I was a fan of Leisure Suit Larry long before I should've been a fan of Leisure Suit Larry, and I was in good company if this game is any example. Rather than continue with the adult-themed comedies Al Lowe and Sierra Games released this delightful, adventure comedy that's both engrosing and kid-friendly. Sort of. Okay, maybe all the sheep jokes flew over my head when I was young, but that being said this remains a touchstone of comic storytelling from the golden age of adventure gaming. And I personally say thank-you to GOG for tracking it down. It was the first and only game I requested from them when I first heard about their service (they made no promises at the time but came through for me all the same).
How do I give this game five stars when it hasn't held up well? How do I give this game anything but five stars when I spent literally thousands of hours in it...in 1993? In fairness the game DID come out in 1992, but at thirteen years old I purchased this game in 1993 and it unleashed a creative output unmatched to date. Seriously. Twenty-four years and the video game industry has yet to come up with anything that has sparked my creativity bug as well as this game did. Minecraft is the only thing that has come close. And like Minecraft it gives you a sandbox to do, for the most part, whatever you want. I shot a video involving a chase between two planes. Halfway through the pilot bailed out and landed in a car beneath him and then the chase continued between the plane and the car. The car tricked the plane into flying into a train. And I wasn't using a canned, preplanned stunt. I orchestrated the whole thing. Then I filmed it. Then I edited it. And for decades I've been able to play the video I made albeit from within the game. It was a stellar work of art. In 1993. And in fairness my description of the video I made exaggerates the experience slightly. The overall look of the video was blocky, artificial, and difficult to control. As a timestamp of video gaming in the early nineties (seriously, this game predates Myst, Rebel Assault, The 7th Guest) but it has not aged well. As you can see in the images, it has become painfully ugly. The prettier, hand-drawn images? They're just still shots used to navigate the game. Anything fun in the game is very, very dated. I played this game for ages in 1993. It was a stellar work of art in 1993. I would have recommended this game to anybody with a computer in 1993. Now? Nostalgia. Or maybe you make machinima and need a very, very specific look. Or maybe you don't mind the graphics. Or perhaps you'd like to make a statement in the hopes someone remakes this game. That's why I'm buying it. Again.
...but it bears repeating: this game really isn't all that bad. The pre-rendered videos have some solid chuckles and the dialogue system for seducing women is a neat concept that both rewards success and encourages failure. And the mini-games can be fun... ...to a point. They become very repetitive very quickly and failures in those portions of the game are enraging hair-pulling moments that'll send you running for a good ole' fashion book. Paper, unplugged no-fail bookmark-savepoint books. The sex and nudity are cheeky but grow old quickly. Al Lowe was smart to hold back because the quest for nipples is what we really want, whether we know it or not. Otherwise we'd buy porn. When this game was new, I paid fifty bucks for the game, wanted my money back, and black bars blocked out the naughty bits. But this one's uncensored and it's under ten bucks. A solid buy. Then go out and get the older Leisure Suit Larry games by Al Lowe. They'll blow this one out of the water. And while you're at it, get Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist, if you can find it. It's Lowe's best work, in my humble opinion, and is begging for a remake even more than Leisure Suit Larry.
