Getting Laid With Nostalgia
HIGH Seeing Larry back in action.
LOW Having to exhaust all dialogue with all characters to proceed
WTF Weirdly dated pop-culture references.
Many years ago, I was way into point-and-click Adventure games. While I still enjoy them, I’ve mostly let go of the nostalgic feelings I have that are typically associated with the genre — these days, I don’t need my point-and-clicks to feature classic characters or continuous references to the genre’s heyday in the ’90s. However, that doesn’t mean that developers still making Adventure games are ready to let go. Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice is a perfect example.
The original Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards (1987) didn’t use a mouse, but featured a verb interface via keyboard. Five other titles followed, all designed by Al Lowe, a man in love with double entendres and lewd jokes. The last entry in the series with his direct involvement was 1997’s Love for Sail. Since then the series took a left turn into forgettable minigame collections starring Larry’s nephew, and was quickly abandoned.
Several years later, Larry went back to his point-and-click roots with 2018’s Wet Dreams Don’t Dry, and the subject of this review, Dry Twice, is the direct sequel. While it’s not mandatory to have played WDDD, it sure does help in enjoying the plot, since the two games are strongly connected.
In Dry Twice, Larry finds himself stranded on an unfamiliar Mexican-themed island and forced to marry a girl he hasn’t even met while still in love with Faith, his love interest from the previous game. The plot of Dry twice revolves around Larry’s desperate hunt for Faith’s whereabouts while finding himself in the usual absurd situations like being captured by lesbian cannibals.
Being a classic point-and-click, all the traditional rules of the genre apply — players pick up everything that isn’t nailed down, they use objects with/on everything to solve puzzles, and they must exhaust every possible conversation in order to move forward. In keeping with its Sierra roots, it is possible to die, but death is just a temporary setback and the player can resume right away.
The puzzles are decent for the most part, with only a couple of instances of what is commonly known in the genre as “moon logic” — puzzles with such weird solutions that no ordinary human would be able to naturally solve them. Newer entries in the genre have (generally) made an effort to phase this kind of design out, but in this case it might be excusable as I feel like Wet Dreams Dry Twice is aimed at ‘classic’ fans, and that’s backed up by references to seminal entries like The Secret of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle.
Graphically, Wet Dreams Dry Twice sticks to the previous installment’s strengths, featuring some nice hand-drawn 2D backgrounds and decent animation, even though the way Larry interacts with the world feels low budget since no objects are ever shown in his hands. The voice actors manage to do a good job with the material and use a vast array of accents in the process.
Like many Adventure titles, much of the value rests on the script and the writing, and players who crave the risque style from days gone by might be happy here.
Larry is a likeable protagonist ripped directly from the eighties and he has a lot to learn about modern sensibilities, but he’s mostly left free to say a lot of double entendres while trying his luck with every girl he meets. Larry also has an artificial intelligence on his smartphone that tends to butt in and chastise him, which makes for some amusing banter. Unfortunately, most conversations with the AI or other characters tend to go on forever, which would have been easier to swallow if there were better jokes or a some character development.
In another attempt at humor, there are at least three penis-shaped objects (along with a couple of vaginas) for good measure in every room. It’s been a while since I played them, but I remember traditional Larry humor to be a bit more sophisticated than what’s on display here. There are also a few pop-culture references that feel weirdly dated now — remember Korean rapper Psy from Gangnam Style?
Wet Dreams Dry Twice is an okay sequel to the reboot of a genre-classic series and its faithfulness to old-school sensibilities is both a strength and a weakness. While the humor is a bit too juvenile for my taste, it does manage to elicit some laughs every now and then. On the other hand, players wanting a fresher take on design and writing might want to look elsewhere.
— Damiano Gerli
Disclosures: This game is developed by CrazyBunch and published by Assemble Entertainment. It is currently available on PC and MacOS. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 6 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.
Parents: The game is rated M for Nudity, Sexual Content and Strong Language. Given the sexual nature, Wet Dreams Dry Twice is not really a game for kids, hence it is recommended that the player be at least 17 of age.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: it is playable without sound, there are subtitles for every dialogue in the game, along with objects and interactions. The text can’t be resized or altered in any way. (See examples above.)
Remappable Controls: The controls are not remappable, on PC, Wet Dreams Dry Twice is controlled entirely via the mouse to point and click.
Years later, he got the idea that he was the most Sega-knowledgeable person in the world, so he opened a website in 1997, The Genesis Temple.
He's a sucker for great stories in gaming, he loves adventure and indie titles, but he never shies away from action and triple-A RPGs.
Damiano's been writing about videogames for 20 years, with no plans to stop. Say hi to him on Twitter at @damgentemp, or on his blog https://genesistemple.com (now dedicated to the history of video game design).
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