Review: Leisure Suit Larry — Reloaded (PC)
Leisure Suit Larry returns to his roots in a remake of the 1987 classic that took the world by storm
Fans have been asking for Leisure Suit Larry to return to its roots for years, and Al Lowe seems to have listened to his fans, releasing an enhanced remake of the 1987 classic as the successful result of a recently funded kickstarter, but does it manage to keep the charm of the original while dragging it into 2013? Read on to find out!
Leisure Suit Larry — Reloaded is an adventure ‘point and click’ game, a remake of one of the most popular soft core porno games of the eighties. You play Larry Laffer, a middle-aged, balding man who constantly tries to seduce attractive women, failing every time. Nearly forty years old and still a virgin, Larry heads to Lost Wages to try and find true love.
The game has managed to keep extremely close with the original game in almost every aspect, from the conversational text to the locations, all updated to suit todays gamer. The game is completely hand drawn via sprite work, all though Larry’s interactions mostly have no animation, it still looks wonderful, accompanied by an eccentric jazz sound track along with having almost every little thing in the game voiced, either by Larry, the fourth dimensional breaking narrator, or even the NPC’s.
The game ditches the input text method of the original, and instead goes for a more easily accessible HUD style overlay that many of the later adventure games of the nineties contained. You click to move Larry around, with three options to interact with the world; the HUD along the top of the screen, scrolling the mouse wheel or right clicking to cycle the commands or cancel your current command, and holding the left mouse button reveals a radial menu of your most used commands, clicking on the chosen command to then preform that action at that spot.
Everything is able to be interacted with, voiced by a sly narrator. commands include walk, look, take/use, talk, taste/smell, unzip, use item, items and options. Inside the items screen you can also look, use/examine the item and equip the item, allowing it to be constantly used from the HUD rather than constantly opening the item screen.
While the game keeps its difficulty of the 1987 original, giving no clue what to do or where to go, it does contain an automated tutorial as well as various tips by the narrator upon making mistakes, allowing those new to adventure games to quickly adapt to it, with the HUD very nicely laid out and not at all overbearing. The game, on my first playthrough, casually taking my time, I managed to clock around 4–6 hours before finishing it.
System Benchmark
As with all PC games, I strongly advise following the recommended system specs to ensure a smooth and enjoyable game.
Recommended System Specs:
- OS: PC — Win 7/Vista/XP/Mac OS X/Ubuntu 12.4
- Processor: 2.5Ghz clock speed
- Memory: 4 GB
- Graphics: Direct X 9.0c with 256 MB RAM or Higher/Open GL compatible for Linux
- DirectX®: DirectX® 9c
- Hard Drive: 4 GB HD space
Test System Specs:
- OS: Windows 7 64 Bit Pro
- Processor: 3.70Ghz Intel® Core™ i7–2600K
- Memory: 12 GB
- Graphics: 1024 MB 560ti
Running the game, I immediately set everything possible on the highest setting, the game managing an impressive and constant 60 FPS at almost all times. A wonderfully optimized game engine.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B17ruX_NvrM?rel=0&w=700&h=394]
The Verdict
Coming in at around $20, the price seems a little high but when you factor in the amazing voice work, soundtrack, animation and hand drawn art style, it’s worth every penny to support dedicated people.
Both causal and old school players will adore this game, but if you’ve played the original, not much is new in the way of content. Larry at times can also feel like an incomplete sprite, not having animations for most of his actions, but it’s just a little annoyance, and overall, this is a solid and enjoyable game.
