Now you can enjoy the experience of "living the lifestyle" at home on your console. You get to play the part of the infamous Hugh Hefner, AKA "Hef" in this game. You have to balance building up your mansion, maintaining a network of relationships, and getting the magazine done on time in order to stay in business. Oh, yeah, there's some nudity involved in there, too.

Not Exactly What You'd Expect.
Don't let the game fool you, this isn't just some Sims knockoff with Playboy textures. The game has considerable depth and actually poses quite the challenge. It's more accurate to compare this game to the "Tycoon" games where you have to manage a business. Although it's temping to dive into the casual sexual relationships and decorating options the game initially offers, this can cause you serious troubles if you try to advance in the game.

There are two different game styles. There's the freeform style that allows you to do what you wish, as long as you keep publishing magazines and staying in the black. There's also the missions style where you have different missions to tackle. The missions style is probably a bit more interesting since it has more events to shake things up from the status quo.

In mission based gameplay, the game starts with you on the verge of publishing your first issue. You need to hire a staff, which includes a journalist and a photographer. You then need to shoot a centerfold with the playmate already on staff. After that, you publish your first magazine and then the fun starts.

Quite Some Characters There!
The gameplay in Playboy: the Mansion is in dealing with various stats. Every character you meet has different relationship needs: casual, professional, and romantic. Characters satisfy their needs and develop relationships through conversation. Relationships between people determine how well they get along. Be careful, sometimes relationships can go sour and you'll see negative relationships between characters.

In addition to relationships, characters have different needs: entertainment, intellectual, and leisure. Different activities fulfill these different needs. For example, sitting in a comfy chair will help satisfy leisure needs. Note that conversations generally tend to only satisfy relationship needs. While characters are satisfying these other needs, they won't be social.

Characters also have three overall stats: physique, intellect, and charm. These indicate how well the characters will do at certain tasks. Characters with high physique will take better photos, characters with higher intellect will be able to write more effectively, and characters with high charm will do better interviews. Individuals can work these stats up through various in-game means. For example, chatting in front of a mirror will increase your charm.

Finally, each character has a set of interests, dislikes, and quirks. There are a number of pre-determined categories such as humor, sports, technology, etc. in which characters can have interests. Characters that share interests will get along better than characters who do not. Also, characters with an affinity for an interest will create better content in that area; this means you should probably get a sports manager to do a sports essay instead of asking the stand-up comedian to do it. Each character can also have a number of quirks. Some example quirks include shy, confrontational, jealous, heavy drinker, etc. You need to keep these quirks in mind when you are throwing a party - getting a heavy-drinking, confrontational character together with a shy person probably isn't the best way to keep people in a good mood.

Relationships And The People You Can Sleep With.
The main mechanism for establishing and building relationships is to throw a party. This costs some money, with costs increasing as you try to attract more famous people to the mansion. Of course, if you try to invite over people that are too famous to be seen with you, they'll just decline the invitation. While at the party you'll be schmoozing with people in order to build relationships. This means you'll have to engage in conversations with people over and over again. If you develop good relationships with people, you can invite them to your inner circle, which makes it easier for you to invite them back to the mansion without having to spend money on a party.

You'll also want to establish relationships between other people to help your magazine. For example, it's a good idea to get your photographer and your intended cover model to be on good terms before shooting. You need to get them talking together in order to form a relationship. If they stop talking, it's your duty as the party host to lead them back toward each other make sure they continue their conversation in order to maximize relationships. Makes you feel like a kindergarten teacher sometimes!

Time To Get To Work!
But, what is Hef without Playboy? You have to publish issues of Playboy in order to keep the sweet moolah coming in. For each magazine you need a cover photo, an interview, a pictorial, an article, and essay and, of course, a centerfold. You will need to get celebrities to do the cover photo, the interview, and the essay. Your staff will do the pictorial and the article. You'll need a playmate in order to do the centerfold. But, it's not enough to just get these, you'll also need to worry about quality. Mood, relationships, interests, and character stats all contribute to the quality of a piece of content. The quality of each individual piece of content will influence the quality of the magazine.

But, wait! It's even a bit deeper than that. You also have to keep an eye on market demographics. What interest categories will sell well? Maybe the market has a burning interest in technology, so it would be prudent to get an essay from a technologist, or perhaps get a sexy cover shoot with that dot-com vixen you met at a party. But, if you focus too much on a particular interest, you might saturate the market and sell fewer magazines that you might otherwise want. So, it's important to fulfill the interests of the market without overwhelming it. The price and ad content of the magazine also influence your potential market and income from the issue.

After you publish one issue you're on to the next issue! Once you get one type of content from a person, you can't rely on them for the same kind of content ever again. Once Uncle Kracker does an interview, you can't just call him up to do another; you must make new contacts and get a different celebrity to do a new interview.

It's important to note that essays and pictorials require money in order to finish them. Unfortunately, it's all too easy to run low on money and be unable to publish a magazine, resulting in you being stuck in a dead end. There are ways around this, but the newbie player will probably need to restart at least once. This is one game where overwriting an older saved game isn't always the best choice.

In Missions mode, you'll sometimes have missions to publish different types of magazines. They start very generic, but eventually you might have to talk to specific people and publish specific types of magazines. For example, one mission involves a visit from Jose Conseco. You have to get some content from Jose and then publish a sports-themed issue. Some missions also throw wrenches into your plan. The same mission where Jose comes to visit also introduces strife between your various employees. You have to resolve this strife before Jose comes to visit in order to get the content from him.

Missions also provide you with other things to do besides just chat people up and have casual sexual relationships. Some missions require you to hold parties to raise funds for charity. Other missions require you to form relationships with certain people. These different mission objectives mix up gameplay a bit and award you points that you can use to spend on bonuses and cheats.

All Work And No Sex? Never!
Of course, it's not all work. You'll be able to engage in healthy sexual relationships with the female characters. Some of them might even become girlfriends, sometimes two or three at a time! It's also interesting to note that you can get involved with employees. Thankfully, Hef never seems to be the target of a sexual harassment suit, even after he fires an underperforming journalist he had sex with the previous night.

What about the sex? Well, prepare to be a bit disappointed if you're expecting much. While you will be able to see the female characters go topless, nobody is quite uninhibited enough to ever take off their underwear. So, while you may have the option to "have sex" with a female, it'll essentially be a sad parody with the appropriate parts safely hidden behind clothing. The sex animations are also rather repetitive, involving about a 10 second loop of animation at most. Eventually you'll get bored with the faux sex and will willingly hit the "Stop Action" button to go back to talking up other people.

It's also interesting to note that while you can have two girls making out, guys never ever show the slightest interest in each other. As usual, lesbians are sexy while gay men aren't. But, to be fair, you could still ogle the sexy bare chests of the male characters just as easily as you can the chests of the female characters if that's what interests you.

Hooray For Interior Decorating!
However, the game does have interior decorating, bringing the game a bit closer to the "sim" style we'd expect. You can buy and place different furniture within your mansion. It's interesting to note that some furnishings can only be put in specific areas. For example, work-related objects such as a journalism desk can only be put in the upper mansion area. Many objects have a purpose; for example, a bar can serve drinks and satisfy entertainment needs. Of course, drinking too much leads to drunkenness that can lead to more arguments if you're not careful. Chairs give leisure, while games provide for intellectual needs.

The problem is that decorating takes a lot of money. Some of the nicer objects are quite expensive and tempting, but you'll find that it's better to save your money for publishing your magazine. Not only do you need money to pay for essays and pictorials, but you'll also need money to pay for your employees. If you fall short on money, you'll lose your employees and you'll be unable to provide content for the next issue. Unlike The Sims, it's possible and quite easy to spend yourself into a hole. This is unfortunate, since the objects in the game look very nice and it is fun to re-arrange things.

...And The Rest Of It All.
What's the life of Hugh Hefner like? You have to work up relationships, get content for magazines, jump through the hoops indicated in the mission, and then publish a magazine. Use the money to expand your empire and repeat.

Be cautious that you don't spend yourself into debt. You'll need money to get content for the magazine; if you can't publish a magazine, then you're stuck unless you "cheat". It takes a patient and controlled person to navigate the business aspects of the game until you finally make enough money to really have fun with interior decorating and throwing lavish parties.

A really cool part of the game is the music. Stereos can play a variety of music. While there aren't many top 40 tunes, there's some cool music to listen to. Available genres include Jazz, Techo, and various forms of Electronica. I really enjoyed listening to the music in the game as most of it was new to me.

One of the most unique parts of the game is rewards in Mission mode. As you complete missions, you unlock new areas to explore, decorate, and have sex in. Completing parts of missions also gives you points. These points can be used to unlock pictures of classic Playboy covers, centerfold models, and pictures of Hef in the army and in life. You can also "cheat" using the points. For example, you can add or remove one quirk from a character; is your journalist a little too reserved? Give him the "Easy Going" quirk and he'll be a lot more effective in dealing with other people. There are many other options, including the ability to exchange points for a small amount of cash. This can help you if you ever do spend yourself too low to publish a magazine.

In Summary...
Graphics: Good. The object models are nice and the textures are detailed. There's a lot of variety in clothes, furniture, and other graphical options to keep things interesting. The graphics really didn't detract from gameplay and there were only a few times where the isometric 3D perspective made things hard to see.

Sound/Music: Very good. Stereo objects play various kinds of music from a wide variety of musical genres. The song selections are a bit small, though, so you'll hear some songs over and over again. However, if you absolutely hate a song you can make sure it never gets played. Character voices are gibberish, but they aren't unpleasant. Expect to hear them get repeated over and over again as you tell the same lame joke to every new celebrity you meet.

Controls: Good. There are a lot of menus to keep track of, but they are fairly well organized. It gets a bit confusing to remember which menus track which information, but eventually you get it down and you'll find that you can get most of the information you need easily.

Gameplay: Repetitive. The game is all about developing relationships with people, and you'll find yourself almost mechanically working up relationships in order to get the best content possible. It becomes important to keep talking to people as fast as possible to get out magazine issues and make more money. Decorating the mansion takes a huge backseat as you have to focus on making money and fear going into debt. The missions help mix things up a bit, but the core game is still very repetitive.

Extras: Missions reward you with points you can use to unlock different bonuses, such as classic Playboy magazine covers and centerfolds. You can also see pictures of Hef throughout his life. You can also use the points to "cheat" in the game and alter gameplay. However, some of the cheats are purely for fun, such as giving all women breast implants.

Sexual Content: It's a Playboy game, so it has to have some sexual content in it, right? The worst you'll see is topless character and simulated sex between people still wearing their underwear. For a game about a philosophy of trying to promote a "healthy sexual attitude", there aren't very many different body types for characters. Most women seem to have fairly large breasts, and the "implants" cheats make the breasts go from huge to comical. Overall, there's sexual content in the game but it's pretty tame, really.

Overall: A fun enough game, but unlikely to hold my interest for long due to the repetitious nature. Don't mistake this for a shallow sex game; it's really a business sim focusing on relationship development with a bit of sexual titillation added on top as a selling point. The gameplay is a bit repetitive and limiting, but the game can be playful when it wants to be. Be prepared to appreciate the work Hef had to put into the Playboy Dmpire in the early days.