According to studio director Martyn Brown, developer Team 17 should be evaluated based on its latest release — a downloadableWormstitle — instead ofLeisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust. A novel idea considering how dreadful Team 17’s continuation of the classic adventure series was.
“I’ll be open as anything.Larrydidn’t turn out great,” Brown toldVideoGamer. “There are reasons why it didn’t turn out great. I’m not going to rattle on about excuses. It’s one of those things. You’re only as good as your last game. Hopefully the newWormson LIVE Arcade, other than a couple of bugs that went unnoticed on, not our testing unit but a testing unit, which we’re fixing — I think the Metacritic on that is 84, 85 per cent.”
Brown doesn’t believe that Team 17 has lost any fans because ofBox Office Bustand hopes thatAlien Breed, a self-published downloadable title, will show that the studio has talent and the ability to make good games.
“Certainly withAlien Breed, if anybody’s got any grumbles about what we can and can’t do, they’ll see the amount of effort and care put into a product where we’re unbridled by any nonsense we had to deal with in theLarryproject.”
“Yeah, hands up, it wasn’t great. At the end of the day people don’t have to buy anything. They go on reviews, they go on demos and everything else. If people make that decision that’s unfortunate. It’s not something we’re worried about.”
The bigger question here, left unaddressed and unasked, is whyLeisure Suit Larrystillexists. There are a ton of worthy and more compelling adventure series —King’s Quest,Quest for Glory,Space Questto name a few — left untouched. Let’s roll the dice with one of these, eh Activision? Nothing can be as bad asBox Office Bust. Nothing.
