Are you a big fan of nineties action flicks? Do you love recognizable B-Movie actors? INGAME STUDIOS has released Crime Boss: Rockay City that seems to take a variety of elements from various heist games while implementing a rogue-like element to the single player story. The stars here are notable as it’s headlined by Michael Madsen playing the main character, Travis Baker. Other cast members include Kim Basinger as Casey, Danny Trejo as Dollar Dragon, Danny Glover as Gloves, Damion Poitier is Nasara, Michael Booker as Touchdown, Vanilla Ice as Hielo and finally Chuck Norris as Sheriff Norris. While there’s no beating Chuck Norris, there’s a bit beating this game as it seems to suffer from an identity crisis while offering a lot for players with a short attention span.
The game is categorized as an “Organized Crime” game and it almost feels like someone brought the drug text-based game from the TI-85 calculator to life. Complete with this impressive cast that movie buffs will love, the presentation is excellent. The exterior attraction and the marketing is there with the art mimicking the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Rockay City is a fictional city that’s based in Florida and full of banks and crime syndicates. Travis Baker wants to take control of the city which is done through various heists that upgrade himself as well as build an army alongside him. The King of Rockay City has been removed so it’s open season for any of these crime bosses.
The single player dives into a rogue-like design as the story offers perma-death no matter how far you’ve gotten. You’ll advance day by day while allocating resources and crew members. If you do die, you keep your progress and start over. Each time you die, the game replays the original introduction cutscene as you’ll start back on Day 1. After a while, this cutscene tends to get old as it starts a trend for the entire game. There are other types of gameplay options that pop up during the story that will have an all out turf war with multiple members taking each other on to take over an area. Others include simply allocating soldiers, a la Risk, to take over that area of the map.
There are a few different settings with changed environment options for the various heists. Some are robbing a van or a bank with a handful of various options on each map. The idea of the game is comparable to the Payday franchise, but it lacks the depth and polish. The ability to stealth kill and intimidate enemies is available, but rarely works. You can’t trick the AI or tip them off by making a distraction and most of the time the AI is standing around the goal area for whatever is being stolen. It’s cool to stake out a jewelry store or a bank, but it takes a minimal mistake to trigger the cops and SWAT team showing up. This doesn’t include the cameras and there really isn’t a way to disable these. Everything usually ends up in a shoot out and the AI assistance is decent. It will pick up bags of stolen goods as what can be stolen at once is limited. The AI crew members can be individually upgraded with new weapons as well.
The ability to purchase higher-tiered weapons is nice, but the revolver that’s stock with Baker is effective. Cops do tend to sneak out of areas that are unexpected and hard to track. The shooting mechanic is solid and the headshots are bloody satisfying. Melee weapons are also included, but unless you’re up close to an enemy, it’s difficult to chase down people to melee. Cards are rewarded as Baker levels up that offer various boosts related to people in your crew. While weapons can be purchased, if an enemy drops a better gun, it cannot be picked up. The only item that can be picked up is ammo and that’s the only way to replenish ammo.
Crime Boss: Rockay City seems to pander to those with short attention spans. I kept digging and digging to see what else would pop up, but the main aspect is going through quick shootouts and taking money that helps build your empire. It’s literally doing this over and over again, no matter if it’s with the single player, cooperative story mode or with the online mode. There are quite a bit of people online as the game offers a lobby system, but there are a good bit of games that have only one person. Joining a match online works well in terms of its connectivity and it runs well, but players are susceptible to booting either before or after a match.
The online component is separate in terms of accruing funds to upgrade weapons and your loadout. While there are different generic players to choose from, the option to not create a player is baffling. You’re working towards leveling up these individual generic characters and while members from the single player can be eventually unlocked, the fact you may’t create a player a la GTA is a huge miss. Also, nobody online tries to do anything special but get into a shootout. The goal across the entire board is to garner the most money and side objectives can add more to that. These also include using multiple revives of other players, but that may never happen in the game. The lack of being able to get creative is disappointing, and it may be something that’s more available with higher level characters in both single and multiplayer.
Having all these noteworthy cast members is a big plus, but the implementation shortsighted. Yes, the cutscenes are awesome, but the dialogue features a lot of alternating conversation featuring one-line sentences. Madsen, Trejo and Booker sound good in terms of audio quality, but Chuck Norris and Basinger don’t sound right for some reason. The overall presentation does feel like a 1990s movie complete with a lot of edgy aspects, but the cutscenes aren’t super long which can be both a good and a bad thing. The soundtrack, however, is amazing and when you see giant cell phones and other 1990s tech, it does tickle the nostalgia bone. It would have been nice to have more of this rather than in short spurts.
Crime Boss: Rockay City is one of the first Epic Games Store exclusives that will hit current generation consoles later this year. The visuals truly back this and both the environments of Rockay City and the player models are beautiful. The game doesn’t even offer ray tracing, but the neon lights and the reflections along with the explosion effects look fantastic. Adding to this are the facial scans of the cast and everyone looks realistic. Even the speech animations are fantastic and frankly I need an entire movie done like this. Every supersampling software is available whether it be NVIDIA, AMD or even Intel. The game doesn’t necessarily need it as it mostly runs at the highest level in 4K at 60-70 FPS without assistance. The framerate will tank if there are a lot of people in the area and it can drop to 30-40. Hopefully, they will get this optimized for consoles for a consistent 60 FPS or more. NVIDIA Reflex was also included and it tends to hurt performance more when enabled. While the bench system offered an i7-9700 CPU, it also has 32 GB DDR4 4000MHz RAM and a NVIDIA RTX 3080 10GB. A more recent processor may close in those gaps, but the game is well optimized while offering a beautiful look and minimal bugs during the experience.
Closing Comments:
INGAME STUDIOS should be commended for trying something different as they’ve previously worked on the Mafia series amongst other titles. The Rogue-like gameplay doesn’t work that well here due to the repetition of the game, even though things can turn out different in every playthrough. That’s more related to the story and not necessarily the process to get there. Each session is quick and it just stacks on top of each other. It’s good to see a good amount of people online playing the game and the experience works in terms of actual connectivity and a lack of any lag. The main issue online is who you’re playing with, so an experience with friends may be the better route. It still comes down to doing nothing but quick shootouts and surviving being mowed down by the enemy. The cast is a well-established group of 90s B-Movie stars and the player models and environments are downright beautiful. There’s a lot here to attract players to something that seems familiar, but it ends up being different in the end. It lacks the lasting appeal, but it does help that on the Epic Games Store, the game is only $39.99. If you like rogue-like games and 90s crime movies and don’t mind repetitiveness, Crime Boss: Rockay City might be up your alley. But those thinking this may be a Payday or GTA clone, it’s not either of those completely.
Crime Boss: Rockay City
A first-person shooter set in a crime-infested open-world, InGame’s Crime Boss: Rockay City follows Travis Baker as he seeks to become the underworld’s new kingpin. In March 2023, the game will launch exclusively on PC, but PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions are in development.
