Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust Comments by Ellie Gibson

'...and it's less erotic than psoriasis'


damn i have psoriasis.

i always thought i was erotic

/walks slowly away shaking his head wondering why he has done one of those /statements.

damn

don't shake your head too much, people will think it is snowing...

Genuine lol'ing here, thanks for the read Ellie! I take it those 2 points the game got where because of the awesomly funny review it got :)

One assumes the 2/10 is comprised of one point per bollock. Can you still get leisure suits?

"It's also the only joke that does not revolve around penises..."

"Wiping the good stuff off the whiteboard of your legacy and drawing a big cock instead, that's what."

Easy trap to fall into by the look of it.

>Oh and smelly stop trolling

Im not trolling.. this is just the latest in a long line of shit 360 games.. i'm going to sell mine as i dont like shit games on my machines.

Arrested Development, awesome.

Cutting off your nose to spite your face?

Just don't buy the shit games, only buy the good ones (and there are plenty of those)

for some reason i'm quite extremely pissed off now

so i'm gonna go fall asleep

kthx

2/10...Wow! Someone was awfully generous...
paketep, this isn't even done by the Sierra. Codemasters bought Larry from Activision/Blizzard when the nice corporate people decided to sell whatever they can from Sierra's old intelectual property. The final product it's just a follow-up of what Vivendi (now called Blizzard) did to Larrry, when they've decided to release Magna Cum Laudae. At that time Sierra was already just a brand, and nothing else....Al Lowe must suffer tremendously seeing how his beloved character is raped....

One of the funniest things I've ever read, cheers!

Shame, was really looking forward to this!

Im not trolling

You know, trolling on the Internet is actually to be expected and perfectly acceptable.

Lying about it really isn't though.

You know, for all that Ms Gibson appears to be forging a career out of trashing crappy games, and for all that the results are always highly entertaining, it'd be interesting to see what she makes of something that isn't unremittingly ghastly.

Also, "less erotic than psoriasis" just put me right off my breakfast eggs, so thanks for that.

I guess we expected reviews like this, with press licking their lips since day one to line up to kick at the IP. Working on other IP's as a work for hire unit always feels different to your own stuff as you generally deliver what the client wants, it was no different here in sometimes trying circumstances.

Since it was Sierra's IP, we made the game (based on their script/direction) to specification of time/budget and content.

In terms of the development experience, I think that like many of the titles during a difficult period in the aftermath of the merger with Activision, it suffered in a whole bunch of production ways, changes, delays, focus and direction at times.

It's not a case of making excuses, but whilst the first half of the project went smoothly and with a great rapport, the latter half and especially lack of opportunity to really embelish the title when we weren't even sure it would be published likely hurt production values in the end. It's certainly not a case of pointing the finger, as these things happen in the games industry and it was unfortunate.

The game content certainly isn't for everyone and Sierra's aims for he script was something more 'Superbad - The Movie' than the original Larry style - they also wanted more of a game than just mini-games as in Magna Cum Laude - and the whole aim of the game was to punctuate/deliver the script, which is either very funny or not funny at all, such is the subjective nature of comedy, especially mature comedy. Some of the stuff in there is indeed very funny - and it's all meant to be tongue in cheek, the game never taking itself particularly seriously (it takes the piss out of itself constantly).

We knew that when we were approached (in 2006) that we were perhaps on a hiding to nothing doing a Larry game, especially with the way the hard-core attack anything slightly off the beaten path. In terms of ourselves, this was a good opportunity in terms of experience and working with a new bunch of people on what for the first half of the project, whilst Sierra were Sierra, was very rewarding and positive. It got difficult once things started to change and we lost the original production staff at Sierra, but c'est la vie. There's no ill-feeling on our part, just a shame that the momentum changed in a tough period.

If people want to write Team17 based on this then so be it, but that's pretty short-sighted although admittedly you can only judge on what you see (we've kept 'Breed closely under wraps, mainly because of the impact we wish to make). We'll be happy to see what people make of the things we build when we're working entirely independently, without any 3rd party involvement - the first of which is Alien Breed Evolution, later this year. It'll be very interesting to see what people make of that and where they think we've fallen or risen to, then.

All comment threads are improved by developers arriving to defend their terrible games.

Why the hell is a girl reviewing this? It's like a man reviewing tampons.

Shouldnt a male review this? :)

@Omroth

Why the hell is a girl reviewing this? It's like a man reviewing tampons.

And the winner of Eurogamers most chauvanistic statement of the year is...

Its a shame about this game. While Manga Cum Laude was utterly terrible and hardly worth the 5 quid I paid for the PC version. The script was really funny at times and it had the odd spark of invention in its conversation system.

Also, good on Spadge for showing that Team 17 dont chuck their toys out of the pram after a bad review anymore (Or will Eurogamer be marching Ellie down to the shop for to buy a retail copy of Alien Breed next gen when it arrives ;P )

Ahh Smelly's still as awesome and predictable as ever then. I hope to God you're going to be buying the upcoming Diva Girls-Princess On Ice, Mary King's Riding School 2, Bob The Builder-Festival Of Fun and Cake Mania-In The Mix for your beloved Wii,(Isn't it strange that I can keep reeling off lists of games like that for every month of the Wii's upcoming release schedule) because they sound like the type of top titles that only the Wii can get in its back catalogue. Infact I might sell my 360 too, and then buy a Wii just so that I can pick up those gems.
You daft bastard, you can't criticise one console's game output when the other's are largely sooo fackin' awful that 80% of its new releases aren't even reviewed anywhere, as it would be deemed a waste of time and effort. :)

kudos to martyn for not throwing a mental, must hurt to see reviews like this, but not entirely unexpected i guess.

Been a big fan of team17 since the amiga days and don't begrudge them for trying to make a living, they gotta do this stuff to fund the IP that we're all really waiting for.

no pressure :P

"smelly 03-Apr-09 23:09:46
Im not trolling.. this is just the latest in a long line of shit 360 games.. i'm going to sell mine as i dont like shit games on my machines."

This coming from the man who owns Cruis'n & I Did It Mum (Girl Version) for Wii & DS.

/Joey

Aahh, it was Spadge told told us about AB!

Don't worry Spadge I doubt many will write off T17, I know i'm all over the new Alien Breed like herpes on a whore, and I'm sure many will be! (give us some info soon PLEASE!)

Although if Larry is that bad (he was never that great anyway) I do think T17 should make up for it by bringing back T17 IPs like Superfrog, Body Blows, Project X and Assassin, don't you? ;)


EDIT - Oh and Smelly dude, I do hope you don't bother with the profile page, 'cos if you do that is a pretty dire list!! ;)

Actually our 3rd party deals may well be over, just 1st party platform-holder jointly developed titles and self-published own IP stuff - one would hope a perfect balance. We celebrate 20yrs next year and I'd like to think that the new Alien Breed will be an indication of where we're heading. Quite exciting really after a generally difficult life (as other developers will likely all concur) in 3rd party publisher land, with all it's foibles. With Breed (and other stuff coming up) we've had no prodding, no milestone threats, no outside pressures (other than of our own processes) and it's made for a refreshing change - hopefully the benefits will be there to see.

20 years, bloody hell I'm old. Sounds good Spadge, I hope it works out T17 gave me some great games, and if you ask me, defined the 16 bit era (Amiga rocks, ST stinks!), lets see happen that again!

"With Breed (and other stuff coming up) "

Alright, spill it come on, it better be superfrog!!

/ glares at Spadge

"You will not only want your money back, you will want reimbursement for the electricity consumed by your Xbox 360 in the six minutes it took to realise you had made a horrible mistake. It's impossible to understand why Codemasters plucked this from the rubble of the Vivendi-Activision merger, like a shellshocked Blitz victim retrieving the dead cat instead of the family jewels."


priceless :D
awesome review.

(please please please let there be a Zero Punctuation review of this soon hehehe)

Superfrog ruled. Yes, do Superfrog. Kind of liked Body Blows too.

"I'm sorry about that!"

How come really bad reviews always make me want to play the game more than an so-so ones?

Probably not for very long though :)

Great idea, getting Ellie to review a sexist game like this. I'll just have to assume it really is as shit as she probably says, rather than sitting through the usual collection of strung out puns and/or violent self-righteous aggression it no doubt oozes...

;)

What the fuck is wrong with "dreadlocks on white people"?

Another terrible exploitation of the Larry name, as expected.

What I ask myself, how much sense does it make to develop a successor to a game that has nothing to do with it? Afaik both MCL and BOB stay away from the characters and style of the original Larry games, heck, the developers of MCL shouldn't even play them!

Sooo....why use the name anyway? To piss off the fans?
I don't see any common sense in there. You use an established brand name, an intellectual property because you have an audience with it that will surely buy your product, so the risk of failure isn't that high. But if it gets clear that you just misuse, exploit the name and that the follow-up product has nothing to do with the former ones......well, then you lost the bonus of using an established IP. Maybe the customers will be so uninformed that they might buy the product anyway, but they will be disappointed and angry and probably swear to never buy a product from you again!

So why not make something totally new? Well, I guess you can't piss the fans off then, if that's a negative...

and people wonder why she likes Star Wars 1 - 3?? All this exposure to sh*t has warped her for life.

I don't associate Team17 with LSL, so I wouldn't write off Alien Breed as a result. Surprised to see thats what you were up to though!
I'd love to see T17 hit PSN with some short, sharp classy titles...

needs more parallax scrolling

"Sometimes when I am driving on the road at night I have the sudden impulse to turn into the path of the oncoming car as I anticipate the sound of shattering glass and the flames rising out of the flowing gasoline."

What movie is this quotefrom? I recognised it as the sample from the start of the Jawbreaker song Jet Black and it's bugging me now.

Just give me a PSN re-release of leisure suit larry 1, 2 and 3, with the original Roland MT32 music as background music. I loooooved those games! And no(t just the) pointy-clicky either, I want to be able to type in cuss-words and get cussed back at using my bluetooth keyboard! Someone, make it happen! :)

Either that, or give the franchise to Rockstar and let them make remakes using the GTA IV engine. Heck, with the taxis, prostitutes, bars, muggers and what-not, the games are almost the same already anyway, except the humor (and the thousands of ways of dying - I haven't enjoyed dying in any other games as much, ever - well, some deaths in Space Quest maybe but that's cheating) would undoubtedly improve over the GTA games even if they just used all the original scripts.

How amazing was it to finally have made it to that prostitute, only to later walk gleefully on the pavement outside the bar and then collapse and die from a venerial disease? And then the underground larry factory that pops another one back out - just brilliant!

Does anyone else think it's a coincidence that adventure gaming died along with text-input? ;) In these days of voice and text-chatting on consoles, they definitely need to bring it back. The interface is there ... use it! The PS3 pad would be perfect, including the mouse pointer thingy.

(I could live with the VGA remake graphics by the way, using the art-style they used for LSL V as well - that wasn't bad at all. Can the original drawings be scanned in with higher fidelity? That would be awesome, also for the painted space quest onces, they were gorgeous)

spadge: interesting to hear your thoughts on this, but I do believe it's quite a serious matter to deliver substandard games. Team 17 used to be an important brand to some of us oldtimers on here, but such brand awareness and appreciation can only be kept at a high level if you keep delivering top-quality product. It has a price to push substandard games onto the market, even if that price may not be evident on the day of release.

I guess it goes without saying that I didn't like Worms 3D or 4 all that much by the way, and Worms Open Warfare for DS was a disappointment. The Lemmings games on PSP/PS3 were fine though, and the XBLA Worms was good too.

Funny, on the front page, Larry looks like a video game version of Basshunter. Another sex-obsessed, humourless prick.

@ Accident Prone:

It's from Annie Hall: A young Christopher Walken in fact.

@CountFapula: Yes.

oerhört, I don't think we, nor any developer sets off with that intention. You have to be in it to understand the whys and wherefores. It was totally in our interest to try and make the best of it (why wouldnt it be?) but not every situation lends itself.

Seriously why do you give a shit game so much attention

2/10, not even close. From a male gamer's perspective, this game is at least 5/10. For one thing, the graphics for a game in this genre is pretty damn cool. The dialogue is freakin' hilarious. One of the downfalls of this LSL title compared to the previous ones is that you cannot talk to anyone besides the characters that you have to talk to for or during a mission. You can't just doodle your way up to some random npc and start chatting with them. Another major downfall is the much toned down adult humor of the franchise. Yeah, you see chicks with big boobs and tight clothes on. That's about it. And I really miss the wacky dildo character from the past LSL titles.

If you're looking for something to past time, pick this one up for a rental. To Ellie, if you really want to review a sexist game, you should play and review BoneTown. It's just like LSL but much more adult oriented.

I am in a strange position. I am someone who QUITE LIKED Magna Cum Laude. Sure it was just a collection of fairly poor minigames, but I thought it was a very competent sex comedy. Well-written, well-voice-acted, and genuinely funny.

So it was annoying at the time to read all the terrible reviews. It was very obvious that the gaming press thinks it natural to hate these games, just BECAUSE they are crude sex comedies. Like the journo rulebook says: "Sex games can never get good scores. Think the worst while you play them." There were only a couple of reviewers who had the balls to go against the grain and praise Magna Cum Laude... none of them mainstreamers. Guys like Rab at Consolevania liked it.

So...

This review is a bit useless because it doesn't tell me the main thing I want to know:

How does it compare to Magna Cum Laude, considering that I enjoyed the script, voice acting, and general tone of Magna Cum Laude?

Incidentally, we were restricted to mainly adult script (no "tits and ass") given that Walmart wouldn't stock the game if it had any nudity, whilst profanity is fine. We don't make the rules on this, we just had to abide by what the publisher wanted. It's bizzare I know, but them's the rules of modern US society.

@CountFapula

Well shit, I hope you're the model fucking human then. Oh how I aspire to look just as flawless as you.

Might have known there'd be at least one shit-minded bigot around here.

"it's not fun to play and it's less erotic than psoriasis"

Oh yeah, let's have a go at psoriasis sufferers now, coz they haven't suffered enough!

Bastards.

"no"

most epic caption ever.

"This review is a bit useless because it doesn't tell me the main thing I want to know:

How does it compare to Magna Cum Laude, considering that I enjoyed the script, voice acting, and general tone of Magna Cum Laude?"

I was equally annoyed when Bed Monthly reviewed the "Mystic Meditation Bed O'Nails" and gave it their worst score ever - 62%.
The review did not even consider the question: "if you are a fan of sleeping fitfully and painfully, will this bed deliver the luxury you deserve?"

I mean, is no-one but me stupid enough to like hateful and unpleasant experiences designed purely for the lowest common denominator? Does no-one want to see Rise of the Robots 2???

I can't help but wonder when the next classic Sierra series will be brutally, err, brutalized.