Playboy: The Mansion review

Sex and pornography has been at the front of technology since technology began. It's been responsible for all the major technological innovations like the uptake of digital photography, the demise of Betamax and the rise of DVD. Gaming is probably the only area that this type of content hasn't had much of an impact.

It's always been around from the early days of Strip Poker with grainy images through the Leisure Suit Larry games and now it's Playboys turn to take on the games world. Playboy the Mansion is basically the Sims with sex and nudity. There must be a substantial market for this given the availability of patches for the Sims to enable the same sort of thing.

With the game of the magazine Ubisoft has tried to tap into this market giving the gamer the chance to take control of Hef at the start of the Playboy empire. Taking control of staff, throwing parties, schmoozing with celebs and running the photo shoots should be a fun and exciting prospect but, as with most tie in game, especially those that try to put sex out as the main selling point, it's best to approach it with a low expectation.

Get to the point

To answer the most obvious question, this game does contain topless, digital women who you can have sex with, with your pants on though. So, Playboy the mansion is based on the Sims model with an adult theme. There are two game modes, the freeplay, sandbox mode, and the mission based mode. The freeplay puts you in control of Hugh as you build up your empire and mansion from the ground up with no real aim other than playing the game.

The mission based version gives you lots of mini goals to complete as you publish your magazine. There are plenty of items available for equipping your mansion but they don't have any real impact on how the game plays out. It's quite possible to play the missions without buying any new furniture. This makes it rather pointless and will disappoint those more used to the Sims which is less forgiving of being frugal with the furniture.

Relationships

Aside from furnishing your mansion, the other main part of the Sims style game is personal relationships. There are three categories of relationships that Hugh can have – casual, romantic and business. These are indicated by bar graphs showing how strong your relationship is with a person in a category. To strengthen a relationship in one category you can talk to the person on that topic so that the bar increases. The categories of each conversation topic are indicated by symbols so just point the cursor at the topic and click.

If you say something that the other person doesn't like in your SimSpeak then just change topics for a while and come back to it later on. Each type of relationship has a final destination – casual relationships result in being able to invite someone into your inner circle so you can invite them to your mansion outside of parties; business relationships result in being able to strike a deal with the other person and either make or lose money; romantic relationships result in sex or inviting the other person to be your girlfriend which is much the same as being in the inner circle except that they're always at the mansion.

Party time

Parties are, of course, the lifeblood of the playboy lifestyle. You can throw parties as often as you like, and can afford. You invite people from your staff list and from the celebrities list. Make sure that you have a journalist and photographer on site so that you can snap that celebrity for the cover shot and get that interview you need, oh, and keep a few bunny girls on the list to entertain and flirt with the other guests.

The parties finish when everyone leaves or when you ask them all to. The main problem with the parties is that the character models are very basic in their variety. They're more like the original models in the Sims. All of the characters looking the same makes it difficult to remember who it is you want to track down for an interview and which ones are your girlfriends who you'd better get flirting with otherwise they'll leave you.

Fortunately one of the menu screens that's available shows all of the people in the mansion so you can see who's wearing what so that you can track them down by that. The parties raise your fame which helps with the sales of your magazine which gets you more money so you can buy stuff for the mansion and hire better staff.

Staffing the lifestyle

Running the magazine isn't a one-man job. Your first task is to hire a full compliment of staff. You'll need a photographer, a playmate and a journalist as a minimum as each edition of the magazine requires a pictorial, a cover shoot, a centerfold, an article, an interview and an essay. Some of these will be provided by your staff but the cover shot, essay and interview all require the help of off staff contributors. These have to be solicited at your parties. The better the rating of your staff the better they're articles and photos will be.

For the photo shoots it's best to introduce the photographer and subject before hand to improve the quality of the shoots. During the photo shoot you are placed behind the lens with 8 shots to take. It doesn't really matter what your photos end up like as you get the same rating whether you photograph the girl topless in a sexy pose or get a close-up of her elbow. You can choose the outfits worn in the photoshoots from a selection which basically comes down to a choice between breasts exposed or not. Again it doesn't really matter which takes any fun out of the photo shoot pretty quickly.

Foxy ladies

The presentation of Playboy the mansion needed to be top quality to really pull this off as the gameplay is inevitably going to be a bit shallow. Sadly, Playboy looks dated when compared with the likes of the Sims 2. The characters glide around and the animations are rather limited. There is too little variety in the animations to keep them interesting, dances repeat too much and the actions that go along with the conversations are also too repetitive. The bit that should really stand out for this, being the primary selling point is the sex but sadly that is also very lacking.

There is only one sex animation per item of furniture regardless of mood or character. This means that you'll probably buy more furniture to see the sex animations but even that loses its appeal very quickly. The sound, on the other hand, benefits from being able to use custom soundtracks. There are loads of built in tunes that can be played over the in-game hi-fi but the game also allows you to listen to your own music that you've copied to the Xbox. The sound effects leave a lot to be desired. The speech takes the form of SimSpeak from the main characters with mission help provided by decent but variable voice acting from your PA.

Playboy or poorboy?

Playboy the Mansion leaves you with a feeling of a missed opportunity. Whilst I don't think many people would have had high expectations for this game, except maybe Ubisoft and Playboy, but that gives them a great opportunity to take the market by storm. The simulation element of running the magazine isn't detailed enough to be an enjoyable game on it own and the Sims type parts of the game – interactions and relationships – aren't developed well enough to be an enjoyable game on their own. If you want the Sims with nudity then get the Sims and a nudity patch.

If you want a simulation game get a Sim game but Playboy the Mansion is one to pass up. It's not that it does anything wrong particularly, it isn't adult enough to be an adult game and get the market that way, it isn't simulation enough to get that market and it isn't a good enough Sims clone to get at that market. If there's a follow-up then undoubtedly a lot of these problems can be resolved but as it is this game falls short of being recommendable.