How bad is Leisure Suit Larry MCL and Bob?

Darkblader

You guys seem pretty annoyed with the two games that Al lowe had no part of, whats so bad about them?

Davies

I've nether played either game but it's worth noting that in spite of almost universal hatred among the critics, the absolutely hilarious Robert Florence from the essential and marvelous Consolevania reviewed Magna Cum Laude and had this to say:

View the video review here. Please note that this review is rated Mature and is not appropriate for children or ignorant Americans who insist on subtitles for anything hailing from Scotland.

As for Box Office Bust, I've never come across a positive review for that particular turkey, so if you want to know what's wrong with it then I'd suggest a very quick trip to Google.

Joop

Magna Cum Laude wasn't good. It was a collection of adult mini games based around a high school campus. The humor was flat and bland and it just focused on nudity.
The thing that it did good was that it didn't forget about Larry's history. The original Leisure Suit Larry is in it, and talks about old times. It's just a cameo though, but he ís voiced by Jan Rabson.
The design for Larry Loveage looks pretty funny and Larry-like too.

Box Office Bust I didn't play. But from what I've seen of it, it's made by people who've never played a Larry game before. It's about Larry Lovage (spelled differently!) (who looks and sounds totally different than in Magna Cum Laude) who goes to his rich movie studio owning uncle(?!?) Larry Laffer, who looks, sounds and acts totally different than the real Larry Laffer.
It focuses on mini games around a movie studio. The babes in it look terrible and there's absolutely no edge to the humor. Larry doesn't try to score and just runs around parodying movies.
The money for this production wasprobably spent on semi-celebrity voice actors.

All and all, I'd forget about these two atrocious games and focus on the parts 1 to 7, even part 4 is pretty good!

StarEye

Regarding Magma Cum Laude

The main reason, in my case, is that I expected/wanted an adventure game. It did seem like it would be an adventure game almost all the way up until release day. Unfortunately, what the developers considered solving puzzles was in reality just mini-games.

HOWEVER

It's not the worst game ever, actually. It's a bit funny (but not Al Lowe funny, since it did miss the mark a bit), the game plays reasonably well, and a bit of fanservice (like going down to Lefty's, and seeing Larry Laffer).

It's not something that you should cry yourself to sleep over if you haven't played it, but if it happens to fall into your hands by pure chance, I'd give it a go just for the laughs. It's by no mean a good replacement for the real Larry series, nor does it do the series justice, and it does tarnish the name of the series for those who never experience Larry in its true form. But I had some fun with it when it came out.

Box Office Bust, however, is to be avoided like the plague. It's a lot worse than MCL, and nothing about it says Larry to me. I can't believe how ugly the game looks, and this is from Team 17? A game so bad it even tarnishes the name of the system it's on.

Davies

What would people say is the best installment in the LSL series?

swedish_jedi

I've only played Magna Cum Laude of the two, and I have to say that I thought the dialogue in that game was really funny. But the rest was real crap.

But the parts of the game where you had to lead a conversation with the girls by leading a sperm through obstacles where funny (silly: yes, immature: yes). The game had a lot of scenes with great, silly, funny well-written dialogue. Like this one

But these do not save the game from mediocrity with the enormous amount of bad, repetitive mini-games the game had.

Magna Cum Laude is not entirely a bad game. Not as good as the older LSL-games, but still not bad. You can see that the developers tried at least to entertain you. If you find it cheap you should give it a try, just for the great dialogue.

Spadge

Yeah, if they replaced the crappy minigames in MCL with puzzles it would have been a decent game. Not great, but decent. I've only played an hour or so. Got bored after that and never played it since. Maybe I should dig it from the darkest corners of my game collection and try playing it again.

Secret Fawful

Davies wrote: »

What would people say is the best installment in the LSL series?

One of the first three for me, but since I haven't finished number one, it's a tie between two or three.

StarEye

If you want a continuing story, go with 1, 2 and 3. If you want standalone games, 5, 6 and 7 are all pretty much untied. Of those, I would go with 7, mainly because 6 is buggy and harder to get working compared to 7, and 5 is probably the weakest of the series and with a fairly non-typical Larry story.

Out of all games, I think 3 is the absolute best one generally because of the incredible music and atmosphere when exploring.

Leplaya

I remember enjoying the original Leisure Suit Larry series, but hell these two games are not and should not even be considered canon. I heard about a new Leisure Suit Larry game, but as I saw the cover. I knew something was up. I only played MCL because it was the only game that my brother had on his PC(and yeah, it was the uncensored one). Hoo boy, talk about one big fat mix up here.

Despite that there are a few references to the original Larry games, this really draws off from the original series. This game focuses more on Larry's nephew(Which I'm questioning on how Larry's family works for him to have a nephew, he must have a brother). And on a collage campus. The uncensored cut of this game has so much sex stuff in it, its on the point of it being a porno to trying to be a copycat of Ralph Bakshi's Fritz the cat. My god. I know there are points were sex isn't needed for most video games, but this one REALLY drew a line. Some of it was wrong. Whoever worked on this game really wanted to make the original LSL fan angry as heck with this. Also, Larry lovage is a complete uninteresting character. And whoever did the designs on the girls in this should use it for something better compared to this garbage. Also mini-games, I dislike mini games. I can approve of a few, but this has so much to no man's land. I feel sorry for Al lowe for wasting his money on this crap.

Also Box Office Bust is something I wished was never made. The original Larry Laffer isn't himself in this. The protagonist isn't trying to get laid in it, sidequests, and also PATRICK freaking Warburton. Why is he even in this game? Does he have anything else to do? Also most of the writing in this is garbage. Like one chick in this says "Can you not look at my chest? It makes me feel uncomfortable". Seriously? How dumb are the people who wrote this trying to prove, that gamers do not care about story for video games but just rely on graphics? The designs on the women in this game look like they are not even trying hard enough. Also the graphics in this are complete crap, its like they tried to rush this without putting any effort in it. This entire game is like Dreamworks trying to make an adult cartoon but they cannot pull it off correctly. Also most of the pop culture stuff is unneeded. If there's ever a new LSL game. Get Telltale, Al lowe, and make it for the Wii.

Irishmile

MCL is ok its heart breaking they resorted to repetitive minigames instead of adventure game puzzles but the story itself is funny and there are some decent genuine laughs.. when you run into the original Larry it makes you wish you could just stay and hang out with him... I still play my copy every so often and I do consider it part of the series but box office bust was so bad and uninteresting the makers of it should be forced to play it everyday for the rest of their lives.

baron_calamity

Irishmile wrote: »

MCL is ok its heart breaking they resorted to repetitive minigames instead of adventure game puzzles but the story itself is funny and there are some decent genuine laughs.. when you run into the original Larry it makes you wish you could just stay and hang out with him... I still play my copy every so often and I do consider it part of the series but box office bust was so bad and uninteresting the makers of it should be forced to play it everyday for the rest of their lives.

I have to agree. I've played both. Finished MCL but not BOB. MCL was decent and funny in parts. The game play was all mini game based but it worked on some level. There is a scene in the game featuring a teddy bear that is the funniest joke in any LSL game.

Box Office Bust should be treated as a war crime.

Davies

baron_calamity wrote: »

Box Office Bust should be treated as a war crime.

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Uploaded with ImageShack.us

PimPamPet

I thought Magna Cum Laude was an endless nightmare of boring & repetitive minigames and crude unfunny jokes. I didn't like it one bit. I've read reviews of Box Office Bust and it was supposedly even worse so I'm not getting anywhere near that travesty.

jmm

MCL was not that bad, contrary to what most naysayers continue to say.
The main problem was that it changed the puzzle nature of the series to mini-games.
From a 1 to 10 scale, I'll say it lands safely into the 5-6 range.

BOB on the other hand, is a complete departure of the series.
BOB is a sequel to MCL, but it focused only on the explore and mini-games part and forgot about what LSL was.
From a 1 to 10 scale, I'll say it is in the 1-2 range.

Anyway, both MCL and BOB failed by ignoring Al Lowe and the Series heritage. And while they both tried to get into new ground, the departure from the originals was their demise.
But at least MCL has some redeeming parts and feels a bit more connected to the series than BOB.

Joop

MCL would've worked as fairly entertaining if it didn't have the LSL stamp. As a LSL part it's just awful.
As a stand alone game it's okay. The toilet humor and the chance to see some low polygon breasts made me finish it. But it's no Leisure Suit Larry, not by a long shot.

Darkblader

Geez leplaya, you sound like you were annoyed with these games.

der_ketzer

Davies wrote: »

What would people say is the best installment in the LSL series?

#4 is easily the best.

nOmArch

that joke was already made in post #3

Paintbrush

MCL was actually very good (it would be great, if there were some puzzles).
The gameplay wasn't something to write home about (overload of mini games), but humor, characters and sandbox world were great. Also the user interface was nice- a little curtsey to adventure genre.
The game was also quite bold and gave you a couple of "no way they will gonna do this... they did!" moments. The nudity was nice as well- not too overused, but more as a humorous bonus (hey, if you are going to make a game about sex, you better make a bit of a payoff).


On the other hand I never finished BOB and I agree with everyone that it was an utter trash. They went and discarded everything they did right in MCL (good controls, humor, raunchiness, interactive world, etc.) and left out the main thing people were nagging about- adventure puzzles.

Datadog

I'd compared MCL to "Mask of Eternity," where it works as it's own game, but shouldn't be considered a part of its respective franchise. Otherwise, I found MCL actually got better in the later part of the game where they introduced a better supporting cast of characters and they got more creative with the conversation mini-games (i.e. the musical number or the VCR scene.) It can be a guilty pleasure at best.

BOB... I haven't played this, mostly because watching the intro on YouTube made me sick to the stomach after hearing one line of dialogue. The experience was similar to walking on a damp sticky floor around a urinal. A bunch of people who didn't know what they were doing just decided to make an offensive sex game disguised as a bad comedy.

The best Larry games are probably the original three, as they actually tell a story about Larry developing as a character. 5, 6, 7 are just him chasing girls. 7 is my favorite of the bunch because of all the puzzles, the music, the animation, and the combination cursor/parser interface - it's a really fun game.

Rather Dashing

Box Office Bust, essentially, is almost as bad as Back to the Future: The Game.

Irishmile

I still think that mcl is not nearly as bad as people like to say it is. There is tons of funny dialogue from "clicking" on random things.. Funny situations and humorous interaction with other characters. But they no longer had many items to collect to solve puzzles... TTG Has kind of done this.. They are starting to have too many puzzles that are purely dialogue and positioning of characters or things through dialogue.

StarEye

Rather Dashing wrote: »

Box Office Bust, essentially, is almost as bad as Back to the Future: The Game.

You mean Back To The Future: The Interactive Movie?

Rather Dashing

I'm just going with what's on the installer. Besides, "interactive movie" does imply interactivity, which is somewhat limited in this case.

zounds!

:rolleyes:

joek86

The main thing you have to remember about BOB is it is an unfinished game. The concept had potential, but we'll never see what it was supposed to be like. The story is this, Vivendi was only at about the 50% mark on this one when the buyout happened. Like Ghostbusters or Brutal Legend, Activsion sold it off not seeing how it could make games for the franchises annually. BOB was bought by a company that had no desire to finish it, they simply wanted to turn around and make money off the acquisition. So what was released was a game that was just polished enough to make it playable. It's really a shame because there were a lot of ideas for that one that got left out (one of the best being a repeat of the kq4 parody done in LSL5), heck most of the dialog hadn't been recorded yet. While MCL wasn't a 10/10, it still deserves some credit for at least trying to recognize previous games and also trying to revive an old adventure game series, NO ONE was attempting this at the time. While immature, MCL still remains a guilty pleasure. It was one of those games I played a lot just to hear the failure dialog. There was also a great computer joke about the original Larry trying to find himself a good old sixteen color girl.

nOmArch

Thanks Joek, didn't know BOB was that broken when it was released, although after playing it for a couple of hours it totally makes sense that most stuff simply wasn't finished.

I did enjoy the boo-khaki joke though.