I like how Al Lowe’s site is as visually dated as his games :-)

I do love the LSL games, though (er, the Lowe ones, anyway). I know I kind of shouldn’t, but it’s honestly true that the risque aspects of them are done in a gentler, Carry On kind of way, rather than being offensive or misogynist. I mean, the games wouldn’t have anything like the character they do if Larry actually succeeded in getting off with women left, right and centre (which is one of the reasons why LSL7 was a step in the wrong direction). It’s a stark contrast to the awful, frathouse antics of the 3D games. I’m not going to claim the originals are some kind of feminist masterpiece or anything, ‘cos they aren’t, but they’re at least a bit more playful and innocent.

Plus, although I probably shouldn’t have been playing it at such a young age, LSL2 is one of the earliest games I remember playing on my dad’s PC when I was, like, pre-teen - even though I didn’t understand a lot of what was going on, I loved it…

Yeah, the original LSL humor (which was maintained pretty much all the way through the Lowe era) was great. To be honest, I can be pretty quick to offense if that kind of overt Comedy-of-the-Horn is handled poorly. It’s not easy to do genuinely funny sex comedy…usually the laughs are either cheap or nervous. I loved the Larry games though, and Freddy Pharkas proved that Al Lowe had a great comic mind outside of hump jokes, too.

I actually quite liked LSL7, but it’s been a long time since I’ve played it, and I probably only got to play it all the way through once. LSL6, however, is a nearly perfect game of its type.