Full to the brim with crude humor, Box Office Bust is a wasted disc in the world of gaming.
GAMEPLAY
As the opening story fumbles into focus, the adventure kicks off with a standard mission/chore that familiarizes you with movement and interaction. Possessing skills seen in most third-person adventures like: double-jumps, ledge shimmying, basic driving, swimming, shallow fighting, and even first-person shooting sequences fill the gamut. While exploring this mock Hollywood property called TinsleWood, jumping between 4 major sets (western, romance, horror, and random crap) does offer a decent amount of activity; but the various transitions you make from something like driving to scaling buildings shows way too many flaws in the overall mechanics.
Borrowing from the Unreal Engine (the foundation to most games) you would imagine/expect a little more polish for simple things like: camera orientation, traversing between indoors and outdoors, object interaction, and especially story-related segments. All are hampered by quirky glitches and sluggish interaction. As much as I hate to admit it though, with some practice and numerous frustrating deaths, such gaming no-no's can be dealt with over time. Just don't expect ever-lasting enjoyment while fine-tuning your gaming skills.
In a nutshell, Leisure Suit Larry is what I consider a streamlined experience. There isn't much to detract from the main story (which is pretty minor) besides a few mini-games, and some timed racing challenges. Converting portions of the studio into race tracks with jump ramps and timed markers is cool at first, but using mostly dawdling golf carts basically renders the experience worthless. Locating these challenges on the mini-map are just as boring.
If you have a story related mission, they appear as exclamations and only activate if you speak with the highlighted character. Races are purple, progression markers are green, the costume shop is a shirt symbol, and Seduction Games are marked in pink. Playing the role of a dishonest, sex-driven, smart ass, who constantly tries to score with big-breasted bimbo's is undoubtedly entertaining, yet nothing produces more chuckles than the Seduction mini-games. They all pretty much play the same; identify the hottie, track her down, initiate futile conversation, hunt down some inane object, and further proceed with sexually explicit conversation. Doing this about 8 times does wear thin, but the dialogue options that pop up while conversing with these superficial lost souls is hilarious! Everything from bluntly stating how much you want to thrust your manhood into every possible opening – to concisely orchestrating the perfect lie to fit your lustful victims desired whims – all will likely have you either cringing with horror or sporting a devilish grin.
Beyond the juvenile emphasis on getting laid by tramps, there are some focused elements to LSL worth mentioning. As you search the studio for a saboteur, travel between the themed movie sets in the form of "dreamscapes" allows for some delightful mockery of popular moments in film. In the western you ride horses, take part in shootouts, hop around on moving trains, and speak with a bunch of hillbillies. In the horror show, you appear as a generic version of Michael Jackson from his Thriller days, and battle zombies, Jason/Krueger, Dracula, and speak with a floating grumpy skull. To cap it off, the romance is a spitting replica of the insanely popular Titanic film, damn near scene for scene. Once you finish each dreamscape, a Director mini-game ensues; choosing between multiple shots to help keep the supposed audience from viewing a terribly edited film is mighty forgiving, but kind of boring nonetheless. Feel free to traffic the Editing Suite (found on the mini-map) anytime you wish to rake in more points, which unfortunately results in no major rewards.
VISUALS
One of the areas in video games I'm much more lenient than others, LSL came up extremely short on all fronts. Colorful kid-like environments I'm okay with, but the poorly rendered characters look terrible from a distance, and even more grotesque up close. Reminiscent of early 3D games, attention to detail was sporadic to say the least. Going from water to land, you could actually see color saturation and watery footprints follow behind the lead man, Larry Lovage – a visual perk somewhat expected from a game based in a semi-realistic world. To have brief moments like that drowned out by robotic NPC's, mountains of insipid women, overly cartoonish level design, and a slew of dreadful animations that plague even the main character – its difficult to ignore such a laundry list of failures.
AUDIO
If there was one gleam of hope for playing or even enjoying LSL, it would have to be the awesomely raunchy voice work. Performed by a smorgasbord of comedy actors and no-namers, this game carries the mature rating solely based on the towering exposure to extremely sexist dialogue that never eases up. If you don't mind such commentary towards females, brace yourself for the sexual puns and loads of frat-boy humor that ooze from every scene in the game.
To claim such ill-mannered humor is "not" funny would be a bold-faced lie on my part, because I love laughing at stereotypes. In some areas of the game it's way over the top, which takes away more than LSL has to spare. In other portions (especially during the seduction mini-games), the spoken dialogue is witty and pleasantly lewd, which is surprisingly encouraging as you grind through each area hoping for another rewarding tid-bit of ear garbage.
EXTRAS
The main story in Leisure Suit Larry could keep anyone busy for about 5 to 8 hours, mostly depending on how much you milk the side-quests. If you master the broken controls and keep your unfair deaths to a minimum, completion could be even swifter. Luckily, the developers produced a decent-sized movie studio environment where you can go inside buildings, drive around large back lots, climb broadcasting towers, and interact with a handful of characters (literally a mere handful).
If collecting hidden items is your fancy, go nuts as there is a solid 100 Larry Awards (small gold statues) scattered all across the ins and outs of TinsleWood – rewarding gamer points in increments of 10, 50, and 100. Other dreary activities for points-hungry gamers besides the racing (40gp) and seduction games (40gp) can be found in golf cart surfing, destroying 3 vehicles in a minute, wearing multiple costumes, run/drive a certain amount, and mission related segments. With hardly any emphasis on completing such dull tasks, breezing through LSL can easily rake in over 500gp in one play through (thankfully). Tackle all 30 achievements like a diligent points monger, and receive a whomping 160gp for simply being dedicated to the cause. This is the part where you eject the game.
OVERALL
My personal fascination with playing potentially bad games is based all around curiosity. In my eyes, there is always a 70/30 chance of stumbling across something different and ingenious – even with games like Leisure Suit Larry. I wasn't expecting to be blown away by cutting-edge graphics and exhilarating game mechanics; I may have secretly hoped for it, but instead I got a satirical work of art that tickled my ears, and reminded me just how easy it is to abuse the First Amendment.
Sometimes that's not so bad! We do it with television, movies, and numerous other forms of media – shutting off the critical parts of our brain to absorb someone else's jaded take on the world is strangely refreshing for some (like myself) and terrifying for many others. I wouldn't recommend taking any dramatic leaps into the unknown, but testing your moral fabric is never a wasted effort. With all that said, Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust is still a poorly made game, built on a foundation of bad jokes, and broken game play. A fatal mistake every developer should be weary of committing.