Others - Completed - Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude - Uncut and Uncensored [Final] [High Voltage Software]

I am reviewing this game after having completed the Steam version of Uncut and Uncensored. I have not 100% it, but I have completed the story as well as each of the "quests".

STORY
You play as Larry Lovage, an all-around loser who seems doomed to never graduate college. When Larry finds out that the reality dating show Swingles is going to film an episode at his college he sees it as an opportunity meet some chicks and get laid. In order to get on the show Larry will have to meet all of their requirements, which mostly centers on proving that women can actually stand to be around him. The core story seems like it must have either been an afterthought or something which they couldn't get working. For how central Swingles is to the story very little of the game really connects to it, and when it does get involved it feels a bit underwhelming.
The stories centering on the individual women in the game fair better on average. The one storyline that gets the most mini-games associated with it and it alone winds up kind of sweet, at least as sweet as this game can get. There is unfortunately another storyline that takes place entirely within the confines of two rooms, and half of it is focused on another character entirely.
Comedy writing normally doesn't hold up, and while it is certainly dated I didn't mind that. It's not aggressively of its time as far as pop culture references go, and it managed to get more than a couple genuine laughs out of me. There is a certain "problematic" ending to a particular storyline that is rather unfortunate, but given the context that Larry is a stupid asshole it's certainly not the worst example of that kind of story from the era.
Endings is where the writing tends to falter, both for the individual storylines and the game itself. There are several storylines whose endings are far to similar to at least one other ending, and the endings associated with the game's final round seem a bit unearned and not particularly funny.


GAMEPLAY
MCL is split between two "modes": explore and mini-games. Explore is the closest the game gets to being an adventure game like the rest of the franchise. Being able to walk around and examine objects is a part of the fun of point-and-clicks, and that's represented somewhat faithfully here, but the rest is mostly absent. There are no puzzles to solve, no dialogue trees, and most items are obtained through shopping or as a consequence of completing a mini-game.
The maps in explore mode are fine, though a few seem underutilized to me. In particular the main campus seems a bit too large for what's available in in most of the time, and the bad part of town seems a bit barren and large for how few mini-games take place within it. As the game goes along however I found myself wishing there were just a couple more shortcuts between locations to make traversal that much faster. The load times really start to ware out their welcome at this point, especially when you know it's for a map that you are going to immediately leave after buying one thing or as soon as you can walk through it.
The mini-games are a bit on the bad side, which is not what you want out of mini-game collection. The main mini-game, chat, is a bit too simple and shallow for how frequently it's seen. Quarters is just outright bad and unfortunately the second most common mini-game. Even when you're doing it right it doesn't feel good and becomes so repetitive that you just want it to be over. The rest run the gamut in quality. The difference in difficulty between individual iterations can be surprising. If you fail enough times you can let the game make that mini-game easier for you, and if you still can't beat it or just don't want to do it yourself you can spend secret tokens to skip it.
The game features 4 resources that carry between games: money, secret tokens, confidence, and drunkenness.
Money is required to buy items, drunks, and play certain mini-games. Early on it's in short supply, but before long you can easily earn so much money you'll never have to worry about it again if you can figure it out.
Secret tokens are found, like with money, by attempting to "use" environmental objects that have no apparent function, as well as getting a perfect on any particular mini-game for the first time. If you want to unlock everything on an average playthrough you need to not spend much of this on wimping out of mini-games.
Confidence really doesn't matter as much as its permanent location on the UI would imply. You gain it by drinking, doing well in most mini-games, and posing for people once it is already mostly full. You lose it by being seen urinating in public, doing poorly at mini-games, and slowly over time during explore mode. You need to have a certain level of confidence to play at least some of the mini-games from what some guides say, but I never ran into this issue as it's fairly easy to maintain this resource.
Drunkenness is is required for certain interactions, and getting hammered is required to trigger the streaking mini-game. Your performance in the chat mini-game becomes worse while drunk, and reaching the upper limit ends the quarters mini-game outright. If you reach complete intoxication it will be drained if you try to replay a mini-game. These interactions are far more interesting than those of confidence.

PRESENTATION
For the era it was released this game looks fine. For a boner comedy it could use better animations all around, but the tech of the time imposed some limits. They might have been able to work around those in mini-games and cutscenes if they had the time or cleverness, but it gets the job done.
The music does its job. There are several licensed tracks, which is nice to hear, but a few of them can get stale by the end. The original music neither inspires nor annoys.
The voice acting is decent to great, which is surprising for a cast of mostly unknowns. In particular the character Harriet's voice work helped sell that storyline.

MISC
This is a "mainstream" game, which means that it has to be judged on a slightly different scale from a full on adults only erotic game. While this version was rated AO it's more of an erotic farce than a piece of erotica, so keep that in mind.
I have one note on progression that requires spoiling a few different storylines as well as when some optional bonus features are made available.
Overall I enjoyed playing Magna Cum Laude. It's funny and sexy enough, and not so long that its negative qualities bring it down too bad. The director of the game has written about how the the whole project was thrust on the studio by executives, and that it was those same executives that decided it should be a mini-game collection. In all I think they did a pretty good job.

Heh, I remember playing this on Original Xbox and I own it on GOG.

Its not about the sex. But rather the sexualized theme of it all
Its not easy to find good keywords for this game from that specific genre and age. But coming from start of the 3D era (as in not by the original 2D Lesisure Suit Larry games) this game set a mile stone.

Cheesy, Sleezy and lenient. But with a hint of quality with a side of
sexuality.

Cheezy
As the Lessure Suit Larry game series goes there is this cringe fest
of Larry searching for the female hot stuff. Wheter its the obstacles he faces, the challanges he (the player) takes or even the rewards you receive.

None of these creates a sense of fulfillment nor prediciment that I wanted. That is none of them offers a complexity more advanced than today's toddler shows you see on kids TV.

"Dora: No stealing Swiper"
"Swiper: MF, you caught me again"
- This issue has been resolved.

Click to expand...

Sleezy
Ive always seen this game as the early adaptation for interactive adult content in 3D but the quality was lacking there of.
Considering this is the era of Xbox and once again a new era of cheap development and low to none QA I am fair to say that LSLarry did well.
Comparing it to among other BMX: XXX

I mean, a licensed game with a sexual focus and actually featuring tiddies made not only polygons but also textured 3D faces.

Lenient
Something that always bothered me was the more lenient approach to the sexuality. Even when not playing the censored version which is basically like cutting with a dull knife, the game offers very little context relevant results.

I am not talking sexulized rewards but the feeling of never gaining. you don't improve but rather you spend more time redoing the same challenges with different themes.

Quality
What separates LSL:MCL from the other games from its era is the old fashion dedication and quality. Not only in the build itself but in the games content.

Stuff like voice acting or the smaller thing like loading screens. Heck, even the meta stuff outside the game like the extras you could find/unlock.

sexuality
In Leisure Suit Larry Manga Cum Laude you wont find constant sex scenes or even repeated nudity. But you will get loads of funny and sexual references.

This for the teenagers during those days was more than enough to keep us interested.

Classic that has aged not too well, but serviceable. Will work for those who like earning the "rewards", but some of the old design does get in the way further in (trampolines for me). But I managed to complete the game, get most of the stuff, and unlock nude mode with only a few copouts. Glad to see this one here.

This is my first dive into a Leisure Suit Larry game and I come out impressed. When seeking fans' comments, I noticed that this entry in the Larry franchise is not highly regarded for being so different from the clicker games. Despite this, Magna Cum Laude has a nice ample overworld to explore and a series of story beats spread through the courtship of various girls in your small college campus and beyond. You do all this to advance in a contest of sorts called Swingles to get hooked up with hot chicks. The gameplay is divided between world exploration, a variety of minigame challenges and several story cutscenes. One drawback is you'll suffer from some slow awful loading screens which take up a fifth of your time.

Truthfully, Larry remains charming and entertaining because of the raunchy adult story. The Larry dialogue can get really stupid in the best kind of way. There is what I'll refer to as the "sperm swimming" minigame which is tied to dialogue. Depending on your proficiency in completing it, you alter your character's interaction with a girl into a failure or success. All minigames are repetitive with increasing difficulty but the "sperm swimming" ones are worth it to attempt at least once for the dialogue. With that said, at a certain point deeper in the game, I opted for a skip minigame option called wimp outs. You are able to do this with tokens which are a currency hidden in the environment throughout Larry's world. You can also use these at a sketchy looking green haired vendor for unlockables like character nudity, naughty models or extra art. My cons list for the gameplay is short: not enough fucking. This is game is as expected, not all that pornographic. I knew that going in. Larry was not made to be explicit. While it has tits and ass, most of the rewards of this game are the humor of Larry's story. The game is very much softcore porn as opposed to anything remotely hardcore.

I've played through many independent adult games. As people on forums like this know, it's a very mixed bag out there. There are highs and extreme lows but more than anything else, mediocrity and incomplete projects that don't ever seem to be nearing completion or feel naked for a lack of effort on indie creators of varying experience and talent. When the pickings of adult games are like this, even now, it's easy to forget that there are games like Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude. This game, while dated, is polished with all the kinds of bells and whistles we wish all adult games could offer through the work of a competent team, back when there were studios making adult games with a budget. This is a classic adult game and history. I'd suggest anyone to give a look but not recommended for hardcore porn fans. To those people I suggest the BoneTown games, which offer little charm you find here but it does offer the ugly, dated 2000s adult game sex scenes.

I've always gotten a kick out of the LSL games. Even back in the text-based game days, Al Lowe had the best sarcastic, off track sense of humor I'd ever seen. Between these and the Spellcasting Series, those were, imho, the peak of snarky-but-entertaining humorous games. This one has a lot to do, and may not be as true to the original as the previous ones, but is still funny and a great time-waster.

A game which i have enjoyed plenty of times in the past. If your looking for fap material STOP, go play something else, this is not it. The closest you can compare it to are teen movies, like American Pie. (actually it gets referenced if you know your stuff)

The gameplay it's terrible, mini games can be challenging to being unfair, specially on mouse and keyboard ( i do recommend a controller if you have one). The only fun looking one is the dialogue mini game where you have to use up down and guide a sperm through a field of answers, get the right one fast cause you don't want to look like a fool. But eventually they are getting repetitive.

Why should i play it then? Simple, the story and humor. Larry is a college dweeb and is chasing pussy, like every other standard college guy, and ofc ourse his diploma. His uncle his hero is another Larry from the earlier series. Then a dating show enters campus and Larry signs up, because that might give him popularity with the chicks and the other folks.

And it's not a short game, however it's a oldie 2004 so you might want to check if your pc can handle a older game.

I can seriously recommend if you are looking for a fun game to play and you need a laugh, if you need a fap and are interested in hardcore sex like most of the stuff here on site, skip it.