Developer: Sierra Entertainment
Rrp: £4.49 (Gog.com) £4.79 (Steam)
Sometimes there’s nothing I like more than to play a point and click adventure game, I have fond memories of playing the likes of The Dig and Discworld 2: Mortality Bytes and sometimes I’ll go back to them. Sadly, what I played here was not a game like those, in fact this might be the worst I’ve ever played. The word puerile doesn’t begin to describe this game. I will admit I did have some knowledge of this game before even booting it up, the Leisure Suit Larry games aren’t exactly known for their subtlety but I didn’t expect it to be utterly insufferable.
It just tries so hard to be funny, every object that can be interacted with has some ‘funny’ comment about it. Oh, and we can’t forget that the cursor is a condom… hohoho how funny, because sex amirite.
To make matters worse the way the game plays is just… awful. One specific mechanic that it has I found just frustrating, which is the ‘other’ option. You see, if you right click and object you get to pick from a few options; look, push, take etc. However they also have included one called ‘other’ if you select that it brings up a text box for you to write a simple one word instruction. The thing is how are you supposed to know what to do there? This sort of game is well known for working with ‘moon logic’ (which basically means that the answer for the puzzle isn’t obvious unless you know exactly what the creator was thinking at the time) so giving the player a text box where you could put virtually anything in isn’t helpful.
I understand that this game is from back in 1996 and at the time there wasn’t an ‘accepted’ way of implementing systems and mechanics, which meant that every studio came up with their own way of doing things. However, Lucasarts had released Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle and The Dig by the time this came out, and I don’t believe that they patented the way that way those games were interacted with (especially since many other companies made games that worked in a similar manner). Which says to me that Sierra just made it work differently because they could.
Honestly, I say give this game a pass. Some games age well and are still a joy to play, others have something unique about them that keep you coming back. This one though? It makes me regret the time I spent with it.
