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Leisure Suit Larry 5:
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In 1991, Al Lowe had a problem. He had written a fitting final chapter in the world of Leisure Suit Larry two years ago, with no intention of revisiting it. After all, few of Sierra's games had gone beyond the classic trilogy. But after months of putting all of his effort into Sierra's failed online gaming network, Al was ready to return to the familiar. He had some great ideas for Larry 4, but no way to begin the adventure since things had wrapped up so neatly in Larry 3. His solution was clear. Don't make Larry 4. Skip to Larry 5. It was a smart move. The fourth installment (Leisure Suit Larry 4: The Missing Floppies) is referenced in game 5, but since it's been "lost", Larry can't quite remember any details from it. This freed Lowe from explaining how Larry had once again reverted to a single, balding, overweight schlub-about-town and become separated from his beloved Passionate Patti. As clever as the concept is, however, the game itself is lacking.
Patti's story opens with her playing the piano in a seedy bar, which is odd because she seemed to be a much bigger act in Larry 3. Perhaps this fall from stardom occurs in the absent fourth chapter. At any rate, she gets stiffed out of her pay and vows revenge on the criminals responsible. Luckily she's immediately recruited as a special agent by the FBI to use her talents (musical and otherwise) to get to the bottom of the corruption in the entertainment industry. I won't ruin the story for you. But it doesn't really matter because you'll have the whole thing figured out by the second cut scene. Even for a Larry game which usually offers the complex motivation of "sleep with hot chicks", the plot of this game is paper thin. A group of villainous porn producers want sex off of the airwaves so they can retain their smut monopoly, but they spend the whole game sitting in a room scheming. They don't even offer the slightest mortal threat to our heroes until the very end. In fact, unlike previous titles, Larry and Patti cannot die in this game. Sierra finally conceded defeat to LucasArts' "dumbing down" of the genre and made it impossible to accidentally create an unwinnable situation. So feel free to try everything you can think of without the headache of multiple saved games. No matter what you do, you can still beat the game. This in and of itself is a good thing, but, apparently Sierra wasn't yet used to this kind of game design. Where LucasArts had already gotten the hang of retaining a game's difficulty without relying on disappearing items, Sierra hadn't had the practice. So what you get is a game that not only can be beaten without restarting, it can be beaten without even trying.
But since the Sierra mindset was still one of "rooms become inaccessible when you leave", there's no way to go back to the studio once you go to the airport. So if you've forgotten the charger, the game will just say "Too bad you didn't get this on tape" and let you proceed even though you've blatantly failed your mission, which is a big indication that these tapes you're supposed to be making aren't important to the end of the game at all.
At least in Larry's section, there is occasionally a "hard way" to solve a puzzle. Patti's missions are even easier, usually only consisting of a room or two. After you pick something up, just look around because you'll end up using it in the same room. The preliminary playing around, that a veteran of the genre will do in each new room, is usually more than enough to solve every puzzle before the objective is even clear. If this weren't enough, copious hints exist in item and room descriptions, and you are even prompted to save after important events. It's as if the game wants you to just hurry up and win so it can go back to bed. The sex-fueled Larry humor we've come to love returns in good form. There's no text parser this time around, but using the eye and hand icons on various things will often elicit a funny comeback. The unzipped fly icon, however, is not the source of hilarity you would presume it to be. Using it on almost anything gives the boring response "Don't do that to ITEM/CHARACTER/ROOM!"
The Sierra icon system (Walk, Look, Touch, Talk, etc.) handles all control for the first time in an original Larry game. This works quite well, with path-finding being a particular specialty. You can click on a door on the far side of a room and Patti or Larry will weave their way around shelves and desks to get there instead of trying for a straight line and running into an obstacle. Still, I confess to missing the parser a bit, for old times' sake. The one control problem I had occurred when I found out that you can use the icons on yourself. It's fun to use the hand icon on Patti ("You begin to adjust your bra strap, but remember you would need a bra."), but it would have been a lot more fun to be able to click "through" your characters to access items hidden behind them, as in most LucasArts games. In other words, if Patti is searching a bookshelf, you have to move her out of the way of the shelf before you can click on it, then move her out of the way again to click on a different area, etc. In another odd technical side note, this is the only Larry game I've ever crashed out of. But multiple clicks on a particular object eventually lead to the message "Oops! You did something we weren't expecting. Whatever it was, you don't need to do it to finish the game" before kicking me back to Windows.
You won't need your copy of "PlaySpy," the sexy spy magazine included with the game. As I've said, the game itself gives you more than enough hints. You will, however, need the AeroDork Airlines pamphlet which includes the travel schedule (as well as a pretty hilarious rant about commercial flying if you feel like reading it) used in-game for copy protection. The codes can be found on Al Lowe's official site. No age verification to contend with this time around. Larry 5 could have been a reasonably good game. The story needs some major reworking, but the puzzles are fairly solid. If the designers had actually forced you to solve them by opening up the game world a bit and allowing you to return to previous areas, rather than nudging you along regardless of your accomplishments, this could have been a respectable sequel. As it stands, Larry 5 is sub-par, feeling more like "My First Little Adventure Game" than an Al Lowe title. It's a must for fans of the series, but serious adventure gamers don't need to waste their time. -reviewed 9/6/06 - game copyright 1991 Sierra
"Where will you end up on this naked adventure?" |
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Stick your finger in every socket you find. You're Unbreakable.
HELP! My franchise is crashing!
