Playboy: The Mansion - Review

Introduction:

Playboy: The Mansion allows you to step into the shoes and smoking jacket of the world famous Hugh Hefner and build the Playboy empire from the ground up.  A quick note about the game; Playboy has an ESRB Content Rating of M for Mature for nudity, strong sexual content, and use of alcohol.  Parents, this is not a game for minors, please keep an eye on what games your children are playing.  This game is a perfect example of why parental guidance should be strongly enforced.  With that out of the way, it is fair to say that Playboy tries to appeal to a market that TV makes billions on, but the gaming industry has not fully tapped.  So as you prepare for hours of business adventures and breasts, get ready for some good times, some good music, and a few laughs.  For those gamers on the fence about whether or not to splurge in the immoral debauchery of the Playboy lifestyle, or go on in the sheltered lives they’ve been told to live, perhaps this review will change your mind enough to at least give it a chance.

Gameplay:

At first, the game play may seem a little clunky, but should be fairly easy to adjust from the play of similar games.  Playboy takes its main influence from the Sims, there is absolutely no denying that fact.  However, there are features in this game that the average gamer may find much better than previous life simulation games.  The player does not have to worry about the arbitrary and dull parts of life such as eating and sleeping, which makes it easier to advance through the game.  Day and night both exist, but only as a graphical change.  There are three basic parts of the game that the gamer will work through to build up his or her Playboy Magazine empire: building up an “inner circle” of friends, using them to develop your magazine along with a staff, and shooting photographs for the centerfold and cover of your next issue.  To add people to your inner circle, you just have to talk to them, build up your casual relationship meter, and invite them into your group of friends.  While this could have been a difficult, strategic development point of the game, the developers decided to make it basically the easiest thing to do, ever. 

Once Hef introduces himself to someone, walk through the conversation with actions like joke around, swap stories, share secret, and invite them in, it’s as simple as that.  Once someone likes Hugh, he can use them to add to the magazine by having them write essays about a topic that will appeal to that month’s demographic charts or have a staff writer interview them.  The more famous and intelligent the person, along with the skill of your writer, the better the interview, it’s that easy.  In order to produce the next issue, you need a full staff which includes a journalist, photographer, and a playmate.  The journalist writes articles and does interviews, photographer takes cover shots, centerfolds, and does pictorials, and the playmate is used for the centerfold.  Once there is a cover shot, centerfold, essay, article, interview, and pictorial, the player can adjust the price and advertisement volume of that issue, and send it off to print, and the money flows in.  The better the issue appeals to the demographics of that month, and the better the quality, the more cash the issue pulls in.

As the game progresses, more famous celebrities and staff members are available, which increases the overall quality of each issue and rakes in more cash.  Oh, how easy the business world is.  Mission play will guide the player through a set of objectives for each level.  Some deal with relationships of characters, and others deal with publishing certain items in the magazine.  When levels are completed, new unlockable items and areas become available, these include the pool, grotto, game room, and so on.

The last main game play feature is the photography portion of the game.  Once a model is selected for a cover shot or centerfold, a location in the mansion is selected for the shoot.  Models will pose for photos, and use items such as couches and beds as props during the process.  Variety seems to be the key factor in a good photo shoot, a few clothed shots, a few topless, and different outfits paired with a good model will result in a good photo session.  Eight pictures later, pick one for your magazine, and that’s that.  This part of the game will be humorous at first, but quickly becomes very repetitive.  A minimum of sixteen shots and four or more load screens are required for every magazine.  At first, this is one of the parts of the game that really adds to it, and makes the player work to build up cash.  After a few missions though, it just gets boring, and the player will probably become pretty unemotional to video game boobs.  Who thought that could ever be possible?

Graphics:

The graphics in Playboy are fairly decent, but nothing to write home about.  The in game graphics are decent, and the models are fairly solid for a console based game.  The pictures taken for the magazine however look like Windows 3.1 bitmap throwbacks with more grain than your average farm silo. The menus are all crisp and legible, as are the text in the game.  There is no HDTV support for Playboy, but it wouldn’t be needed anyway.  The overall graphics feel is not bad, and doesn’t distract from the game but no players will be talking about them months from now.  The player models are a major graphical plus though, as the female models are very … err … detailed.  From the waist up anyway, and no, there is absolutely no south of the border nudity in the game to worry about.  Either way, this should be a plus to the 18-21 year old male crowd.

Audio:

Just like the Sims, the characters in the game do not actually talk; they speak a form of gibberish with pitch changes that imply happiness, sadness, or anger.  The music in the game is fantastic.  Many genres are represented with actual music tracks from a few unknown artists and a few more recognizable musicians.  Rock fans will recognize radio hits like “Swing Swing” from the All American Rejects, and hip hop fans will recognize a few artists in the game as well.  The soundtrack was mixed by Felix Da Housecat, and really is quite impressive.  Along with the support of custom soundtracks from your Xbox hard drive, the music will not get old fast.  Even if the in game tracks get old, custom soundtracks will keep things fresh as the game progresses.  One of the best audio features is the fact that the player can switch the soundtrack and songs from the start menu, without having to walk Hugh to a stereo.  Volume levels of all tracks can also be adjusted from there, to keep loud songs down to an ambient level while playing.


Controls:

The controls may seem a bit odd at first for those used to mouse and keyboard style sim play, but they are easily mastered.  The left analog stick is used for movement, the right for panning and zoom levels.  The D-Pad is used to access all the in game menus like missions, characters, the magazine, and the buy/build mode.  The button that seems to get the most use though is the right trigger.  The trigger buttons control the speed of the game, with neither pressed the game is in normal speed, left trigger is slow motion, and the right trigger speeds the game up to get through conversation and actions.  To say the least, the left trigger has seen very little action in this game, and because of how repetitive some portions get, the right trigger will receive quite a workout.  For the most part, the controls are fairly smooth for a console based sim, and will not upset most gamers.

Replay:

The game itself may be fairly easy, but it definitely takes time.  The missions will take most gamers many hours to beat, and they will feel a drive to keep playing to unlock all the areas and keep generating cash.  Playboy also offers a free play mode, where the player can build their own mansion, and develop the magazine as they see fit.  In this mode, the player can take any approach they wish, which adds to the replay factor of the game.  When it comes to mission mode however, it’s the same missions no matter how someone looks at it, which could really hurt the game in the long run.  Live content downloads are supposed to be coming in the near future.  This could add a lot to the replay value if these include new items or missions, but that remains to be seen, as none are currently available.

Summary:

Overall, this game is fairly innovative.  It offers a very adult title for adult gamers, who are looking for a little non-competitive fun.  It is good to see developers out there are taking chances by making titles that not all gamers and community members may agree with, but it gives the industry more freedom to develop games they truly want to if they do well.  Players will get a few laughs with the antics of some of the characters, and a few funny additions that can be found during play.  Playboy:  The Mansion is not a bad game by any means; it just isn’t a great one.  It is however a lot more in depth than some of the like genre games that had come out previously.  At times, it even feels like the developers were not just going for the cheap nudity buck from gamers.  Playboy could really open the industry’s arms to more mature titles built for older gamers.  It has a decent overall game play, good audio, decent graphics, and a good feel for the Playboy lifestyle.  And while I cannot stress enough the fact that this is a mature game, if you’re opposed to this, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.  This game does a great job in trying to widen the horizons of people in general, as the magazine has tried to do for many years.  Both have helped break preconceptions about race and sexuality, and denying the game based on the fact that it has suggestive themes alone is pretty childish.  Hugh Hefner has done many things for society when it comes to opening minds to things they have not experienced, so it is best to at least give it a try before shutting it out completely.  Heck, maybe the Playboy lifestyle is for you after all…