Leisure Suit Larry Wet Dreams Dont Die Review

Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Die Review

Contents

Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Die doesn’t entirely reinvent the sleazy side of the series, but does just enough to form a solid adventure game.

You Are Reading :[thien_display_title]

Leisure Suit Larry Wet Dreams Dont Die Review

No game series seemed tied to the past like Leisure Suit Larry. It’s a franchise based on one of the most antiquated of genres, the point-and-click adventure game, featuring the kind of crass humor that was perhaps stagnant even at the time. Nonetheless, much like fellow 1980s characters like Mega Man, Larry Laffer has made a return to the modern gaming scene, through Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Die.

Although the sleazy pun of its name suggests that Larry is back, (genital) warts and all, developer Crazy Bunch has attempted to modernize the series in a few ways. For long-time fans of the character, Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Die does still contain all of the franchise’s core tropes, from its traditional adventure game mechanics through to the puerile comedy and the need to take a long shower after playing. That said, the team has taken Larry’s character and looked at him, at least a little, through a modern lens.

Related: Return of the Obra Dinn Review – A Superb Maritime Mystery

Wet Dreams Don’t Die takes the classic version of Larry Laffer and deposits him firmly into today’s world, thankfully ignoring some of the more recent games in the series and instead giving Larry a fish out of water element. Having last experienced technology and culture in the 1980s, instead he now has to contend with the era of smartphones, and this adds an additional layer of desperate to a character already feeling outdated – this time by design.

Leisure Suit Larry Wet Dreams Dont Die Review

This is something of a double-edged sword when it comes down to it. Although it manages to allow the title to occasionally poke fun at both Larry’s sordid past and the absurdities of the point-and-click adventure format, it also leads to some of the weakest humor in the game. In particular, some of the cringeworthy names given for apps – Instagram becomes InstaCrap, for instance – have a particularly cringeworthy quality to them, feeling like the kind of tired joke an elderly relative would make about ‘kids these days’.

See also  My Hero Academia Shigaraki Battles Star and Stripe in Epic New Fan Art

On the whole, though, there’s a light-hearted and mildly raunchy tone that is nowhere near as awkward as earlier Leisure Suit Larry games. Yes, there’s a reliance on phallic imagery for laughs, and it often goes for low-hanging fruit such as hipsters or social media influencers, but there’s a playfulness to its tone that makes it clear there’s no attempt to pull off a biting satire here. Wet Dreams Don’t Die is a bit of fun, and most of that comes at Larry’s expense, which is exactly how it needs to be.

This is not a straight-up inversion of the previous games, so those looking for the Spec Ops: The Line of raunch adventure games (now there’s a thought) should keep dreaming, but at the very least those sharper edges have been filed down. Wet Dreams Don’t Die feels much less predatory than it could do, with characters – both men and women – more accepting to Larry’s ‘charms’ and treated in a much more positive manner, complete with calling out the character for his more sleazy moments. It’s still not perfect in this regard, but what could have left a sour taste is instead treated with much more care.

The way that this serves the plot is also carefully handled, with Larry’s obsession with moving up the rankings of Tinder stand-in Timber actually working rather well as a central framing device. In a way, this shows how the development team manages to walk that fine line between showing care for the franchise’s roots and original fans and bringing Larry to the modern day. There’s still an obsession with sex, now tied to that of public image, but this shift towards positivity means that the adventure genre machinations are much less creepy on the whole.

Gameplay-wise, things are the same as ever; there’s no attempt to rebuild the point-and-click as per Life is Strange here. This is very much an old-school adventure game, complete with random item combinations and the odd sense of a virtual Rube Goldberg machine, although thankfully most of the time Wet Dreams Don’t Die’s puzzles do have a bit of sense behind them. Sometimes it does stray a little too close to King’s Quest for comfort, with some head-scratching moments that could leave players baffled, although thankfully these are few and far between.

See also  Kris Jenner May Sue TikTok Star Behind Kanye WestJeffree Star Affair Rumors

All in all, then, Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Die is a throwback, but it knows it. There’s enough of an understanding both of its sordid past and its archaic genre history for it to work, with that ever-so-slight tonal tweak to stop its sordid elements from taking on a darker turn. Those who remember the likes of Maniac Mansion fondly will find a well-made adventure game, as long as they’re happy to revel in the low-brow humor.

More: Another Sight Review: Pretty But Ponderous Puzzles

Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Die is out now for PC and Mac. Screen Rant was provided with a PC download code for the purposes of this review.

Our Rating:

Rob Gordon is a writer and musician from Brighton, United Kingdom. A Creative Writing Masters graduate from the University of Exeter, Rob has his roots in fiction writing but also has extensive experience writing about video games and the video game industry. As well as this, Rob is at home with a focus on film and television, particularly when it comes to the realms of horror. Alongside his writing, Rob plays in two UK-based musical acts, the electro-pop band Palomino Club and rock band Titans & Kings, and also lends his vocal talents to the Big Boys Don’t Cry podcast, which reviews and discusses romantic comedies. The bands and the podcast can be found on all good digital distribution platforms, and Rob can also be found on Twitter.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/leisure-suit-larry-wet-dreams-dont-die-review/

Movies -