Playboy The Mansion review

Breasts are lovely. Women can healthily celebrate them, men can healthily appreciate them, and they also serve practical storage purposes. Certainly they are one of the most impressive parts of human anatomy.

But can their abundance improve a poorly designed game? You only have to take one look at Playboy The Mansion to see that no, they can't.

Based around the life of the eponymous mammary-oriented magazine and its founder Hugh Hefner, Playboy plays like an exceptionally limited version of The Sims. As Hef you have to build the Playboy mansion and magazine, outfitting your home, hiring staff and commissioning articles.

This is achieved by endlessly throwing parties, choosing from a selection of desperate wannabes and then building one of three different types of relationship.

Friends can be asked to write articles, business associates can be asked for finance, and lovers can be asked to be glamorous.

Practically, you do this by choosing from a small number of abstract dialogue options such as 'Casual Talk', 'Discuss Market' and even 'Have Sex on Couch'. You repeatedly go through a similar solicitation process with each character you invite, which soon becomes irritating.

The small number of animations and unimpressive selection of furniture to outfit the rumpus rooms with makes this endless simplistic process to become painfully dull.

Yes, there are lots of breasts and plenty of glamorous parties, but it's certainly not worth it.

Playboy The Mansion is out for PS2, Xbox and PC now