Now for something completely different. I'm going to be honest with you. This game is here for pure nostalgia and because it's funny as hell, but I can objectively say that several games that have come before are better titles. Why this is here is largely due to the nostalgia of my father's bad parenting (I was about eight or nine when the version I played came out) and the fun memories of being over at his place playing this game and asking him a bunch of unfortunate questions that all parents dread to hear their kids ask. With that said, I do feel a bit guilty of placing this here after going through four solid titles. So I may end up dropping this a bit lower on the list in the end, and remind people that the list is transient at best until you reach the top ten.
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards is a remake of an old softcore porn game that largely scaled back the "porn" aspect and amped the humor like any good text adventure game. Considering it's unfortunate origins, Larry feels more like a raunchy 80s college comedy about a guy who wants to find true love, or at least get laid while trying. That or Johnny Bravo for adults. To say this game is considered politically incorrect in today's age is an understatement, but the game makes up for it for the delightful narration, quirky black comedy antics that befall the cosmic chew toy that Larry is, and how much this game often makes fun of itself for how utterly juvenile the whole premise is. Fun fact, Al Lowe, the creative genius behind Larry and remake got his start making compute edutainment games based on Disney titles. So yeah...
As I said, Larry is basically the original forty year old virgin. He still thinks the Disco era is in full swing and Leisure Suits are a thing, he tells the ladies that he's looking for love after his old lady kicked him out of their place, but fails to mention that the "old lady" is his mom, and that this happened maybe two months ago. The game makes it abundantly clear that Larry is a loser and that his purpose in the game is kind of misguided. You're given eight hours to help Larry find his dream girl, otherwise, he'll kill himself. Dark I know, but considering the more fun ways to get him killed, chances are, you won't see this ending.
You spend the majority of the game traveling a poorly veiled expy of Las Vegas looking for a girl to be Larry's true love and wooing them with words and gifts, though considering Larry has the worst pick up lines and this is an adventure game, it's mostly the second option. Most of these end disastrously for Larry. The girl at the club forces Larry into a sham marriage and then steals all of his stuff while leaving him tied naked to the hotel bed, the second girl ditches him for her real boyfriend, and you can only see the good ending by finding and romancing Eve, a doctor you meet at ritzy hotel.
The real charm in the game is the old adventure game element of dialogue from looking at various items in the game, the text is hilarious and the narrator and cast will take every opportunity to poke fun at Larry. There's an amusing scene where Larry needs to pick up a "Lubber" to get with a prostitute involves answering a ton of questions, of which half of it doesn't really have anything to do with, and the convenience story clerk as well as all of his patrons making fun of you for how perverted you are.
Going back to my statement about uncomfortable questions and Larry's amusing deaths, this is actually the game that taught me both what a condom and STD were. Because if you "do the deed" with the prostitute without protection, Larry contracts an STD and explodes, fanciful yes, but it gets the message across about "no glove, no love". You also get arrested if you don't remove it since apparently Larry always forgets to zip his pants up. My favorite death is flushing the toilet at Lefty's Bar, where it overflows and drowns you. When Larry dies and you press continue, the floor opens up and reassembles a new Larry for you by dropping him in a blender and sending the Larry Shake through a machine to make a new one. It's amusing and never really grew old for me.
My other favorite part was that you had to answer a bunch of questions to even start the game, most of them designed to weed out young kids (or at least ones without negligent parents) from people of the "proper age" to play this. So a lot of questions are entertainment trivia questions about old actors and musicians, but some contain hilarious jokes mocking the development team. Hell just stating you're too young or old to be playing the game offers some really funny text from the game.
It's a funny if quirky game that definitely falls into the "product of it's time" way of thinking. It actually did get a remake recently thanks to a kickstarter campaign which surprised the hell out of me, especially since the newer games (about Larry's even more pathetic nephew) are generally panned by everyone, including fans of the series. Yes, I did say series, the game spawned like eight sequels not including the ones about the nephew, and it contains my favorite joke in gaming. Al Lowe vowed to never make a Leisure Suit Larry 4 after 3, so the next game is actually labeled "5" and the plot revolves around a The Hangover style story where Larry has to remember what actually happened in the unmade 4. It's a quirky series indeed.
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