Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude
Travel back in time, won’t you, to the year 1987. A little fledgling game developer called Sierra programmed and distributed an adult humored game on 5 1/4 inch disks for Amiga computers. The game featured a pixelated little guy called Larry. Larry loved the ladies and would go to all lengths to bed the women of his neighborhood and beyond. A mostly text based adventure, Leisure Suit Larry introduced adults to gaming using sexual innuendos and suggestive, if not highly pixelated and blocky, computer graphics. As time and technology progressed, so did Larry and his suit, but not his one liners.
Fast forward to 2004. Video game boundaries have been broken and Larry’s now on his 11th iteration. Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude. Yeah, you get it, don’t you? Anyway, Larry is newphew to the old suited one. The new Larry is going to college and lookin for a degree in T and …. yah, you get the idea. The game is available for the Xbox, PS2 and PC. It should immediately be obvious to even the most inept of people that this is an adult game. Full on rated M for mature and for good reason. Nothing is left to the imagination. There is a bit of censorship, particularly in the nether region areas of both male and female characters, but everything else is open air and in all it’s fleshy glory.
As I said, the new Larry is lookin for love in academia, but being the short, big nosed, slimy used car salesman type that he is, he has very little luck. The latest TV reality show has come to campus and Larry is determined to come out the big winner. Before he can be a contestant on Swingles, he has to prove he’s not a school schmuck. Proof comes in the way of personal effects, tokens of the women Larry must conquer and bring back to the hottie show host. Levels consist of wooing 3 said strumpets before continuing to the next 3. Larry ultimately just wants to get into their varied trousers, but more often than not just picks up something personal they leave behind as they run away screaming. Convincing women on campus to give you the time of day is often like jumping through hoops… or on trampolines. LSL:MCL is more a collection of mini-games wrapped in an animated B-Movie. Whack-A-Mole, Root Beer Tapper, Simon and some standard rythm games make appearances in one form or another. On occasion you’ll have to collect an item and return it to someone in order to progress. In reality, the games are pretty boring, and only mildly challenging. Let’s be honest though, that’s now why you play Leisure Suit Larry.
Graphically, Larry doesn’t look bad at all. Now fully realized in 3D, the characters and environments exist in a cartoon reality that almost has a Disney quality. Dorms, sorority houses and town stores have angled roofs and off center pillars. Characters are equally stylish and well-endowed. In game women aren’t necessarily attractive, but the high resolution versions that appear during the multitude of loading screens improve considerably. If that weren’t enough, each of the score-able women have a human model counterpart in various poses and stages of undress, though you won’t find any full frontal here. Still, it made the HUGE amounts of wait time in seemingly pointless loading screens, considerably more bearable.
Audibly, the moans, screams and general pillow talk is all there, and I mean ALL there. Nothing is censored, so if F-bombs make you twitch, find the mute button or just don’t bother, because there are no options to tone down the language (or the visuals for that matter). You’ll most likely kill the music pretty quickly too. It doesn’t seem to reflect Larry’s moods or help to progress the story at all, becoming just short of annoying.
The real draw is the humor. South Park fans should love the low brow humor and really, where else can you see 3D toon boobies? Right, nowhere. Basically if immature toilet humor (hehehehe, boobies) is your game, then a rental might be in your future. The game doesn’t have much replay value and a lot of the jokes are re-used throughout the game. Guys will keep motivated by each passing half-nude model. Did I mention there’s a ginormous amount of load screens? There is a payoff at the end of the game, but most will find it too little too late. A few laughs and a few Maxim quality hotties earn this a 3 outta 5.
