Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust
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 Oh, this game was a complete bust, alright!
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Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust is an action-adventure game released in 2009 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. Developed by Team17 and published by Codemasters. The Wii and mobile versions were planned but were soon cancelled. This is the eighth installment in the Leisure Suit Larry series, and the second to star Larry Laffer's nephew, Larry Lovage, as the playable protagonist after Magna Cum Laude.
Gameplay
Box Office Bust has open-world sandbox gameplay such as exploration, platforming, racing, and puzzle-solving. As with other games in the series, it features humor, attractive women, and suggestive themes, although, unlike its predecessor Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, this game does not contain nudity and sexual content despite its appeal to adult audiences. This was a decision championed by Executive Producer John Melchior, who believed that nudity was just a "mask for poor gameplay" and had stated that they (Team17) created a game with "a good solid story, clever set ups, and great pay offs."
Plot
Box Office Bust features Larry Lovage, the main character of Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, whose uncle Larry, the original Larry Laffer calls upon his assistance at his pornographic film studio (Laffer Studios), doing odd jobs and trying to uncover a mole from a rival studio who is attempting to sabotage Laffer Studios.
The storyline was written by Allen Covert of Happy Madison Productions, and the voiceover cast includes Josh Keaton as Larry Lovage, Jeffrey Tambor as Larry Laffer, Jay Mohr, Patrick Warburton, Shannon Elizabeth and Carmen Electra. Artie Lange and Dave Attell were also featured as voice characters.
Development
The game was announced by Sierra Entertainment on January 17, 2008, for release in the fall. A Mobile game was also in production from Vivendi Games Mobile.
On July 29, following Vivendi Games' merger with Activision to create Activision Blizzard, the company announced that they would only publish five Sierra titles, with Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust not being one of them, leaving the game in limbo. The game's publishing rights were bought by Codemasters in February 2009.
This is the second Larry game that was created entirely without any input from original Larry game designer and developer Al Lowe, though the character Big Al is a homage to Lowe.
Artie Lange, who voiced Big Al, said he was paid $30,000 for his 1.5-hour studio session. He has also stated that this installment has a higher budget than all the predecessors.
Why It's a Bust
- One of the main reasons for the game's poor quality and state was because it was placed within a course of development limbo once Activision purchased Vivendi Games in July 2008 and rejected the title alongside several other Sierra titles. To make note, Codemasters purchased the rights to the title in February 2009, and the game came out two months later, so this meant that Team17 had to basically rush to get the game in stores on the date Codemasters set.
- The gameplay suffers because of the game's horrible controls; platforming feels incredibly slippery (especially on narrow platforms), and combat is clunky and at times unresponsive. The latter becomes a real test of patience when the player is getting murked by multiple enemies at once, and unable to get more than two hits off due to how broken the combat mechanics are.
- The main plot is nothing to write home about; it is nothing more than "main character helps out relative, gets caught up in a plot to sabotage said relative's establishment".
- The studio lot, while pretty big, is also rather empty with only the occasional NPC walking around and very few points of interests.
- The visual gags aren't really worth noting, as they mostly consist of phallic shaped rock formations and plants, and parodied posters of famous movies. It's not even like they're trying to be clever about it either, it's just there screaming "Haha look! That cactus looks like a dick!"
- The game's dialogue is as bad as the gameplay itself. Not only does it feel like a movie produced by Happy Madison Productions but it is so badly written with absolutely no regard for subtlety whatsoever, and makes you feel like the writing team, including head writer Allen Covert (who, by the way, is a good friend of Adam Sandler and appeared in a few HMP movies), have never played any games in the series and just whipped up every sexual related thing possible.
- Almost every line of dialogue has a corny double entendre shoved in, and it just sounds unnatural.
- As mentioned above, it outright lacks the charm and charisma of the previous games. The original Leisure Suit Larry titles focused more on the sexual appeal of the title than heavy nudity and profanity. While there is no nudity or sexual content in this game (which Magna Cum Laude had both of), there is a lot of sexual dialogue and puns which frequently repeat and get old fast. Characters also frequently swear every few words to try and get cheap laughs, which ends up getting annoying real fast.
- John Melchior, the game's producer, actually said that the writing and comedy were of such high caliber that the game didn’t need nudity as a cheap tactic, despite the fact the game's humor relies on cheap tactics itself.
- Most missions are nothing more than "going from Point A to Point B" affairs with only slight variations in between. Given how slow Larry moves, how quickly he exhausts his sprint, and how infrequently vehicles appear, these often tend to be rather boring.
- The characters are all pretty unlikable, with the worst offender being Larry Lovage (Named Larry Loveage in this game for some reason) himself, who happens to be even worse than he was in Magna Cum Laude, where in this game he is portrayed as the clichéd slacker who is more interested in chasing women than doing any actual work, and even then, he lacks the charisma his uncle Larry Laffer has.
- Due to the low effort visual gags and poor dialogue, most of the game's humor falls flat. The only things that might make you smirk are the dialogue choices provided when seducing the ladies (YMMV on that, though).
- The graphics are very unimpressive at best even when running on Unreal Engine 3; the environments are colorful at least and have that exaggerated cartoony aesthetic to them which is fine, but the actual character models look atrocious. The male characters look incredibly gonkish, while the women looks as though they went overboard with the plastic surgery. Also both Larry Laffer and Lovage look nothing like they did in the previous games (even Magna Cum Laude had Laffer's original design used for Lovage) and look more like poorly hired cosplayers.
- To elaborate on the platforming elements, Larry can wall jump, ledge jump, and walk across narrow lips. All of these techniques are hindered by Larry's bad controls.
- Wall jumping can be a pain since you have to press jump after he touches the opposite wall; doing so beforehand will cause Larry to drop like a rock to the bottom of the chute, which itself is problematic because Larry takes fall damage in this game, something that is completely unnecessary in a cartoony platformer where suspension of disbelief can be thrown to the side a little.
- Ledge jumping isn't used that often, but it is functional, but even when shimmying, ledge grabbing isn't the most reliable thing in the world, and makes the player not trust the platforming.
- Tightrope/ledge walking isn't too bad an issue, since you have to try and make Larry lose his balance, but it can become an issue when the camera starts whipping around trying to give you an angle you don't want, messing with your controls in the process.
- It's also possible to accidentally soft lock the game; if you're in a vehicle, and you manage to upend yourself (nose pointing skyward), good luck getting out of said vehicle because for some reason, Larry will outright refuse to get out, even when there is nothing there to stop him doing so! Each attempt to exit the car in this state will prompt Larry to say, "Aww look at that, the exit's impossible to reach!", even when there is plenty of room for him to exit!
- The PlayStation 3 version is worse due to inferior visual quality and more severe framerate issues.
Reception
Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust is often cited as one of the worst games ever made. Most of the critic scores rate it in the ballpark of 1-3/10, often pointing to the game's poor controls, terrible sense of humor, ugly visuals, repetitive and frustrating mission structure, and non-existent appeal as the biggest sore spots. The game was nominated for a few Worst Game of 2009 "awards", but it either lost out to other bad games released that year, or at the very least received a dishonest mention, in addition to being among the lowest rated video games on websites like GameRankings and Metacritic.
Review aggregator Metacritic puts the Xbox 360 version at a 25/100, the PC version at 20/100, and the PS3 version at a dismal 17/100, while GameRankings rates the game at 26.08%, 20.22%, and 16.00%, in the same order.
Even series creator Al Lowe disparaged the game, calling it "the latest disaster" in a message he sent to Vivendi Games for keeping him away from it.
It had also damaged the reputation of the Leisure Suit Larry franchise, as it was then put on hold for five years until the remake of the first game Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded was released in 2013 and Wet Dreams Don't Dry and it's sequel Dry Twice, both released in 2020 and 2021, all receiving mixed reviews, but were more positive than this game.
Trivia
- The game was originally going to be released by Sierra Entertainment. After Activision merged with Vivendi's gaming division, the entire Leisure Suit Larry franchise was sold to Codemasters.
- As mentioned above, due to the game's poor reception, Al Lowe, the series' creator, personally thanked Vivendi Games for not giving him any involvement in the project.[2]
- Also as mentioned above, a planned Wii version of the game was scrapped due to the poor reception it has received.
- The game features some notable voice actors, including Patrick Warburton, Shannon Elizabeth, and Carmen Electra.
References
- ↑ Published under the Funsta label.
- ↑ Al Lowe's Humor Site: Box Office Bust
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