Leisure Suit Larry 5: Final Rating

Written by Alex

Leisure Suit Larry 5! Final rating! GO!

Puzzles and Solvability: 1

What puzzles? This game is impossible to lose, and as such, I cannot give it a higher rating than this. Here: I’ll show you. After getting all 1,000 stupid points in this stupid game during my initial playthrough, I proceeded to do an “As Little As Possible (ALAP)” run. Let me give an example of how this game goes beyond hand-holding into outright giving you the solution. See this?

I think I forgot to mention this in my gameplay posts. It lets you skip parts of the game. Not just cut-scenes, but actual “puzzles,” as far as this game has any. Remember this part?

Leisure Suit Larry 5 – WON!

Written by Alex

Another Larry game in the books. This one . . . this one was a real doozy. Between the lack of puzzles, the overdone hand-holding, the repetitive nature of the gameplay, and the controversial nature of some of its jokes, I’m ready to move on. After my last post, things can’t get any worse. Can they?

I guess they can! Unless you find jokes about Mexican accents not to be as inflammatory as blackface! At least I got 1 point for looking at this billboard. What’s that, you say? There are no jokes about Mexican accents in the above text box? Let’s see what happens when Larry calls the number (7 points):

Leisure Suit Larry 5 – You Are What You Is

Written by Alex

Commenter The Mara recently noted that her question, "[H]ow much more tasteless can Leisure Suit Larry get" is one she has to wait for the answer to. Well, the wait is over. Hold on to your Tardis, because here comes the stupid!

So here’s Patti, outside of K-RAP studios in Philadelphia.

Wait, or is it Baltimore. Continuity error!

Leisure Suit Larry 5 – Hot Plate Heaven at the Green Hotel

Written by Alex

As Patti leaves Baltimore behind and settles in for her long limo ride up to Philadelphia, the scene returns to Larry, dreaming about riding a gondola with Patti through the streets of Venice. Of course, we know that his reverie doesn’t end well. This time, the gondola springs a leak, and Larry makes a rather uncomfortable discovery upon awakening . . .

C’mon Larry!

Leisure Suit Larry 5 – What’s New in Baltimore?

Written by Alex

Avoiding the groping from her limo driver, Patti alights in Baltimore, outside of the majestic Shaft building, home of des Rever Records and the FBI’s next target, record producer Reverse Biaz.

Inside the funky lobby, there’s a sleeping guard, an elevator Patti can’t open, and a directory. Before I continue, I’d like to give an example of a problem I have with the puzzle design of this game. Here are three ways to get into the elevator:

1. Look at the directory to find out that des Rever Records is in room 900 (3 points), and then talk to the guard to wake him up so he can call the elevator;
2. Talk to the guard to wake him up and then show him the DataMan with the Reverse Biaz cartridge inserted (6 points), so he will call the elevator; or
3. Just keep talking to the guard until he calls the elevator for room 900; no mucking around with the directory or the DataMan necessary.

Sure, option 3 results in no points, but you get to where you need to go regardless. Conversely, you can look at the directory AND show the DataMan to the guard for the maximum amount of points, but the point remains the same: Alternate solutions to puzzles are pretty pointless when they are all redundant and there are no stakes attached to any of the solutions. Just click, click, and click, and get to where you need to go.

Leisure Suit Larry 5 – Be In My Video

Written by Alex

So here we are, with Larry having landed in New York and Patti en route to Baltimore. As you can tell from my last post, the structure of Larry 5 alternates between Larry and Patti, giving a nice symmetry to the two’s concurrent narratives, as well as to my play sessions. When will these plot threads meet? How will the game reconcile Larry and Patti’s amnesia and what happened in Larry 3 with the machinations of the mysterious and sinister Julius? With a plot this stupid, who really cares? On to the Big Apple!

Welcome to New York

Leisure Suit Larry 5 – Intracontinental Absurdity

Written by Alex

I have to say that the presentation of Larry 5 is really top-notch. For making a stupid comedy game that is very linear and plays more like a clickable movie than a game, Al Lowe and company have done a fantastic job of ensuring that it’s entertaining. The jokes, while puerile and immature, are well-written and perfectly timed, which helps matters immensely. But the whole vibe is similar to a movie like Airplane!, which knows that it’s dumb and just goes with it. There’s nothing filthy or dirty here; as with the other Larry games, it’s mostly innuendo, wordplay, sight gags, and the kind of thing that leaves most of the perversion, so to speak, up to the player’s imagination. In other words, if you’re offended by this game, then you have serious issues.

Game 58: Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patty Does A Little Undercover Work (1991) - Introduction

Written by Alex

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: This is really the fourth Larry game. I won’t do the hacky Internet writer thing and make some joke about the missing floppies or whatever; it’s been done to death and series creator and head designer Al Lowe tells the story much better than I ever could here. But since it turns out that I actually am a hacky Internet writer, here’s the condensed version: The ending of Larry 3 left our heroes, Larry and Patty, happily together and writing computer games for some fantastic company located in the California Rockies. In order to get out of this continuity-bind, Mr. Lowe, in a flash of genius, wondered why he had to make the games go in strict numerical order. Why not make the next Larry game the fifth one, begin in medias res, and refer to the events of the fourth game, hinting as to why Larry and Patty are not together developing really sweet adventure games? So it’s all just a part of the joke. That Al Lowe, making comedy games that are actually funny. Who does he think he is?