I know it's all the rage these days to get down on Zynga for their timesink-centric free to play Facebook games, but they are responsible for some ridiculous numbers. CityVille in specific is responsible for nearly 2.4m "Likes" on Facebook, and according to Wikipedia was Zynga's biggest game launch and has set the record for most monthly active users for an application ever on Facebook. Considering just how massive Facebook is, an accomplishment like that is absolutely incredible.

FarmVille [Free] hit the App Store quite a while ago now, and set expectations for what to expect out of Zynga's efforts on the iPhone. Initially the client was a little limited, but you were able to connect directly to your own existing farm and manage your crops on the go. If you were a FarmVille fanatic, this was amazing news.

Unfortunately, the iOS CityVille isn't a CityVille client at all. CityVille Hometown [Free] has the basic frameworks of CityVille, and looks a lot like CityVille, but you'll be starting a brand new city entirely dependent of your (potentially) already existing city on Facebook. Maybe it's just me, but this makes CityVille Hometown go from vaguely interesting to downright confusing. The App Store already has entirely too many time sink-laden building games, and not having the same Facebook link as FarmVille did easily makes it blend into the pack.

So I guess if you just can't get enough of CityVille, and want to completely start over on your phone, CityVille Hometown is for you. This really makes me wonder what Zynga's ongoing strategy is going to be for mobile devices. It always seemed to me that leveraging and connecting to these massive already thriving communities would be too huge to pass up. Regardless, it will be fun to watch Hometown on the charts to see how it does.