Leisure Suit Larry Goes Looking for Love (In Several Wrong Places)

The Good
The graphics, music & sound effects are all improved from the original thanks to Sierra's SCI engine. Some of the jokes & visual effects are funny & clever.

The Bad
The biggest problem with this game is WHY is Larry doing any of the things he is doing? In the first game, the objective was simple: get Larry laid. All the actions & jokes stemmed from that. In this game, Larry has no idea what is happening. SPOILERS Larry goes into a shop & gets an onklunk (?) which holds secrets wanted by the KGB. The KGB chase Larry for the rest of the game & many of the puzzles or traps involve getting past their agents. Larry never has any idea why they are chasing him. He never finds out about the macguffin that he carries. So the whole game is just a bunch of stuff that happens. Any time he tries to 'score' with a woman it's a trap so the sex comedy feel of the first game is gone as well. Many of the puzzles are of the 'die until you know what to do' type. There are also sequences where you must have certain items or you will die later in the game. This all becomes very tedious very quickly as the player must save-scum his way to the end.

The Bottom Line
Leisure Suit Larry was a hit because it was simple & funny. The sequel tries hard to be bigger & better in every way but poor puzzle design & tedious sequences make it a chore to get through, with little of the sex comedy vibe of the original. Once again don't believe the hype of the sequel.

The Good
Compared with Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, Larry II has a lot more humour, better puzzles and a more involving storyline (as if Larry I actually has one). The weird thing is that it really isn't about sex at all (well, the title of the game does state that Larry goes looking for love in several wrong places, and this is very true). Instead, it has a hilarious James Bond-type plot, although Larry himself remains blissfully unaware of this through most of the game. (Now that I'm writing this I actually realize how brilliant the plot actually is, and how well the character of Larry Laffer fits in - or vice versa.)

The hi-res EGA graphics are the usual Sierra quality, with nice animation and really funny visual humour at times (the barber scenes are one of the best running gags in Sierra games). There is also a screen where Larry has to navigate a narrow path running along the side of a cliff, but - lo and behold - you can't die by falling off! Parts where you can't die by falling off something are always worthy of notice in Sierra adventures.

The Bad
All right, so the plot is brilliant, but I remember, when playing the game, I was more concerned with the puzzles than with the plot, so this is a bit unbalanced (I guess if you wanted to be nice you could say it was a puzzle-oriented adventure). I can't say I didn't like the storyline, though.

The sound in this game is really poor considering what the AdLib card could do, for there is no music most of the time, and the sound effects are only so-so. (Larry III was a big improvement in this area.)

And if anyone was wondering, no, I did not like the fact that you can die in the game, but as with all older Sierra titles, I can't say this bothered me to any great degree back when I first played the game (and nowadays I can't die because I know the game too well).

The Bottom Line
This is by far one of Sierra's best adventure games, and if you don't mind the dirty jokes and "pixelated nudity" (for fellow Europeans, in the States bare breasts are perceived as nudity), this is certainly one classic game to check out.

The Good
Outstanding storyline -- good job working a spy story in with Larry's normal pursuits. Puzzles that aren't too easy and aren't too hard. Decent graphics and sound. And... it's gosh darn funny. So many hilarious ways to die!

The Bad
Can't think of much... there are some parts where time (i.e. real-time) is a factor, and that can be kind of annoying if you're stuck somewhere.

The Bottom Line
Lots of fun... sort of a twisted version of "Forrest Gump".