best writing ever, actual gameplay a little brainless
Written: Mar 10 '06
Product Rating:
Pros: very funny, hot girls (both digital and real), great plot
Cons: too much of the mini-games, needs more strategy involved
The Bottom Line: Buy it. The game's plot is so good and jokes so funny that you won't care about the gameplay at all, and the gameplay's certainly adequate anyway.
abagofajay's Full Review: Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude for PlayStatio...
You might remember the Leisure Suit Larry games for PC. This one stars his nephew (also Larry), and the point is to try to get on a reality dating show. You first approach the host, who tells you that you need to get "tokens of affection" from hot girls on campus to show that you're good enough to be on the show.
There are 13 girls, 3 in Round 1, 3 in Round 2, 4 in Round 3, and 3 in Round 4. You get a token of affection every time you finish a girl's storyline, i.e. you do everything in your power to have sex with her and see a cut scene with the final result. Round 1, you have to finish 2 of the 3 girls. Round 2, I believe you have to finish 3 of the 4 girls (remember, there's 1 left over from Round 1). Round 3, I think you have to finish 3 of the 5 girls (again, 1 left over). And Round 4, you have to finish all 3 girls, and it has to be the ones added just that round. At the end of each round, you will play a mini-game for the dating show, too, to help you advance as a contestant. Once you finish Round 4, you will play the actual show, which consists of you playing 2 more mini-games and choosing a girl from the 3 in Round 4 to go on a date with.
The game takes place in wander mode, but every storyline consists completely of mini-games, about half the time being the game they use for dialogue. I'll go into an explanation of all the mini-games below, but I'm not using the official name as they're not used in the game and my names make more sense.
Conversation
You control a sperm and control your vertical position along a continuous spectrum, but interact with items on three distinct levels that cover the spectrum. Green items help Larry's health and make him say the right thing. Red items hurt Larry's health and make him say the wrong thing. Alcohol makes the sperm react more slowly and drift away from center, but coffee reverses the effects. An icicle will freeze you at a vertical position, usually forcing you to hit alcohol, but bombs blow up spaces (although you can't tell which) and can get rid of icicles. This game is very entertaining as far as gameplay goes, and it also has the best writing of any part of the game, as it contains most of the dialogue.
Direction Game
A sequence of arrow keys (and sometimes the X button) comes through and you have to hit them in the right order. This takes place mainly for replicating moves on the trampoline or dance floor, but also helps with secret handshakes and playing the guitar. This game is really irritating and pointless, and can often take forever to get right.
Running Game
Some people will be after you, and you need to collect all of a certain item, then run to safety. To help you out, you usually have string cheese that can act as a decoy. This game's pretty decent.
Button Game
A bigger representation of the shape keys is made on the screen and you have to hit the right shape when it's up. The game uses this whenever none of the other games fit, so it covers things from threatening a bouncer to miming pornography. It's used most to give spankings, and also often for mixing drinks and giving makeovers. It's about the right difficulty, but too pointless and repetitive.
Quarters
This is the drinking game quarters. Basically you quickly pull your analog stick backwards and then return it to its original position. This game is way too easy.
Back and Forth Game
You run from a person in the center to people walking around a certain area, and press the X button to say something to them. You then run back to the person at the center, so you can go to the next person. This is okay. It's never terribly hard.
Rows Game
You run back and forth between four rows, throwing objects to the oncoming people to make them leave before they reach the end of the row. This takes place whenever you have to distribute objects: fliers, monkey food, drinks, etc. This is a little easier than the other games but very entertaining.
Masturbation Game
This is just Pong, but your hands are the paddles, and a penis in the middle grows with time until it extends fully and you win. There are a lot of items in this one, both ones that help you and ones that hurt you. It's the right difficulty, but Pong's not terribly interesting.
Photo Game
You control your body position, the direction you're facing, and the zoom and have to take a good picture. A meter at the top of the camera rates your shot out of 5 so you know when to click. Most of the time, it's easy, but one instance of it is the hardest mini-game in the game. It's pretty decent to play, though.
Wet T-Shirt Game
You rotate your water pistol with the right thumbstick and shoot with the X button to shoot at girls' chests. This is by far the easiest thing in the game... too easy, but it only comes up 2 or 3 times.
Anyway, the bulk of the time you're in mini-games, and when you go back to wander mode, it's because you need something like money and you get it by playing other mini-games. And this isn't like the old Leisure Suit Larry games at all. There is no strategy to this. In fact, a summary will tell you exactly where you need to go and what you need to do. This was a bit of a turn-off for me, but the writing more than makes up for it.
The dialogue is incredibly clever. Larry keeps stumbling into these hysterical slip-ups like admitting that he feels up his mother's bras. And the other characters can be so funny, like Larry's nemesis, Assistant Dean Abrahamson. He's straight out of a campy 60s show about college, and gets mad and yells "Lovage!" (Larry's last name) every time something goes wrong. The endings to each of the storylines are usually really funny, too, and often quite shocking.
Also, you don't have to play every girl's storyline to beat the game, but you can play them all, and generally want to so you can get tokens that buy goodies like modes that make girls naked or in their underwear and new load screens. The load screens show the girls in sexy poses, and the ones you buy with tokens have them in less clothing and sometimes a scantily clad real-life girl representing the character. You can also unlock 3D models of the characters (clothed or nude) or turn regular mini-games into strip games. All in all, the game's very fun to play. It would be nice if it weren't so reliant on the mini-games, but the mini-games are fun on the whole, anyway.
In this epic search for sex, you'll travel across aninteractive college campus, searching out women Use quick thinking and romance skills to talk your...More at Amazon Marketplace
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