Playboy: The Mansion (Xbox)

This is not a great game, but I must admit that it has provided me with quite a few hours of entertainment, and so cannot give it too low a grade. The game is effectively a niche Sim and in reality it will only really appeal to a certain type of person in the long term i.e Male fans of the Sims who like dressing up gorgeous virtual women in a variety of undergarments.

The game has two modes; sandbox and campaign. The campaign game is a good way to learn about how the game works, but I found that after the fourth mission I was staring to find the whole thing a bit monotonous. This actually is one of the biggest problems with the game because the campaign missions are the only really challenging thing in the game at all.

The whole thing revolves around producing the content for Playboy magazine. This involves befriending celebrities for essays, interview and cover shoots. And hiring staff to enable photoshoots, centerfolds and articles to be produced, and to entertain the celebrities who visit the mansion. As the game goes on Heff can hire better quality staff and more famous celebrities to produce a better quality magazine. In addition he can buy various furniture and accessories that can improve the mansion and will have an impact (albeit indirect) on the quality of the magazines.

In between, Heff can also embark or numerous sexual and intimate relationships with the various women around him. This is a novelty at the beginning, but it soon wears off,and I soon started concentrating on producing the magazine rather than interacting unnecessarily with the other characters. Heff must also maintain and fix relationships with the staff and celebrities around him, an aspect of the game that I personally found a bit dull.

Producing the magazine is fairly satisfying, and does involve planning as you can aim it to certain demographic sections of the population. However it lacks substance as the articles, interviews, pictorials and essays are simply refered to as titles with the name of the author, and it is difficult to identify with them as the real thing after a while. In addition, there is very little challenge in obtaining them as the celebrities and staff will provide material for the magazine very easily in most cases.

The photo shoots are quite entertaining as you can choose the clothing and location of the female character involved. However, this becomes a bit monotonous as well, as eventually the girls start to look similar, and all go through the same routine of poses.

In conclusion, there is not enough challenge, variety or action in this game for me to play this regularly in the medium term.

However, its not a bad idea to have an easy game providing some light entertainment. And when I am not in the mood for concentrating on assasinations and infiltrations in the games I usually prefer, I will happily play as Hef in the Playboy Mansion for a couple of hours, take a couple of photo shoots and publish a magazine.

So although not a great game, neither is it a game that I regret buying. This may be more a game for renting, as it is entertaining initially for the novelty factor, but I suspect many people may tire of it quite quickly.