Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude (Uncut and Uncensored!)

The Good
Imagine going to college where there are no classes. Young, attractive girls are everywhere you look. No matter which girl you talk to, the term "boyfriend" is irrelevant. You have no problem playing a game or two with them, and if you are good at these games, you are more likely to get laid at the end of the day. The latest Leisure Suit Larry game lets you do just that. This is number seven in the series, only this time you won't be controlling Larry Laffer, but his nephew who also happens to share the same name as his old uncle. Larry is a bachelor in his early '20s who has just signed up at Walnut Log Community College, and at the right time, too. When he hears a TV dating show called Swingles has come to campus, he vows to win the contest and prove that he can live up to the shining example set by his uncle.

The campus consists of four main areas, and each area is nice to walk around and explore. All the objects are worth looking at, since you can get lots of cash and secret tokens this way. In Magna Cum Laude, the main attraction, of course, is the gorgeous women. If your confidence is really high, you can dance in front of them, and doing this repeatedly will make sure that Larry's confidence remains high. The girls are just character models, but each model is based on their real-life counterparts, which you can see on the loading screens. The only real-life girl I wouldn't mind getting laid by is Analisa. One of her loading screens show her in a sexy position. All the real-life girls have multiple loading screens, so your dream girl may not be sexy in one screen but will be in another.

Scoring with girls requires you to go up and talk to them. While you are talking to them, you have to make sure that you don't mess up the conversation. Making conversation is done by controlling a sperm through a series of small green and red faces. What icons you pass affect the conversation, and it is easier to turn a positive conversation into a negative one. You have a heart meter to tell you how the conversation is going, and your aim is to keep this meter in the green otherwise you don't get to play a game with them afterward. The best part of these conversation games is trying out a mixture of green and red icons for a rather interesting conversation. Later conversations have beers and martini glasses that will make the sperm harder to control, and if you are drunk, it makes it harder to play games. I found that the best way to deal with this is to move as soon as you see up ahead when they are in the sperm's way.

There is a variety of games to choose from, and Magna Cum Laude tells you how to play these games if you are playing them for the first time. Of these, I enjoyed playing the games where you have to deliver something or run away from your pursuer, as well as taking photos of somebody posing for the camera. The mini-games that you encounter later on in the game are disgusting, but more on that later. The games start out easy; but the more you progress, the more difficult they become. You can buy several items from vending machines which can help you win the harder ones. Like in real life, you need to make sure that you have the cash, which you can earn by participating and winning in mini-games that are found throughout the campus, or by examining stuff that you lay your eyes on. I enjoyed getting all the cash as I can and buying everything possible so that I can try to win every time.

As well as cash, you can get secret tokens by also examining stuff as well as getting a perfect win in a game. With the tokens, you can watch girls strip every time you do something right, view nude character models in the game's “character viewer”, get the girls to pose in their underwear for perfect photo shoots, view naughtier loading screens, and more. I rather not use them as even one secret costs a lot of tokens. Larry keeps with him a little black book that comes in handy, and I love looking at it from time to time. It reminds you of your goals, replay the mandatory games you already won, change outfits "on the fly", and view your statistics.

Like the previous LSL games, this one has a lot of humor in it. I forgot to mention this earlier, but another way to lose your drunkenness is to piss anywhere you like. Sure, Larry loses some confidence, but at least I got a good laugh at how the college dudes/dudettes around me reacted. Also, you will encounter a girl who is obsessed with a bundle of sticks, a masturbating monkey, the porn fairy who doesn't even look like a fairy, and possibly other stuff that I can't think of. Some of the games themselves are disgustingly funny. One has you pissing on the Dean's art while avoiding a black dude named Sweetwater, who just dawdles along, making it easier for you to get away. The "Broke-Ass Ho" is also present, and if you go near her, she will look as if she is begging you for anal sex. When you played at least three games with the score-able girls, you get to watch them reject Larry, but how they reject him is funny. Then there's the footbag dude who counts to his world record incorrectly (50-6, 50-7, 50-8, 50-9, 50-10) and the way you can lose his footbag.

There are radios in indoor areas, and when you turn them on, some stations Larry tunes into play real songs, and most of these are about girls. Out of these songs, I enjoyed listening to Girls, Girls, Girls by Motley Crue. There are two songs that I am already familiar with, but these songs can't be heard on the radio. As well as the songs, there are useless advertisements that really don't help you progress for the game.

I like how Magna Cum Laude has multiple endings. You will get one of the three endings in the game depending on which girl you choose to get laid by. What's different about Magna Cum Laude and the other LSL games is that when the ending has been watched and the end credits scroll by, you are free to continue playing as normally, even after the Swingles contest is over. I am reviewing the uncut edition of the game, which is not suitable for anyone under the age of eighteen. It features a full-blown sex scene in one of these endings, and there is a lot of nudity in the game, particularly in the streaking games.

The Bad
Some of the locations are quite a distance apart from each other, but since Larry has no car he can drive around, it takes quite some time to walk to them. I'm talking about the buildings that you enter, not the main outdoor areas. Say, for example, you are in the Dorms area and you want to go to the Frat House. You have to leave the Dorms, walk through the two huge main campus areas, and then into the Greek Quad. It would have been nice if Sierra provided a map where you click on your destination and you are instantly there. It worked for most of the games that I've played.

In some of the dance/trampoline games, the commands your opponent gives you come a bit too fast; and when you press a key to carry out that command, the game doesn't even register the keypress, causing you to lose the game. To make sure that the game registers, you have to really press the key and not just tap it.

Finally, and this may seem irrelevant, but as I mentioned earlier you can access Larry's black book to change outfits during the game. When you do, Larry instantly changes into these outfits. Where's the logic to that? It would have made sense for the campus to include a locker room where you can change your clothes. We might have seen Larry actually changing. Also, what was the point of calling this a Leisure Suit Larry game if the protagonist only wears a jacket?

The Bottom Line
In conclusion, Magna Cum Laude takes a step away from the adventure genre and moves into a more, GTA3-style one. The main objective of this game is to score, and to do that, you have to strike up conversations with girls, making sure that you send them in a positive spin, and play games if everything goes right, then get laid by the girl if you keep winning them. The further you progress in the game, the more challenging the games become. You can buy items from vending machines scattered throughout each location that will help you with these. Since these games are fun, I found myself wanting to go back and play them again at a later stage, by accessing Larry's little black book.

Scattered throughout the game are various references to the old Leisure Suit Larry games, like Scruemall Hall, P.C. Hammer's African-American Studies, and more. The old LSL humor is also here, with unusual activity going on around the campus. I found that the best bit of humor lies within the games themselves and it was interesting seeing how people around Larry react to him urinating in public. There are real songs in the game, most of which I haven't heard of before, and these songs can be heard on the radio. There are also useless advertisements that are funny. For example, one of the ads begin with "Double, Double, Double Dong. Double your pleasure with Double Dong". I found this to be quite funny.

As I said earlier in the game, there are two versions of Magna Cum Laude. If you are easily offended by sex scenes, nudity, and naked people that can be seen in the uncut edition (the one slapped with a 18 rating), then perhaps you should get the toned-down censored version that was released in North America. But even the censored edition of the game is raunchy enough, with those sexy character models and kissing going on. But if these don't make your horny enough, then the loading screens will.

The Good
The game does have some humor, and might be fun to play. It includes a fair amount of nudity, which might be a thing to appreciate. And, there are references to the predecessors in the game, plus you get to see Larry Laffer, mentioning some of the things you miss about his games.

Also, the alcohol and self-esteem features might have been better, but they still do alright as different types of challenges when you try to talk to different women.

The Bad
I don't even know why they made it. If you want a game about naked women, then go ahead and do it. But if you want to do a Larry game, at least try to live up to its name; after all, it will get the attention of Larry players more than anyone else. But this is how you do it? It's not even an adventure! It's an arcade game.

No more point-and-click interface. No more choice of different actions (from the icon adventure games). Instead there's only one "action" button which might be anything, from picking up, to talking, to turning on/off. You'll just have to try and see. But considering, the whole game is so simple that this is probably better, as it would've been an insult to icon adventure games otherwise.

No more choice of what you want to say. Instead, there's an arcade mini-game that decides the course of the conversations, which is not only impossible, but really really frustrating if Larry is drunk. Yes, it's arcade.

Then again, everything in this game is arcade. For everything you want to do, you have to play an arcade mini-game which requires reflexes. It's so stupid that you play these mini-games more than the actual game itself. Plus, all you do in the actual game is run around and talk and even talking is controlled by a mini-game. None of the devious thinking you did playing previous games when trying to get out of situations is required here. You just run around, play mini-games, and move along, watching whatever's happening out of your control...

The Bottom Line
I think everyone could've guessed that without Al Lowe, the game would lose its spirit. And without Laffer, it's even worse. Without the adventure elements, it's the worst thing you could expect from a Larry game. It's a mediocre arcade game, and it's a disgrace to its predecessors. You might still play and have fun though, it has a fair amount of humor, and lots of girls, but remember: You don't have the control.