Playboy: The Mansion review

I'm struggling to figure out why there is an '18' certificate on the box of this game. Sure, Playboy magazine itself has boasted more than its fair share of adult content since its initial publication, way back in 1953, but this piece of software is pretty tame in comparison. I'd even go so far as to say that the game's adult rating is there to boost sales, not reflect content.

Oversized, oddly buoyant breasts and sexual encounters that are best described as madcap are about as adult as this game gets. In fact, anyone expecting a rollercoaster ride of non-stop titillation from a plethora of gorgeously-rendered, unusually liberal ladies will be rather disappointed. Playboy: The Mansion is more about being Hugh Hefner the working man than being Hugh Hefner the dressing gown-draped, beslippered love machine.

Sex sells

This doesn't mean that you won't get to live the Playboy lifestyle, filling your lavish residence with rock stars, friends and a host of Playmates and bunny-eared women, but all that extravagance costs money. It's your task to secure content for each month's issue of Playboy Magazine, as well as hiring models and centrefolds. Unfortunately, this isn't nearly as much fun as it sounds.

Getting people to appear in your magazine is a pretty simple task; everyone is just a phone call away and it won't take you long to find yourself a writer, a photographer and willing young woman. A little networking is required if you want to generate better content for the magazine but, again, this is dead easy. A party at the Hefner household always attracts interest and it won't be long before you're mixing with the likes of Uncle Kracker and Andrew WK.

The upward spiral

If it's not already apparent from the screenshots, there's a heavy Sims influence here, both when it comes to character interaction and mansion construction. Your profits from magazine sales go towards the expansion of your mansion, improving your quality of living and attracting ever more impressive celebrities, and you directly control Hefner, using your charm to make friends and influence people.

Whether you choose to play through a pre-defined mission structure or enjoy the freedom of the sandbox mode, you'll find the game dynamic pretty similar since success revolves around the same old formula: Gradually improving the quality of the magazine attracts ever more famous contributors and models who, in turn generate more sales which, in turn, make you more famous and attract yet more high flyers and so on and so forth.

The problem is that the actual process of making the magazine quickly become humdrum routine and, what's more, is not particularly difficult. Winning over celebrities and writers and convincing them to provide content is dead easy, as Hefner (the only person you can directly control) can charm anyone he meets within minutes, and working out which contributors will generate the most sales is pretty academic.

Once you've sent a few issues off to press you'll find yourself well on the road to success and will be sat there, thumbs twiddling, wondering what to do next. If you're so inspired, you might want to work towards unlocking the game's many secrets, such as historical Playboy features and photoshoots, but this is a long and slow process.

The kinks in 'kinky'

Building your mansion is neither as intuitive nor as exciting as it should be and, since you can't switch character control away from Hefner, your interpersonal experiments are pretty limited too. There's a few minutes of fun to be had enjoying the odd idle distraction, such as snapping models at photoshoots or watching guests or Playmates shed clothes and mate furiously (though nobody ever seems to remove all their underwear), but these moments are fleeting.

Playboy: The Mansion has a smattering of bugs, with some poor clipping occasionally enmeshing characters inside each other and guests gliding apart in the most spooky of fashions as they make room for you to join them in conversation. The pathfinding, especially in tight environments, can also be quite bad and the game is really in need of a lick of paint in just about every department except the music, which is an impressive mix of contemporary and classical compositions.

Such simple solutions

I'm left wishing the solution to all my journalistic problems was to throw a party and repeatedly nudge my friends in the ribs until they wrote me fantastic features on modern sexuality.

Within months they'd be introducing me to ever more important people and perhaps, in the meantime, legions of charming ladies would populate my house, none of them the least bit jealous, and my ever-growing public profile would keep the cash and the contacts rolling in.

In the meantime, I will just have to be content with knowing that, at one point in my life, I was only four meters away from Tom Cruise. If he'd only been a little bit taller, I might even have seen him too.