Leisure Suit Larry III: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals (1989)

Preliminary: I assume it's gonna be the same, outdated format as the other Leisure Suit Larrys but I have to give it an earnest try because the music in the playthrough video I watched was soooo good. If I am seeing correctly, there's a Peeping Tom scenario so I doubt I will end up finishing this. However, I also read that you get to play as one of the women Larry pursues/d so that could be neat. Apparently she gets to act on her own love/lust interest too. Here goes nothing

The controls seem better than the earlier LSLs and I like how the credits look and the tropical vibe. But the Sound isn't as good as the version I saw a playthrough of (I'm playing the original DOS) and, I dunno, there just isn't an exigency/urgency to the series that gets me to play through. I'm sure many a straight men had a blast though.

Huh, I didn't hate this one! I expected to be frustrated and to deal with unfunny jokes but I enjoyed it! It's not an amazing game by any means. It's especially far from the 37th best game of all time like PC Gamer deemed it back in 1994 (for real! They ranked it higher than Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis!). It still has a lot of the Sierra frustrations that'd you expect but they also seem to be aware of it, trying to fix some of it. The first surprise is that there is an automatic reminder to save that pops up. The intro shows you how to get around the world too. There aren't constant deaths either. Deaths are still there but it's not the endless stream of saving and reloading that the last one was. Still a ton of nonsense puzzles but also plenty more that I can see the logic behind too.

It's actually funny too. It made me laugh a few times and it was fun to see what was going to happen. The scene when Larry is in the showgirl outfit and visiting the lawyer is so shameless and silly that I kinda loved it. The ending in particular is clever and strange, going completely meta in a way clearly inspired by Mel Brooks. I wouldn't say you need to play this game but it's interesting to see how the graphic adventures were changing, especially now that Sierra was seeing serious competition in the field from groups like LucasArts.