Games for Lunch: Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust

In a nutshell: Putting "Bust" in the title turned out to be prescient.
6/24/2009 12:48 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3

Developer: Team 17
Publisher: Codemasters
Release Date: March 27, 2009
System: Xbox 360 (reviewed), PS3, PC, mobile phone
ESRB Rating: M
Official Web site

0:00 One of my fondest childhood memories is teaming up with my friends to try to fool the trivia age-confirmation engine for the original Leisure Suit Larry into thinking we were over 18. I'm not expecting nearly as much fun from this remake... I put it on my GameFly queue pretty much just to see how painful it can be.

0:01 A rigger, or a gaffer or whatever, cranks up a title sign from the overhead walkway. Cut to a movie theater where some cheesy sci-fi is playing on a black-and-white screen. Timpani and horns soar like it's the Oscars or something.

0:03 "That posture can't be good for your back," says the loading screen. Whoa! Fourth wall = BROKEN! Pan back from a pair of breasts covered by the poster model's hands. A bikini magazine is open on the bed. "Honk my Ass" is open on the computer. "Who you callin' afraid to f*** himself ... I mean, uh, Lovage residence," says our hero, confusingly, as he groggily answers the phone. It's a call from his Uncle, who is not buying his script for a celebrity sex tape (they "just happen.") "Larry, I need your help ... someone I can trust, someone inexpensive ... one out of two ain't bad." "Heh. Heads up, stinky, we're going to Tinselwood." Hey, who you calling stinky?

0:06 Uncle comes along to stop the security guard from slapping me around at the gate. "Be glad they didn't get to the cavity search," he says. HA! Because cavity searches are FUNNY! He takes me on a tiny golf cart around the studio lot. We pass Denise, his "right-hand man," and Merv at the mailroom. A bunch of people are acting out movie scenes: a "Thriller"-style music-video dance, cowboys being run down by a boudler, a stuntman jumping from a roof, etc. Anyway, my uncle tells me that his rival, Big Anus, has a mole in the studio. He wants me to act as a spy to figure out who the mole is. Gripping...

0:10 "Call Me Al" is the first level, apparently. "Who's the newbie, he doesn't look union," says Al, who's now my boss. "Show him the apron strings, the whole nine inches." HA! That could be interpreted in MORE THAN ONE WAY!

0:12 My first mission is to scrape graffiti off a soundstage wall. Really. I walk up the wall and hit the B button to spray it away. Even for a first mission, that's depressingly easy. "Not too shabby, Lovage. Shabby, but not too." Heh.

0:14 Quote of the moment: "You call this graffiti? I've seen bigger dicks in the mirror."

0:15 Usually I'm not one to downgrade a game for having a double jump, but ... come on ... a double jump? In a Leisure Suit Larry game? What is the world coming to?

0:16 Thanks to some shoddy hit-detection, I fall from a roof and lose a quarter of my health. Not to worry ... I gain it back almost immediately. As if I didn't have enough reasons to hate this game alreayd, they had to add automatic health recovery...