaper in our gallery - perhaps the least enticing reason we've ever offered to open a gallery link.

#familyguy We already know that the toddler genius and talking dog from Seth McFarlane's hit TV show will be the star of the upcoming Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse game. (Mike Fahey says it'll probably be good for a laugh.) The screens above show off more of what the in-game action will look like, with Stewie—but no Brian—raging against some bros. The show's signature cartoony look gets recreated almost perfectly, to the point where you can almost hear Stewie's comically deep voice while you look at these screens. Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse should be hitting later this year. More »

If Family Guy Online just isn't scratching your itch for everything Quahog, Family Guy: Back the Multiverse is coming to consoles this fall from Activision and Fox. Incredibly little is known about the game other than the basic quotes and whatnot from folks behind it. "Family Guy: Back to the ...