The Social Gaming weekly roundup: Farmville, Mafia Wars, MyBrute

Love it or hate it, Social Gaming is here to stay. Those in favour of the new genre are probably already sufferers of what we call Social Games Syndrome.

It's an acute addiction that has many of us wasting many hours sat at our computers in a bid to beat our friends, gain a level, become number one, or perhaps for a little bit of escapism while talking to friends and relatives with the (ever more annoying) FaceBook chat. Luckily, however serious your case may be, we're here to help.

Every week we're going to do a weekly round-up of goings on in the Social Gaming world. This will include news, tips, events, forum ramblings, and whatever else we deem worthy, so if a contribution of yours is particularly brilliant it will appear in shining lights for all to see.

So without further ado (drumroll please), we present to you our first ever Social Games round-up, you poor, addicted soul.

FarmVille

FarmVille (not FarmTown) isn't a game as such - it's a lifestyle. Addicts will start to wrap their own lives around when crops finish growing and when they need to replant in an attempt to make money and buy the finer things.

The fact is, FarmVille is devilishly addictive. Even when you don't want to play it, you have to. It's as if your farm were actually your livelihood.

What's been going on? Well, Halloween came and went, and along with it an assortment of limited edition items to spookify your farm, ranging from pumpkins and gravestones to a rather cool haunted mansion (sadly only available with farm cash and real money).

Fortunately, if you missed out on this event, you can enjoy the current space-themed one. After all, what farm would be complete without a crop circle or a crashed spaceship named after Roswell?

Developer Zynga is clearly not helping people with their addiction, as they seem to trickle out changes more and more frequently. Perhaps the biggest change we've seen recently was the introduction of several new seed types, and a seed mastery system, both of which were very welcome additions.

Another feature, admittedly less impressive, was the fertilising system. Persumably it tries to enhance the social aspect of the game, but with so few 'grow' bags given per day to fertilise your friends' farms, is it really worth it?

What can we expect? Ideally we'd love to see greater animations added, as well as even more items to personalise our farm creations. Okay, our ideas are far from brilliant, so we're sure you suggest far better things that FarmVille should include.

On a creative note, the more artistic players amongst us have been making ever more impressive FarmVille pictures from crops. Some are downright impressive, and very indicative of those with plenty of spare time. Still, you can't deny the originality.

We'd love to see your attempts, so get posting, farmers. The Mona Lisa and Mario has been done, so try be original.

Except an on-going guide to FarmVille soon.

Mafia Wars Unless you've lived under a particularly large rock, it's unlikely you've not heard of the iPhone and Facebook mobster, Mafia Wars.

Some of us had managed to avoid the temptation to give it a shot, but upon the discovery of the upper echelons of the Pocket Gamer staff being well and truly hooked, resistance was futile.

So for the last month or so we've been battling through the missions, taking on others and trying to accumulate as many items for the collection as we can, intent on beating our bosses (can you blame us?)

As with Farmville, over Halloween there were eight themed items to get your mitts on. Each one was specifically styled from other Zynga games (Farmville included). Also added was a halloween mission titled 'Rob the Candy Truck', which, aside from the experience boost, gave you the Candy Truck for your inventory upon completion.

Not so long ago, the Moscow expansion was released. As things stand most of us are unable to sample it, but more content is always nice - particularly for the higher level players who are after a new challenge. Is it any good is what we want to know?

MyBrute Perhaps most akin to Nintendo's Pokemon, MyBrute pits your brute up against other player's brutes in a fight to the death. With many different weapons and skills available, each brute seems to be sufficiently unique, and it's strangely addictive to see what each level brings to the table.

If you didn't know, MyBrute has been released onto iPhone, so you can be battling your friends when on the way to school, college or, perhaps embarrassingly, on the way to work. Unless of course you drive.

Aside from copious losses we've sustained, we've gathered that the best way to progress is via the joining of a Dojo. Experience is gained faster, and there's a stronger social side to the game as a result. So if you are recruiting or want more challengers, let us know.

There are daily tournaments to enter for those unfamiliar with MyBrute, each one seeing us beaten to a pulp by pretty much everyone. We live in hope we can at least get further than the first two fights but we highly doubt it.

In other news * The massively famous, Sid Meier's Civilization is coming to the social networking giant Facebook. Details are scarce, but sources say will be out some time in 2010. No doubt a free Facebook version will entice many a gamer to the social world.

* It's rumoured EA has quietly acquired social gaming giant Playfish - or might be just about to - for a stunning $250 million, Gamasutra revealed in a recent article. Could this mean more quality, higher budget games for sites like Facebook? We sure hope so.

So that's it for this weeks roundup. The proverbial ball is now rolling, and this is where you step in. We'd love to hear about any social gaming news or experiences you've had. We want this section of the site to be driven by readers as much as it is by us, so get in touch on the forum.

Over and out.