After a lengthy hiatus, Leisure Suit Larry is back with Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry, and this point and click veteran has managed to crawl out of the shadows of some of its former releases to offer up a genuinely amusing and well-design puzzle game. It’s not without its flaws, and the genre isn’t as popular as it used to be, but some good writing, attractive visuals, and smart choices, make this an entertaining romp.
In Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry, protagonist Larry Laffer awakes in an underground bunker to find decades have passed since he was last on the streets looking for love, and the world has changed significantly in his absence. This staging proves exceptionally smart in allowing the character to maintain his old-fashioned ‘charm’ with the humour largely coming from how the modern dating scene baffles and confuses him, while the people he encounters find him woefully outdated and out of touch. It’s a smart re-educating of a character that helps make him likeable rather than creepy as he pursues female company.
The story revolves around Larry reacquainting himself with the world and dating, and the technology and social system of the modern era, complete with tongue in cheek references and parodies to enjoy. It’s well-written too, with equally entertaining voice acting bringing characters and situations to life. It is however, very much of the same vein as it’s early predecessors, with its traditional point and click puzzle solving, copious amounts of backtracking and sexual innuendos and jokes. It’s also back to 2D, with some excellent hand-drawn visuals.
Talking with people, collecting items, then trying to apply those items to all manner of puzzles, is very much the order of the day, and the logic for solving these puzzles can get a bit obscure. Additionally, there’s a lot of backtracking to previously visited locations which can makes the title feel padded. However, it is genuinely funny, which in turn encourages you to talk to more characters and explore the locations. Indeed, Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry is very much self-aware and will laugh at itself frequently as the story unfolds.
Unfortunately, several game breaking bugs occurred during our time with Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry that hurt our enjoyment, running the gamut from dialogue buttons not working to hard crashes. Fortunately these issues were overcome with restarts, and certainly don’t ruin the overall experience, and hopefully a patch or two will smooth things out. It’s also a short game, clocking in at a couple of hours depending on how well the puzzle solving goes.
Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry offers a funny and smart point and click puzzle game with the right amount of sexual jokes and engaging story beats to keep you entertained. Furthermore, a strong control scheme that allows you to lock-on and switch between interactable objects within a scene makes this genre work well on console. And thanks to strong writing, Larry Laffer once again becomes an interesting and likeable character to enjoy.
Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry
33.49
Pros
- Great hand-drawn visuals
- Smartly written
Cons
- A bit buggy
- Lots of backtracking despite being a short game
