Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude (PC)
Developed by: High Voltage Software
Published by: VU Interactive

If there’s one thing movies and TV have taught us over the years, it is that sex sells. Sad but true. In its early years the video game industry was too simplistic and naive to be corrupted by this kind of thinking (okay, so maybe the graphic limitations had something to do with it as well), but eventually a certain loveable, libidinous loser by the name of Leisure Suit Larry crashed the party and changed everything. His game franchise flourished for years under the guidance of creator Al Lowe and was widely worshipped alongside many of Sierra’s other “Quest” graphic adventures. But let’s be honest, in those days you couldn’t be too risque with a videogame, and the appeal of Leisure Suit Larry was more about the sense of humour than the explicit content… although the odd digitally rendered boob didn’t hurt either.

It’s been 8 long years since Larry’s last adventure, and games have pretty much caught up to movies in just about every way. Sex sells more than ever, and hot on the heels of recent games like BMX XXX and The Guy Game, Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude aims to modernize the franchise for a new audience. As we all know, graphic point-and-click adventures are dead, so the development team at High Voltage Software had to come up with a new way to package the innuendos. Their solution was to woo a younger demographic by basing the game around Larry Laffer’s nephew Larry Loveage who happens to be in college… and what better place is there to score chicks than on campus? Lucky for Larry, there is also a reality tv dating show looking for contestants at his school. Sounds like the perfect opportunity to get some lovin’! As you can probably guess, though the game may sell more than a few copies based on 12 year old boys’ thrill at seeing 3d artistic renditions of the female anatomy, the game itself has little to no lasting value.

The end goal in Magna Cum Laude is the same as always… to get laid. And of course, Larry Loveage is every bit as inept and social awkward as his uncle, and he needs your help to guide him in his quest for female companionship. This is accomplished through a series of conversations and challenges, all of which are driven by mindless reflex-based mini-games. Apparently High Voltage came to the same conclusion that most women arrived at eons ago — the fact that horny guys are pretty much incapable of actually using their brains.

The most common mini-game you will run across is the interactive conversation game where you must maneuver a sperm up and down to avoid obstacles while Larry’s dialogue responds to your movements. This is an interesting alternative to the typical adventure game style dialogue where you pick from a list of responses. When you hit an obstacle you may fart or belch, detracting from your heart meter, or sometimes Larry will start down strange and unexpected paths of discussion. It can get rather difficult though, and after a while you’ll start thinking that you probably have something better to do with your time than sit there dodging bare asses.

The other common game is quarters, that loveable pasttime of bar hoppers everywhere. The idea is to get your opponent drunk before you are, but the actual throwing of the quarter is performed by sliding your mouse up then down. Other than that, you’ll encounter simple rhythm games where you perform dance moves by pressing the proper combinations of keys in time, or chase and escape games.

Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude is fully 3D, allowing you (in theory) the ability to go anywhere and do anything. The fact of the matter is that there is little interactivity involved in the game, and a very linear progression. Some of the college environments are pretty amusingly real and encourage further exploration, unfortunately you can’t do anything except look around at most of the objects and people in them. Well, except for the utterly useless application of physics in the game that allows Larry to actually kick beer bottles and other garbage around. Wow, it feels like you’re really there!

To make the game a little more interesting, you have a confidence meter and an alcohol meter that affect your performance. The more confident you are, the more girls are impressed by you. The more intoxicated you get, the more inaccurate the controls for the mini-games will be. Luckily, you can also freely urinate throughout the world which immediately sobers you up. Urinating in public does knock your confidence down though, so you definitely have to strategize about where and when to take a leak! Not really though… whenever your confidence is lacking simply retreat to your room and engage in a hearty game of Whack-A-Mole! Wow, such variety. You also have a camera which you can use to photograph women and sell the highest rated pictures for cash.

Although the mini-games are strangely addictive for an hour or two, they get repetitive rather quickly and it doesn’t take long to realize that Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude has nothing else to offer. The game holds your hand from each goal to the next, and the dialogue with anyone other than the main characters is sparse and recycled all over the place. There aren’t even any secrets to hunt for with the exception of hidden tokens which are found by randomly clicking the action button in certain locations. These tokens can be exchanged directly for unlockable bonuses like naughtier load screens featuring the girls in the game.

The one thing Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude has going for it is the sense of humour. But for every funny, out-of-context remark Larry stumbles over, and every pathetic situation he finds himself in, there’s an equally lame and cliched joke that just falls flat. Aside from that, there’s only so much enjoyment you can get out of farting and urinating on characters, but I guess the wonderful open-ended design leaves it up to you exactly how much time you want to spend doing such things.

It may or may not interest you to know that Leisure Suit Larry’s original creator Al Lowe had nothing to do with this game, and is probably pretty pissed about the whole ordeal. Old school Sierra fans will not be too impressed with the lack of puzzles and exploration, but at least they did capture the spirit of the original games for the most part… which is to say it is immature, juvenile and degrading to women. It might be worth a rental just for a laugh, but with all the worthwhile stuff out there in stores nowadays I don’t think I could ever recommend purchasing a game as shallow and utterly flaccid as this. — Sean