When you play iMobsters you may get a sense of the familiar. You won’t be alone.
Nothing New
The lack on ingenuity on the iPhone has gotten to a critical point as the text based RPGs have become one of the standards for gameplay. This is not to say that all programs, or the successful genre itself, are suspect, but that innovation and creativity do not seem to be the strong suit for iPhone developers. Not only have almost identical games come out on a consistent basis, but for some reason they all seemed inspired by mafia stereotypes and have names that are inspired by the “i” pun epidemic. First were iMob Online, iMafia, Mafia LIVE, and the rest. Now is iMobsters, which has a few new ticks but nothing new to make it stand above the rest.
iMobsters Work
iMobsters has an interface that is modeled much more after Mafia LIVE than the rest. Like all of them you are given a mobster character that is meant to earn money, gain weapons, and fight other players. You begin earning money through missions like Petty Theft and Mugging. This money should then be invested in Real Estate that pays out on a cyclical basis.
Like all, you have a series of statistics available that play into how you do things like performing missions and fighting opponents. Unfortunately, iMobsters could not even take the time to rename things like Energy and Stamina in a way like iVampires Online did. Similar to iMob Online you can add people to your mafia by entering their friend code, and mine is N3Q14. Just like the rest, is a finite number of “favor” points, which you might remember as respect points in another incarnation.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Overall, the game has very few plus points to support it. There are a number of promotional items on a consistent basis as well as tutorials to help you. These end up taking up the entire screen and do not really add to the sparse interface you already have. Like iMob Online does with iVampires Online, iMobsters supports its companion program by offering another ten free favor points if you download Vampires Live.
The property system does work a little differently in iMobsters as you are only asked to secure the building and not the base property, which is a nice change and lets the game get started even quicker. Unfortunately, none of these things make up for the slow response time and similarity with other free iPhone games. If you are obsessed with text based iPhone RPGs then make sure to pick up iMobsters, but if you only play one or two you might want to just stay with the ones you have installed. Five out of ten stars.
