So here’s the deal. We have pistols and uzis, but I’m pretty sure we can take out an armored truck with this easily.
So that’s how I lost my last team of heisters as the SWAT van rolled in and took out everyone in one fell swoop. Sheriff Norris wasn’t too keen on this one.
Crime Boss: Rockay City has the potential to rival the likes of the Payday series with a pretty good list of Hollywood Action heroes joining in on the fray to take over the Heisting genre.
But alas, the heat didn’t rise this time and what we have is a shooter that has its moments but fails to capitalize on what should have been a good co-op game.
Presentation
For starters, the cast of characters that includes the likes of Michel Madsen, Danny Glover, and even the legendary Chuck Norris looks pretty accurate to themselves as of this year, so that’s the power of the Unreal Engine for you.
It runs as well as you expect on my now aging hardware, but it can do 60fps thanks to the likes of the FidelityFX Super Resolution Support coming in clutch. There are some weird texture pop-ins here and there but hey, it does maintain its framerate well even during intense firefights.
Though I have to mention that the loading times are quite lengthy for some operations that might have taken 5 to 10 minutes at best. Maybe their assets are quite big that it needs some time to load? Who knows. And the loading back to a menu screen is the same as well, which I hope should be fixed come to its console release soon.
Audio is okay at best, but there is some subtitles disparity with what’s being said on screen is different, which might hinder some players and thankfully, with updates coming, that amount of text being different is lesser than during 1.0. And while the heist music does feel a tad generic, it does lend well at times, when the heat gets too hot and you have to shoot your way towards the exit.
But what about the cast performance, you might ask? I guess they range from pretty good to just okay, like the hammy nature of recent Chuck Norris stuff is there in all its glory, same can be said about both Michael Rooker and Michael Madsen who looks and sounds like they enjoying their roles like a glorified B-movie made into a video game.
But on the other side, like Kim Basinger and Danny Glover, they kinda sound like they’re phoning it in, which is also quite true to the spirits of cheezy B-flicks, I suppose.
Gameplay
On the gameplay portion, it is your atypical heist shooter formula of a four-player team about to hit a location, be it silently or loudly depending on your mood of choice during that mission type, and get the goods that range from actually stolen goods to cold hard cash from a bank.
But there are some neat mechanics that made Rockay City quite unique (for now) among its peers and it’s something that even Payday fans would love its addition. And that’s the ability to control the AI coop teammates during a heist as a solo player and even control the speed of a drill so as to make it not jammed during more hectic moments.
It helps to coordinate both Teammates and Drill to make the gateway much easier, something that Payday 2 solo players (like myself) had problems with, during the later tougher heists. And every teammate has the same ability to do all the things that are essential to the heist, making its flat difficulty curve much bearable
The actual story mode of Travis Baker trying to take down a big town in Florida is compelling to try out, with the mode going day-by-day as you try to take down the big families one block at a time, via takeovers that might range from easy to a hard shootout with evenly matched teams. It’s quite engaging during the start but gets rather tedious as you try to reach the end game.
One thing that I feel is a weird addiction is the roguelike element in the form of a card-based powerup system, where every level-up will gift you a card that helps improve your Michael Madsen with better health or less sway when aiming.
It fits into the weird daily grind nature of the campaign as your hired goons can also get their own perks, so there’s some element of replayability if a career mode run goes terribly wrong.
Content
Crime Boss: Rockay City is like their mainstay rival, it is one of those games where if the itch hits, you can spend up to hours on end to get the better result and more cash to get that new weapon that ranges from another pistol to even their equivalent of the M16.
Like, when you go upwards to the harder cop levels, they will challenge you hard if you don’t have the firepower needed to not only guard the thingy that you are robbing but not die up to two times for each teammate that you bring in.
Besides career mode, there’s also the quick heist option that drops you into a randomized objective on the map much like how Payday does it and you also can do this one solo and/or cooperatively with normal goons or if you completed missions already within the career mode, even the main cast if you want to see Yondu rob an armored truck as Chuck Norris drops in with his twin revolvers trying to gun you down.
It’s this sort of chaos that kinda makes this game quite endearing, really.
Personal Enjoyment
Rockay City does scratches that heist-shooting itch before the inevitable Payday 3 releases sometime in the future but I do feel that it’s kind of a “what-if” scenario for this title, all the glitz and glamor with the star-studded cast, couldn’t really hold together a game that has the potential to be something unique but becomes rather bland with how samey it gets.
Maybe when the console versions come around, we see more content coming in because I do want to see this game succeed in the long run.
Verdict
Crime Boss: Rockay City feels like they embodied their 80s cheesy movies aura way too much which leaves itself being the supermarket version of Payday, for better or worse. But if you don’t mind it and love to have something that has COOP to play with, then look no further than this one when a sale comes around the block.
Played on PC, Review copy provided by the publisher.
Crime Boss: Rockay City
Embodied their 80s cheesy movies aura way too much which leaves itself being the supermarket version of Payday, for better or worse
- Presentation 7.5
- Gameplay 7
- Content 6
- Personal Enjoyment 7