Sexy Vegas

Sex sells, right? Not always. Think about those adverts you used to see with 'SEX!' in big letters at the top, and then 'Got your attention? Now buy our insurance policyzzzzz' in smaller text underneath. Did you ever buy the insurance? Nope.

Unfortunate then that an increasing number of mobile games are adopting a similar policy, taking a fairly boring game that you wouldn't normally want and draping half-nekkid ladies over it to arouse your attention. Often, the results aren't much fun. Recent examples include Sexy Babes: Wild Waterslides, and Sexy Soccer.

Sexy Vegas is another one for the list. It's a basic slot-machine game, where the aim is to win enough money to persuade four women to strip down to their birthday suits (although their hoo-hoos are pixellated out).

On each of the five machines, you have to earn a certain amount of money to get the girl to take off an item of clothing. Then repeat. It's not mutual, by the way: you don't have to strip down yourself while playing. Well, it's not obligatory.

When you've finished the game, you can leer at them in an image gallery. Seedy? Just a bit.

But our problem with Sexy Vegas isn't about being prudish. It's down to the fact that the game just isn't very good. There are five slot machines to play, which you unlock progressively as you work your way through the girls.

They get progressively more complex, with more lines and features (this is the machines I'm talking about). So the first machine, Jewels, has one line and a nudge option, while the second, Inferno, has three lines and a hold. Paradise Island has five lines and a scatter feature, which pays out across different lines. And so on.

To spice up the action, every so often the girl you're trying to undress will tempt you with a bet relating to your spins. For example: "I bet you can get four 7's in seven spins". Take her up on her offer, and you double your winnings. But lose, and she takes all the dosh that you earn during the challenge – in the quoted example, the next seven spins.

Trouble is, the gameplay just comes down to spinning reel after reel in an effort to win cash, with precious little of the depth you'd want from a full fruit machine simulator. In short, it's boring. Even if you just bought it so you could show your mates in the pub, you'd still lose patience working through the repetitive gameplay.

Just to re-stress, we're not taking some kind of a moral stand against this kind of adult game. It's just that the gameplay itself could be WAY better, particularly when you consider that Gameloft is one of the more creative and quality-driven mobile games publishers around.

From them, this is disappointing. Even if it does sell like hot cakes, which is presumably the idea.