Parents' Guide to Mafia City: War of Underworld

At first glance, there's lots to do in this raunchy strategy app, but the farther you get, the more you realize that the gameplay is incredibly thin. Mafia City: War of Underworld seems to have hundreds of buttons to click to control your empire, and you'll see lots of screens packed with pictures of weapons, tantalizing upgrades, muscular henchmen, and scantily clad gang molls. But once you dig through these screens, you start to realize there's not much there.

The first problem is presentation. Developer Yottagames tries its best to emulate the gangster movies we're all familiar with, but to poor and often comic effect. They've thrown in all the prerequisite violence, curse words, and misogyny (all of the game's female characters are busty and scantily clad, and a closed curtain + sound effects implies that you're having sex), but they still come up short. The story is tissue-thin, and thanks to clumsy English translation, the dialogue is stiff and awkward. Odd text can also make game processes unclear. Mafia City: War of Underworld joins the app store ranks of so-called strategy games that are no more than a reason to mindlessly tap buttons. There's little sense of strategy or accomplishment; you tap once to finish a mission and tap again to get a reward. It's admittedly addictive (n the same way that bells are used to get lab rats addicted to cookies), and Yottagames is counting on that to drive players to cough up loads of real-world cash. They've even taken the reward idea a step further, giving players in-game currency in exchange for a five-star review. Take that into account when you're in the app store, and don't be fooled. The only strategy here comes from a cynical app contriving ways to separate you from your money.