Tag: Mafia Matrix

Mafia Matrix: My Final Review

Gaming

My character is dead.  Poor guy.  All he wanted was to see a little justice, but there is none in Mafia Matrix.  The tag line for this game is a lie.  “Rise above the law, or become the law” it says, but realistically, you have no choice.  In this game, you are either a gangster clawing for power or bowing down to those in charge, or you are in the legit careers.  As a legitimate businessperson in Mafia Matrix, you are little more than an ATM for the gangsters.  You earn money by working your job, investing at the bank, and keeping the world running (the cities are designed to fail if all the legitimate careers are not manned).  Meanwhile, the gangsters will mug you, rob your house, steal your car, hack your bank, or set your businesses on fire.  Every city in the game runs on intimidation and fear.  If you want to stay legit, expect to rotate through jobs on a weekly basis, because no one will let you stay anywhere for very long, they want to keep the cows moving, churning through the careers and making cash, and most of all remaining unimportant.  Why, you wouldn’t want a mayor or a police chief to have any power at all… instead, anyone who sits in a seat of power longer than authorized will log in dead.

I tried to enjoy the game.  I kept telling myself the next career would be the one that would click.  But every time I began enjoying the game, someone would come along and tell me to move on or die.  Every career, in that light, became pointless.  If you weren’t using them as a road stop to gangster-hood, there was no point.  So in the end I finally gave in, stopped trying to be legit, and headed down the path of the hood.  Of course, it wasn’t long before I crossed the wrong person and was whacked for my troubles.  Okay, it might have been my fault… I mean, after spending months being an ATM for gangsters, I decided to put my foot down.  I got a face full of buckshot in return.

After much playing, in the end, I cannot recommend this game to anyone.  It is a giant pile of flawed garbage that is labor intensive with very little enjoyment or reward.  Do yourself a favor and stay out of the Mafia Matrix.

Mafia Matrix

Gaming

Since dumping Urban Dead, I was looking for another free web game to play and thanks to Ryan over at Nerfbat, I was pointed toward Mafia Matrix.

In an odd way, Mafia Matrix is almost the complete opposite of Urban Dead.  While the zombie game only penalized you with time, death was just becoming a zombie and you could be revived, this little mob system simulator is much more harsh.  Death is death.  You can make a new character, but a dead character is dead for good.  Of course, there is much more to do in the Matrix than just killing people.  You work jobs, collect money, buy stuff, steal from people, and there is a real community.  See, in Mafia land, players get to be the Mayors of the cities, the judges, the lawyers, the store owners, and the gangsters.  If you go whack someone without permission of the local don, you might find yourself dead.

It makes for interesting game play.  I, for example, have gone the route of being a legit lawyer.  I don’t commit crimes, but I will take any case and make sure that all my clients are given the best defence the law allows.  Of course, every criminal I get off means that the city doesn’t get that fine as revenue, so even defending criminals could get me killed, or at least run out of town, if I deny the city too much money.

Anyway, for now I’m enjoying the game.  If you play and want to look me up, I’m Jhaer and I spend most of my time in Miami.  And if you do decide to play, do so from one of the links in this post, I get something for the referral if you stick with the game.