When I first heard this game was made I chuckled to myself thinking it couldn’t possibly be true. But it was and so I got a review copy so I could check it out. THQ states that the target demographic is 15 to 30-year-old males. Honestly I can’t really see anything that would attract anyone from that demographic to this game even though I’m slightly outside the upper end.
The game consists of two pieces. The first is what I call ’dress up’ where you define the look of ’your playmate’ and decide upon her clothes, hair and accessories. Yep, that will pull in the males. No, there’s no nudity which is the only thing that might have attracted this demographic. You’re extremely limited in options when you first start, so after some minor configuration consisting of hair color, skin color, name and less than a handful of clothing options it’s time to get to the other side of the game, the pool party.
The Pool party, which is the whole point of this game, consists of four mini-games. Yes, that’s it. Four mini-games. Sure there are three levels of difficulty for these four mini-games, but it’s still JUST four mini-games.
The game forces you to play each game dozens of times. Each of the four areas is hosted by a playmate aptly named Miss January through Miss December. They ask you to help create some interest in their particular area by playing the mini-games well. They each have five challenges so the minimum amount of times you must play each game is 15. However in order to even take the challenges you must have party points. How do you get those? Well you play the four mini-games of course!
The four mini-games consist of:
- Water Balloon Hoops - Move to catch thrown water balloons
- Pool Jumping - Jump on moving platforms to get Playboy bunny icons
- Flying Disc - hit balloons with a frisbee before they fly away
- Bull Riding - stay atop the bucking bull machine (overtly sexual by the way)