Although Crime Boss: Rockay City stars some well-known actors from the 1980s and 1990s, other aspects of the Game also feel stale. Series like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption have long dominated video games that depict the perilous and thrilling life of organized crime. Despite having a cast that would have made a fantastic action/comedy movie thirty years ago, Crime Boss: Rockay City lacks originality in nearly every aspect of gameplay and idea execution.
Rockay City has the feel of a standard shooter from the Xbox and PlayStation 3 era. The game’s various modes are populated by cartoonishly animated characters with cringe-inducing dialogue, which together form a cohesive setting for the crime-ridden and vibrant Rockay City. To complete missions involving stealing money, drugs, or territory, players assemble a crew of thieves.
Up to four players can compete in the online games Urban Legends and Crime Time in either a covert or overt manner. Crime Boss: Rockay City’s story-expanding cutscenes, which star renowned actors like Michael Madsen, Kim Basinger, Michael Rooker, and Vanilla Ice, can be unlocked by completing missions in particular game modes.
The main character of Crime Boss, Travis Baker, aka The Candy Man, played by Michael Madsen, is introduced to the player in the game’s tutorial.
Players in Rockay City’s single-player roguelike mode must carry out missions to seize territory and resources from competing Crime Bosses, portrayed by actors such as Danny Trejo and Vanilla Ice. It is advised to complete tasks perfectly without leaving behind bodies or evidence because law enforcement is headed by Chuck Norris’s character and gets harder and more vicious as the amount of evidence against Travis grows. Travis’s death during a mission, which can also be played as a hireable thugs game with various weapons and perks, causes progress to be reset.
In Crime Boss, the locations of enemies, security cameras, and objectives change from one mission to the next. With the time of day and the number of pedestrians varying, this helps add variety to missions and can sometimes help or hinder how easily an objective can be completed.
However, each location feels the same as the NPCs that players will spend the majority of their time controlling, and neither the levels nor the characters have many distinguishing features that make them stand out or be memorable. In comparison to the over-the-top main cast, which all feel like caricatures from bad movies rather than characters worth getting emotionally invested in, the lack of personality from any character not modelled after a famous actor feels flat.
Crime Boss: Rockay City’s review build felt incomplete and in need of more gameplay depth and activities during the brief time I had to play it. With more time, the game’s creator, InGame Studios, will hopefully add more features and gameplay mechanics to help the game stand out in the multiplayer shooter genre since the game is intended to be a live service experience.
A group of four friends working together to complete missions can be entertaining. Still, Crime Boss: Rockay City feels like a low-level want-to-be criminal trying to get rich quickly in a neighbourhood full of multiplayer shooters that already perform better in its current state.
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