How do you resurrect a raunchy sex-comedy adventure game icon of the ’80s and ’90s for 2018? I had kept wondering that before finally getting a review copy of Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry.
 |
| A lot of the best dialog moments come from interacting with Lefty – the long-time proprieter of Lefty’s Bar, who’s seen all the changes in the world in the past 30 years. |
The answer is, “very blandly.”
Here’s the thing: a Larry game set in 2018 should have been comedy gold. And with the right writing team willing to take some heat, I think it could have been. This is the Era of That’s Not Funny, where men can be women if they feel like it, consent videos are a thing, and half of millennials think that just asking someone in the office out on a date is sexual harassment.
Or, to be fair, if the writers wanted to take this on from a left-wing, SJW angle, there’s plenty of easy targets in incels, MGTOW, and pick-up artists to mock.
Unfortunately, what we got was a blandly competent adventure game with whatever bits of humor are unlikely to offend anyone. It still probably isn’t enough to avoid some group or other getting offended.