Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out Review

Leisure Suit Larry 6

The Leisure Suit Larry games were always in the background of my PC gaming childhood, notorious point-and-click adventures that I was (understandably) forbidden to play. Well, take that, Mom, I can buy ’em on Steam now! But after playing 6 and 7 back-to-back (which is probably way more Larry Laffer than anyone humanly needs in a weekend), I’m not sure if I was merely filling in a gap in my childhood or purposefully regressing as an adult. These games are certainly a product of their time, brimming with homophobic jokes, racist stereotypes, and misogynist goals that wouldn’t fly today. It’s never totally insulting, but it does feel very dated.

That’s to be expected, though. I mean, the game originally came out in 1996, back when point-and-click adventures ruled the gaming landscape. But I was in the mood for some nostalgia, and these are pretty much the only ones I hadn’t played yet, so… here we are. But you know what? Aside from some antiquated humor, the games hold up surprisingly well. I’m choosing to spotlight 6 over 7, though, because the VGA graphics are pretty endearing, the setting/story is a little less hokey, Larry is more of a lovable loser, and the point-and-click gameplay consists of true pointing and clicking without the gimmicky text inputs that 7 weirdly reintroduced.

Of course, this is a 90s adventure game, which means there are plenty of moments where you’re aimlessly clicking on things, hoping something new happens. A lot of the times I got stuck boiled down to me not realizing a certain pathway existed or that the commands “use” and “take” are sometimes interchangeable and sometimes not. It definitely felt like Sierra hadn’t quite figured out how to best do icon-driven adventure games yet. Fortunately, the majority of the puzzles make sense and are fun to figure out. I liked it overall and am thankful services like Steam have preserved these games so I could, 20 years later, finally see what the fuss was about.

Reviewer

Clark
I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.

Published by

Clark

I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.