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Hugh Hefner. One of the most recognisable names in the world, almost as recognisable as his magazine, Playboy Now it is your chance to be 'Hef' as you find yourself living the life of parties, babes and generally the lifestyle of one of America's icons and its owner. Welcome to Playboy: The Mansion.
The premise is simple, you are Hugh 'Hef' Hefner and it is your job to run the massive Playboy empire, starting from the bottom up, building circulation, gaining fame, fortune and girlfriends galore. All the while ensuring that your sales figures remain high, that the parties get thrown and that you get to meet al sorts of interesting people. All to the betterment of the Playboy name and your reputation.
That is it, straightforward and quite refreshingly simple a concept.
Gameplay is similar to what goes on in The Sims games. Take control of Hef and the four main areas of business and whilst you are at it, schmooze and swagger your way through things, talk to people, conduct business, make friendships and gain girlfriends. All the while trying to gain the elements you need for that months issue. The two most important being a centrefold and a cover shot, they along with an essay, an interview, pictorial and an article form the backbone of what you are going to give the world. The better each is the better your sales, so that you can improve your mansion, get better interior items, unlock the pool and gardens, all for the benefit of selling more issues and so on.
There are two ways to accomplish this. Mission mode where you undertake specific missions - 'Launch the Playboy Empire', 'get a centrefold shot' and so on - each detailing out a high point in Hef's career some are easy, others are quite hard to accomplish and show that some forethought has been employed. In any case there are rewards, which can be as simple as the flush of success that you have your first intimate encounter through to picking up tokens to by new music tracks, archive copies of the Real World Playboy or to activate various cheats and other effects.
The other way to play is in Freeform mode, where you accomplish the same things but at a pace you choose, the pressure is off but the elements remain the same and in a lot of ways it is easier to accomplish things. In either case you start off meeting your current staff, Jenny a current Playmate, Victoria a Bunny Girl and possibly more importantly Dick, who is your Chief of Staff and main guide as to what you need to be doing. Such as throwing a Party!
Parties are the single most important thing in the whole game, without them you cannot get those new articles, new centrefolds or covers and above all you will not get the chance to get a girlfriend. Parties are also the most difficult part to get right. Everyone has drives that they need to be fulfilled, be they professional, casual or romantic. They also have entertainment, personal and leisure drives to be balanced out, each can fluctuate throughout a party and will influence if your request for a shoot is turned down or not. Indeed their over all mood can go from angelic to spurned very quickly, more so if you ignore them. The conversation menu is the main way of interacting, talk about casual things and they will become more friendly, talk business and they will be come more focused that way and if you sweet talk them well the results are obvious. Other interactions include asking people to follow you, to introduce them to someone, other guests, a photographer, or a playmate or bunny girl. All can affect the way the game progresses.
Visually things are a pretty good. A few rough edges at times, often occurring during the photo-shoots, I am uncertain if this is to simulate a bad picture or is a real problem And yes you can do topless shoots by changing costumes. Animation is smooth but at times appears to be almost languid this gives walking a curiously smooth look to it. The mansion itself is well rendered and gives the feel of a place dedicated to a man's dream.
The music selection is vast and welcome. There are a multiplicity of styles to pick from, all to help create the mood you want for your current party or to just chill out to in-between times. This ranges from techno and industrial through to mellow jazz. A great difference from the predominantly techno/house beats that seem to plague games these days. There is no voice acting as such, more a generalised series of exclamations, enough to give a flavour of things but not enough to require tonnes of dialogue.
There is bags to do, in either mode. Missions can be long and often a save or even three will be required before they can be completed successfully. The parties with their meet and greet style emphasis can mean a grind to see that everyone has been catered for and are enjoying themselves, either with yourself or one of the other guests. You are in for the long haul and it shows.
Control wise things are finicky. The conversation menu stems from the left analogue stick and corresponds to which of the eight directions you push it. This can cause all sorts of problems as getting it exact seems far more awkward than it would warrant. At first it looked like a simple, up down list of options, which is confusing until you figure out that it is directionally based, it also isn't explained in the rather light manual. Perhaps it would have been better to place the selection on the D-Pad, whose normal functions (the various management menus and screens) are disabled in conversation anyway would have been a less messy way of dealing with conversation topic selection. Beyond that the controls do their job effectively if at time a little slowly. Another gripe is that you have to explicitly let indicate that you are moving between areas in the mansion, you have to tell the PS2 that you are indeed going upstairs, no walking to the out of the way stairs and moving up them, you have to inform it and confirm that you are doing so, wasting more interaction time.
The manual is structured to deliver the most info on how to balance drives and the rest of the resource/social interaction required but misses out some basics such as how the conversations are selected and other little things, including a more detailed explanation of what the controls actually do.
There are some clever touches. You can sit down as will guests, pulling out chairs to do so. You boogie to the stereo after changing the music selection and the relationship AI is at times funny but clever. Watching Hef get slapped is a cute experience. Pathing through obstacles once or twice was reminiscent of the hokey cokey as Hef shimmies through, round and about guests to get to somewhere, when a straight path is available. Some of the available cheats are hilarious and the little Playboy Factoids that appear between level loads will be of interest to most, if only to show off at a party.
There is a lot here to absorb. Playboy: The Mansion is a solidly put together game but ultimately runs into the brick wall that whilst it is fun to ogle and instruct some beautiful ladies around, often changing their costume at your whim. It is unsatisfying to do, there is not enough to do, throw party, get articles, throw another party, publish. You just wonder what else there could be and you can't. It just doesn't hold you and after the fourth or so photo-shoot the fact that you can get them topless looses its appeal. However for all that it doesn't seem to glamorise the subject and that perceived compromise may be the biggest flaw.
Chris Snook
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Fascinating look and feel of how it could be to be one of the worlds most infamous men and the empire he built around the celebration of the female form. Beset with controls that on occasion conspire against themselves a subject that is compromised in its final form and an ultimately lacking experience of play. For some it is a dream come true for others they will quite happily look elsewhere.
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