I’m not going to lie to you, the truth is that I didn’t expect much from Crime Boss: Rockay City. It may have been a bias, but the recent trailer coverage, coupled with the delays, the prospect of per-service play, and the fact that it won’t hit consoles for a few months, made it a flagship product. …the one I didn’t trust much when I started my analysis process. However, I was surprised, because even though this game has some obvious issues and some serious issues it needs to address, it’s still a fun title to spend many hours with.
Set in a city similar to Miami in the 90s called Rockay City, the idea of the game is to put you in the shoes of the criminal protagonist Travis Baker (Michael Madsen), as he wages war against rival gang leaders in the sunny metropolis, all with the help of allies like Casey (Kim Basinger) and Gloves (Danny Glover), and while avoiding police and sheriff-led law enforcement Norris (Chuck Norris). Of course, they are not exactly unknown. The gameplay basically revolves around completing robbery missions to fund your empire, while Landing (Michael Rooker) does the dirty work of claiming and defending territory all over town.
In practice, Crime Boss: Rockay City is essentially a first-person shooter. The game will tell you that you have to plan and be smart about heists, but running full throttle and leaving a trail of corpses is just as effective and actually much easier than trying to plan something. Because? Because (as he tells you several times) Crime Boss is not a heist game and therefore lacks the options of a heist title like Payday. You don’t have multiple ways to approach the same job, the way things work is linear, and the stealth systems are so mismatched that it’s nearly impossible to do a job without all hell breaking loose.
Advertisement:
Luckily, shootouts and gunfire are excellent. If you’ve played Far Cry, you’ll see a lot of similarities to the feel of Crime Boss, as the weapons feel a bit heavy and unwieldy, but at the same time feel realistic in the hands of a criminal who doesn’t. was not trained by the military to handle a fully automatic firearm. It’s not in the handling of the weapons and the controls that Crime Boss has problems, but rather in the activities and all the rest.
And I say that because Crime Boss: Rockay City is a one-turn game. If you enjoy digging through a small level, smashing crates, smashing safes, and blowing up safes with drills, all while keeping hordes of incredibly stupid cops at bay, then this game has it in spades. In fact, he basically has it exclusively. Every heist mission (whether it’s a bank, a jewelry store, a warehouse, a mall, etc.) is all about doing the exact same thing, which means the campaign of Crime Boss and other game modes quickly become very repetitive. . And before we get into what at least tries to save the countryside from this purgatory, let me say that the Urban Legends and Time of Crime modes are nothing more than ways to play these heists without the suite of campaign options to save them. . . They lose their charm almost instantly.
Advertisement:
But anyway, the campaign. This is where you’ll spend most of your time in the game, and luckily the roguelike nature and option set keeps things interesting. Since you can’t let the boss Baker die in a mission, the game will be over and you’ll have to start over from the beginning, your choices are important, although the roguelike nature makes the game easier as you progress (that’s (i.e. said, I nearly beat the game in the first game and only lost for being greedy while robbing a jewelry store, which goes to show how pathetic the AI and challenge is). Player Choice adds to this by letting you decide who you recruit, what territory you attack, what weapons you own, what job to do next, what assets to buy to increase your wealth and reputation, and a whole host of other things that make your game more enjoyable. to be a more exciting boss. It’s all here so you can get lost in the campaign, even if the voice acting, characters, and narrative do their best to dissuade you.
For many, Crime Boss: Rockay City’s star-studded cast is probably its biggest draw, but that leads to a lot of disappointment, as some of the characters are just plain exhausting. I’m a big fan of Michael Rooker, but his character, Touchdown, is so cartoonish he’s exhausting to deal with, speaking exclusively in football rhetoric and metaphors, and when I say exclusively, I mean it. Added to this is Casey (Kim Basinger), who simply exists to be eye candy and sexualize the game. Rival bosses (Vanilla Ice and Danny Trejo) carry very little weight in the story (to say nothing at all), and worst of all, Chuck Norris’ Sheriff is so bad it looks like Norris just did the lackluster performance of taking the check and running.
The narrative is also immemorial and flat, and if the gameplay loop of shooting cops, filling bags with drugs, gems, gold, and cash, then transporting them to a delivery vehicle ( which I found amusing in the four days I had to review the game) doesn’t appeal to you, then Crime Boss: Rockay City has nothing else to hold your attention and keep you entertained.
Even so, the game seems to run well on my PC (RTX 3090 and 11th Gen i9 processor), with a solid and smooth frame rate when playing at maximum graphics settings. But just because it looks quite flashy and performs well at a fundamental level of performance doesn’t change the fact that some aspects, like the AI, are downright atrocious. If you’re planning on playing solo, be aware that you’ll have to bark orders at your team to keep them from going out into the streets and being shot by the police, and you’ll have to tell them to do whatever requires it. a small initiative. If nothing else, the police level the playing field a bit by attacking you in an incredibly predictable formation that requires very little thought and strategy to overcome. The solution to any of these problems is, of course, to play co-op, but as we all know, finding and scheduling a game session with three friends isn’t always the easiest thing to organize.
In short, Crime Boss: Rockay City is not an absolute disaster of a game, but it is not a title for which we will drink the winds. For anyone looking for a flashy 90s-inspired Payday (because there’s enough attention on the heist that you want to compare the two) that focuses its gameplay on an FPS, then this will give you at least a few hours of fun before you want to spend your time on something with more travel.