Zynga readies, aims and fires its live Mafia Wars 2 round at Facebook

The second salvo of digital death and destruction has been fired on Facebook. Zynga has officially launched Mafia Wars 2 in a slow roll-out (we imagine) on the social network. The game, developed by much of the same team that worked on the original, is the first direct sequel to a Zynga game, and it takes the series in a vastly different direction.

Mafia Wars 2, while it looks strikingly similar to competitors like Crime City, is essentially an animated, visual representation of the chaos you've reigned upon the world since way back in 2008. You'll build a brand new crime empire on the outskirts of Las Vegas, defending it from random thugs hailing from either storyline enemies or your enemies' friends' gangs. The isometric perspective of this new version of Mafia Wars puts an even more intense focus on the violence of mob life.

Peppered throughout your travels across seven areas of the city that never sleeps--Casino Row, Granite Square, Neon Strip, Downtown, Bluebird Meadows, Boxer Island and Westside Wharf--are heavy doses of player vs player combat (PvP). In addition to invading neighboring turf, players can take the fight to three PvP arenas: Bone Yard, Badlands and Area 51. It's here where players will fight asynchronously, rob one another and spark rivalries.

Gallery: Mafia Wars 2 on Facebook

Zynga's next take on Mafia Wars will allow players to customize nearly ad infinitum with over 300 types of weapons and armor as well as over 600 pieces of decorative clothing. And Mafia Wars 2 will be Zynga's first game available in 16 languages (including English): French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, Turkish, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Japanese and Thai.

As the original Mafia Wars steadily loses monthly and daily players, according to AppData, it looks like Zynga hopes to revive the franchise with a full-blown sequel. However, we've been assured that the developer plans to keep the 3-year-old game alive as long as the players keep coming back. Though, after a look at this brand spankin' new version, we wonder how long that will last.

Click here to play Mafia Wars 2 on Facebook Now >

Have you hopped into the brand new Mafia Wars yet? What do you think of Zynga's approach to keeping the franchise alive? Sound off in the comments. 1 Comment