Al Lowe's Review Of Magna Cum Laude...
 

Okay, this didn't really upset me, but yeah I pretty much agree with everything he said having played the game and cheating...

TAKEN FROM http://allowe.com/Larry/MCL.htm

What About Magna Cum Laude?
Hundreds of you have asked my opinion of Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude. Although I have yet to finish the game, I have seen quite a bit of it.
Truth be told, I may never finish it.

But here's my initial impression, and I promise to update this page as I progress through the game.

First Impressions Count
I expected worse, especially after reading the many reviews across the Net. MetaCritic.com reports that MCL's reviews across the Net have averaged 64, on a scale of 100.
Differences It is not Larry 8! Even though VU calls it a "Leisure Suit Larry game," Leisure Suit Larry's only role is a cameo as the "help voiceover." It is not an adventure game.There are no real puzzles, no interactive dialog, no narrator, no character develop-ment, and nearly no plot. Much of the dialogue is uninspired and trite. There's more profanity in the first scene than in all the previous Larry games combined. Women cuss like sailors. The F-word is repeated so often the writers must have used a macro. The plentiful load screens show cheesy photographs of average-looking college-aged women who don't look sexy, but rather, ill-at-ease.


Similarities The protagonist is a loser named Larry who has trouble scoring with women. The game works hard, usually too hard, to reference earlier Larry games. Like Larry Laffer, it seems to desperately want to fit in. The animation is 3D and wonderfully jiggly. (Actually, "pendulous" would be a better word; most of these breasts are too large to jiggle.) There's some humorous dialogue. And it's more than bawdy enough.

But… All this ignores the glaring disaster of those damned mini-games! They're distracting, repetitive, and boring. Who wants to play lame arcade games that wouldn't be fun even on a GameBoy? Not even this game's giant breasts are worth this slog.

MCL is definitely unlike the other Larry games.

Bottom Line
Those who seek 3D boobs, profanity, and fart jokes will be pleased.

Those who fondly remember the earlier games will be severely disappointed.

I have yet to play any Larry games, and would like to try them, but I definately know this is not one of them. Every time I go to IGN I get these gigantic boobies thrown at me, and it makes me sick. I feel like I'm browsing a porn website. Are male gamers really such pigs? I enjoy female leads and characters in games not because how of they look, but because of who they are. In BS, Nico is just awesome. She is strong willed, independent, and has a unique personality. The same goes for characters such as Yuna from FFX, and Laura Croft from Tomb Raider. I don't see anything wrong with female characters displaying their assets (or males :devil: ), but I do have a problem when women are just thrown around as sex objects, like in MCL ads.

Sorry for the rant, it has been building up

Al Lowe hit the nail on the head...the game may have a protagonist named Larry, but it's really not a Larry game. What made the previous games so funny was the fact that Larry was so naive, when he thought he was a stud. The majority of the games even had him fail in some wacky way before anything even happened...but in a way that led him to believe he had "scored". The new game lacks any of that subtlety, and is just too "in your face" to be fun.

Having said that, I'm glad he wasn't involved on this project. It would have been an insult to the classics he DID create. When I started playing the new one, I had a very positive attitude, expecting it to gain momentum as I played. Now, nearly 2 weeks later, I kinda feel like Al Lowe does...I might finish it, might not. It's too bad they sacrificed humor for vulgarity.

Bring back Larry 8!!

Tiger; The rant is welcomed as you made some good points but I find it very interesting you mentioned Lara Croft as a positive female figure. She was designed to be an 'empowered woman' in Toby Gard's vision but since then has gone to the status of becoming sort of like a digital pin up girl or an adolescent boy’s fantasy of a woman to join the ranks with many girls in fighting games who appear to be empowering woman on one hand but on the other they're optimized with features such as 'breast jiggling' obviously there for oogling. I think Magna Cum Laude is at least decent in obviously admitting they're objectifying women and not trying to blur the line pretentiously.

It's still got horrible game play though. :P

Al Lowe's Magna Cum Laude Comments
 

http://www.allowe.com/Larry/MCL.htm
Discuss

He says this game is for fans of 3D boobies, cussing and fart jokes...
Sounds like it will be a hit with the mainstream gamers... :rolleyes:

So in the end LSL:MCL is like Mario Party Pr0n... :P

I guess that's why the next game IS a "party" game...

It may be a good thing if people stop playing "I kill you" games and start playing "naughty" games, but for some strange reason the media prefers violence over sex... :shifty:

I'd rather be "grabbed" than stabbed... Wouldn't you?

Hmm... depends on who is grabbing :P

Fabulous. They have made Larry precisely the thing it never was but always got the heaviest flak for supposedly being: nothing but pornography. And apparently the crappiest imaginable kind at that.

As for the target audience, I'm reminded of those nauseating beach volley games - with cartoon "babes" (right) on the cover - that I can't imagine anyone ever buying off our local store's shelf, only I can imagine only too many subhumans going for this Vivendi crap because it stands on the headstone of a solid game series.

Just goes to show that you can't make a halfway decent game if the designers haven't got a single iota of either brain or maturity to spread around between them.

Give me games 1-3 and 5-7 any day, the ones that did have plenty of genuine creative talent behind them (Al Lowe for one, of course, but also plenty of others).

This is the one that should have gone missing instead of The Missing Floppies. :pan: :pan: :pan: :pan:

i just see it as a failed attempt to blow some new life into the LSL series...

too bad though, loved the humor in those games...

I can't even imagine what Al Lowe must be feeling right now :frown:

I've merged the two threads, since they are both about same thing.

I've pretty much said everything you can about this game already (here for instance).
Good to know that Al is feeling the same. :)

Well no one is buying the newest one right? I mean, they're already creating an uncut edition which they would only make once sales of the first edition slow down, and I didn't even see MCL when I was at Best Buy (I doubt it sold out)

Well, I hate to say it, but my fears about it not being an actual Leisure Suit Larry game were true, so I'm definitely not going to ask for this game for Christmas. :frown:

P.S. It was nice to read Al Lowe's impressions about this game, though. :)

This little review of Al's really makes me have more respect and appreciation for the original Larry games.

Well, while I agree wholeheartedly with him, I'm not so sure if the developers appreciates badmouthing from the creator of the series. I'm pretty sure Ron Gilbert have some strong opinions on Escape from Monkey Island too, but letting it out in such a manner wouldn't gain him any more respect from me. The way Al Lowe spoke of Magma Cum Laude is a bit unfair to the developers of the game. I would at least be a bit offended...

Hey man, these guys took his creation and took away everything that made it good and excluded him from taking any part in the proccess. How would you feel?

Quite frankly I've never seen Al Lowe rant like this, they've clearly screwed with his baby and I doubt the developers are going to lose any sleep over this generally because everything that is missing from the game is what they smugly claimed was slowing down the series. Remember, the purpose of this game was an experiment to move away from Sierra’s old adventure franchise to another genre altogether that is more marketable to today’s modern audience. (NOTE: And just to tell you, Vivendi have been trying to do this for a while now, you don’t think it was Al Lowe’s idea to postpone LSL8 for Larry’s Casino do you?) Unfortunately though, I think they’ll succeed because as another reviewer put it there simply isn’t any other game like this on the market at the moment; it’s all medieval, gothic or space related, and only the fans know they’re being short changed.

I got to try this game for a couple of hours yesterday. It's not really that bad. It starts off really lame, but gets better after the first hour or so. Some of the minigames are actually fun (unlike the main sperm one).
The 7 of 10 score is justified I think.

The graphics and especially the environments look really nice & cartoony. It's not quite cell-shading I think? I have only played XII that is cell-shaded, but this looks much better to me.

But it's definitely not a Larry game.

Micromania, Spain's most populat PC gaming mag not only gives it a good score, but it also gives it the "recommended game of the month award", which they also gave to Scrapland... :P