Forget the farms, the adventures, the empires and the allies. Love them or hate them, Zynga will soon release what they're calling their "most bad-ass game to date," Mafia Wars 2.
How bad-ass can a Facebook game be? How Grand Theft Auto can they go?
The debut teaser trailer here shows no gameplay but does set the mood and does fit with the direction Zynga's been going lately, creating the likes of Adventure World and even, before it, FrontierVille. Those were games that appeal just a little more to the macho gamer than a farm-decorating simulation does.
What do we know about Mafia Wars 2? Very little. Zynga's publicity machine indicates that the game will have 3D graphics, which really means that the new game will have a graphical world and not be so text-based like the original Mafia Wars. They say they game will be out "soon."
With each Zynga game we play here at Kotaku we see one of gaming's biggest companies getting gradually closer to making games that feel like they have some depth of gameplay—some interesting interactive choices to make—beyond figuring out which friend to pester for help next. Hopefully Mafia Wars 2 progresses along those lines.
The new game's tagline is "Being bad never felt so good." I see a scantily-clad lady in the logo and someone trying to put a cigar out in someone's ear. Zynga, when did you get so edgy?
You can contact Stephen Totilo, the author of this post, at stephentotilo@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.