Mafia Wars
The game that comes most readily to most people’s lips when Facebook is mentioned is Mafia Wars. This very casual RPG has proved a big hit for developer Zynga, constantly featuring in the social network’s Most Played charts.
Taking on the role of a Don of New York, you carry out jobs for profit, attacks against other Mafioso, and the day to day running of your underground empire. It’s a minimalist interface with all actions handled through a series of lists, each item decorated with thumbnails of the task at hand. All tasks are executed by a quick check against your character’s stats, the most important of which is energy. This allows you to perform a certain amount of activities – the grandeur of which grows as you gain more energy – in return for both XP and a swag bag full of loot, be it cash or miscellaneous knickknacks that can be used to improve your mafia.
XP slowly tots up and pushes you up through the ranks, each promotion granting you more jobs and more opportunities. Money collected from your nefarious activities can be invested in property to bring in a more stable source of income or an arsenal for your followers. All of whom can be equipped with a weapon, a vehicle and a piece of body armour and the better equipped they are then the better protected you are.
Your mafia is made up of those you know and love. Those who you never thought capable of a nasty thought turn out by your side, touting tommy-guns and talking in dubious accents aiding you in attacks against rival mafia. Whilst your single-player adventures fight against nothing more than a timer that slowly refills your energy, multiplayer consists of fighting and robbing other Facebook users. Your mafia are then pitted against your opponent’s with the victor leaving the other battered and a little lighter in the wallet. Those with small friends lists will suffer here as no matter how well pimped your troops are the sheer weight of numbers seen in some mafias will crush all that stand in their way.
It can be deeply addictive, rising through the levels and taking on random strangers. A slowly refilling energy meter rations the amount of time that can be spent playing a criminal mastermind but a few minutes here and there each day can be enough for you to grow an empire extremely quickly. Almost as soon as it begins, however, the shine disappears. The promise of heading to Cuba at level 35 may keep you grinding through the early levels but the realisation that Cuba is basically a reskinned New York breaks any illusion of progression. Once in a foreign land you must start completely from scratch, and the option of travelling to Moscow at level 50 leaves me in no doubt that the same cheap trick of extending the experience will be used again.
Prior to that revelation Mafia Wars had proved a compelling prospect; a web based RPG that appeared to have progression and sense of depth. A mafia full of well known faces is an amusing aside but with nothing more than the expectation of a new looking background at staggered intervals the game lacks any sense of purpose.
5/10
Paradise Paintball 3D
As an example what could be achieved by using Facebook as a platform and not as a confine, then Paradise Paintball should be held aloft. With a plethora of little-and-often, two-dimensional, RPG-lites, Paradise Paintball stands out by being a highly colourful, fully three-dimensional, FPS. Set on a series of tropical islands, your large headed character is dropped in with a hopper of paint pellets and let lose on the unsuspecting public.
Technically, it is very impressive. The game itself is very smooth with barely a hint of lag throughout all the time spent in Paradise and the water effects of the sea lapping the lush beaches could put many more well known titles to shame.
Whilst it may be different, difference is not always enough. The concept may be good enough and the controls solid but individual matches offer very little in the way of order. Often it is hard to tell who is on which team, what the objective is or even if there is an objective at all. To this day I have never finished a game; not because I didn’t want to but because they seemingly never end. All too frequently Paintball Paradise turns into a flashy tech demo which was not followed up on with a fully thought out design.
I do encourage you to visit Paradise, but I’ll be surprised if you stay.
3/10
I make my living as a programmer at a British games developer. In my spare time I try and spread myself between writing, gaming, drumming, goalkeeping, rolling dice and keeping my hair blue. Somewhere around that my wife fits in.
Disclaimer: the views expressed are my own and do not neccessarily reflect those of my employer. "
