Leisure Suit Larry is a series of games created by Al Lowe that dates back to 1987 when the first game in the series was released. Since then there have been a total of seven games, and now Codemasters has decided to release the eighth game in the series, Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust. Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust promises humor, beautiful women and suggestive themes, but just for your information, like past games this game will not contain nudity and sexual content despite its appeal for adult audiences.

The storyline was written by Allen Covert from Happy Madison Productions. Larry takes a summer job working at the movie studio of his famous uncle Larry Laffer, (the original Larry) doing odd jobs and trying to uncover a mole from a rival studio who threatens to expose the studio’s secrets to the tabloids. Trying to be incognito Larry has to pretend (probably not that hard for him to do) to be a lowly assistant who gets all of the rubbish jobs as he sets out to search for the mole.

You start out learning some of the basic controls like jumping and climbing ladders as you clean graffiti off the side of a building. I thought to myself as the mission ends what is wrong with the camera. I will go ahead tell you that a lot of the frustration caused from playing this game can be credited to the horrible camera and control systems the game has.

Most of the missions are movie based, you will have to run and jump around rooftops to collect lost script pages or drive a golf cart around delivering mail. A large majority of the levels involve fetching items which gets very repetitive. The game takes place in several locations, from the main movie studio lot to three other lots where your “dream sequences” takes place. They are the Western, Horror, and Bytanic lots.

Graphically the game doesn’t look horrible. The environments are ok, maybe a little bland for a next generation game and the character models are ok for a cartoon like character I guess. The biggest thing I saw was the frame rate issues that take place when driving around. You will notice it real bad driving fast and in the 9 races you have to complete in the game.

The audio on the hand was not too bad in my opinion. There is a very impressive voice over cast with stars like Carmen Electra, Shannon Elizabeth, Jay Mohr, Artie Lange, and Jeffrey Tambor. Of course it would not be Leisure Suit Larry without the rude jokes. Almost every line has a reference to the human anatomy and at least one curse word per sentence.

The achievements are not that tough. The collecting 100 awards is just real time consuming. I suggest looking around on the web to find a guide that will speed things up. The other tough achievements are the getting the three bulls-eyes and scoring 2800 points on shuffleboard. Takes practice and patients. The speed achievement which is beat the game under 8 hours, is not that tough but it will require you to play the game a second time through. I did everything on the first play through then came back and did just the story missions on the second play through. I guess this game does have some replay value.

Overall it’s not the worst title I have played. Many people have problems with the language but I think people have to realize that’s what the title is shooting for, mature and very offensive, but funny humor. I won’t say every joke was funny but you will get some laughs. Maybe you just have to have the right mind set before you start the game. The graphics were ok on the eye but had some frame rate issues. The voice over cast made the audio nice. The only replay value is from just trying to get all the achievements. I have played the Leisure Suit Larry series for many years and that’s why with a heavy heart I give it a 5.0 and say I just wish you were better. I love you Larry!