Video Game / Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work

Sex, thugs and rock 'n roll.

"What a dream assignment! Travel across the United States, visiting three of the sexiest women in America, and you get paid for doing it!! Larry, it looks like things are really beginning to go your way."

— The Narrator

Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work is a video game published by Sierra in 1991. It's the fourth installment in the Leisure Suit Larry series (there was no Leisure Suit Larry 4; Al Lowe, the series' creator, had previously stated that there wouldn't be a Larry 4 and decided to make good on that promise).

Larry Laffer has found work as a lowly tape-sanitizer for the rather seedy adult film producing company PornProdCorp. His boss, the sinister and slimly CEO Silas Scruemall, is about to launch his newest project, the show "America's Sexiest Home Videos", and wants to employ American's sexiest woman as the host. Mr. Scruemall, however, is concerned about the host being able to interact with your average American male, so he is on the lookout for the lamest, most unappealing and sexless person possible to "audition" the candidates, believing that anyone willing to lower their standards to such a degree must be perfect for the job. Since Mr. Scruemall finds Larry to be the dorkiest loser amongst his staff, he chooses him for the job, promising him a big promotion in return (perhaps even the post as Assistant Associate Director). Larry, although very elated about being given this big break, notices that he hasn't been feeling all that well lately, as if something had happened between getting hired by Sierra in Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals and the position he is in now.

Meanwhile, Patti finds herself getting fired from a sleazy nightclub after the owner refuses to pay her. Wanting to get back at the music industry, she gets recruited by the FBI to look into des Revers Records and K-RAP Studios, a record company and radio station respectively, who are being accused of sending backmasked pro-pornography messages in their music.

The game runs on the SCI 1 engine. The protagonists' movements are controlled with a point-and-click interface, the first time in the series unless you counts the VGA remake of Leisure Suit Larry 1: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards. Graphics make good use of VGA with better and more colorful sprites than before, though there are still remnants of EGA such as Larry still having a red skin tone, as well as there being placeholder backgrounds. Deaths were also completely removed and unwinnable situations are very rare, making this game a good starting point for newcomers. The game also often switches control between Larry and Patti.

Video Examples for this article.

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This game provides examples of:

• Accidental Misnaming: Silas Scruemall keeps calling Larry Laffer wrong names, like Larcher, Loafer, and Loaner.
• Alliterative Name: Bobbi Bahng, Bobbi Bang, Bobbi Bangue, Bobbi Biang, Jennifer Jiggle, Michelle Milken, Pat Patterson, Pia Priapous, Rockin' Roller, and Silas Scruemall.
• Blackface: Unintentionally occurs with Passionate Patti due to a malfunctioning copy machine.
• Chekhov's Armoury: Subverted. Patti gets shown several gadgets in the FBI lab at the beginning of the game, but she only uses one: the bra cannon.
• Chest Blaster: The Hooter Shooter bra cannon.
• Chewbacca Defense: After the trial following Mr. Bigg's incident at the White House, Julius Bigg was declared innocent due to the "custard pie" defense. Apparently he "pleaded temporary insanity due to the high sugar content of those White House desserts", which resulted in him only getting a mild reprimand from the judge and six months of mandatory Jenny Craig meetings.
• Crash Course Landing: Larry is picked to land his flight (due to his experience in selling flight simulator programs) when the pilot goes on strike in the middle of the air due to a union contract dispute.
• Darker and Edgier: In a weird way, the game is this to the EGA Larrys. While the death feature has been removed, the game attempts to have a somewhat serious spy plot and there are many more moments of tension, unlike in the previous games in which Larry just searched for women while comical things happened to him.
• Easy Amnesia: Justified: At the start of the game, Larry, being a character in a computer game, has completely forgotten the events of his previous adventure, Leisure Suit Larry 4: The Missing Floppies, because the villain has stolen the game disks.
  • In reality, Leisure Suit Larry 4 never even existed, as the third game's ending didn't lend itself to a sequel and Lowe decided to skip straight to the fifth game, letting players come up with their own theories on the events of Leisure Suit Larry 4.
    • There's also the fact that Al Lowe promised there'd never be a fourth game of the series, due to some of the negative reactions garnered by the series. He kept his promise, too...
    • The game was indeed created, but was flushed down a toilet by Roger Wilco in Space Quest IV. This temporal paradox caused the game to never be published.
• Endless Corridor: Atlantic City's boardwalk is infinitely long (supposedly), and it will take you the same time to get back as it did to get out there.
• Erotic Eating: Michelle Milkem eating a banana split. Complete with the remains of the banana split having a rather suspicious phallic shape...
• Fun with Acronyms: C.A.N.E.: Conservatives Against Nearly Everything.
• Funny Background Event: At the airports, you can occasionally see the 2 employees fighting behind the counter.
• Glass-Shattering Sound: After getting trapped in K-RAP Studios, Patti aims the microphone so it's pointing just below her mouth, cranks up the volume on her control room's monitor speakers to an ear-piercing level, and lets out the strongest High C she can, which easily shatters the window in the recording room.
• Hidden Track: The otherwise unused track "Gettin' Some Air" can only be played in the sound test, where it's put in the middle of it alongside other tracks which are played elsewhere, likely because its unusual composition would not fit any places in the game.
• Idea Bulb: Once Silas Scruemall realises that Larry is a pathetic dork he could use for the audition, a bulb shows up above his head.
• I Know Mortal Kombat: Parodied. Larry steps up to the task of piloting a plane based on his experience with selling flying games after the pilots learn that a union dispute has broken out and join in on the strike while the plane they're flying is still in the air. He (and the player) proceeds to blindly fumble around with the controls until he purely by chance turns on the autopilot.
• Inflating Body Gag: One of the researchers in the FBI Lab has invented a flatulence-inducing powder. When he consumes it for testing purposes, it makes his body ball-like that bounces around the room, until he eventually pops.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: One of the puzzles involves Patti breaking out of a room that has its door blocked by an apparently immovable, insurmountable, microphone stand.
• Left the Background Music On: The tape room at the beginning has a boombox that plays songs from the game's soundtrack.
• Luck-Based Mission: A situation occurs with a video poker machine. Save Scumming is not required (if you lose your money you can hit for a little more) but definitely encouraged (the total you need to advance is very high compared to your starting amount).
• Meat Grinder Surgery: Passionate Patti gets this treatment with a drill during a Tracking Device implantation.
• Mister Big: The similarly named Mr. Bigg is not very tall and he's the game's villain.
• Money for Nothing: There is little point in playing the poker machine for more than 525 silver dollars as you need 25$ to watch the show, you can borrow the skates in exchange for the camcorder, and taking part in the show with Lana Luscious costs 500$. Indeed, Larry just gives them all away to the doorman once it's time to leave Tramp's casino.
• Musical Pastiche: "Nasty Girlz", the track that plays in Tramp Casino's showroom, is a pastiche of Janet Jackson's "Nasty" (also known as "Nasty Boys"), with similar instrumentation and composition. It's made pretty clear by the title.
• Playlist Soundtrack: There are two areas that switch between three music tracks as you spend time in them. Hard Disk Cafe goes through "Hard Rock Me", which is lighthearted and upbeat, "Hard Rock You", which is calm and relaxing, and "Hard Rock It", which is energetic and is the only that can be described as "rock". K-RAP Radio goes through "K-Rap Rap", "K-Rap Talk", and "K-Rap Rock", which are Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Sdrawkcab Name: Des Rever is literally "Reversed" reversed.
• Sexophone: This game has a song called "Saxy Sex".
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Pretty much everything that Patti does amounts to nothing. She shoots the villain, but despite drawing a gun in the White House in the presence of the Vice President, he gets off through a convoluted Chewbacca Defense. The mob's plan to use subliminals in music falls apart not because of her efforts, but because nobody could figure out to play CDs backwards. The mob's efforts to influence the government failed when their proposed bills got stuck in committee. And both of these together cause the mob to get out of the porn business, but that doesn't mean much because they quickly find alternative ways to make money. At least she got a weekend with Larry at Camp David out of it.
• Shout-Out: Examining one of the computers in the FBI's lab will have Patti imagining herself playing Zeliard on it. Josh Mandel, who was a writer for Larry 5, was also the producer for the English localization of Zeliard.
• Sliding Scale of Linearity vs. Openness: A 2 on the scale. The game progresses in a straightforward way: Larry>Patti>Larry>Patti, etc. No exploration is really possible and you're constantly pushed forward to the next location. That said, you can choose in which order you tackle locations.
• Smart People Wear Glasses: A few researchers who work at the FBI Laboratory wear thick glasses. Most other characters in the series don't.
• Sound Test: There's a music player available early on in the PornProdCorp building. It can play several different tracks from the game. After beating the game, you also get a special screen which plays sound effects.
• Stealth Pun: There are some cases, like when you make Larry talk to a bush, he will say:
  Larry: "Hi, is by any chance your name George?"
• The Stinger: A message pops up after the credits, saying "Remember Al Lowe's Slogan: Better Babes Through Technology!"
• Subliminal Seduction: Des Rever Records is suspected of planting subliminal messages in their records to get customers to buy porn. This is confirmed when you listen to the golden record backwards.
• Tagline: "Sex, thugs and rock 'n roll."
• Thinking Out Loud: The game mentions Larry used to laugh at his mother when she talked to herself when the "Talk" icon is used on Larry.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable:
  • An Unwinnable by Design state occurs if you forget to write down the numbers of the various limousine companies you must call throughout the game at the single time they're shown in each location. This leads to this trope: At one location, you can call a different "green card" limo company instead of the regular one, but when you want to return, they won't pick up; only the regular limo can take you back to the airport. If you only wrote down the green card number assuming they could return you, you'll never be able to get back. Worse, because viewing the real limo company number is a flagged event, failing to view it makes the scenario unwinnable even if you use a guide to get the correct number (with Sierra's stock "Oops!" error).
  • If the player fails to have Patti pick up both DataPaks in the FBI Labs then they can use the taxi to travel to the first location but can't take travel to the other location as they don't have the address. There's also no way to return to the FBI lab to get the other DataPak.
• Variable Mix: When Larry outside the Hard Disk Cafe, one of its three themes plays quietly. Once he goes inside, the music picks up in volume.
• What Does This Button Do?: After a copier in K-RAP Studios gets jammed for some reason, Patti decides to press a switch on it out of curiosity, causing it to blow in her face and cover her in toner.
• WPUN: Patti has to infiltrate a building of K-RAP Studios which is a radio station.
• X-Ray Sparks: Happens when you stick your fingers in an outlet. As they had decided to remove the accidental deaths from the series around this time, it isn't fatal.
• Yes-Man: Mr. Scruemall has three Yes Men who always agree and congratulate him.

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