Mafia Wars meets CityVille (sort of) with Urban Warfare on Facebook

Urban Warfare
Enjoying CityVille, but in search of more competition? Well, Blue Shell Games' first effort on Facebook hopes to bring social gamers the best of both worlds with Urban Warfare. With both city-building elements and Mafia Wars-style battles with friends, Urban Warfare is a jack-of-all-trades of sorts, allowing players to both maintain a sprawling town while defending it from invaders. However, this game is certainly not without its flaws. In fact, it has those in spades.

Take a look behind the break to get a detailed look at whether this game might interest you (but probably not).
Urban Warfare Battles
Urban Warfare throws players into a war-torn world where every city is required to have a full-blown military to defend itself, which would be absolutely badass in most situations (fictional, of course). It's too bad that this game doesn't bring much in the fun department. Sure, Urban Warfare is functional, but that's about where development seems to have tapered off to a point. For instance, the image above is what every battle looks like. And that's it. (Well, aside from a blank loading screen that simply reads, "Battling!")

So, don't think you're preparing for full-scale war here. Battles operate almost exactly like those in Mafia Wars, but with less detailed artwork and it's the bland soldiers you train that decide the outcome rather than collected items. Not to mention that Battles can be repeated over and over again with no real benefit or penalty. You'll almost immediately catch on to the trick of finding a weak player pummeling him repeatedly to level up at lightning speeds (due to the lack of animation), but what's the point?

City building
Not much really, though in order to compete at later levels you'll need to build out your city with coin-generating businesses, residencies that boost your population and barracks to train more soldiers--all of which cost coins. The balance between generating coins and population via plopping buildings on the grid and training an army is simple enough. In fact, it's probably too simple. In my short time playing the game, there are really no perceivable setbacks aside from losing a Battle and the excruciatingly long time it takes to train soldiers.

Despite its many shortcomings, Urban Warfare does get a few things right. Take Quests, for example. While they've surely been done before, it's somewhat reassuring to know that Blue Shell at least realizes that these have essentially standard to guide players along in social games. Taking a cue from games like CityVille, players can visit their friends' cities to provide them with boosts to supplies. Alright, I'll admit it: that's all I can think up. For Pete's sake, the game allows players to pay coins for decorations that have no benefit whatsoever besides a sliver of XP. I can get more XP in an instant by pummeling Random Newbie #27.

The game offers a paid currency known as Reward Points (sound familiar?), but I would strongly recommend you not spend your hard-earned dollars on a game with little to no animation or interesting artwork and a gameplay dynamic that doesn't feel complete before really getting to know it. It's a shame too, because the initial premise is spot-on and has loads of potential for the next big social game, which Blue Shell deserves credit for. Unfortunately, it's in the execution that Urban Warfare goes AWOL.

Click here to play Urban Warfare on Facebook now>

FrontierVille Gingerbread House Goals: Everything you need to know

Gingerbread House WhackingYou pioneers are never satisfied, are you? First, it's the Buildable Snowman. Then Zynga gives you 12 days of Christmas Goals. And now, because that clearly wasn't enough, it threw in one of the most elaborate cross promotions you've ever seen this side of Rattlesnake Canyon: The Gingerbread House. Man, you FrontierVille players are just plain spoiled.

It seems that this adorable little gingerbread man is having trouble building his home this Christmas season as everywhere he's gone, people have literally eaten him out of house and home. In order to help, you'll need to go back to the three locales he's tried to build at and retrieve the essential ingredients to his home: CityVille, Treasure Isle and Mafia Wars. After placing his house on the homestead and giving it a few good whacks (that cost Food this time rather than Wood, get it?), you'll be greeted by this Building's menu. (If you're having trouble finding him, he's hanging out with the Carolers near the Toy Factory.)

Find out how to complete this Goal spanning several Zynga games after the break.
Finish your Gingerbread House
We'll get the easy--well, easier--stuff out of the way first. In addition to traveling to three different game worlds, you will need 15 Pretzels, 10 Gingerbread Slabs and 10 Frosting Tubes. All three of these items are acquired the old fashioned way: begging, of course. So, keep up on tapping your friends for these Gifts while you gallivant about three games.

Paul's Improvements
Let's start with finding a Chocolate Bar in CityVille. Clicking on the "Earn for Free" button will take you to a confirmation screen that will then launch you into your own city. From there, click on the Horseshoe icon to get started with "Paul's Improvements." Here, you'll need to do three simple tasks: place two Asphalt Roads, collect from five Residences and place three Decorations (yawn). Find the Asphalt Roads in the Decorations tab of the Build menu for 10 coins a pop. Also in that same tab will be where you can find three Decorations, so pick any three and put them any old place. Then, just click on five Residences with the coin icon hovering above them. If you're trying to save money or don't have any room for this nonsense, just delete it when your done using the Remove tool. For doing this, you'll receive 50 coins.

For some reason, completing the Goal won't return you to FrontierVille automatically nor did it instantly reward me with the Chocolate Bar. Only after jumping back into FrontierVille and following the same link that go me into CityVille from the game in the first place made Paul reappear, allowing me to jump back into FrontierVille to claim my Chocolate Bar. Next, let's take a stroll down the shady streets of Mafia Wars to get the next item, the Candy Cane.

Mafia Wars Candy Cane
Following the same process again, but for Mafia Wars, will take you where you need to be for the Candy Cane. For new or low level Mafia Wars players, this is going to be cake. For the veterans out there, have fun, OK? All you need to do in Mafia Wars to get the Candy Cane is gain one level above Level 5 through Jobs, which won't be so easy for the Level 100-plus players out there. Once you level up, you should receive a similar message to that from CityVille, prompting you to return to FrontierVille and open up your Candy Cane. Next, let's dive into Treasure Isle for the final item, the Gum Drops.

Treasure Isle Gum Drops
This Goal should be even easier than the last for most. For players above Level 4 (it's a requirement), all you need to do is find five Treasures... anywhere. So, you could probably just go about your business and work on whatever it is your currently tackling. Then, you should receive a similar confirmation as before, transporting you back to the homestead with Gum Drops in hand. If this doesn't happen automatically--this goes for Mafia Wars too--try the trick mentioned above. It worked in CityVille, so it might work the same way here. Now that you know what to do, go forth and conquer the worlds of what might soon be the misfit Zynga games, cowering in the shadow of the mighty CityVille empire.

Is PopCap's Bejeweled Blitz beating FarmVille where it counts?

According to PopCap VP of social operations Michael Carpenter, Bejeweled Blitz is the number one game on Facebook--just look at the numbers differently. In an editorial on Gamesindustry.biz, Carpenter goes into detail explaining how the success of social games should be measured. You see, Facebook games' popularity and reach are measured in two ways: monthly active users (MAU) and daily active users (DAU).

We all know CityVille surpassed what many thought might be impossible with over 100 million MAU. Yet just as quickly as it rose to the top, it's now began its descent just like Zynga's FarmVille did nearly one year ago. Carpenter doesn't address this, but rather makes his point that DAU is more important than MAU because, "A high DAU/MAU percentage means that players are actively engaged in a game, often returning several times a day to play," Carpenter said.

While PopCap, like everyone else, is beat by Zynga when it comes to reach, Bejeweled Blitz has a higher DAU/MAU percentage than any of Zynga's games. The DAU/MAU percentage is essentially the percentage of a game's total monthly active users that are also daily active users. An impressive 34 percent of Bejeweled Blitz's monthly players log in daily compared to just 26 percent of FarmVille's 54 million MAU. We're no mathematicians, but isn't 26 percent of 54 million still more than 34 percent of the 11.4 million monthly Bejeweled Blitz players? Yes, it's way more.

It's certainly an impressive feat for PopCap to keep over a third of its audience so dedicated no matter how you slice it. But Carpenter even admitted, "In a nutshell, while Bejeweled Blitz does not have as many players, it's doing a good job of retaining those it has." Most importantly, keep in mind that this is far from the first time the company has downright lashed out at Zynga for whatever reason. Now, cut the bickering and get back to making my dream of Peggle for Facebook come true.

March Madness Facebook Game Showdown: FINALS

In the finale of our March Madness Facebook Game Showdown, we have what can only be described as shocking turn of events. We have a finals match-up between two games that no one would have thought would have made it to the last round -- Pet Society by PlayFish and Bejeweled Blitz by Pop Cap.
playfish popcap march madness facebook game showdownClick the image to see the bracket!

Pet Society was an underrated competitor, which was able to tap into its popularity and vanquish newer games with more current players. Pet Society defeated Zynga's Treasure Isle fairly easily 60% to 40%.

The HUGE upset in our tournament has been Bejeweled Blitz's gutsy victory over the behemoth of CityVille. To give you perspective on the magnitude of this upset you need only one piece of information: CityVille has 19 million daily players while Bejeweled Blitz has a modest 3 million plus. Amazing! Bejeweled Blitz won by the slimmest of margins, 52% to 48%.

If we would have told you at the beginning of our tournament that no game made by Zynga would have made the finals you would have laughed at us. Zynga games made up half the field and nearly all the higher seeded games. To say that this finals match-up is a Cinderella story is an understatement. Or, as Dicky V of ESPN would say "It's TOTALLY AWESOME, BABY!"

So -- now is the time to pick which Facebook will win our Showdown this year. Vote early (and often) in the poll below.

Sorry, this poll is now closed. Final results will be posted soon. Thanks for visiting Games.com - The Blog!

Click here to see the winner!

CityVille College Library Upgrades: Everything you need to know

Another interesting set of upgrades has been launched in CityVille, after a morning filled with Clerk's Office upgrades. This time, you can upgrade the College Library, which is a fairly standard community building. These upgrades will only increase the building's support for a higher population, so if you have no current need for more citizens or a higher population cap, feel free to skip them (for now).

To upgrade from the base at Level 1, you'll first need to be at least level 27 and have 1800 or more citizens in your town. Once that's done, you can begin the actual upgrade process by inviting additional crew members to work in what will be a larger building. You'll need to invite ten new crew members, or pay City Cash to fill the crew positions instantly. At Level 2, the College Library will support 750 citizens, up from the original number of 600.

Is 750 not enough? If not, you can upgrade yet again to Level 3. Before beginning the crew member process yet again (yes, you'll need to add an additional 10 crew members to the Library), you'll need to have at least 3200 citizens in your town. Those requirements out of the way, you'll be left with a totally transformed College Library (that is, one that is incredibly different visually) that supports 1,000 citizens in your city. Whether or not the additional 400 citizens slots will be worth asking 20 friends to help you, however, will be up to you.

Do you like completing Community Building upgrades, or do you just upgrade businesses instead? How far have you made it into your College Library upgrades so far?

CityVille: New summertime items are all available for coins

I'm almost speechless here, folks (almost). A new set of summer-themed items has been released in CityVille and, believe it or not, none of them are premium; they can all be purchased for coins! There's a single new business here: the Jet Ski Shop, which is such a cute building that I'm thrilled I don't have to spend any City Cash to add it to my town. It costs 9,000 coins, and requires 140 Goods to operate. By default, the payout is 700 coins, but remember, you can earn more if you boost that payout percentage with decorations.

Speaking of, there are three new decorations here as well. One, the Kids' Ball Pit, costs 10,000 coins, but also provides a 4% payout bonus, which isn't bad. Likewise, a Drummers item costs the same amount, and also offers the 4% bonus. Finally, a small Metal Detector decorative citizen is available for 1,000 coins. As you might expect, this low price equals a low bonus of just 1%.

Rounding out this release is the Beach Hut, a new home that's available for 10,000 coins. The home starts with a population of 120 citizens, but that can be increased to 250 via random upgrades in the future. In terms of rent, this one is a fast-payout, although the profits are small: 15 coins every five minutes.

Luckily, none of these items comes with time limits, so if you've yet to start setting aside an area of your town for these summer-themed items, you'll at least have plenty of time to do so in the future. Since all of these items were available for coins, does it mean that Zynga is finally listening to users who were complaining about too many City Cash items / features, or is this a coincidence? We can only hope this is a new positive trend, but we'll make sure to let you know either way.

[Image Credit: Zynga]

What do you think of today's summertime item release? Are you happy to see nothing but coin items here, or are you fine spending City Cash for new decorations and items?

CityVille: Run off and join the circus in the comfort of your own town

Ever have the wild thought of running away and joining the circus? Why not have the circus come to you? You can do just that this week, as circus / amusement items have come to CityVille. With most of these items expiring in less than one week, you've got your work cut out for you to collect them all (especially since most, unfortunately, cost City Cash). Here's a complete run-down of what's available.

    Fun House (Home) - 25,000 coins - 200-380 population - 188 coins every four hours
    Animal House (Home) - 50 City Cash - 620-1230 population - 20 coins every five minutes
    Carousel Cottage (Home) - 70 City Cash - 1180-2360 population - 401 coins every four hours
    The Far Out Freak Show (Business) - 35 City Cash - 165 Goods; 999 coins in earnings
    Circus Snack Shack - 12,500 coins - 253 Goods; 1413 coins in earnings
    Clown Costumes (Citizen Clothing) - 1,000 coins
    Fountain of Mirth (Decoration) - 6% bonus payout
    Daring Diver (Decoration) - 5,000 coins - 4% bonus


For the Fountain of Mirth and Daring Diver, you'll receive an extra 6% and 4% bonus to surrounding structures, respectively, so long as those buildings are in the circus theme.

Additionally, you also have the option of purchasing a Circus Mystery Crate for 35 City Cash each, which gives you the chance of winning a Carousel Cottage, Far Out Freak Show or Animal House, along with another home - the Clown Alley, which offers 900-1800 population when placed in your town. So long as you're not concerned which of the four items you end up with, the 35 City Cash price is definitely a better deal than purchasing these items individually, but remember, after the first crate you have a chance of receiving duplicate items if you purchase more.

Remember, all of these items (save for the Clown Costumes for your town's citizens) will expire in a week, so shop fast if you want to create an entirely circus-themed area in your town! The caravan won't be around for long!

Will you purchase any of these Circus-themed items for your cities in CityVille? If you splurged on a Mystery Crate, which item did you end up with?

Building the Dam in CityVille: Everything you need to know

Slowly but surely, the Dam feature has started rolling out to users in CityVille, but watch out: You need to be at least level 50 to receive this new source of hydroelectric power. Once you've received the Dam, you'll need to start the lengthy process of building it. First and foremost, there's only one particular portion of the river (to the right of your town) that the Dam can sit on, and you must have your town already touching this square in order to build it. That's right, you might be looking at expanding your city before you can ever build your Dam, as seen below.

From there, you'll need to collect quite a few building materials to actually set the Dam into motion:

    14 Rotors
    14 Flood Gates
    14 Turbines
    14 Canal Locks
    14 Generators


After this has been done, you'll still need to "whack" your Dam 15 times to finish the building process. In this way, we're actually looking at a reverse of the normal business process, where you whack the frame and then collect items, but I digress. Once you complete the 15 whacks, you'll instantly receive 31 free energy, launching you back up to a full bar to make up for the trouble. This extra point brings your current maximum energy total to 31, but there's a catch.

Overall, the Dam can be thought of as a sort of long-term business, without the customers. You'll need to routinely supply the Dam - at least once every 48 hours - to keep your boosted energy cap, or else you'll lose your bonus. To be specific, for each day after the first 48 hours of supplying you fail to re-supply the Dam, you'll lose a point, eventually dropping you all the way back down to the original maximum energy of 30. It should be noted that your energy level will never, ever decrease below 30; instead, the range of 31-37 energy points is the fluid portion.
Finally, if you're a daily active player, once you reach the current new maximum of 37 energy points, if you continue to resupply the Dam (as often as every 12 hours), you'll simply maintain the boosted cap. Unfortunately, it won't increase any higher than 37, no matter how much we may want it to.

As I can expect this fluidity to the maximum energy cap to frustrate some players, we'll make sure to keep an eye on things, to make sure Zynga doesn't pull a switch and change the feature. Also, this is a slow roll-out to users, so if you don't have the Dam in your city yet, don't be alarmed. Just make sure you have plenty of Gift Requests ready for the day, so you can ask for those parts as soon as you receive it.

[Image Credit: Zynga]

Check out the rest of our CityVille Cheats & Tips right here.

What do you think of the Dam in CityVille? Do you like the fact that the energy bonus can go away, as a reminder for you to play daily, or would you rather the boosts be permanent?

CityVille Executive Driving Range Attraction: Everything you need to know

It seems that just as quickly as we can finish the construction on an Attraction in CityVille, another one is released. Such is the case this week, as the Ferris Wheel has been followed up by the Executive Driving Range, or a golf range, if you prefer.

The base of the Executive Driving Range costs 10,000 coins, and it must be whacked eight times before the base is complete. From there, you'll need to collect various building materials, as you might have expected:

    * 5 City Seals
    * 5 Golf Balls
    * 5 Buckets
    * 5 Netting
    * 5 Targets


If you're lucky, you'll already have the City Seals in your account waiting for you, and can then concentrate on gathering the other four items instead. Golf Balls and Buckets can be earned by posting a general news item to your wall, while Netting and Targets are earned via individual gift requests sent to friends.

Once the Executive Driving Range is complete, you can put it into operation for five minutes at a time. Once the five minutes has passed, you'll collect your profits just as you would any other business (your income ranges from 1,400 to 6,000 coins each cycle), but you can't restock it with Goods. Instead, you'll need to wait for a countdown timer to hit zero before you can restart it. You can collect Wrenches from your friends to speed up this timer, but remember - you can only post a single request for Wrenches, which are shared among all of the four available Attractions, so you won't be able to stock up as greatly as you might like.

Of course, building the Executive Driving Range is entirely voluntary, but if you like features such as this, why not give it a swing? Note: you must be at least level 25 to access the Executive Driving Range.

Will you build the Executive Driving Range in your town, or are three attractions enough? Sound off in the comments.

CityVille: Casa del Sol offers fun-in-the-sun living for a huge price

If you thought the Playa del Rey Apartments in CityVille were expensive, costing 75 City Cash for a population boost of 2,350 citizens (at least), try this newest building on for size. The Casa del Sol home is priced at 90 City Cash, and is also in the Mexican item theme, making it limited edition. Specifically, the Casa del Sol home will be in the game for 10 days (note that that's also one day less than the Playa del Rey Apartments).

Once you purchase the Casa del Sol, you'll have a home that starts with a whopping population of 3,000 citizens, and can be upgraded by collecting from the building (or your friends can collect from them as well; all upgrades drop randomly) to a staggering figure of 5,500 citizens. If you're looking for a quick way (albeit expensive way) to unlock that next expansion by reaching your next population goal without adding multiple homes to your town, this would definitely be an easy way to get that done. However, at a price this high, even I'm not sure it's worth it.

Still, I suppose the building's rent potential could raise its value. You'll receive 156 coins every hour if you're prompt enough to routinely collect your earnings, which would give you upwards of 3,000 coins daily, if you were really on top of things. Still, does that justify the current cost of over $11 US for this single building? I'll leave you to be the judge of that.

What do you think of the Casa del Sol in CityVille? Will you purchase one of the expensive homes for your city, or would you rather purchase multiple, cheaper buildings instead? Let us know in the comments.