Turf Wars adds to urban conflict with Vendettas

There have been about a billion Mafia games for MySpace, Facebook and iPhone - slight exaggeration. Perhaps there's only one as they all feel the same?

The free-to-play Turf Wars - which I've been playing off-and-on for the past month - does have a nice angle in terms of the way it uses your location to create a more personal experience though.

Like all the other Mafia games, you still have to do missions to get money and experience, and level up and buy more items to do more missions.

But by getting you create your own turf, within a mile of your location as calculated either using GPS or wi-fi location, and allowing players to attack each others' turf, it makes everything somehow less abstract.

For new players, it can be difficult to make your way against much more powerful enemies though, and that's where the new Vendettas come into play.

They're designed to enable lower level players to compete with established players for turf and resources by banding together to protect themselves and laying down some hurt on neighbourhood rivals.

"Becoming the Capo of a big city is more just than mob and weapons. It takes ruthless strategy and total domination, and Vendettas add another powerful tool to your arsenal for control of your city," says Nick Baicoianu, founder of MeanFreePath and creator of Turf Wars.

Turf Wars is free to download from the App Store and you can see the spread of turfs around the world via the map on the game's website.

For example, just check out the density patterns in New York.