Around The Web - Resurrecting Leisure Suit Larry

How do you resurrect a raunchy sex-comedy adventure game icon of the '80s and '90s for 2018? I had kept wondering that before finally getting a review copy of Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don't Dry.

A lot of the best dialog moments come from interacting with Lefty - the
long-time proprieter of Lefty's Bar, who's seen all the changes in the world
in the past 30 years.

The answer is, "very blandly."

Here's the thing: a Larry game set in 2018 should have been comedy gold. And with the right writing team willing to take some heat, I think it could have been. This is the Era of That's Not Funny, where men can be women if they feel like it, consent videos are a thing, and half of millennials think that just asking someone in the office out on a date is sexual harassment.

Or, to be fair, if the writers wanted to take this on from a left-wing, SJW angle, there's plenty of easy targets in incels, MGTOW, and pick-up artists to mock.

Unfortunately, what we got was a blandly competent adventure game with whatever bits of humor are unlikely to offend anyone. It still probably isn't enough to avoid some group or other getting offended.

Around the Web: The Crew 2 (Xbox One) Review

"What if someone made a racing game that threw almost every class anyone could think of into the mix and just let players race whatever?"

Fun with the livery creator. An MHI theme for this hovercraft seemed about right. Now if only I could add a .50 cal turret on the top.

That seems to have been the question that the designers of The Crew 2 started with, and were fortunate that Ubisoft allowed them creative freedom to do so. At least, that's my opinion in my review of The Crew 2, which is now up at Marooners' Rock.

GeeBee. Statue of Liberty. Party.

While the game overall has some polish issues that aren't present in competing open world racing games such as the Forza Horizon series, the overall package is fun enough to make up for the flaws. Racing Hovercraft, Jet Sprint boats, Monster trucks, aerobatics aircraft and more is more is so much fun that a lot of the "core" driving races feel pedestrian by comparison. It's certainly not an accurate, high-fidelity simulation of anything. Neither is the Ace Combat series. But when the games get hit the fun formula correctly, realism doesn't really matter.

Sadly, there's no helicopter racing category. Yet...