Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry Review

Despite my love for adventure titles on the NES like Shadowgate, Uninvited, and Princess Tomato, our family did not grow up with a PC in the ‘90s. Sadly, I missed out on classic LucasArts and Sierra adventure titles like Monkey Island, Full Throttle, and Sam & Max. Being a typical male teenager in the late ‘90s, one series that I always wanted to play was the adult-themed Leisure Suit Larry games. I avoided the games that were released on home consoles, Magna Cum Laude and Box Office Bust, due to the appalling reviews. I was shocked that a new title, Wet Dreams Don’t Dry, was coming to the Nintendo Switch. After all these years I was able to experience this notorious series for the first time.

This game starts off with the ‘hero’ Larry Laffer waking up in the present day 21^st century. He finds his favorite bar, Lefty’s, and quickly realizes he is no longer in the late ‘80s and somehow has been transplanted 30 years in the future. Larry is simply a hopeless, unattractive middle-aged loser, whose entire mind revolves around sex. Aside from having no filter and little shame, he is now an utter dinosaur and must adapt to all the new technology of today. After getting lots of assistance from other characters in the city of ‘New Lost Wages’ he gets his own PiPhone and learns about Uunter, InstaCrap, Farcebook, and most importantly the dating app Timber.

The overall goal, in addition to learning why and how he ended up in the future, is to boost your Timber score to 90, in order to date Faith, a gorgeous yet secretive woman who works with Bill Jobs at ‘Prune Technologies’. You increase your Timber score by interacting, assisting, and potentially dating the 30 or so people whom who’ll cross paths with around the city.

This is a classic point and click adventure game through and through. There are about 30 unique settings and 30 zany characters to meet. These people will have a wide array of issues that you must help them solve. When these are accomplished, new areas will be unlocked and the story will slowly unfold. Like any typical adventure title, each area is full of items to collect and interact with. If you become stuck, you’ll have to try lots of different things by using everything on everything. Some puzzles are relatively simple to decipher, but there were plenty of them that had me stumped for some time.

There is a fair amount of dialogue as you chat with and get to know all your new acquaintances. There are usually three or four remarks or questions to choose from, and one is almost always extremely perverse. There is a ton of variety in all of the different people you meet, as they all match different stereotypes and clichés of modern Americans. The writing is quite clever and the voice acting is right on point. The story is surprisingly witty and while the game is packed with crude and sexual content and innuendos, it manages a good balance of humor and is not as over-the-top as I had predicted.

The controls are simple to figure out and the game plays equally well on your television or in handheld mode. You simply move the cursor around the screen, and the Down button shows all interactive items. You use your PiPhone to access Timber, InstaCrap, or call an Uunter, which lets you move locations. The people are well animated and have plenty of flair. All of them are memorable and full of hilarious quips. They range from the sexy cam model, Erin; GMILF Bea who runs the Leisure Suite, an adult toy store; Lance & Dick Ryder, ex-lovers that you assist reunited; and the dorky Kyle & Finley – a parody of the Apple ‘Geniuses’.

The backgrounds are bright and colorful and have a good amount of humor – most of which is sexual. You’ll visit the local gym, the hipster bar, the underground club, and the police station, among others. This game’s soundtrack is mostly light jazz that acts as serviceable background music. The voice acting is excellent and was well cast. Larry’s voice-actor is Jan Rabson, who served as Larry’s voice in many of the classic games of the ‘90s. Despite Larry’s numerous shortcomings and one-track mind, Rabson, helps make Larry a guy who you can’t help but cheer for.

I’m sure I missed out on a lot of in-jokes, having never played the original titles. This game seems to be an alternate direct sequel to the very first title ‘Land of the Lounge Lizards’, as the opening sequence has a 1987 calendar in the background. The original series creator, Al Lowe was not involved in this game, but the German development team, CrazyBunch did a phenomenal job. The best humor in the game is found in the cut scenes, which are recorded on your InstaCrap. Larry’s outrageous exploits are captured on these.

My biggest complaint was the constant backtracking between areas, which of course is part of any adventure game, but it seemed like overkill at some points. It can become very difficult as more and more areas become unlocked and you’ll have so many agendas going at once. Another annoyance is certain phrases will trigger over and over again if you are stuck and trying everything. Hearing the same lame one-liner four or five times in a row soured the game at times for me. This is certainly not for everybody and has some cringe-worthy lines and plenty of crude moments, but this is definitely a product of modern times and offers a lot more diversity and understanding than the extremely dated, sexist, homophobic, and rape humor of the ‘80s.

Aaron Conwell

Aaron got his NES in 1991 and has loved and collected video games ever since. In addition to gaming, he enjoys Stephen King novels, Twins Baseball, and his cats.