Original Release: Groove Games, 2005, PlayStation 2 / Xbox / PC
This “Hef sim” brings together the social interaction aspect of The Sims, the decision-making and budgeting of a “tycoon” game and a rudimentary model photography mode.
Playboy: The Mansion (Playstation 2, Groove Games, 2005)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: PS2 Emulation Guide
Review by: Master-B
Playboy: The Mansion chronicles the life of Hef (who looks like a mix of Dick Nixon and Quagmire here for some reason) as he becomes a luminary in the flesh trades. The game doesn’t exactly glamorize his lifestyle, though; Hef appears to be on house arrest and is confined to his mansion, to which you have to lure various figures of prominence to milk for magazine content and nubile young naifs (for other types of milking).
The game appears to take place in some sort of Bend of Time in which the Playboy magazine has not launched yet and it’s present day (circa 2004), but Hef somehow already has a mansion and is in his physical prime. With a mere $100,000 in the bank and a relatively bare and small mansion on hand, the goal of the game is to build the magazine into a juggernaut by creating the best content you can for each month’s issue.
So the game has “tycoon” genre elements, but the main way you get content is by schmoozing people at the mansion in a Sims-esque social simulation. Each new game randomly generates a pool of new people to populate Hef’s world. The first order of business is to hire staff for the magazine – you need at least one journalist (to write articles), photographer (to do the shoots), Playboy model (for your centerfold) and bunny (to serve drinks and entertain guests at the mansion).
All of these are randomly generated except for the Playboy models, who are drawn from real women throughout the magazine’s history. These are generally the most expensive staff to hire and you need a new one every month for the centerfold, but the game tosses you Julie McCullough for free for the initial tutorial magazine. There are also a handful of real-world D-list celebrities peppered in to get your supporting content from, like Carmen Electra and Jose Canseco.
The randomly generated people are half the fun of the game. They’re given randomized jobs that are all over the map, but all of them end up looking like either early 2000s frat bros or e-thots with giant gabungas. My favorite was a Congresswoman who looked like a 20 year old titty streamer, had “amorous” and “drinker” perks, and would show up to parties already topless and immediately make out with random schmos.
Speaking of topless women, I suppose we should address the level of “adult content” in this one. It goes right up to the line of what you could get away with and still be on mainstream retail shelves at the time, the same as contemporary Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude; bare pixel boobies, and very short scenes of simulated grinding sex (doin’ it Premarital Mormon Style – always with bottoms on). The one thing I was surprised by is that you can unlock various Playboy pictures as you go, and some of them actually give you the full frontal in the original non-polygon form.
Hef is free to sex up any ladies in the game, except the Bunnies for some reason (though the Playmates are not off-limits). This includes creating a future #MeToo situation in about 15 years with any female staff you might hire. This is always just a time-wasting distraction from your main goal, though; churnin’ out that content for the monthly issue.
Every issue requires six components: a cover photo shoot (for which you have to woo a celebrity), a centerfold (simply pay a Playmate), an article (hire a competent journo and play to their strengths), a pictorial (same with a photographer), an interview (need a good journalist + an interesting celeb) and an essay (convince a celebrity who isn’t a meathead to write this for you). Articles and pictorials are the simplest; just hire the best staff available and send them on their way. The centerfold is fairly simple as well, you set up a photogenic environment somewhere in the mansion and then snap the perfect pic (bonus points for catching the model in a brief wink or toothy smile).
The more complicated bits are the schmoozing of celebs to get the nakey pics, interviews and essays, which force you to dive deep into the game’s Sims-like social system. Hef attracts his potential content creators to the mansion with parties, which have more strategic layers than you might initially think. The more famous celebs provide better content, but their “fame” level has to be near or beneath Hef’s for them to accept your invitations (you gain fame from releasing magazines and holding parties). You also need to balance the male-to-female ratio to keep people talking to each other and interested in the goings-on, since all this plays out in real time and Hef can’t chat up everyone at once.
There are even more considerations, like increasing the appeal of the mansion with decorations and populating it with items that appeal to each celebrity’s particular inclinations, but usually just getting them through the door is enough. Hef then needs to chat them up to build up his relationship level with them, which you do just by repeating options from three main menu choices – Casual, Romantic and Business. The general flow of the game is to build up the Casual relationship on first contact to get the celeb invited to your Inner Circle, which means you can now call them to the house at any time to work on them further without throwing a party or spending money on them. Business talk gets them interested in being a magazine contributor, but if it’s a female you can also do Romantic talk to gradually seduce them into sexytimes (Hef World appears to have a strict “No Homo” policy).
The whole thing is really not a bad idea, but the nuts and bolts of it just don’t come off well. The main problem is that the social aspect of the game is so slooooow and repetitive. The chat-up process is pretty much identical for everyone … and then if you want the best results, you also have to butter up your employees similarly and then introduce the subject to the writer/photographer and let them build up their professional relationship independently. Oh, and don’t forget to pause and check the menus first every time to see what everyone’s proclivities are!
It’s still kind of fun up until you put out two or three magazines, and then it just feels like you’ve seen everything the game has to offer already and the rest of it is going to be a big grind. It’s the same endless Simglish chats, the same photo-taking mini-game, even the same goofy little sex loops over and over with women that tend to look quite samey (give the game some credit for actually making faces and boobs look passably decent with 2004 technology though, and having some decently detailed mo-cap animations). But now it’s complicated by forced group chat goals, which are seriously glitchy.
I think what the game needed was to focus more on the magazine-running aspect and less on the role-play of Hef’s parties. And on that point, it doesn’t at all dive into the more socially and culturally interesting aspects of Hef’s life. It’s content with being another Sims variant with a big side of soft porn, a photography mini-game and an extremely simplistic magazine management element. As-is it’s just too slow and tedious, and the adult stuff is not really titillating.
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