With Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven our weekly column continues # fridaynostalgia dedicated to retrogaming. Here is our story of a game that gave birth to a saga capable of competing with great science fiction masterpieces.
If you missed the previous articles dedicated to the retrogaming you can easily find them all at this link. You will find Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Winning Eleven and many other goodies collected just for you!
MAFIA: THE CITY OF LOST HEAVEN
“You know, the world is not governed by written laws, but by people. Some follow the laws and some do not. It depends on each individual what the world will be like, on how he creates it. And it also takes a lot of luck to keep someone from making your life hell. It's not as easy as they teach you in elementary school. But it is right to have solid values and to respect them. In marriage, in crime, in war, in short, always and everywhere. I have failed. How Paulie e Sat. We aspired to a better life, but deep down we were worse than most people. You know, I think it's important to keep balance. Yes, balance is the right word. Because those who want too much risk losing absolutely everything. Of course, those who want too little from life risk getting absolutely nothing ".
To tell you about Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, I decided to start from the end, from the beautiful final sentence that the protagonist, Tommy Angelo, pronounces right in the last epic scene. A phrase that alone has the power to summarize the philosophy hidden behind one of the most beautiful titles of the new millennium. A story of crime and ambition, of betrayal and revenge, a story that has nothing to envy to the best American films on the genre. A video game that made us experience, firsthand, the spirit of the 20s and 30s, between prohibition and "families". An action title, with a huge exploratory component and settings and dialogues worthy of a great movie set. Pack your bags, Lost heaven awaits us.
PUT A TAXI DRIVER IN THE MAFIA
1930. Tommy is a quiet taxi driver from the city of Lost Heaven. Unfortunately for him, a chase between mafia gangs is about to change his destiny forever. Tommy, helping Sat e Paulie, two henchmen of Don Salieri, to escape from the men of the cruel rival boss Morello, finds himself in spite of himself embroiled in a bloody feud. Despite the attempt not to enter that world so dangerous, a series of events will push us inside the organization, in what will soon become a real climb towards the highest ranks of the underworld.
The life of a "picciotto" is always full of novelties and twists. We will soon move on from asking the lace to stealing cars, even ending up competing in a real Grand Prix of the thirties. We will find ourselves againstFBI and the district attorney, we'll stock up on loads of whiskey and guns, while also finding time to fall in love and start a family. In a time span that goes from 1930 al 1939, together with the inseparable Sam and Paulie we will find ourselves having to recover burning documents, break into safes and choose whether to condemn or let escape those who until recently were our friends.
A SERIES OF EPIC SCENES
Thanks to the constant references to genre films, Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, becomes a real experience. I assure you that, despite the sabotage of rival cars, finishing the car race in first place was a real undertaking, given that the racing cars of those years tended to have truly revisable grip. Even the classic chase scenes, thefts and shootings have that exquisite retro flavor, in which the work done to recreate stands out. weapons and cars of one of the most controversial periods in American history.
In terms of writing, Mafia gave us a series of truly unrepeatable scenes. One above all, the escape from the funeral of a politician's son that we committed. Here, after being recognized, we will have to make our way in an epic shooting, ending up escaping the police with the first means at our disposal, which is a hearse. It goes without saying that that vehicle won't be quite the best to leave police officers behind, but the resulting scene is pretty awesome as a whole. Just as fantastic is the epilogue in Civic Museum of Lost Heaven, where the final shooting will lead us straight to the epilogue of a game capable of capturing us from the first to the last mission.
A CLASSIC SPORTS EQUIPMENT
Great credit for the success of Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, goes to the great variety of weapons present in the game. Unforgettable the joke of Vincenzo, historical gunsmith of the Salieri family, when he proposes to use the baseball bat to damage the cars of those who refused to pay the protection money: "This classic sports tool should be for you, otherwise I have prepared some Molotov cocktails". Among the various sidearms stood out the brass knuckles, crowbar, knives, bars, while, going on firearms, there was a great variety.
From the guns Smith & Wesson 10 M&P, Smith & Wesson 27 Magnum, Colt 1911, Colt Detective Special, passing through the classic Lupara, the shotgun, the US M1903 Springfield Carbine or the Mosin Nagant 1891, without forgetting the sniper rifles. But the real hero of Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, it was he, the machine gun Thompson 1928, with the classic disc magazine and the veritcal despair of the shots typical of all the films set in that historical period. A great attention to detail, able to thrill even the less attentive gamer.
THE CARS OF MAFIA, WHAT A PASSION
In addition to firearms, the second characteristic element of the Mafia was represented by cars. In fact, in the game we could find, steal or drive a large variety of cars typical of the 30s. Give her Bolt Ace, Model B and V8, at Caesar racing. From the Crusader Chrominum, alla Falconer, passing through the Lassiter V16 Schubert Six, normal and police.
The game also featured heavy vehicles, such as ambulances, trucks and fire trucks, as well as very rare luxury cars. Among all the stand out Silver Fletcher, The Thor 812, Or the Trautenberg. Since much of the game was spent driving from one point of the city to another, the cars were a central point of the story and the narrative, and you had the possibility to collect them and park them in a special garage. Impossible not to mention the legendary one Ford T, present in one of the craziest and most iconic missions of this first chapter.
SOME CURIOSITIES
Despite the longevity of Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven was anything but scarce, those jokers from Illusion Softworks wanted to include some extra mode at the end of the game. In fact, once the story was complete, we could start a series of crazy and fun missions, in a mode called "at full throttle". While in the "Go for a walk”We would have played a Thomas Angelo completely free to roam and explore the city at will.
The real gem, however, was precisely the "full throttle" mode. Suffice it to say that some missions were really crazy, to the point of being almost impossible to complete. If in "Speedy Gonzales"We had to invest a very fast man (like the famous mouse) in the mission"the money sucker“We had to take a Trautenberg to the other side of town that could empty the petrol tank in an amen. In one of these crazy missions we will even have to cross a bridge with the legendary (and very slow) Ford T, under the bombardment of a Zeppelin airship. A real madness, able to increase the longevity of a title that is already very long and beautiful in itself.
Mafia was one of the undisputed capvolari of the beginning of the century, a magic halfway between video game and cinema, able to give us a story that even today, almost twenty years later, still manages to excite us.
