Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude

"The tale of an idiot that doesn't know how to use a personals ad and makes us suffer boring minigames because of it."

This is the first Leisure Suit Larry game in years. I had mixed impressions of the series, finding some games fun and others in the series dull. This installment in the series falls under the wrong side of that spectrum sadly.

Story: 1/10
The plot is the same one used in pretty much every Larry game. You play Larry Lovage, the nephew of Larry Laffer from the earlier games in the series. Lovage takes after his uncle in the fact that he's some dork who cannot seem to get women to save his life and he decides to go on some journey after he sees a commercial for a TV dating show, Swingles which is a rip off of ElimiDate. Granted Larry games are not big on plot, but this was just totally corny.

Graphics: 4/10
The graphics do not look good considering the powerful sound card required for the game, but all is not lost. The character designs themselves are decent except for Larry's head being larger than the neck down, which weirds me out. The graphics have a style befitting this game so its alright by me. I don't like how the female characters all have breasts larger than their bodies and the males have melon heads. Also, Leisure Suit Larry is a misleading title as Lovage is dressed more like a bowling alley employee.

Music: 1/10
The music in this game, just blows. There was no kind way for me to put it. There aren't that many musical pieces in this game and the few that are present are not really that loud unless you're in a bar or something in the game. The music isn't even befitting this game. The worst piece was at a part when you could help some aspiring rock band do a concert. The "rock" music sounded worse than some of the midi on my computer.

Sound Effects: 5/10
I gave this a 5 based on an average. The sound effects such as the chugging of a beer get an 8/10 whereas voices get a 2/10. The voice overs are annoying as the characters all sound like stereotypes of what they're supposed to be. Like one girl in this game that is a mob leader's daughter has an Italian accent *racist stereotype*. Lovage also has a kind of whiny voice to him which would annoy most women since he tries too hard to impress women or he'll whine for no reason. I guess women feel sorry for him when they decide to talk to him. The SFX is great on the other hand. Noises for simple actions like arcade games or monkeys all sound similar to real life. My least favorite voice though is for a talking monkey named Leopold. He has a cultured and sophisticated sounding voice. Talk about your cliches, the sophisticated ape.

Gameplay: 2/10
This is, where things fall apart. The gameplay itself is repetitious to the highest degree and boring. To help Lovage on his quest of getting laid, you have to walk around his college and town to meet girls and sweep them off their feet. If you're wondering how you woo the unlucky lady, you play some insipid mini-game such as Hand Slapping. Yes, every girl you talk to will be impressed by you for playing some insipid mini game with them.

The mini games include Quarters, a game in which you use proper angles and power to bounce a quarter into a cup. Quarters is easy to play but gets old really quickly since that's one of the few means of getting money and its too easy to beat your opponent. Another is Hand Slaps where you rapidly tap space bar to build up power and you use another button to fake out and strike your opponent on her hands, winning by lowering her life bar to zero. There is a Jerk Off, which plays like Pong but you make a nad grow to ring a bell. You can also streak by running into people while avoiding cops. The most common game though, is the conversation which you do by maneuvering a sperm on a grid to hit the smiley faces while avoiding beer mugs which makes the sperm harder to control and red faces which will cause Lovage to say something offensive to the girl. There are too many other cruddy minigames for me to bother naming here, but these are sadly the most entertaining ones, which isn't something to really be proud of.

The controls in this game are easy, but the conversations get a little hectic later in the game because there are too many unavoidable beer mugs. Another aspect of this game is monitoring Lovage's confidence and appearance. You buy clothes with money to change his appearance and his confidence by winning challenges or spanking it in his room. This would be cool, if it weren't too easy to go to his dorm room and make him beat off to get confident. How does playing with yourself raise one's confidence anyway?

Replay Value: Not Really
There are 3 endings to this game, but you can simply save at the end of the game (which the developers made obvious) to just make the choices necessary to see the other 2 endings. There's nothing else to really merit a 2nd play through.

Rent or Buy: Rental at best
This game is not long enough to merit buying and the dialogues and cut scenes are not funny later on, so don't waste $40 on this game. Think of this American Pie 2; funny for 10 minutes then annoying for the rest of the time.

Seeing as this is a random assortment of minigames which could be played online, such as Pong, but without the stale sexual humor, I can't see any reason to buy this game. I guess jacking off by playing Pong is an interesting idea though.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 10/18/04