Insta-review: Mafia Wars is a staple of the free internet gaming realm. It’s extremely easy to play yet filled with incredible depth. It is fun, casual, and core all at once, and is best played in bite-sized increments on every system it has appeared on. I highly recommend those who haven’t played it to give it a try. You WILL be sucked in (until you get bored, at least).
Okay, now that that’s over with I can dive into the full-on fun review of the game. In this review, I’ll be comparing the Facebook and iPhone versions of the game that continues to take us gullible gamers by storm. But here’s the surprising thing: It’s not the traditional gamer that enjoys it most.
First and foremost: Although both the games are similar, they are far from identical. For one thing, Mafia Wars on Facebook has been available for much longer than the more recent iPhone version, allowing for several upgrades along the way. These upgrades will probably make it to the iPhone version in some form or another.
Now for the fun review part. Mafia Wars sucked me in. Completely. Like some sort of viral epidemic, Mafia Wars spreads best through word of mouth. I did not even know it was available for the iPhone yet, until the folks at Joystiq mentioned it on their podcast. As a fan of the game and genre (I was addicted to Falcon’s Eye waaay back in the day) I quickly downloaded it to the phone and began playing. Just like the Facebook version, Mafia Wars for the iPhone was full of simple methods of battling, jobs, and leveling-up. In the simplest of terms, Mafia Wars is an MMORPG all about grinding. But, replace magic and dragons with bullets and crime lords.
Mafia Wars in Facebook includes a multi-level job system. Master each crime job’s level within a class, and the option for the next crime job level opens up (at the time of writing this there are only 3 levels per crime job). For both games, each crime job you complete is based on how much energy and specific items you currently have. Crime jobs output experience points and cash, and in the case of the Facebook version, new loot. The Facebook MW has a great balance of energy used to experience points/cash to be gained. On the other hand, the iPhone version is very imbalanced. Early on, the player is able to rack up cash and expend minimal energy points quickly if they choose the right job to undertake (hint: its 2 energy pts for 2 exp & $2k). A future update should fix that.
Fighting in Mafia Wars often results in a sort of hard-to-resist griefing. The game prepares a list of other Mafia Wars players with similar statistics, allowing the user to choose whom he think he’ll have the best chance of winning against. The obvious choice is almost always to battale the person with the lowest level, power, or smallest mafia (we’ll get to that later). While once again the Facebook version has the selection of possible enemies down to a science, the iPhone version often will offer fights that are completely mismatched. Perhaps this is a case of the game still in its infant stages with less players on the system.
The biggest draw to Mafia Wars, and the reason that its popularity comes in waves, is the ability to grow your mafia by recruiting friends to play as a part of your ranks. While the players never actually play together, simply joining a players mafia is enough to grant more power and strength to all those involved. There are some mafias that reach into the thousands of members on the Facebook game. With Facebook’s app system, it is easy to join the game to help a friend and forget about it, never coming back. Or, it is easy enough to join and stick around, playing whenever there is a spare minute to be used. And in actuality that is all the time needed to play Mafia Wars.
There are no “graphics” to the games. While the iPhone version is prettier, both use cut-and-paste images of cars, guns, and tools that were probably found via Google search. The visuals of the Facebook version don’t rely on pleasing the eye, just making the information quick to access.
The simplicity of the iPhone version can quickly lead a player to try out the Facebook game, which includes depth found in some of the most popular RPGs today. Mafia Wars is my current crack addiction.
Likes (iPhone):
- Simplicity in usage and easy to understand how to play
- Ability to add friends via Wii-like friend codes, allowing for quick updates to the size of a mafia
- Faster replenishment times for energy & stamina
- It’s free!
Likes (Facebook):
- Great depth in how to take on jobs and advance skills, offense, and defense
- Plethora of options and “side quests” with an item-collection system
- Many things are available to do right off the bat… There is no waiting for quests or jobs
- It’s free!
Dislikes (iPhone):
- Too simplistic/not enough depth. There is just barely enough to come back to each time, other than knowing that my mafia is growing and I am level-grinding
- Bad management of fights selection creates mismatches in battles
- The game crashes… alot.
- The game can’t be linked to the Facebook version or share accounts
Dislikes (Facebook):
- Bad visuals. It’d be nice to clean them up in future versions
- The game crashes. ALOT.
- There is a huge gap for new items and crime jobs to open up between the middle and later levels of character development
Although the taste of Mafia Wars can go away fairly quickly (it IS repetitive by nature, after all) the game is a great “my first MMORPG” for anyone to try. I recommend it, and I recommend you add me to your mafias as well.
[All images courtesy Zynga Games]
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