Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude

"Funny to watch, infinitely less fun to play"

Introduction:
I never played the original Leisure Suit Larry games so I have no background information. This game is about Larry Lovage, who has to get tokens of affection from girls to win a spot on a reality tv show filming on campus in his school. It's a series of minigames, and a wander mode where you can walk around to access minigames. It's really about the story, and the situations that Larry gets himself into. But since there is no choice involved (except in one part), it ends up being like a movie where you don't get to see the next chapter until you beat the minigame.

Gameplay: 3
LSL:MCL gets really boring way before the game is over. The minigames are fun at first, but you quickly find out that there aren't enough, and they only get harder and not in a good way. There's the conversation minigame, then the rhythm one (a la Bust a groove, but slightly different), then a button match one, then quarters where you flick the stick, to flip quarters into a cup, but it's always the same medium backswing + medium front swing = success. There is also a Slaps competition that plays like MK's test your might, but versus. I loved Bust a groove (PS) and still play Fuzion Frenzy on occasion, so I'm not a minigame hater, but the dance scenes are not as dancy and the minigames are just bland after the first two times you've gone through them. At later levels, it just gets ridiculous. In the button match game, for example, a button appears (inhumanly fast) and if you press it too late, it counts are two errors 'cos you missed the press, AND you pressed when you weren't supposed to be pressing, or if it's one in a series of buttons, you'd get three misses 'cos it would carry over into the next split second press. Ugh! unbelievable.
Luckily, you are able to buy your way to success using "secret tokens" that are so secret as they're almost 300 available and you can buy your way out of the minigames using between 1 - 5 tokens. The load times in this game are the worst I've seen....ever, in my entire life. It loads into a minigame, then it loads out of the game to a cutscene where the girl goes "oh Larry, that was so nice, let's go to my room" (or some variation of this short sentence) then it loads into ANOTHER cutscene where you're in the room, and some of the areas are so small that it doesn't make any sense at all especially since there's just one way out, back the same way you came. And at some point in the game, you'll have to choose between going to point A or B and you'll say to yourself, "three load screens to point A and 5 to point B....hmmm?" You also have a confidence meter and an alcohol level meter which matter at certain points.

Graphics/Sound: 7
That said, it's almost consistently funny, and well acted.
The graphics are ok, nothing special. They could be nicer in the cutscenes but it's one consistently blocky figure in-game and outside....which would be nice for other games, but it's naked girls so it's might be a problem. The sound keeps dropping out on some scenes. Not sure if it's just a HD problem or something, but I'd have to turn the volume up every time I repeated those scenes. The load scenes are pictures of the girls in the game, and their real life model "counterparts" which might make the waiting a little more bearable.

Play time/Replayability: 5
Once you've beaten it, you can play or watch any of the episodes and you unlock naughty and nude mode (not automatically). A lot of the minigames have funny things happening in the background, and you can unlock variations where the girls strip as you do well, or Larry strips as you fail. And there are ... three different endings (at the end so you don't have to play the whole game again, just the last 5-10 mins of it)

Final Recommendation: 4
This game would be perfect if there was some code that unlocked everything and allowed you to watch it as one consistent story. Or if you could take turns playing it so you could watch and listen to the hilarious conversations while someone battles to clear the minigames.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 01/04/05