Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out!

The Good
Despite its appealing looks, Larry 5 was one of the weakest adventure games Sierra has ever produced. The glory of the franchise seemed to have become a thing of the past. But the developers did their homework, learned from their mistakes, pulled themselves together, and eventually delivered a triumphant game seriously contending for the title of the best in the series.

Larry 6 is everything its predecessor was not: it is large, difficult, very funny, and rich in interaction and exploration. Discarding any unnecessary changes and experiments, the game goes back to the convenient formula introduced by the very first outing: you are given a selection of accessible areas you can visit in any order and try to woo the attractive young women populating them. Just like in the initial episode, all the puzzles form an interconnected system, where you'll need to please several female characters until you get the crucial items required for the "boss girl" and the grand finale.

Yes, Larry 6 is unoriginal, but it is often so that originality comes at the expense of quality, and - on the contrary - following a trodden path may eventually bring you to perfection. Whatever Larry 6 does, it does better than any of its predecessors. First of all, it is a big game. Its only location, a resort hotel with a spa, may come across as a disappointment after the urban exploration of the earlier games - that is, until you actually begin exploring, at which point you start noticing that the game's world is bigger than in any of its predecessors. There are various facilities, rooms, beach, outside area - and all those places are packed with items, people, and interesting things to do.

You are able to visit any area of the game world right from the beginning, which makes Larry 6 the most open-ended installment of the series. The upsides of this structure are obvious: not only you are virtually unrestricted in the satisfaction of your curiosity - you are also free to tackle the puzzles at any pace you want. If you feel you are stuck on one task, try exploring more and you're guaranteed to find something to work on. Most objectives can also be solved out of a particular order, which means that the game allows you to play it the way you want to, without forcing particular sequences down your throat and only interfering for humorous cutscenes that occur once you've successfully seduced a girl.

The puzzles have received a tremendous boost. Larry 6 has by far the best puzzles in the series so far, boasting a nigh immaculate system with convoluted, intricate tasks woven together in a clever and yet appropriately twisted, comedic way. There are even some puzzles that can be solved through different methods. Sierra decided to get rid of dead ends, and the death scenes in the game are purely for humorous purposes. They have wisely understood that the days of death-ridden, simple adventures were gone, and, after the hiccup that the preceding game was, devised a puzzle tree worthy of a competition with the best oeuvres produced by their rivals.

At the same time, Sierra kept and enhanced what always gave their games a certain edge over LucasArts' creations - interactivity and text descriptions. Larry 6 is beautifully responsive and heavy on interaction. Even the most mundane, generic actions elicit unique responses. Trying out illogical, ridiculous actions has always been one of the greatest pleasures in those games for me, and Larry 6 shines as one of the very best examples of this. There is more text than ever, longer and more elaborate descriptions, and much longer dialogues that make the game livelier, "tastier", and more energetic than the earlier entries. The humor is also back with vengeance, and the writing is generally among the finest I've seen in a comedy adventure.

As always, this Larry installment is a pleasure for the senses. The high-resolution CD version is the definitive edition of the game, with its enhanced soundtrack and crisp graphics far surpassing the somewhat blurry images of the floppy release. This version also adds, for the first time in the series, full voice-overs, which are excellent. The omnipresent narrator steals the show with his sarcastic wit.

The Bad
Larry 6 is quite unoriginal. It takes what made the series tick and doesn't attempt to breach the boundaries. What the game offers is good traditional adventure gameplay and comedy; it doesn't try to do anything beyond that. There are no political conspiracies this time, no love affairs, no KGB, no FBI, no tragic situations in which the hero should either lose his virginity or die. Just walking around in a spa, gazing at women in bikinis and scratching your head while trying to figure out how to charm them.

The designers made a conscious choice of opening the playground to you right away. The downside of this is a certain lack of dynamism. The game is very laid-back and there are no real surprises: you know you won't leave the area and there will be no new place to visit until the game ends. This also affects the plot, which is nearly non-existent: "please several women in humorously inventive ways" pretty much sums it all up. Also, I know that most people were happy that Patti was gone, but throwing her out of the series without a single hint of an explanation created an unpleasant feeling that all your previous adventures were meaningless.

The Bottom Line
Larry 6 is a splendid recovery from the preceding game's effort to knock the disco lover's crown off his balding head. Dropping all pretenses, it returns to shape by sticking to what works, clearing the field for humor, hormones, and - above all - excellent gameplay.

The Good
For the life of me, I don't know why people considered Leisure Suit Larry 5 so weak. I enjoyed the game and couldn't find any flaws, apart from the password protection and non-death scenarios. Anyway, for LSL6 - and once more in the last game - Al Lowe follows the same tradition that Roberta Williams took when it comes to using puns in the titles (this game's subtitle is a pun of Shape Up or Ship Out).

LSL6 sees Larry participating in a dating show called “Stallions”. He has no idea about the rules of the game, and ends up confusing the show with the likes of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. Nevertheless, he manages to win a two-week vacation at the La Costa Lotta health spa. I liked when Larry participated in “The Dating Connection” from Leisure Suit Larry 2 better, because at least you had control of what Larry says; and no matter what the answer was, you win yourself a trip on the computer game equivalent of The Love Boat. But I digress.

The first thing I noticed is the impressive interface. The playing area has now shrunk down to make way for the icon bar, score, and inventory. There are about eight items you can see at one time; and if there are more than eight, arrows appear at the side that let you scroll through the inventory. The red and purple background blends well with this bottom half of the interface. The top half of the interface is reserved for the menus which look like the ones from the earlier LSL games, giving the game a more nostalgic feel.

Unlike previous Larry instalments where the action takes place in multiple locations, the game is restricted to just one. However, La Costa Lotta is quite big, and there is plenty to see and do there. There are plenty of “babes” that you have to meet and interact with, and give them gifts to progress through the game. Larry's ultimate goal is to find the woman of his dreams, but doing this will not be as easy as it seems.

There are two versions of LSL6. The disk version of the game uses the low-resolution SCI1.1 engine that Sierra games have been using for quite some time. Not only does the CD-ROM version feature the same engine with full speech throughout the game, but it also has an updated version that has gorgeous graphics. You also get to see Larry's ugly mug all throughout the game. I prefer the version with the older engine. I feel that this version is more cluttered and has too much pink in the interface. In my opinion, the SCI1.1 version gives the game a more nostalgic look when it comes to the menus and the dialog boxes.

The puzzles in LSL6 are not that difficult, and mainly involve you talking to a girl completely to find out what she wants, then finding the item somewhere in the hotel. Not all girls want you to get an item, though. In one situation, you need to fix the Cellulite Drainage Salon so that the girl at the front desk can tone down her figure. Most of the girls will leave something behind that will help you with the final girl.

There is a lot of humor in the game. Just clicking every icon on everything provides a hilarious response, or something that will lead to Larry's death. My favorite is clicking the zipper icon on the hotel's towel attendant. Neil Ross, the narrator who did Freddy Pharkas as well, is just as funny in this game. Then there are those kinky situations and unexpected conclusions. In my opinion, the best scene is where Larry goes bungee-jumping naked and against the side of the hotel tower.

The soundtrack in LSL6 is excellent. The main background piece is reminiscent to a certain elevator music from Police Quest IV, except that it is longer. Other than that, the music in the game ranges from easy listening to techno. My favorite is the piece that plays when Larry gets it on with a girl, and the way a note gets added to it as you give items to her is quite neat. Also, the music that plays when Larry gets out to the beach at night is excellent as well.

Other neat features that I like include the window that reminds you to save you game, which you can choose how long before you get a reminder again. Finally, I like how the random video clips seen in the ending demonstrates the power of the SCI2 engine; it is a precursor to Sierra's own interactive movies such as Phantasmagoria and Gabriel Knight 2. The same sort of engine can also be seen in the SCI1.1 release, but it struggles a bit when the same video clips are used.

The Bad
I agree with the other reviewers in pointing out that LSL6 is quite unoriginal. What you have to do is basically the same as in Larry's previous adventures: give a woman what she wants, and she'll show her appreciation. Only this time, there is no making out or sex involved. Also, the game intends to crash when you do certain things you don't even need to do, like trying to steal handcuffs from a security guard's belt without adjusting the cameras first.

The Bottom Line
LSL6 is the best Larry game that I have played. It has fantastic visuals and an excellent soundtrack. It has plenty of things you can do, even in a limited area. There are a lot of neat features, and the game should provide plenty of laughs. However, Sierra has decided to go for the “Larry goes round each area looking for a root” objective seen plenty of times already; and this makes the game a bit boring.

If you have a machine with a CD-ROM drive in it, make sure to get the CD version of the game; as well as full speech, you will also get two releases for the price of one. I think Sierra has two versions on the CD because they probably felt that some users were incapable of running the newer engine.

The Good
A great game, Larry 6 features better graphics than either of the first, excellent background music, great jokes and great, no-bullshit gameplay. With improved inteface and game engine, the Windows version features voiceovers which are actually quite good (a lot better than in Larry 7).

The Bad
It tends to crash, and that's annoying.

The Bottom Line
A bizarre-o adventure game you gotta love.

The Good
After the pretty but oh-so crappy Larry 5, I expected the next installment in the series to suck royaly. Fortunately for everyone, Larry (and Al Lowe) learned from his mistakes and came back in full puzzling glory and taking full advantage of the new technological advances to provide a much more extensive adventure experience. There are now 9 babes to conquer, and the spotlight is set entirely on Larry, which of course means no Patty, but lets face it folks: Larry wasn't made to be tied down with the ol' balls & chain :)

The puzzles are among the best in the Larry franchise, and there are some pretty wild ones here, unfortunately their difficulty often comes from their lack of logic (like the one were you have to make yourself a thong), but regardless of that, Larry 6 manages to be one of the best adventure games of it's time, and the digitized ending, though ripped right out of the Naked Gun, is still immensely fun to watch. As is the game to play through, with excellent comedy writing and some fantastically funny moments. Larry truly made amends with the world after the debacle of it's previous outing, and that takes a VERY good game.

The Bad
The only problem in Larry 6 comes from the same reason most of it's good points come from. It's bigger and badder than ever, thus the cliches and the re-using of the same old tired formula becomes even more evident. The plot is the same as always: get to "score" with the girls, which fortunately means to just give them a specific item (man, if it were only half as easy on real life!!), with your main objective being to nail the "ultimate" girl that requires an item you get after nailing all the other sub-chicks. Obviously, all of the adventures with the previous girls turn out rather badly for Larry, but the final chick gets to be Larry's big payoff....

Sound familiar?

The Bottom Line
Larry is bigger, badder and way more funny!! Slightly illogical and definitively unoriginal, but still funny as hell. A must for every adventure fan with a politically incorrect, and sexually active sense of humor.