Portent

This is the only paid one in the four reviewed: Mafia Live which costs £1.79, or about $2.99 (I guess). I have to say it is my favourite of the four but it has a basic flaw in the game design. It relates to recruiting members.

To get more mobsters into your gang, you have to get friends or acquaintances that you know to join.  Not exactly viral marketing but that sort of thing and it involves them basically being slightly spammed by you.

Not everyone has lots of friends who want to join up so if you haven’t then you are doomed to fight alone in your one man gang. This affects your combat strength as only one your best rated vehicles can be used – if you’ve bought say a town car and a BMW M3, it’s the M3. A gang with 2 members uses both cars.  It also stops you doing bank jobs etc. I can only steal or trash cars, shop lift or at best rough up rivals.  Bigger gangs can do bigger jobs which net them more money and experience.

I spotted this flaw early on so gave up trying to win fights. I armed myself with the minimum needed to conduct beat-up rivals missions, let everyone beat me up and concentrated on building up my property portfolio. After 4 days I have acquired 5 Hot Dog stands and 2 Gas Stations and quickly expanded up t0 ten jewelry stores. The bigger weapons and vehicles will milk you dry in support costs so I figure expand first and then arm myself to the hilt.

I’ve also been attacking against stronger gangs to lose and to lower my health. Below about 20 (of 100) no one can attack you. It’s an essential part of money management and you lose health when attacked or attacking. You heal a point every 290 seconds.

Every 50 minutes (real time) all my properties give me cash. If I’m attacked with money on me I lose some of it (about 10% per attack!) so I have to pay it into the bank for safety 1losing 10% in fees. In iMob the banks charge you 15%! I lost $125K while asleep last night. So every 48 minutes I log into the game, beat up as many rivals as I have energy points and pay all of the resulting cash into the bank. When its enough, I withdraw it and expand my property empire.

This isn’t the best looking which is probably iMob Online. Mafia Live uses a web page for its controls (Don’t believe me? Keep your finger pressed on a link like Banker and you’ll see the URL popup). To give it its due, you don’t see the network connection animation when it connects and it’s pretty quick, even on 3G.

I’m now at Level 29 with each level taking more and more points to get up. This comes from the experience gained in missions. Levelling up gives you 5 Zen Points to spend on improving your attack/defence, energy or stamina. It also brings newer weapons and vehicles every 5 levels. Most of mine has gone into energy which recharges at the rate of 10 points every 50 minutes.

Overall I’ll keep playing this for a few days more but its not the most interactive game. I also discovered a way to make a lot of money from one player which nobody else has done on me! If you attack someone and beat them you get money. If they have a lot of money you get a fair whack- my biggest is 55K. So long as you have the stamina and health and they have the health, (both healths must be 20 or higher) you can go to the My Hood tab, view the fight log, click on the link showing the player you last beat up and then fight them again and again and if your health goes to low you just pay to have it restored. You can’t attack anything except other gangs.

Be great if you could trash cars or blow up their buildings and increasing gang size without spamming your friends…  Rating 7/10.

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