In 1988, I was a 16-year-old hacker running a late-night BBS over the phone line of a local business at which I was employed during the day.  The owners had no idea that their main PC was host to a sort of lending library of software – with local folks sharing files packed in the brand new “PKZIP” format which greatly speeded up the uploading and downloading over the already blazing-fast 2400 baud modem I had installed.  Every morning I would log into my BBS server, and quickly unpack all the new files to see what new goodies had been shared.  One of those files was Leisure Suit Larry and the Land of the Lounge Lizards.

To a 16-year-old boy, the raunchy exploits of the hapless 38-year-old virgin Larry Laffer search for love – or to simply get lucky – in the fictional town of Lost Wages, were an absolute laugh riot.  Larry’s campy 1970’s disco attire and dorky double-entendre was like playing a simulation of a day in the life of Mr. Furley (from the television show Three’s Company – Google it).  Leisure Suit Larry and the Land of the Lounge Lizard was by far the most-shared file on my BBS after that, as every hacker in the area-code wanted to get their chance to help Larry lose his virginity.

So here I am 30-some years later and I have somewhat reluctantly agreed to take on the review of the PS4 release of the 10th game in the Leisure Suit Larry franchise, Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice. Reluctantly, because I now have a wife, three kids (20yr, 19yr, and 16yr), and a job – and a good part of me does not feel comfortable with some of the content which would aptly be described as misogynistic, crude, and outright inappropriate.  However, on an objective technical level this point-and-click adventure displays a surprisingly high degree of production quality, gameplay ingenuity, and overall entertainment to sit alongside the best of the genre.

Wet Dreams Dry Twice starts off immediately following the events of the series’ prior release Wet Dreams Don’t Dry (which I didn’t play), and even with the rather lengthy and detailed intro setup in which Larry is informed of the past events by a local storyteller, I found myself a bit lost.

What I did glean from the discussion was that in the prior game Larry had at some point magically transported through time – from the late 1980’s to the current day.  He finds himself embroiled in some sort of schism with the folks heading a corporation called Prune (i.e. Apple) the makers of the PiPhone (again, think Apple), somehow bringing him to the tropical land of Cancúm (yuk, yuk) in search of love from Prune’s CEO Faith, which eventually leads to Larry mucking everything up and the beloved Faiths’ unfortunate demise.

Oh, and Larry’s getting married.

Yes, Larry is reminded that he is being forced to marry the daughter of Cancúm’s tribal leader.  All the while he still pines for his object of love (or is it lust?) Faith, for whom he keeps a ofrenda-style shrine in his hut.  It’s in gathering and lighting a candle to add to Faith’s shrine that Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice introduces the gamer to the unique inventory crafting system – using blueprints to combine loot to make tools to perform actions.  It’s also where you are introduced to the PiPhone’s camera, which comes in really handy during the later stages of gameplay.  The PiPhone also comes with Larry’s virtual personal assistant Pi, who tries to keep Larry in check with his always-inappropriate attempts at humor.

Larry quickly decides that his fate is not with the people of Cancúm, so he escapes from the island and sets off in search of Faith.  What follows is a story that includes a tribe of cannibalistic women, and a very determined Prune replacement CEO, Mr. Wang, who is dead-set on capturing Faith to use her coding skills for his own evil plans. The gameplay centers around interacting with the objects and the characters within each level to direct dialog and solve puzzles all with the purpose of finding Faith and thwarting Mr. Wang’s nefarious plans.

True to its legacy, Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice utilizes traditional point-and-click gameplay, and overall it translates quite well to the PS4 controller.  Of particular note is the game’ option to use the controller’s shoulder buttons to highlight all the interactive elements within the level – this greatly reduces the common point-and-click frustration of having to blindly pixel-hunt each area.  Another great addition is the ability to double-click on objects and areas to skip the walking animations – which often seem to bog down point-and-click adventures.  I can think of a few of my favorite point-and-click franchises that would benefit from either of these options (Broken Sword – I’m looking at you, my old friend).

As I mentioned earlier, Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice’s humor is fairly raunchy – this is not a game that I would play with my wife or children in the room.  Hell, I wasn’t comfortable playing it with them in the house for fear that someone would eavesdrop and wonder what the hell I was into.  That being said, all the phallic symbolism and locker room talk aside, the overall presentation in Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice is top-notch, with excellent voice acting and colorfully-cartoony level design.  There’s even a bit of classic Larry gameplay that will leave the old school gamers feeling a bit nostalgic.

I have to admit, I am quite surprised that in the day and age of the “Cancel Culture” that the folks at Crazy Bunch and Assemble Entertainment would take a risk releasing a game like Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice, especially on the consoles as they have – but Larry is a legend in gaming and he certainly deserves his day in the sun, and this game is just that.

If you weren’t looking closely at the PS Store in January you might have missed Windfolk, a fun little third-person aerial shooter that launched just after the holiday mayhem.  Developed by Fractall Fall as part of the PlayStation Talents initiative, Windfolk offers some surprisingly engaging gameplay mixed with narrative and intuitive controls.  The setup is simple; the world of Eurian is at war and the Coalition is trying to take over all the floating islands. – yes just like Pandora in Avatar.  Ironically, they are using Trydian to power their attacks and other horrible experiments; the same substance that keeps the islands floating.  You’ll play Esen, a fresh recruit of the resistance equipped with a blaster, jetpack, and impulsive attitude who must end the war.

Windfolk is divided into numerous chapters that tell portions of the overall narrative.  You’ll engage in fast and furious combat with a full six-degrees of freedom.  You can hover or kick in those boosters for flight mode (just like Ironman).  You’ll be facing off against swarms of soldiers as well as both ground and aerial targets like missile launchers and other attack craft.  In one of the earlier missions you’ll go up against a large hovercraft that requires you to take out their propulsion system while avoiding incoming fire.  It’s all quite exciting really with a smooth difficulty curve that rises right along with your skill.  Esen can combine her different weapons with a growing skillset that caters to a variety of playstyles.  There are some fun fly-through-rings race challenges that will test your flying ability and those who enjoy collectibles will find plenty of hidden data bits to collect.  These are tallied on the mission select screen so you know where to return if you missed anything.

The game mechanics are quite clever in that you have this large targeting circle and anyone within that circle will take damage, but those closest to the center will take more.  It greatly simplifies combat to the point where most of the challenge lies in you being able to dodge incoming fire since you are almost always hitting something and doing some damage. Once you have finished the story mode you can also replay the game in combat and turbo modes for added challenges and rewards.  These will test you combat and flight skills in a variety of battle arenas and flight courses while adding a few more hours of content to the overall game.

The presentation for Windfolk is quite nice with a charming visual design that allows for a creative world design whether you are fighting in the desert, jungle, or tropical islands.  The variety of climates and environments keeps things fresh and interesting, with plenty of nooks and crannies to explore.  Poly counts are low and textures are modest giving the game a storybook flavor while keeping the framerate rock solid.  The character model for Esen is nice with some good animation and details.  Enemies are usually blasted before you get a good look, but the user interface and HUD are really good and there are plenty of explosive effects during combat.

I particularly enjoyed the soundtrack that makes prominent use of wind instruments, giving the game an ethereal quality during casual exploration.  The music will switch over to something more energetic during combat.    The voice acting is pretty good given the script they had to work with.  Parts come off a bit childish but we never learn how old Esen is, so that might be okay.  Most of the chatter between Esen and her handler over the coms gets annoying as does the over-the-top conversations with the main bad guy.  Expect lots of drama between the fights.

Windfolk run on PS4 and PS5 with backwards compatibility, but since this is not designed for PS5 you don’t get any of the technical advances from the hardware.  The load times on the PS5 are really long, and when I tried the game on the PS4 Pro they were even longer – 60-90 seconds on most levels.  This includes dying and having to reload.  I normally don’t complain about load times until it negatively impacts my enjoyment of the game, which this does.  Playing on the internal PS5 hard drive is your best option and it only gets worse on PS4 or an external HDD.

Despite the long loads I did have some fun with Windfolk.  The combat got a little repetitive when played for longer than an hour, and I definitely had more fun finding the hidden collectibles and doing the ring race challenges.  The 8-chapter story mode and 7-chapter arcade mode offer lots of diverse gameplay for only $15, but I have a hunch this will be offered as part of PS Plus pretty soon, so unless you are craving an average aerial shooter you might want to wait for a sale.

World Splitter is an interesting new entry into the puzzle gaming market.  Sporting over 60 single-screen levels, World Splitter tasks gamers with getting their downed space delivery driver from one edge of the screen to the other in an attempt to collect the numerous fuzzle-like creatures that escaped from his ship upon his unfortunate crash landing.  It all sounds pretty straightforward – except for the fact that this is no ordinary world that our hero has crash landed upon: it has two layers.

World Splitter’s levels are formed as two parallel (overlaid) physical realities – one light, one dark.  Players use an onscreen tool called a “Dimension Rift” – a screen-splitting plane that the player can determine the precise location, angle, and direction to “split” the screen and expose the underlying level.  This is all done on-the-fly, and each level will have gamers splitting and manipulating the maps many times to get from screen edge to screen edge.

I understand it sounds confusing even reading my own description, but here’s the jist: let’s say the character approaches a wide gap that simply cannot be crossed by jumping.  The gamer can move the dimension rift line to just before the gap, showing that the underlying map actually has a bridge in that location.  Once the character has moved safely over the bridge, the gamer uses the rift to address the next obstacle.  And while the initial obstacles are simple gaps, or rocks, or walls – as the game progresses, the obstacles become seemingly insurmountable, forcing the gamer to get rather creative with their rift-work to get the character to all the high and/or hidden locations where the escaped creatures are perched.

In fact, there were a number of times I had to put the controller down and leave because the level was simply too challenging for me to even care to finish.  Of course, I would swear off the game, only to inevitably find myself drawn back to World Splitter to give it another try because its gameplay was that addictive.

World Splitter’s appeal is certainly fueled by the game’s fantastic presentation. Even without a vocal track, World Splitter’s brief cutscenes sport a level of presentation that grabs the attention of anyone passing by with its excellent cartoon-style visuals.  The visuals, coupled with the eerie new-age audio soundtrack, had me reminiscing of early side-scrolling platformers like Rayman.

World Splitter offers 60 levels of single-player gameplay to tackle, and about a dozen two-player levels that are played via local co-op (no online).  The overall playtime will depend on how long it takes the player to solve each level, and just how much of a completist they intend to be, but I put in a good 5 hours or more in 30-45 minute sessions, and I still have quite a bit I need to finish.  It’s a nice game to pop-in, take a stab at a level, and then move on to something maybe a bit more story-driven.  And while World Splitter won’t appeal to all gamers, there are a lot worse ways to spend $20.

Black Legend is an interesting new RPG from the fledgling Belgian strategy/RPG developer Warcave.  Uniquely set in the 17^th century European Low Lands area (Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg), Black Legend tasks gamers with leading the resistance efforts to overthrow a band of Mephistian Cultists who are using a madness-inducing fog to take control of the city and its inhabitants.  The game leans heavily on Dutch and Belgian folklore, which

As the first game I have ever played that was set in my family’s motherland – which I have visited many, many years ago – I was immediately blown away at the incredibly authentic Dutch architecture and street design that Warcave put into their fictional city of Grant.  The overall aesthetic is dark and foggy – littered with dead bodies and destroyed property.  This all helps to accentuate the atmosphere of devastation and despair that the Mephistians have inflicted upon the once peaceful city.

In an interesting tweak on traditional gameplay, Warcave has not included a map of any sort in Black Legend – no paper maps to reference, no overhead maps on screen – all navigation is based on following the compass, reading street signs, and from repetition.  While this was initially a bit frustrating, it does put a greater emphasis on observation and exploration within these richly designed levels.

A great deal of Black legend’s gameplay is spent exploring Grant’s various city districts in an attempt to amass loot, liberate imprisoned townsfolk, and recruit new resistance members. This is all straightforward RPG fare.  Where Black Legend gets really interesting is in the turn-based combat, which not only incorporates a gird-based system similar to XCOM but also an incredibly complex alchemy system.

Black legend’s alchemy is based on the ancient holistic “medical” practice of Humourism, in which the four humours, or essential fluids, of the body must be in balance.  These are yellow bile (fire), black bile (earth), blue phlegm (water), and red blood (air).  These humours can be incorporated into attacks – either alone or stacked – which are then “catalyzed” by an attack, doling out heavier damage.

Enemies are each affected differently by the humours – and it’s up to the gamer to figure out which humours, or combination of humours, will best dispatch the enemy at hand. Enemies also use humours in their attacks as well, so gamers will need to pay particular attention to their character and party make-up before going into battle.

I will say that it’s is not immediately clear how the alchemy system works, and the game gives very little explanation or training, so the combat mechanic can lead to a lot of frustration, but over time gamers will become familiar with what does and doesn’t seem to work, so it gets a bit easier to manage. Regardless, kudos go out to Warcave for trying something new rather than just sticking with the same old magic spells and potions that most RPG’s rely on.

If that didn’t sound like there was enough complexity, Black Legend also incorporates a deep class system featuring fifteen (15) available classes, with unique abilities and skill levels.  Classes can be changed at will, with learned abilities and skills transferring to the new hybrid class. Yes, it’s all a lot to take in – and I have to admit that I was a bit lost for most of the first few hours of gameplay simply trying to figure all this out.

While the gamer does have one central player the story revolves around, they also outfit and upgrade a party of up three additional fighters recruited from the many resistance members encountered throughout the story.  Gamers can take any of their resistance members into battle, but given the cost of upgrading each, most gamers will stick to a favorite few and replace as needed.

While all of this sounds good – there are some issues with Black Legend on the PS4.  Most of these come from the fact that it is obvious that the console release was a bit of an afterthought and that Black Legend probably plays a whole lot better a PC. Character navigation is simply not at all console controller-friendly, especially when the grid-based battle is in full swing, and when combined with the lack of good camera control, and random glitches and crashes, it all makes large battles a tad frustrating.

In short, I did enjoy my dozen or so hours spent attempting to free the citizens of Grant from the Mephistian Cultists.  And while the turn-based, grid-based combat can get a bit overwhelming at times with the complex alchemy system, I have to give credit once again to the folks at Warcave for trying some new tricks in an established gaming genre.