In our recent review of Shadow Cities we said it was "Part RPG, part location-based team strategy game, all addictive time-sink." Unfortunately, when I was reading the review, I didn't pay enough attention to those last three words. Too bad, because weeks later, I'm still sinking all of my time into the epic mage battles.

Doesn't get much epic-er than that.

So what am I doing? Mostly just trying to sign up all my friends to get extra mana potions. Why do I need extra mana potions? To get extra emblems and a fancy swirly avatar. Why do I need that stuff? To impress all my friends, obviously. 

That's pretty much the rational here in Shadow Cities. If you haven't heard of it, it's part AR, MMO, and fantasy game. What that means for you is that it tracks your location and puts you on a map, where you can fight enemies with real live people. Except, as you can tell by the pictures, people don't look like people and you'll spend the better part of an hour trying to distinguish gates from enemies and enemies from travelling spirits.

Unfortunately, none of the element designs are really that cool. You're just a sphere attacking other spheres. Even those cool swirls I want don't change the fact you're still just a floating ball. I might be the only floating ball in Shadow Cities that really wishes it had a face and could put armor on. Instead I'm limited to enhancing my stats. Fortunately, the game's pretty stinking successful, so no doubt the GameLoft version is just around the corner.

Can you tell what's going on in this picture? Me neither, and I was there.

So what exactly is so addicting about this game?

Well, beneath the ridiculous premise and stupid sphere floatin, there are advanced strategies to be played and exploited. When attacking enemies, for instance, you can warp out of harm's way at the last minute or hit the home button and log out to really rile up the enemies (this might be cheating, I'm not sure).

You can cast spells by drawing runes. Sometimes they look like "Z's."

Another strategy is to get an impressive list of friends together to do your bidding. There are a multitude of ways to trick these suckers, but remember: these are real people so they take a bit more finesse than cheating those other floating balls in Shadow Cities. One strategy is simply helping out someone who is about to die. They might add you as a friend and help you out in your time of need. Or, you can talk over the team channels and try to get all the hardcore players to help you out when you're in need. If you want to do it this way, make sure you talk about something relatable, that hardcore MMO players will find interesting.

Apparently no one was thinking 'bout sports.

Or finally, you can grind like Tony Hawk at a Jersey Club until you've leveled enough to crack some orbs. In order to do this, you can destroy the floating AI spirits, you can take on the actual enemies, or you can take tons and tons of quests. Most of these quests are simple hunt and gather quests, but this constitues the real, non-spammy, way to level up in the game.

With missions like this, I'll never miss real life.

Unfortunately, no matter what you do enemies are kind of going to hate you. They get experience by killing you. In the picture below, I somehow angered/warped into a mob of engineers (the orange guys are the bad guys). This sometimes happens, and you get completely obliterated.

Every time I warp anywhere these days, this is what happens.

If the MMO/AR/Drawing Runes aspect of Shadow Cities sounds like it might be a hit, check it out here (that's my referral link so I can get lots of mana, duh). Or skip the linkbait and grab it from iTunes here. Either way, I'll be casting more spells than a wizard at spelling bee. See you in the Shadow Cities.