Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude PS2 Review

Leisure Suit Larry may be intended for a mature audience, but there’s enough juvenile humour in here that will surely attract the attention of many under 18s for a bit of harmless fun. The game follows the tribulations of one, Larry Lovage as he attempts to woo the birds. That’s birds as in the un-feathered kind of course.

Leisure Suit Larry is certainly not like anything we have ever experienced before. The central character is a cheeky and sex mad college student, whom is attempting to follow in his uncle’s footsteps (Larry Laffer of previous titles). This isn’t easy of course as – even when scoring looks a certainty – Larry suffers a series of setbacks.

The star of the show is the snappy dialogue as Larry tries to talk his way into the lives (and beds) of the fairer sex. Things are explicit too; there are many references to sex of course and enough profanity to cause a stir amongst those who’d rather not listen to sexual degrading words. Larry himself is quite a rogue and a fairly memorable character with it, there’s also a wild array of female characters to interact with.

The game itself is mostly composed of attempting to pull the female kind via some clever mini-games, which is pretty fun for a while, but we soon found that it becomes rather tiresome all too soon. Talking to a major female character has you moving a small sperm-like avatar through a scrolling bar situated at the foot of the screen, hitting the right icons results in filling a heart shaped meter (also displayed on the screen) and the wrong ones obviously sends it back down a little. The conversation cleverly flows with how well you are or aren’t doing.

Other mini-games include mixing drinks, dancing and more. There’s even a clone of the Sega arcade classic, Tapper alongside a rather cheeky version of Atari’s Pong. Like we said earlier the game is enjoyable for a little while, but only mildly distracting and lacking that certain special punch. The horrible and constant loading times don’t help things much either.

Besides the mini-games there is some potential exploring to be done in Larry’s colourful world of character, which can result in finding secret tokens or cash. The secret tokens can be used to unlock extras whilst the cash can be used for betting on mini-games, or even buying some black coffee to return to a sober state and more.

You read that right, Larry can literally become intoxicated after one too many. There are various ways to sober him up (when it’s required) which includes urinating in public. This animal like behaviour does some damage to Larry’s confidence bar though, which is a major part of the game. Confidence is lost as easily as it is won, mini-games for instance will result in different levels of self-belief depending on how you fair.

We don’t feel that Leisure Suit Larry is essential by any means and it soon gets old rather quickly. There is some fun to be found here though in the various mini-games and the humorous theme is a good reason for progression. It sadly just doesn’t feel like a full-bodied game therefore if you are merely curious we can only recommend a rental.

5/10