Mafia Wars is a simple text based number crunch game, that puts you in a Mafia with all of your friends (who play Mafia Wars, and add you to their Mafia). A player starts out by doing jobs, with energy, for cash and moves up to buying properties for sustained income. The player then uses this income to buy bigger and better weapons from the inventory screen, which then can give them the upper hand in multiplayer fights.
As the player does more jobs, they earn experience that allows them to go up levels. As a player goes up in levels, they gain more profile points which allows them to become stronger, and to better fight rival Mafia groups. As I said earlier, pretty standard. What sets this game apart from the crowd, is in its multiplayer co-operation, and a few gameplay aspects.
Another aspect to the game that I liked, was that it allows you travel from section to section without penalty. I really like this feature, because unlike some games, where traveling from one location to another to do missions, (only to find out that those missions cost more than you remembered) can cost you hours, and really slows down the game. Mafia Wars relies on the tiers to move users from one section to another, and lets you quickly check out your options and make the most informed choice on where to spend your energy. This was a good move by the developers.
Mafia Wars is a fun game. It has several great aspects, decent gameplay and tries hard to make up for lousy graphics. If you are into Mafia themed games and have yet to try a text based game, this might be for you. If you are looking for a minor distraction throughout the day, something to look forward to doing on your breaks, this game might be what you are looking for. But as far as free text based games go, there are many choices, and this game would not be my favorite.