{"id":4533,"date":"2011-09-20T09:30:43","date_gmt":"2011-09-20T14:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcitement.com\/?p=4533"},"modified":"2011-11-16T23:07:51","modified_gmt":"2011-11-17T05:07:51","slug":"techcitement-review-the-godfather-is-coming-to-facebook-capiche","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/software\/techcitement-review-the-godfather-is-coming-to-facebook-capiche\/","title":{"rendered":"Techcitement Review: The Godfather Is Coming To Facebook, Capiche?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kabam<\/a>, an online game developer, is bringing The Godfather<\/em> to Facebook with their newest browser-based game, The Godfather: Five Families<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0They\u2019re currently testing their beta and inviting select users, who sign up on their website, to play. I signed up, got access to the beta several days ago, and quickly began the arduous journey into the heart of some good ol\u2019 mafia warfare.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Capiche this<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The premise of Five Families<\/em> is simple. You first choose to be in one of five families at war with each other: the Corleones, Straccis, Cuneos, Barzinis, and Tattaglias. Within the game, the only thing that separates these families are inconsequential differences in appearance and backstory. I chose the Cuneo family merely because they had a really cool picture where a couple of guys in trenchcoats walk away from a car on fire, and also because I didn\u2019t want to be cliche by picking the Corleone family.<\/p>\n

From that point onward, Five Families<\/em> plays almost exactly like Kabam\u2019s other browser-based MMO strategy games, like Dragons of Atlantis<\/em> and Kingdoms of Camelot<\/em>. In an expansive New York City, you have control of a neighborhood where you can build buildings that produce resources, increase your population, and allow you to create units. Within your neighborhood, you also have an estate, where you can build up defenses, research new technology, and unlock new units and bonuses. Outside your neighborhood are other players\u2019 neighborhoods, bandit outposts, and slums that you can attack to get more resources. The goal? \u00a0Expand across the city, stave of elimination, and potentially become the mafia don of your chosen family.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

My humble estate<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

So, do I like Five Families<\/em>? Meh. First of all, I\u2019m an admittedly picky gamer. I\u2019m also a very graphics-oriented person, and as far as art and UI design goes, Five Families<\/em> has nagging flaws. The art style makes for a cluttered screen, and beyond that, the heavily-stylized UI is poorly organized. There\u2019s also so much ancillary art that it takes a while to distinguish between what you can interact with and what\u2019s just decoration. During city view, it\u2019s hard to differentiate what\u2019s what because everything looks similar, and within your neighborhood, the UI frustratingly blocks plots of land. This all combines to make it hard and unpleasant to navigate the game. This is sad because Five Families<\/em> does have beautiful art in and of itself, but used within the game, that art makes for a difficult playing experience. Like many online browser-based games, Five Families<\/em> survives off micro-transactions, where you can pay real world money to buy in-game powerups, and I believe that this unfairly vests power in the biggest wallets and the most addicted.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

New York is a complicated city. Don't get lost.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

All and all, Five Families<\/em> is a game that\u2019s almost an exact carbon copy of its predecessors. It definitely lacks creativity, but it does have one thing that the others don\u2019t and that\u2019s one of the most iconic titles in world. Kabam wasn\u2019t trying to reinvent the wheel. Maybe it doesn\u2019t have to. What do you think? Do you have what it takes to be the Godfather?<\/p>\n

[yframe url=’http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TyurQFB7Gbo&feature=player_embedded’]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kabam, an online game developer, is bringing The Godfather to Facebook with their newest browser-based game, The Godfather: Five Families. \u00a0They\u2019re currently testing their beta and inviting select users, who sign up on their website, to play. I signed up, got access to the beta several days ago, and quickly began the arduous journey into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,1085,1609,38,47,40],"tags":[124,1343,1345,1344,29,1157],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4533"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4533"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5764,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4533\/revisions\/5764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}