He’s back! After a string of mediocre to poor titles and a lengthy hiatus, everyone’s favourite (?) lounge lizard is back and ready for action in Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry Happy Endings edition (talk about a mouthful of a title). However, is Larry’s triumphant return everything fans are hoping for, or is this dinosaur better off stuck in the past? Is the humour crass enough to be funny or just ridiculous? Can the writer of this review break the site’s records for most double entendres in a single post? Let’s find out!
Beginning with the story, Leisure Suit Larry finds himself in a creepy bunker after a night of drinking. After solving a few puzzles, he makes his way to the surface to find that the world has changed without him. He’s been asleep a good thirty years, but this is merely a minor setback for our hapless hero, as his 69-year old body looks better than ever. After returning to Lefty’s for a drink and reuniting with an old friend, Larry finds a glowing box in a pile of crud. After clearing the crud, he finds himself a brand new Pi Phone prototype, complete with a virtual assistant that looks eerily like a certain Halo AI. With this discovery, Larry is blasted into a world of corporate espionage, internet dating and tons of babes who are way out of his league.
The story itself, for the most part, is very good. It is the right amount of stupid and self-aware that I feel a game of this type needs. The game is 100% aware that many of Larry’s um… eccentricities would not exactly fly in the modern-day, but instead of changing the character to compensate, they change the world around him, genuinely mining the situation for all the comedy it’s worth. It helps that Larry himself is less malicious and more just blissfully unaware (he has been asleep for thirty years after all) leading to a character who you can still enjoy playing as. The supporting cast is also rather funny but mostly relies on dated stock characters. The character development takes a significant back seat (I wouldn’t sit in the back seat of Larry’s car) to the humour here, which might disappoint some, but I feel it was ultimately the right move. The game also features a new epilogue that sets up the next game, “Wet Dreams Dry Twice”, very nicely.
Moving on to the gameplay – this is a classic point and click adventure title through and through. If you don’t like that style of game, this is not for you. However, the team has done a great job in adapting the title to the Xbox One controller, allowing (for example), to use the right trigger to lock onto a given item. However, it does bear mentioning that some of the puzzles in this game require galaxy brain logic that I cannot say I could solve under any circumstances without a guide (yes, as the game so succinctly put it when I admitted it, “coward!”). For example, I cannot say I ever expected I would have to go through an agonizingly vile and confusing process to capture a rat (the game offers a refund to players at that point, but it’s all a jape. No refund for you!). Still, the majority of the puzzles are fairly straightforward. The other issue is the prevalent amount of backtracking in this game that can artificially lengthen the experience, but it isn’t a deal-breaker.
The aesthetics also deserve special attention. The game, to its credit, is entirely hand-drawn, and I feel it looks quite nice. It reminds me of many of the adult shows on Teletoon at Night (Canadian Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim equivalent) that I grew up watching, even if I probably shouldn’t have been. We aren’t talking about Rayman Legends or Ori levels of visual splendour here, but it compliments the game nicely. The music is also very catchy and fits the areas well.
However, as of writing, there are two major flaws that hold back Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry from ever reaching its climax. The first of these is the prevalence of several technical issues. This included several hard freezes and crashes (by my count around 7 or 8 throughout my playthrough) and other technical issues including a few instances of framerate stuttering and off-lipsyncing on my One S (though neither of those are deal-breaking). I also encountered a bug that, until a patch was provided, made it impossible to progress further in the game. This was thankfully fixed, but I cannot confirm if any other such bugs exist at this time.
The other issue right now is the price. As of writing, Wet Dreams Don’t Dry is going for $40 USD/£33.49 GBP. I feel this asking price is way too high for what amounts to a short but fun experience with technical flaws. In comparison, the game is selling for $30 on Steam, which I’d even argue is still too high. This is not a bad experience, but I can’t say it is worth the high asking price.
Ultimately, Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Die on Xbox One has put me in a bit of a sticky situation. The game itself is stuffed with appealing elements, but the technical issues and high asking price currently hold it back from being a definite recommend. There is a ton for fans of the series and newcomers to enjoy, but like Larry himself, it’s not for everyone.
