High Voltage Software became the overlords of the new Leisure Suit Larry project, and their changes are sure to come as a shock to series aficionados. Unlike previous series installments, Magna Cum Laude feels like it's been designed as a console release from the ground up. Realistically, its appearance on the PC platform probably has more to do with respect to the series origins than any hope for massive sales – Vivendi Unversal Games will be looking to the PlayStation 2 and Xbox releases for that. The console influence can be felt all the way to the most basic of gameplay elements. No longer is Larry actually exploring his environment and solving puzzles on his way to babes. Instead, it's mini-game after mini-game after mini-game after mini-game. Literally.

The mini-games aren’t even that varied. Here's the basic setup. One, you chat with a girl by navigating a sperm character through a conversation bar at the bottom of the screen. Nab the green icons for good conversation answers, red for bad ones and as you progress further in the game, other icons make an appearance. You usually do this a few times before moving onto one of several mini-games split up between the girls: trampoline bouncing, handing out item "X" to students, a dance-off, etc. Following that, they've gained your trust, and it's time for the clincher in an alcoholic-fueled game of quarters. You'll play variations of these mini-games throughout every single female encounter in Magna Cum Laude with little deviation and mounting repetitiveness. As rewarding as the final scenes with each girl are, reaching them through the same rotations of mini-games becomes increasingly tiresome.

There were bits and pieces of nudity in the previous games, but Magna Cum Laude pushes the limits of virtual nudity in previously unseen directions to capture that lucrative teenage market. There are plenty of bare breasts to be found in the game, the amount of boob bouncing is the equivalent to the entire Dead or Alive cannon added together and the loading screens tease gamers with shots of the real-life models the Magna Cum Laude ladies are based upon. There's a certain disturbing charm to watching polygon characters have sex, even if it's done in an exceedingly comic fashion, but do remember that Larry loses out to the ladies far more times than he wins, and you'll have to bust through most of the game before Larry sees much action. With enough dedication, secret tokens and in-game cash can purchase the uncensored models and strip modes for the game's girls, but it's hardly worth the effort, especially with the PC version – save the annoyance of hearing Larry fart for the billionth time and download an unlockable patch instead.

In the version we played, however, gamers are denied access to the naughtiest bits of the women, and have to purchase the special Adults Only-rated version of Magna Cum Laude, which was unsurprisingly announced several weeks after the initial release. However, if you're European, there's only one version available. Can you say "cash-in?" Either way, you're only missing out on some virtual cartoon-style vaginas – is that worth another $34.99 to you? Anyway, most of the missing content is uncovered by simply editing a variable in one of the current version's INI files. Take that, corporate America!

To the game's credit, High Voltage Software's scriptwriters have a good sense of humor. Even though the vulgarity and crudeness of Magna Cum Laude's one-liners are over the top, it fits the college theme, and if you're going to warp the Leisure Suit Larry series with full-on nudity, you might as well go the extra mile with the dialogue, too. Larry walks the fine line between not having a clue and lyrical greatness through his sexual mishaps, and it's impossible to keep from laughing when he's such a clearly misunderstood genius. You run into an incredible variety of characters, each more hilarious than the next. Whoever decided to create an Arnold Schwarzenegger-esque male bouncer whose penis flaps all over the place when he walks (and especially when he dances) deserves a medal. All of them are colorful, interesting and completely different from one another, and this is what makes Magna Cum Laude worth the look. Of course, anyone who's polarized to the American Pie sense of funny will think all of the cracks in Magna Cum Laude are pointless and crude, but to everyone else that's precisely the point, and the game excels at exploiting this fact at every turn. Larry's constant farting and urinating get old after the tenth time, but try to hold back the laughter when the trashy chick from New Jersey tells the player he's a dirty fill-in-the-blank sucker or the game pushes a lesbian spin on the classic Grease song, "Summer Nights."

Looking at only positives and negatives, Magna Cum Laude doesn't come out a champ. You have to remember that even though the mini-games are too common and unnecessarily repetitive, and the random cartoon nudity isn't worth the effort, the wonderfully insane dialogue and characters are worth taking a trip to Larry's collegiate adventure. It might not be the Larry you remember, its might not pay any real respect to its origins, but it's hard to find a genuinely funny video game these days and Magna Cum Laude fits the bill.