Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don't Dry Review - Sleaze Snorefest

For some inexplicable reason, Leisure Suit Larry is back. I’m not sure who asked for this, but like Larry Laffer himself, it loiters anyway, hanging around like a bad smell. Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don't Dry (good one, Larry) brings the sleazy, detestable protagonist back to his traditional point-and-click roots that surviving fans of the series are sure to enjoy.

My experience with Wet Dreams Don’t Dry was generally one of apathy. After becoming too bored to be disgusted by the awful writing, I started just wishing it was over. I thought I knew what I was getting in for at the start. Going in expecting bad sex jokes and a sleazy backdrop to every other word, the dialogue's sheer laziness caught me off guard. If it’s not a lame pun or a predictable dig at modern life and technology, then it’s someone saying something that makes me want to tear my ears out.

This game could’ve actually been something interesting. If only it had a bit more self-awareness about how much of an awful character Larry Laffer is. Not just in the lovable loser way the game tries to frame him with, but in a “this is just a poorly conceived character” kind of way. The premise is actually pretty solid. Larry ends being up hurtled through time into 2018 and finds himself in a very different world to the 1980s. There’s an opportunity for some legitimately clever stuff, but the game instead defaults to boring jokes, obvious punchlines, and the feeling that nothing's changed in the past 30 years.

The crux of the gameplay revolves around Timber, a Tinder parody. It’s not much of a parody, though,  because, well, it just is Tinder. As you can probably imagine, after acquiring a PiPhone Larry makes it his goal to have sex with everyone he sees on it. In a surprisingly progressive move, the game actually allows you to go after men, too. You can set your preferences to women, men, or both, and Larry can flirt with just about everyone he meets.

As you can probably tell by now, Wet Dreams Don’t Dry makes heavy use of bad puns. The title, a play on SWERY’s D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die, is probably the best pun in the whole game, which says it all really. Everything else ranges from bad to terrible. InstaCrap is the stand-in for Instagram and you’ll hear several mentions of Farcebook. Every time I heard a character say either of these words, a little piece of me died. It feels like the writers took a sideways glance at 2018 and thought they’d come up the most hilarious commentaries. It’s truly horrible. The game’s dull takes on modern culture, from social media to vegan hipsters, are soul-crushingly lame.

It’s not all bad, and there's a pretty well-made adventure game beyond the writing. You can get around quick using the fake Uber service “Unter” to zip from place to place. It’s a handy thing, especially when so many puzzles require you to go back and forth from different places. You spend a lot of time picking up items and trying to use or combine them with everything possible. Everything you can interact with highlights at the press of a button. The problem is that there’s far too much stuff to pick up. This means that it takes a long time to try every conceivable item, as well as every feasible-sounding combination of items when it comes time to interact with something new.

This over-reliance on trial-and-error is a classic adventure game trope. The best adventure games can make up for confusing and illogical puzzles with excellent writing. When the writing is weak and groan-worthy, it begins to fall apart. There’s just nothing to keep me going from scene to scene. No real incentive to engage with the obtuse puzzles. If you happen to enjoy the sleazy tone of the game and its low-hanging fruit style of comedy, then the quality of the game itself won’t let you down.

As far as looks go, Leisure Suit Larry graduates into the modern era pretty well. The art style works, providing the character with a vibrant backdrop. The audio design similarly accomplishes its goals. The music gets the job done, despite being a little corny and trying a little too hard to sound sexy. Voice-acting is decent, even if it occasionally grates thanks to the lines the actors are reading.

Ultimately, Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don't Dry is a perfectly fine game from a mechanical perspective. The bells and whistles of an acceptable old-school adventure game are all here. It looks good and plays just fine, with plenty of modern concessions to make the experience quicker and more convenient. The awfully lazy and boring writing is what makes it all fall apart, however. Bringing Leisure Suit Larry back in 2018 without changing the tone or quality of the writing doesn’t work all that well, it turns out. Take out all the references to modern life and this game could be 30 years old.

TechRaptor reviewed Leisure Suit Larry - Wet Dreams Don’t Dry on PC with a copy provided by the publisher.