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Gaming Reviews

Online Game: Mafia Wars

Zynga/Facebook/Tagged/Myspace/Yahoo!
[Four Stars]

Aug 25, 2009

Unlike most web games that try too hard with flash animation and fancy java programming, Zynga decided to leave the action to your imagination and it seems to be working. Mafia Wars is a text-based adventure where your goal is to graduate from a petty thug to the mafia overlord. To do that, you take on a variety of jobs to earn cash, be it bumping off a snitch, getting rid of rival gangs or poaching rival gang members. The gameplay is simple: You start out as a novice with about $3000 dollars in cash and no experience. In every stage you are given a number of jobs that will require you to use up some of your energy but which earns you cash and experience. Every few levels you will encounter a boss you have to defeat for personal vendettas (say Boss X roughed up your uncle), eventually becoming a Don yourself. Also, since the game is plugged into everyone’s social networking site of choice (Facebook, MySpace, Tagged, Yahoo!), you get rewarded for recruiting your friends to join your gang, which would explain all those Mafia Wars invites spamming your inbox.

While it doesn’t have the depth or graphics or production values of some web-based offerings, it’s still very addictive to play, even more so with the non-gaming crowd as all it requires is a social networking account and a decent internet connection. Definitely worth a look-in, whether your game of choice is Crysis or Solitaire.

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