THIS GAME WAS PROVIDED TO US BY CRAZYBUNCH FOR THE PURPOSE OF REVIEW

I’m beginning to worry that I’m going to get a reputation on this site as the guy who is impossible to please. Every game we’ve been given a review code for I’ve given pretty lacklustre ratings, but then I remember that I’m the guy who loved Fight Crab! (A game about crabs fighting.) And I worry a little less.

Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice is the eleventh game in the Leisure Suit Larry series and it’s also the second game from their fourth developer CrazyBunch. Which is interesting considering every reboot of the game has been met with negative reviews so clearly someone out there isn’t getting the hint that no one really wants to play a game where you’re a balding, middle-aged man with the maturity of a teenager, the intelligence to match and an obsession with ‘getting some’ so great that it puts Genghis Khan to shame!

The plot of the game is fairly simple, Larry Laffer has been brought to the future from the 80s and is in pursuit of a woman named Faith who’s company he blew up and now she is wandering around the jungle with amnesia and he has to solve a million puzzles and ask a dizzying array of ‘wacky’ characters for information . . .

Okay maybe it’s not very simple.

Point and Click as a genre has had a pretty storied history considering it was one of the first major genre’s of its time alongside platformers. A personal favourite of mine being the Simon The Sorcerer series which has a similar style of writing and humour to LSL it just doesn’t suck eggs. Since the coming of big-budget RPGs has kind of taken over Point and Click’s market they’ve had a niche audience that, while small, is very strong and eager for more of their favourite puzzle-solving adventures.

So you can bet whenever a Point and Click is announced it is usually met with excitement considering so few get made these days. When I was given the code to LSL even I was pretty excited. I actually liked LSL: Magna Cum Laude. However, rose-tinted glasses are a powerful thing and I quickly learned that I had outgrown constant sexual puns and everything in an environment being shaped like a penis or vagina in some way.

If you’re wondering why I’m stalling it’s because point and click adventures are fairly short reviews. Mechanically this game is perfectly fine. You point and click on things and stuff happens as and when it should. There’s a large array of things to look at, comment on and pick up. The only difference between this game and its predecessors is that you can only take or look at things instead of the dizzying array of options in Point and Clicks of old.

Graphically the game is, again, perfectly fine. Everything is 2D drawings that have about 3 animations between them and a generic mouth movement when you talk to them as if you’re watching an anime. The only comment I’d make in terms of graphical design and animations is instead of cutscenes and varied animations whenever something unique happens we just get a few simple pictures with the tiniest amount of movement to denote action.

Come on CrazyBunch, Point and Clicks that are old enough to be your parents had better animation than this. Simon the Sorcerer had unique animations up the hoohaa and it was an often pixelated, incomprehensible mess from 1993 that was developed mostly by a father and his son in a basement! What’s your excuse?

So to get to the meat and bones of the review, the writing. My word the writing. I want to preface this section by saying that I really liked The Bee Movie. Why is this relevant? Because I love puns. If I can sit and enjoy an hour plus of bee puns I consider myself fairly easy to please when it comes to a joke.

I knew I was going to have a problem with this games writing when we are introduced to the story by a Mexican in a poncho and sombrero playing a tiny guitar who uses the word ‘gringo’ like it’s going out of style. Because that’s all Mexicans are right? They’re not a varied culture or anything, nope. I wouldn’t normally have a problem with this, satire is a key part of the humour. But when we later get a racist stereotype of a Chinese who swaps his Ls for Rs I kind of got the feeling that these developers haven’t had a look at the political climate in the last umpteen years. They also remembered to add the stereotype of a Russian spy in there too if you’re into that.

Every line of dialogue in this game feels like it’s punctuated with the writer looking through my screen and saying “Do you get it?” Before they giggle and run away. Apparently, if this story went more than 3 seconds without someone referencing sex, sex toys or sexual organs the writer was going to die. Like that Jason Statham movie but somehow more cheesy.

The real kicker for me was when you meet a character who is very clearly a Louis C.K stand-in who blatantly says “You can’t say anything these days without someone getting offended.” I’m paraphrasing a little because I’m not replaying this crap just to find one line of dialogue.

You have literally taken up hours of my time for this garbage writing CrazyBunch! You can’t spend hours saying all the dirty/inappropriate/offensive rubbish you like and then have a character complaining about how you don’t get to tell the jokes you want these days.

The one praise I will give to CrazyBunch is that YES this game does feel like it was made in the eighties. But I don’t think that’s the compliment they think it is.

Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice is available on steam for a galling £30.99 and if it wasn’t obvious from this review, no I do not think it is worth it.