In a move that will delight dozens and leave millions feeling completely ambivalent, CodeMasters announced over the weekend that they would publish Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust for the XBox 360, PS3, and PC this April (thanks Big Download). The title fell into what can best be described as a mericful limbo during the Activision-Blizzard merger, but most people were justifiably more concerned with the future of Ghostbusters than playing as the progeny of a washed-up PC adventure gaming celebrity. With a main character who doesn't even wear the titular leisure suit (how many people still know what the hell this is and what it signifies) and looks like he fell out of an anime, Box Office Bust is sure to garner attention from no one except old-school Larry fans who'd love nothing more than to see this game wiped from existence.
The continued existence of the Leisure Suit Larry games has always been more than a little inexplicable to me--sort of like when Uwe Boll makes movies based on properties about half a decade after they've peaked. To be completely honest, most of the Larry games--as with nearly the entire Sierra catalog--are nigh unplayable today, so it's not like a re-release of the oldies will bring gamers screaming back to the franchise. I may be a LucasArts adventure gaming brat, but there's something evil about those Sierra adventure games, almost as if the designers have seething contempt for you from the second you start playing.
I'm sure a company like TellTale could make a worthy Larry adventure that's tolerable to our modern gaming tastes, but until then, we're going to get confused hybrids like Box Office Bust and Magna Cum Laude--which haven't even been touched by Larry creator/mastermind Al Lowe. I've never been the biggest fan of Lowe's humor, but it seems odd that these modern Larry games don't throw the old dude a bone and let him come back to the series that made him famous--to nerds, anyway.
If you're the least bit curious about the Larry series, the amazing Hardcore Gaming 101 has an extremely-comprehensive retrospective on the franchise. It's definitely worth reading.
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