Reviews// Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude

The storyline itself will be all too familiar for followers of lowest-common-denominator US cinema. From Porky’s to Porky’s III, the story stays the same; it’s all about 'getting laid' (a popular American term for sexloving). But like his un-PC PC-venturing uncle, Larry Loveage’s romantic endeavours are far from organic, and require considerable skills in silver-tongued swordsmanship. This in turn forms the bulk of the gameplay in Magna Cum Laude. Each attempt at seduction is punctuated by a series of comical conversations and chat-up lines; the player controls these by navigating a sperm past a series of hazards.

This is essentially gaming at its most basic and it’s barely more sophisticated than an unfinished, prototype Atari 2600 game. You just have to move the sperm up and down across a 2D scrolling level, simply trying not to crash into any of the symbols that represent a verbal or bodily faux-pas. That’s all there is to it.

Although this overt simplicity allows the player to listen to and enjoy the conversation being had, rather than concentrating on a more complicated task, the sperm-guidance levels quickly become rather repetitive. And if you happen to fail in one of these conversations, by bumping the little man-juice warrior into one too many hazards: making Larry fart and burp between his words, you will have to repeat the whole process. By the second time you have to listen through this light-hearted banter, it won’t be particularly funny anymore (although there is scope for a few variations each time) and this amoebic gameplay can definitely not be construed as particularly exciting in itself. This means that those levels that do actually pose a challenge and require repetition quickly become frustrating and tiresome. There is the sympathetic option to make the some of the mini-games easier if you keep failing at the same task, but that just adds embarrassment and disillusion to the frustration and tiresomeness.

There are other mini-games throughout the course of Magna Cum Laude, but they do tend to appear over and over again in near-identical forms; meaning that the game can get rather repetitive. A large proportion of the mini-games are based on following button patterns and rhythms, much like any basic dance game; others involve a simplified variant of tiddlywinks; a few resemble Midway’s retro classic Tapper; and the rest just involve running around the campus a bit - collecting things or being chased. If you’re after a unique challenge of wits, skill and reactions, this is not it. It may sound like an unfair criticism to make of a video game, but all LSL requires you to do is press some buttons and move the joystick around a bit. There really is nothing else more profound to the gameplay.