A new, M-rated update, stripped of any real gameplay and bursting with foul language and sexual allusions.

User Rating: 6.5 | Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude PS2
Leisure Suit Larry has been taking a mighty long vacation. The last time he strutted his way onto adventure gamers' screen was in 1996's Love for Sail, so it's no surprise that he has built up a sizable cult following. The humor of those games was often questionable, but the titles still held a certain amount of charm, particularly since they stayed mostly true to standard adventure/puzzle traditions. Now, eight years later, High Voltage Software and VU Games brings us a new, M-rated update, stripped of any real gameplay and bursting with foul language and sexual allusions. While the superb audio presentation and some occasionally laugh-out loud moments keep Magna Cum Laude from being immediate bargain-bin fodder, there is no gameplay of any consequence to keep gamers interested in the 10-hour journey. In Magna Cum Laude (pun very much intended), the player takes the role of Larry Lovage, the nephew of series hero Larry Laffer. Larry is a college student in a school that features vending machines selling anal sex toys, and apparently, the gargantuan head on his tiny frame makes it difficult for him to find sex partners. Fortunately, the university is crawling with buxom babes right out of “Girls Gone Wild,” and the television show Swingles is looking for an unlikely bachelor. If Larry can bring series host Uma enough proof of his irresistible masculinity, he will be featured on the dating show, where he can choose from one of several bosomy beauties with which to do the deed. Larry's search for panties and pasties takes him from one lousy pick-up line (“Your lips look lonely; would they like to meet mine?”) to the next. Larry does not play as a typical adventure. Rather, it is mostly a string of simplistic minigames meant to lend cohesion to a series of boob shots, fart jokes, and sexual innuendo. You can examine and use various objects throughout the campus from a third-person view, often to hilarious commentary, but you will not actually pick up any of these objects, or use them to any degree of necessity. Instead, to advance further in your adventure, you need to increase Larry's confidence levels by conversing with any of the shapely vixens wandering about town. The success of these talks is based solely on how well you maneuver a happy-go-lucky sperm cell (which sadly does not possess Woody Allen's voice) across a side-scrolling mishmash of hearts and smileys – which positively influence the conversation – and red icons that represent farts, belches, and close-ups of bouncing breasts that divert attention from the heart-to-heart. While these asides are amusing, they may keep Larry from getting in the chick's pants, so it's best to move around the grinning sperm as accurately as you can. Of course, no game involving scantily-clad women would be complete without trampolines and alcohol, and Magna Cum Laude seems to have intimate knowledge of that fact. The most interesting diversions the game has to offer highlight the two niftiest parts of the game: intoxication and breast physics. Actually, the physics don't apply just to breasts (which we swear also possess their own AI), but to the bottles and other items Larry kicks around in his travels. The best minigame, the well-known drinking game of Quarters, also showcases the physics by showing the coins bounce around in a somewhat convincing fashion. But really, the best bouncing is on display in minigames like the trampolines, where you have to press the buttons in proper order in DDR fashion. It's quite difficult to concentrate on your succession of moves with your comely competitor's cleavage in full view, but gamers who can look past the silicone will find there is nothing remarkably difficult – or fun – about it. Larry does manage to get drunk, although a little public urination can help take care of this dilemma. The way the game handles it is quite comical: when he is tipsy, you will see the bubbles float from him to indicate his intoxicated state, and the warping of the camera view does a creditable job of simulating the experience. When he runs around, Larry will actually clasp his hand to his mouth, as if he is going to throw up. The conversation sperm (for lack of a better term) is actually more difficult to control in this state as well. Fortunately, should Larry wish to masturbate – yes, sadly, a Pong-type game can help you get Larry off in his spare time – his drunkenness doesn't seem to interfere. Along the way, you can pick up some cash to purchase various necessaries (and unnecessaries), and will meet an eclectic assortment of stereotypes: the nerdy gay mathematicians (“I'm interested in prime numbers.” “That's what I love about you.”), the dowdy front desk clerk (“the existential dread!”), the brainless hackysack dude (“Yeah, I'm in the zone”), and the spoiled trust-fund baby (“I only paid fifty for these socks.”) At its best, Magna Cum Laude can be surprisingly funny, simply because a brainless reference to flatulence or a close-up of digital boobies will be followed by droll commentary on campus life or an ironic pop culture in-joke. If any of these odd caricatures (or their privates) seem particularly interesting, you can take a snapshot of them, although this has rather little bearing on the gameplay. The juvenile humor would fare better if Leisure Suit Larry actually succeeded as an adventure game, but aside from an enormous amount of spoken audio and the visual one-liners, there's really no point in exploring the campus. The game features no true puzzles; there are no levers to pull, no inventory items to combine, and sadly, no gameplay of any depth. In a game such as Myst, exploration serves as its own reward, and the experience is strangely captivating and compelling. In Magna Cum Laude, the ribald humor and jiggling jugs are amusing and entertaining the first couple of times, but they are expected to carry the entire game; when Quarters becomes the title's highlight, it speaks volumes as to the actual gameplay. Ostensibly, we should care about getting Larry laid, and the dirty jokes and butt plug references are assumably meant to lubricate the way. In reality, it would have been better off as an episode of The Man Show: a mild, guilty pleasure – and over in 30 minutes. Larry's new world follows very much in the vein of previous incarnations in the series in terms of its look. Everything (that isn't a female form) is highly stylized, especially Larry himself, who is so top-heavy we were afraid he may actually topple over. The cartoony graphics are a perfect representation of the game's frat-house sensibility, even if there is nothing terribly noteworthy from a technical standpoint. The incredibly long loading times are well-worth noting, however: just entering another area can trigger an extended wait so tedious you may be able to read an actual Playboy article to keep yourself occupied. The game's audio, however, is superb and truly admirable. There is a great deal of spoken dialogue in Magna Cum Laude, and every line is delivered perfectly by a terrific voice cast. Larry himself is as annoyingly charming as you would expect, but even the bit players can keep things livened up quite a bit. Even when the writing falls flat, ever line is delivered with such goofy irreverence that even the most terrible punch lines have a certain appeal they would otherwise lack. The game's highlights are easily the bits of spoken dialogue you overhear as you travel from one potential roll in the hay to the next. The soundtrack is a motley crew (pun again intended) of pop, rock, and hip-hop that seems oddly appropriate for the university setting. As a showcase for adolescent high-jinks and a censor-pushing barrage of four-letter words, Larry succeeds as well as the average episode of Jackass; as a video game, it's a lackluster sequel in a series that once relied more on innuendo than on crude references and penis jokes. If you are looking for some sexually charged humor, we recommend a rental of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. If you want some engaging minigames, there are plenty of arcade compilations available on the shelves. If you want a high-quality, involving adventure, there are dozens of terrific choices. If, on the other hand, the digitized breasts in Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball have worn thin and ASCII masturbation sounds like fun, then by all means, pick up a copy of Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude.