Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude Hands-On Impressions

There are few iconic characters bigger than Leisure Suit Larry, the lovable lounge lizard whose comical romantic adventures started way back in 1987. Larry would go on to appear in six adventure games, and in each one your job was to turn the ultimate loser into the ultimate ladies' man. However, Larry's popularity slowly waned as the series went on, and by the time Leisure Suit Larry 7 appeared in 1998, the decline of the once-popular adventure genre was in full effect. But even more problematic was the fact that popular culture had caught up with Larry and passed him by; the previously titillating and edgy gameplay seemed almost tame in comparison to what could then be found on cable TV or the Internet. However, Vivendi Universal Games has decided that it's time to introduce Larry to a new generation of gamers with Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude. But this isn't your father's Leisure Suit Larry, as developer High Voltage Software is making a whole new kind of Larry to fit in with today's gamers. Fortunately, we had the opportunity recently to check the game out and see where Leisure Suit Larry is heading.

In Magna Cum Laude (which is Latin for "with high honor," a phrase used at graduations), you get to play as Larry Lovage, the college-aged nephew of the original Leisure Suit Larry. Larry Lovage bears a remarkable resemblance to his uncle; he's short in stature, has an enormous head and weird hair, possesses strange fashion tastes, and has an eternally optimistic attitude even though he's one of the biggest losers attending Walnut Log Community College. Fortunately for Larry, Swingles, the country's biggest reality TV dating show, is coming to campus, and if he can get on the show he can turn his fortunes around. To do that, he has to prove his manliness to the show's producers by scoring with the various babes on campus, which is the focus of the game.

While all the previous Leisure Suit Larry games were traditional point-and-click adventure games where you simply clicked where you wanted Larry to go, Magna Cum Laude lets you actually control Larry directly, as if he were a character in a third-person action adventure game. Indeed, Magna Cum Laude is the first Leisure Suit Larry game to go full 3D, and the designers have adopted a very lighthearted, cartoonlike look and feel to the world. In the PC version, you use the traditional WASD keys to walk around, and you use the mouse to look around. As Larry approaches an object or person he can interact with, its name pops up onscreen, and you can use the space bar to have Larry examine it or the Enter key to interact with it.

Despite the series' PC roots, Magna Cum Laude is clearly a game designed for the console crowd in mind, and the PC version retains all of the minigames and puzzles that will be in the console versions. Larry makes progress with various girls by playing through a series of minigames.

For example, Larry starts his relationship with Sally Mae, the country girl with the cowboy hat and southern twang, by going through the conversation minigame. Larry has a fake conversation on his cell phone, pretending he's an important country music promoter who is having an important discussion. At the bottom of the screen, there's a small rectangular window in which a reproductive tadpole swims along. Whenever Larry comes to a critical juncture in his conversation, a series of icons will appear in the window, and you have to guide the tadpole to select an icon. A green icon is the "safe" choice, and yellow and red icons indicate more risqué conversational choices. At the same time, you're guiding the tadpole around random icons that represent faux pas (like burping, farting, or staring at a girl's bosom) that will create a negative impression. The trick is to dodge the bad icons while nailing the good ones. Of course, it's fun to hit one of the riskier icons every now and then, because that will throw the conversation into zany and hilarious directions. A heart-shaped meter at the bottom of the screen indicates Larry's standing with the girl, and you need to fill it up in order to "win" the conversation.

Give No Quarters

After the opening conversation with Sally Mae, Larry then has to go to the alcohol table and mix her a drink. This kicks off a time-based minigame--one where you have to hit the appropriate WASD key when it's flashed onscreen. If you're too slow or hit the wrong key, it's an error, and if you amass more than five errors, you lose. Fear not, however, because the game does let you replay minigames until you get them right. Once you've got Sally Mae's drink finished, you have to run through another conversation before you hit the dancing minigame. This time, you have to impress her with your moves. In this minigame, Sally Mae demonstrates moves, and you have to mimic her movements. This plays out like the console game Dance Dance Revolution, so the trick is to tap the keys in time. The action gets faster and faster as the dancing progresses.

Once Larry is done impressing Sally Mae with his dance skills, he has to talk her into playing the drinking game quarters. The goal is to bounce a quarter off of a table and into a glass. If Larry makes a successful shot and Sally Mae misses, she has to take a drink, and vice versa. The first one to get drunk loses, and meters on the bottom of the screen display your and Sally Mae's level of inebriation. If Larry wins, courtship is over and a cutscene will illuminate what happens next. But don't get your hopes up too soon, because in typical Leisure Suit Larry fashion, if something can go wrong with Larry, it does.

Something that has impressed us about Magna Cum Laude thus far is just how funny it is. Leisure Suit Larry has always been ribald and humorous, but this game comes off as sharply written without being coarse or vulgar. It's almost outrageously hilarious at times, and the humor isn't always about sex, as the game pokes fun at everything from country music to college life. The voice acting is top-notch. What's impressive is how seamlessly the conversations come off, considering that they're being mixed on the fly, depending upon the options you choose.

That's not to say that we don't have any concerns, though. The version of the game we played felt very much like a port of a console game, right down to all of the loading screens that appear whenever you enter a new area or start or finish a minigame. (Admittedly, the loading scenes do offer an opportunity to gaze at the game's scantily clad female characters.) Hopefully High Voltage Software can do a bit more to optimize the game for the PC, as well as include support for higher resolutions. Otherwise, Magna Cum Laude has every indication of bringing Leisure Suit Larry back into style. Magna Cum Laude is scheduled to ship in October, just in time for the college kids to get back to school.