Leisure Suit Larry In the Land of the Lounge Lizards

Review by Ofisil

"Larry Laffer: The 38 year old virgin"

Leisure Suit Larry In The Land Of The Lounge Lizards is an Adventure game developed by Sierra Entertainment. It is the first game in the long running and extremely funny Leisure Suit series. Adult games nowadays are very easy, filled with bad humor and are just an excuse to see a digital pair of breasts or some naughty scenes. This game, while not the best of the series and despite being quite outdated, it remains a major cult classic and unlike modern adult games, it's humor is very clever, the challenge is fulfilling and the overall naughtiness of the game isn't there just to give some wimps something to stare at…

Story: 7/10
Presentation: 8/10

The story while simple is also quite original. You are Larry Laffer, a short, shy, wimpy guy who is 38 years old who lives with his mother and is still a virgin. You suddenly realize that this life's pleasures are passing you by very fast, so you decide to give all you got to buy a fancy leisure suit and then go to the big city with the mission: Loose your virginity at all costs before you blow your brains out!

Don't expect long dialogues and complicated interaction with the characters you'll meet, it is a very old game after all. Nevertheless for its time the overall presentation was great not to mention the clever and naughty humor, with which this game is full off, like in most early Sierra games.

Gameplay: 7.5/10
Replay Value: 3/10

This game is an adventure game but unfortunately not a point and click one, instead you walk around with the arrow keys and input your commands like in a Text Adventure. So you walk up to a girl and say TALK GIRL or GIVE FLOWER and commands like these. Sometimes the difficulty of the game has to do more with this way of control rather than the actual difficulty of the things you must do. However as a game despite this minor flow, Leisure Suit Larry is a great adventure game where you try to find the girl of your dreams and loose your virginity, with the aid of the various items you will find. Beware that although not very hard, sometimes you may stuck for a while, it IS an adventure game after all. Also, unlike newer Sierra games in this one you can die and you might even stuck because you have thrown an important item forcing you to load a previously saved game or restart. Finally the game has a very replay value since it is very small, of course adventure games rarely have high replay value and the laughs this game gives you may encourage you to play it a few more times just for the heck of it or maybe in order to get a perfect score.

Graphics: 7/10
Design: 7.5/10

I am one of the few people that don't care about how powerful a graphic engine is. I don't care how many polygons you can throw at me! I don't want a freaking tech-demo but a game that looks good no matter the time it was developed. So, Some people find this game ugly, since most people expect to find the same graphic quality they have now in old games… which excuse me for saying it, is absolutely stupid! Further more this game actually looks very good even with its limited colors and low resolution.

No pixel has gone to waste in this little gem, so everything although simple in design looks good and more importantly recognizable! I loved the design of the few places you'll wander through and I loved the characters, which while simple had… character. Also you can look the few girls you will meet from a first person perspective in wonderful designed pictures. Apart from looking good it also looks very funny, like for example when a dog comes out of nowhere and does “number one” on your legs or when you enter a Discotheque where ALL the men look at the only girl available, etc. Now if you still don't like the look of the game just play the VGA version, which is better for people, which are not into “heavy” retro graphics.

Sound: N/A

Being a game so old its no wonder Sound and Music are almost absent so I haven't gave a score in this section. The few sounds you'll hear are the simplest ever and the music, while catchy, (especially the intro theme), is rarely heard since most of the time you wonder around with no music at all.

Positives:
-A game with an original plot and lots and lots of dirty humor
-A decent challenge
-Looks good although simple and quite old

Negatives:
-The command input controlling might make the game harder
-Low replay value
-A bit too music\sound-less

Also Play:
Day Of The Tentacle (PC)
Leisure Suit Larry 2-7 (PC)
Leisure Suit Larry (VGA Version)(PC)
Monkey Island (Series)(PC)
Out Of Order (Freeware) Highly recommended!!!

Overall: 6.7/10

It is old, it is small and it is quite flawed however it is also very funny and quite entertaining. So if you are a fun of such adventure games play it!