Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded

For years fans of Leisure Suit Larry and Sierra alike have been praying for a new Larry game. This is not it, but it's the next best thing. This is a remake of the original Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of Lounge Lizards, the title that started the beloved series. But there's more than just a new coat of paint, gloriously bouncy double D paint. The humor has been updated, some of the puzzles reworked, there's new original content added, and the famous Sierra death sequences are more hilarious than ever and not punishing (no reloads, yay). Welcome back Larry, we missed you so much!

Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded is a solid remake of an old classic. Unlike the first 1991 remake, Reloaded mixes up the puzzles, adds new content, has removed dead ends, so while the game has the same plot, it also feels more fresh. If you like the old Larry, you'll propably enjoy Reloaded as well, as it really brings Larry back from the depths Magna Cum Laude and Boxoffice Bust dragged the series in.

Although there is a native Linux port, it is still not available here on GoG for some reason, just like many other existing Linux ports of games sold here. It's a good remake and very faithful to the original. I'd have changed the control system but they kept the old one. The graphics are good, for some reason they changed some of the girls significantly though. Eve isn't a black beauty anymore but rather a mix. The diseased hooker isn't black anymore either and instead of the unattractive old one, she is now Russian and really horribly disgusting. They added a swimmer, took away the christian cross around Faith's neck, added some small bits of content and made some minor changes in the puzzles. The major improvement is that you don't have to replay from your last save (which was sometimes already doomed) but get set back in time to the last moment before the point of no return. Technically, it's flawed, because like many others, the native mode doesn't have any FPS limiter and lets your GPU run on max, creating as many frames as possible and heating it up extremely. I had to fix the shortcut to force openGL so that this doesn't happen, it still needed too way much performance for such a simple game though. It obviously wasn't optimized very well, at least the Windows port. Another bad thing about it is the repeated mentioning of the Kickstarter. It would have sufficed to mention this in the credits, but they go on and on about it. Kickstarter backers are written on a wall, some monologues of the narrator are about it suddenly in game and Al Lowe himself mentions it again right after beating the game and before showing the backers in the credits. This game isn't about immersion at all anyway, but they have taken this too far. I'd recommend it to fans of the old adventures of the 80s that are happy to get rid of some of the major flaws of this time. Wait until GoG has all ports though or buy it somewhere where you get the Linux port with it.

Well, read through these few player reviews right here, and I see some negativity about things they didn't like about this selection, and that's fine. I, however, loved this game. I just recently delved into the LSL series (though I've known generally about the series for a long time), starting with the original. I recommend playing that and the VGA remake before playing this Reload. So far, I've completed LSL 1, 1 remake, 2, 3, and just now Reloaded. I think I played through the original trilogy first, and I recommend doing so. The text parser typing system will make you appreciate how much easier the point-and-click system is. But the text parsing has certain advantages. It could enable you to to have seemingly limitless commands/actions as you adventure. The good thing about point-and-click, though, is having a set of commands you can very quickly use anywhere in the environment. And often times with the text-parser, you can get frustrated fishing for that exact command to accomplish something if or when you get stuck. This Reloaded point-click system really enables so much more quick and fast comedy. I laughed more playing this Reload than the other LSL games I've completed. A LOT MORE. The first 3 LSL games (and the LSL 1 VGA remake) were not nearly as funny as this Reload. Some of the jokes are corny but some are flat-out hilarious, but I guess you have to have a sort of sick sense of humor to really enjoy it. The VGA LSL 1 remake was really exactly like the LSL 1 original, with better graphics and a conversion to point-and-click. This Reloaded LSL 1 is almost like an "expansion" version, not just an exact replica. The storyline is a little different with a couple new plot-twists. I think the point-click system is vastly better than the 1991 VGA remake. They did a nice job having Larry go through this game like he was in the 80s going through as if transported through time to today. So some jokes we would get but he wouldn't.