A masturbating monkey. Wet T-Shirt contests. Larry
Lovage in a thong
shaking his groove thing. Please, someone stab my eyes with an ice
pick!

You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Larry in a thong,
his hips gyrating seductively. It’s a vision that is burned
indelibly into my memory and I’m still having problems sleeping
at night. Who are these people who have turned our memories of an
adventure icon upside-down?

We recently returned from
New York where we met with Vivendi Universal and some members of
the High Voltage development team – known
primarily in the adventure community for their splendid The
Haunted Mansion.
Courtesy of Producer Joshua VanVeld and Vice President, Creative
Content Eric Nofsinger – we enjoyed some hands-on playing time
with Leisure Suit Larry and his nephew Larry
Lovage.

So what are our initial
impressions? Well, this ain’t your
daddy’s Larry. As a matter of fact, this ain’t the Larry you remember either, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Let’s just say it’s a broader interpretation of Larry and reserve judgment for the final version. This Larry is though – if
you are not offended by the bawdy humor – the funniest, most
side-splitting game I’ve ever played.

So is LSL:
MCL an adventure
game? Hey, is the Pope Polish (What’s
that, he is, oops. Scratch that previous line.)? Let’s put
it this way: LSL: MCL will be the Grand
Theft Auto of adventure games.
By that we don’t mean that Larry will be driving around in
a car pimping, but rather that LSL: MCL should generate enough controversy
that sometime around the end of October CNN nightly news will run
a feature story on how the new Larry game is corrupting the sexual
ethics of American youth.

The game in a nutshell
centers around Larry and his nephew’s
attempts to ‘score’ with fifteen different women (As
a side note, between levels, each woman in the game is represented
by a real model dressed to resemble her video game counterpart).
Their quest for lust can be accomplished many different ways, but
is mostly consummated through mini-games and risqué dialogue.
We were assured that there will be some puzzles in final version,
but I gotta tell you, I’m not holding my breath.

This is a Larry that ‘borrows’ heavily from numerous
influences: a touch of Benny Hill, a tad of American
Pie and a heavy
dose of The Man Show. We’re talking mini-games that involve
beer guzzling chug-a-lug contests or jumping on a trampoline while
attempting to match the moves of the girl jumping on the trampoline
next to you who is, of course, quite buxom and has certain body parts
that shake like a bowl full of Jello.

We’re talking hooters galore and cut-scenes – which
are awarded as bonuses – involving full-blown depictions of
sexual intercourse, sometimes with more than one partner.

I asked the developers
how they had avoided an AO rating (Adults Only) – which meant that a lot of retail outlets would have
refused to carry the game – and was told that the censors simply
asked them to alter a few camera angles. Thank God, for if there
is one thing I could live the rest of my life without ever seeing
it would be a full frontal view of a butt-naked Larry.

It might be the best of both worlds if Larry is a runaway hit. On
the plus side, if LSL: MCL attracts mainstream attention and huge
sales then publishers will think that adventure games are a hot commodity
again, but on the negative side, much as sales of Myst inspired dozens
of inferior copycats, so too might we be subjected to a boatload
of sleazy porno games masquerading as adventure.

Personally, I think that
LSL: MCL will be a mega-hit of a game, but I also don’t for
one moment believe it will fly with the hardcore adventure crowd
that is for the most part comprised of women
and gamers that skew older than the twenty-something industry average.
This game is clearly aimed at the 18-25-year-old male demographic
and college crowd and on that accord it scores a direct bulls-eye.

Which begs the question,
if LSL: MCL is an unbridled hit, then what next? Considering that
Vivendi Universal still owns the licenses
to such past Sierra classic series as Gabriel Knight, King’s
Quest, Police Quest, Space
Quest and Quest for Glory wouldn’t
it then be feasible that if LSL: MCL is a huge hit that these series
would be revived and revamped for a new generation of gamers? Well,
our sources at Vivendi Universal assured us that nothing is currently
in development but money speaks volumes so if LSL: MCL is a huge
hit then don’t be surprised to see Gabriel Knight wielding
a gun in a Grand Theft Auto setting this time next year.