Let's make this clear right from the bat; despite Box Office Bust having Leisure Suit Larry in the title, the game has next to nothing to do with the series Al Lowe created. Sure, it has a character called Larry Laffer in it, but the Larry Laffer, voiced by Jeffrey Tambor of all people, in this game is nothing like how the character has been previously portrayed in either looks or personality. Really, if you'd remove the Larry moniker from the name, no one would know. So if you go into this game thinking it has even the fraction of good ol' Larry in it like Magna Cum Laude managed to have, you will be disappointed.
The story picks up, supposedly, sometime after the events of Magna Cum Laude. Larry Lovage, the nephew of Larry Laffer, is slumming in his trailer when his uncle gives him a call, asking him to come by the movie studio he now for some reason owns. Laffer wants his layabout nephew to infiltrate the ranks of his studio, as he believes there is a mole among his staff, looking to take over his company. And from here the game begins, with Larry Lovage running around Laffer studios, incognito-like.
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| Meet Larry Lovage, left, and Larry Laffer. What have they done to Larry Laffer? Who thought this was somehow an improvement over the old design? The dead-eye stare isn't making either of them any more likeable. |
I would describe Box Office Bust as a poorly made GTA clone. The game is set on a seemingly open studio lot, filled with studio buildings and filming sets. You get to run around (poorly), drive a vehicle (terribly) and run over people, complete simplistic quests, often with timers attached, fight (dreadfully) and play some minigames. The story makes very little sense and a good portion of the game is spent in dream missions, in which Lovage enters a movie realm, like westerns and horror. This was the point where I personally gave up on the game. Or I would have, had I not found a trainer that grants invulnerability, extended health, stronger attacks and the ability to levitate up and down, as that helps with a lot of the problems the game has. Being able to skip 90% of the game made it somehow much better.
Perhaps the most damning thing about Box Office Bust is the controls, which are, at least on PC utterly broken. I don't believe any genuine playtesting was done for the PC release, as there are plenty of occasions, where the camera and movement controls are the biggest obstacles of the game. That includes the terrible fight controls. The fight mechanics itself is one of the clumsiest I've seen in a GTA clone. There are other technical issues as well, such as bugs and terrible loading times, which surprisingly enough are the least of the problem. What is somewhat interesting is, that the previous sandbox Larry, Magna Cum Laude, despite all its problems, was at least a technically competent product. The same can't be said here.
The second huge problem is the script, which is just plain terrible. I played the game through and none of the jokes landed. In fact, to spare my nerves I skipped as much of the dialogue as possible. What is even worse are the voice actors, like Patrick Warburton and beforementioned Jeffrey Tambor, who sound wholly disinterested in their line reading. Josh Keaton as Larry Lovage does try, but his jokes are just utterly horrible and come out either sad or cringy. Box Office Bust tries to poke fun at Hollywood but doesn't manage to do much more than throw around tired cliches. It lacks almost every sense of wit you can imagine. Again, the ability to curse doesn't make anything funny if you don't know how to build a joke.
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| The women in BOB aren't much better. If you study the image long enough, you might notice a trend in their design, if the poor texture work doesn't blind you. |
Out of all the problems, the controls are probably the biggest offender, as if the game was fun to play, you could at least try to get some enjoyment out of it while skipping all the terrible jokes and nonexisting story. But it's not fun to play, it's even at best frustrating, at worst rage-inducing. Imagine climbing up a wall or trying to walk on roof crossbeams, the biggest obstacle being, that your controls don't move you where you'd expect them to move you. And the camera, which at times works freely movable is occasionally set in a specific position without a warning, requiring you to constantly reorient the way you move Larry around.
What really bounces to your face pretty quickly is, how empty of a game Box Office Bust is. Although it has pretty extensive surroundings, there are a lot of buildings in the studio, not to mention the movie sub levels, there isn't that much to do in the game. The main story has only a handful of missions and there is a severe lack of side quests this kind of game should have a plethora of. The only side quests are a handful of racing missions, which are terrible because of the controls, pick-up missions that are simply just Larry talking to several girls with no real puzzles in them and collecting Larry statues, which have no bearing on the game whatsoever. The only reward you get from collecting the statues is that you collect them.
So, let's go the gameplay over real quick. In the beginning, you get to do some simple moving exercises by cleaning graffiti off the wall. This already shows you how terrible the controls are. You get to experience the controls even further during the first couple of missions, where you do a couple of fetch quests in order to learn how to navigate around the studio. All this laced with 4th wall-breaking comedy Larry spouts out on "how it would be funny if he was a character in a game". There are even some short story tidbits, which reveal the villain of the story, Kip, who is planning on overthrowing Larry Laffer.
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| You can, if you want, look for Larry statues. There's no benefit in collecting them other than collecting them. |
Soon enough, you get to the first movie set, wild west. Lovage takes part in making a stunt, which makes him dizzy, so he goes asleep under a huge movie poster, which takes him to the Western world. There he has to rescue some girls from robbers. This means fighting, shooting and riding around with a horse. These movie segments have no relevance to the main plot. They are just excuses for throwing around even more tired cliches. You could even call them padding.
At the end of the Western dream, you get to play what is probably the most fun part of the game, the director mini-game, where you need to alter between three cameras to film a segment for the movie you just dreamt of. The only relevance is to score a shit load of points, I guess. The only downside of this particular minigame is the terrible script, but in this game, you have to be happy even with the smallest of blessings.
More running around in the studio lot and some clumsy fighting take you to the second movie location, this time it is horror. In the horror land, the control and camera issues are even worse, but I did muster on to the second part, Teen Sex Chainsaw Massacre, where you have to rescue 4 girls under a 4-minute time frame from a murderer. This happens by setting your hair on fire, because why not, and using your noggin as a torch to keep the Freddy Kruger-like chainsaw killer away. There's even more fun to be had in a torch ignition puzzle, wall climbing to the castle, a boss battle against Igor and slapping some zombies with a shovel. The segment is almost glorious in how poorly the game mechanics work and how poorly the game must have been tested before release.
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| This is Al, a character supposedly meant as a homage to Al Lowe. More like a middle finger if you ask me. He gives you tutorials at the beginning as well as some of the story missions. |
After the horror movie dream, you get some more "story" missions, after which you jump into the most obvious parody section of the game, a Titanic parody called Bytanic. The level of wit that went into inventing these jokes is off the charts. The name of the western parody was Beefcake Mountain if you were wondering. Anyways, this segment is similarly marred with terrible controls and mission design. The only reason I managed to get through it with my sanity intact was the trainer that allowed me to levitate past the worst parts. I still had to play the boring shuffleboard minigame several times in order to win against the computer.
The final stretch brings you back to the movie studio, where Larry Laffer tasks you to take care of Kip. What this means is that you have to run between three locations, beat up the same three dudes in each and point the fireworks to the rival Anus movie studios. The amazing wit of this game strikes again. And then the story is done.
What's really interesting is, that there is pretty much no nudity at all in Box Office Bust. There are a lot of innuendoes and coarse language, but no actual nudity. In fact, the game has less nudity since Leisure Suit Larry 2, actually even less, as there aren't even visible breasts in the game. Despite Larry Lovage can pick up women, the only thing shown in the sex scenes is his mobile home rocking. Sure enough, there are a lot of dildos and overly phallic formations everywhere, as apparently, that is the greatest piece of comedy the developers of this trash could come up with, but naked breasts were too much for their delicate sensibilities.
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| Perhaps the best minigame of the game. You score by choosing the best camera angle from the three cameras. It doesn't have any effect on the game as the far story or the narrative goes. |
Then again, the lack of nudity is all fine, as the character models do leave some room for improvement, to put it nicely. Especially the female models are relatively lazy, consisting of a single character model fitted with a bit different textures and clothing. Not necessarily a bad choice if you want to cut corners and make things a bit cheaper, but you should at least try to make the texturing good, which, in this case, it is not. And as the characters have the cartoonish style to them, it doesn't really help that some of them have rather intense, and ugly, normal mapping going on, which rarely fits for cartoon characters.
The executive producer of the game, John Melchior, actually stated, that nudity is nothing more but a mask for bad gameplay. Let that idea sink in for a moment. And after that, think about how much masking Box Office Bust would need in order to feel even a mediocre game. Magna Cum Laude with its excessive nudity didn't manage to get there either, but I have seen people defending it because of bewbs.
Apparently, at least if Artie Lange did voice acting for the game, Box Office Bust is the most expensive Larry game ever made. I believe it, as the cast is full of pretty big names. The voices alone probably cost more than the production of any of the previous games in the series. It is a shame, that money that was sunk into making BOB doesn't show in the actual quality of the game. I have no idea what went wrong during the production of it, but whatever it was, it must have been terrible. Or it was just sheer incompetence.
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| It tells a lot about the quality of this game, as seemingly no one cared or didn't notice that glaring rigging error on Larry. Maybe they were distracted by his dead stare. |
So, Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust. It is a terrible game, that everyone involved should be ashamed of. No online store holds it anymore and if you ever play the game, it is quite obvious why that is the case and why the current rights holder for the series wants to keep it as far away from people as possible. And considering you can still buy Magna Cum Laude, that is saying a lot.
And now, that I have finally played it to completion in my madness, I can finally begin to wait for the nightmares to come.
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