Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded
Review
Flatter than a blow-up doll with an air leak
by William Thompson
reviewed on PC
Premature... completion
Speaking of rushed, the game is rather on the short side. It only took me around three hours to complete. The puzzles are fairly simple, made easy by the fact that you can only use a select number of items available. Basically, any object that you can interact with is required to be used in order to complete the game. All the puzzles are quite intuitive and there are none of those mind-numbing impossible puzzles that some point-and-click adventure games exhibit. The puzzle element of Larry Reloaded is actually the finest part of the game.
The audio is a mixed bag, though. The music is reasonable but it becomes too overbearing when there is any dialogue. So much so that I needed to turn the music off if I wanted to make sure I could hear what people were saying. The voice acting is quite good (apart from the horrible lip-synch issue) and the narrator, despite sounding somewhat condescending is quite cheerful. It’s too bad that most of the jokes should have been flushed down the toilet. Yes, there were some that made me grin a little, but most were groaners.
Save often when at the Casino
Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded lets you save and load at any point, which I found quite handy. On my first outing, I made the mistake of not saving before chancing my luck at the casino. Unfortunately luck wasn’t on my side and I ran out of money. It was at that point that I couldn’t catch a cab to other areas in the town and trying to walk there was impossible, as doing so gets you bashed in the alleyways. So I was forced to start again. Annoying, but my own fault for not saving more often.
Flatter than a blow-up doll with an air leak
Although the puzzles were quite good, the voice acting is reasonable and there are some tributes paid to the original, there aren’t too many redeeming features to the game. The visuals are mediocre, the jokes are rarely funny and the background music was so overbearing that I turned it off. Anyone who backed the game for more than $15 on Kickstarter or paid the $20 asking price on Steam may certainly feel a little ripped off, especially with it’s length. Yes, the nostalgia is certainly there, but I felt that playing Reloaded wasn’t enough of an improvement on the original to warrant the price. If I was twelve again I might had enjoyed the game more, but as it is, Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded falls well short.
5.0
fun score
Pros
Point and click is much easier than typing commands as in the original. Puzzles are intuitive. The retro Age Verification check was cool.
Cons
Tries to be funny, but isn’t. Visuals needed to be reloaded. Short and overpriced.