Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude

"Not 'Real' Larry Action, But Not Completely Awful"

As an old-school PC adventure gamer, I have a deep fondness for the Leisure Suit Larry series. While the games had a reputation as being idiotic smut, they were really just goofy, fun titles which merely used sexual content as a launching pad for endless gags. (Some great, some groan-worthy, but always harmless fun.) While most adventure gaming series are either too cutesy or serious, the Leisure Suit Larry games worked overtime to make you laugh, no matter what it took. Alas, Larry seemed to be a dead duck when Sierra's adventure game department was deep-sized by short-sighted management, who showed almost zero respect for the franchises and authors that put the company on the map to begin with. Series creator Al Lowe went off into the sunset to run his Web site and do other projects, and thus was the end of an era.

Well, sort of. In a surprise move, it was announced many years later that Sierra was resurrecting ol' Larry for another round of embarrassing hijinks. The announcement was even a surprise to Lowe, who didn't own the rights to the franchise and seemed puzzled at the whole thing. There was talk that Lowe would be brought onto the project, but it never occurred, which was quite obvious after spending twenty minutes with the game. Magna Cum Laude jettisons most of the series' traditions - Larry Laffer as the lead, puzzle solving, any sort of restraint - and instead provides a sledgehammer-subtle adventure full of endless vulgarity, nudity, and crude humor that suggests that the game was co-authored by the editors of Maxim magazine. You'll basically spend your time doing three things: walking around, playing endless mini-games, and watching cinema scenes. While most of these activities wear thin after a while, the game is redeemed in the end by some genuinely funny scenes and top-flight voice-acting. Those looking for a traditional adventure game will probably be put off by the brainless antics on display, but if you're looking for what is basically a funny and interactive adult cartoon, you won't be disappointed.

Still, why did the developers replace Larry Laffer with his nephew, Larry Lovage? Ol' Uncle Larry is on hand, mind you, as a source of wisdom and nostalgia, but his role is rather limited. If you're going to pimp out an old franchise for a few more bucks, why not go all the way? I can't help but feel that the game would be much funnier if you had Larry Laffer (a clueless, middle-aged degenerate) chasing college babes around. I guess you could argue that it'd be 'unrealistic' for young hotties to snuggle up with everyone's favorite polyester pervert, but in a game where the mystical Pornograpy Fairy saves you from a ray gun blast, realism is obviously not a priority. There's nothing wrong with Larry Lovage, mind you. He's reasonably endearing and is basically just Laffer minus thirty years. But why not let the old legend out for one last ride? Ah well; maybe it's better this way, for Al Lowe's sake. Nobody likes seeing their favorite creation in the hands of amateurs. (Especially when they're not getting a cut.) Still, the developers have a done a little homework. Magna Cum Laude features a lot of throwback gags to the older games in the series, and some of the events in the story (the dating show, the girl who turns out to be a guy, etc.) are plucked straight out of the original titles.

As always, your job is to get Larry some action. There are about 15 girls or so that you'll take a crack at, almost all of them based on classic college stereotypes. (The ditzy cheerleader, the laid-back nerd babe, the slightly psychotic band geek, etc.) Veterans of the series will not be surprised to hear that the dates almost universally end in disaster. While this is all well and good and proper Larry tradition, the hopelessness wears you out a little in Magna Cum Laude. The older Larry games featured about half the women that this game does (and sometimes even less), so the running gag of sexual ineptitude managed to stay funny until the end. But with over a dozen flameouts in this installment, you actually start wishing Larry would get laid now and then, just for the surprise factor. (You'll find yourself accurately predicting how the date will fail with almost half of the women in the game.) On the plus side, though, the game features three different endings, depending on which girl you choose in the dating game. It was a good touch, and if there's a sequel, it should be made into a tradition. The game is so linear that it was a very pleasant surprise to get to make a genuine decision that affected the storyline.

Of course, you can't simply grab a girl and bring her back to your room to enjoy a horribly botched sexual encounter. You must woo her first, using a variety of minigames to get the job done. The most common one is the chatting mingame, where you control a happy little sperm as he zips through a tank of water. As you try to aim Mr. Sperm through the green hot-spots, Larry and the girl will share a conversation, which is often quite amusing. If you consistently hit the right targets, Larry will succeed in winning the girl over. If you hit a bunch of bad spots, though, Larry will make all kinds of inappropriate comments and possibly scare the girl off. Thankfully, the game saves every single chapter of each encounter in Larry's black book, so you can go back and replay old chats to play them as badly as possible, just to hear what he says. Good stuff.

Unfortunately, most of the other mini-games are not as entertaining. By the time the game ends, you'll have played about 79 different variations of 'hit the right arrow key as it appears;' think Dance Dance Revolution with a keypad instead of a dance mat. Meh. Dancing, trampoline contests, secret handshakes... the name changes, but the interface is exactly the same. Not cool. And while I enjoy the old arcade game Tapper as much as the next guy, I don't need four or five mildly different variations of it in the same adventure game. There are about eight minigame types or so (if that), and about 100 or so different situations in which they're used. You do the math. The games eventually become something you endure to see what funny stuff happens next. It would've been nice to see the developers go half-and-half, and put in some classic Leisure Suit Larry puzzle-solving to go along with the minigames. But I guess that stuff is too old-school or what have you.

Not surprisingly, the girls are a mixed bag. Some of them (like the conspiratorial redhead and the lunatic band geek) are pretty well-crafted and interesting, while others (the Russian girl, or the campus protester) are half-baked and seem thrown together. The endings of many of the dates seem unfinished as well; the game's plot has so many loose ends that I can't even begin to list them. The oddest part is that the girls you flounder with remain on campus and engage you in small talk if you approach them, no matter what level of insanity transpired on your date. Call me picky, but if I went on a date with a girl, had kinky sex and then walked out on what she thought was a precourse to marriage, that would probably color my future interactions with the girl. But not in Magna Cum Laude, where said girl seems unfazed by the whole thing the next day. Weird. Then again, there was the Pornography Fairy saving me from a ray gun blast. So perhaps I'm thinking too hard.

And yet, with all that being said, the game always seems to charm you just as frustration or tedium sets in. Magna Cum Laude produces some likable characters and hilarious situations that I remembered long after the credits rolled. There's an homage to the movie 'Grease' at a gay bar that shouldn't work, but somehow, it does. And I loved the angry, talking old-school arcade cabinet that constantly taunts Larry (and even follows him around, thanks to hundreds of extension cords) into playing another round. The game features dozens of funny little touches that win you over. I laughed every time I saw the lame decorations on Larry's door, or listened to the fraternity guy read from his mystical initiation book. And the three girls in the last chapter are all endearing, especially the geek cutie Morgan, who is probably way too good for Larry. (But there's no accounting for taste.) The four-way conversation during the Swingles Dating Show had everyone in the room with me cracking up. There's some genuine wit hiding beneath all of the crude content; I'd love to see these guys make a game where they don't feel the need to push the limits of the ESRB every six seconds.

But such is Magna Cum Laude, the software equivalent of tossing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. Some if it works, some of it doesn't, but I found myself enjoying it overall. Still, if they decide to make a sequel, they'll need to make some serious adjustments to the gameplay. (And get Al Lowe on board, man! He misses his little buddy Larry. Heck, we all do. Larry Laffer is a first-stringer; you can't keep him on the sidelines forever.) Anyhow, Magna Cum Laude is at budget prices these days, so if you're looking for some laughs, it's not a bad call. The game was completely stable, and the frequent load times were relatively short and painless. (Although I have a fairly high-end machine.) If you're an old-school fan, you might end up buying the game for the same reasons I did: doing your part to keep an old friend around a while longer, no matter what form he takes. Hey, April Ryan recently crawled out of the moth balls to go on a new adventure... who knows what the future might bring?

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/26/06