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- 505 Games
- 505 Games
- 505 Games
- 505 Games
Crime Boss: Rockay City
Released On: Mar 28, 2023
51
5.5
Where to Buy
Where to Buy
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 36 Critic Reviews
51
6% Positive
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
61% Mixed
22 Reviews
22 Reviews
31% Negative
11 Reviews
11 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 36 Critic Reviews
51
6% Positive
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
61% Mixed
22 Reviews
22 Reviews
31% Negative
11 Reviews
11 Reviews
I’m really enjoying Crime Boss Rockay City and highly recommend it! If you have a soft spot for the cast then that’s a good draw card… but if you have a big ol’ spot of nostalgia for music of the 90’s… it will be hard to suppress the smile as you enter a shopping mall only to hear Freestyler playing. If you want a great heist game that involves a bit more thinking and planning than GTA or even Payday… grab a copy!
If the developers keep their promise to publish new free content and solve some problems, the first work of the Brno-based studio could carve out a small space in the gaming landscape, also thanks to its affordable cost.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 92 User Ratings
5.5
45% Positive
41 Ratings
41 Ratings
12% Mixed
11 Ratings
11 Ratings
43% Negative
40 Ratings
40 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 92 User Ratings
5.5
45% Positive
41 Ratings
41 Ratings
12% Mixed
11 Ratings
11 Ratings
43% Negative
40 Ratings
40 Ratings
Ok look, this game is not a masterpiece, and I was beyond apprehensive about buying it because of the reviews and the fact that Im not into Roguelike games had me turned off but I love heist games and this is a very fun single player game. So if your more of a solo type player and into heist games then give this a chance!I The ai teammates are actually helpfull it's really not as bad as the reviews make it out to be. 8 out of 10
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PC
If you expect a new Payday here, you will inevitably be disappointed.
Crime Boss: Rockay City has many interesting features and good ideas,
but only half-heartedly pursues most of them.
Crime Boss: Rockay City’s heist gameplay is squandered by a myriad of bugs, mindless, boring gameplay, and a severe lack of fun despite its best attempts to have the presence of GTA and the mechanics of Payday, both of which are much better games.
If the idea of playing a shooter crammed on top of a modern edition of Drug Wars, full of pseudo ironic stunt casting and roguelike gimmicks sounds like a good time, boy do I have a game for you. The only game for you, really. All snark aside I don’t think I’ve ever played a game quite like Crime Boss: Rockay City. It’s a massive swing and a big miss, with enough force to crack the sound barrier while the ball stays in the catcher’s mitt. It’s neither a cynical corporate cringe like Sharknado, nor is it a low-budget dud you’d expect to see a crew of robot puppets heckle. It’s weird, loud and uncanny. Frankly I’m surprised Christopher Walken didn’t show up.
Crime Boss: Rockay City is exactly what we thought it would be. A turgid waste of a solid central idea with a cast stacked with actors who sound like they’d rather be anywhere else or are just purely hateful. There’s a little delight in falling into b-movie nostalgia, but it’s few and far between. There’s very little here to recommend because very little of it works, if anything at all. Well, the title is fun to say at least.
Crime Boss: Rockay City is proof that star power isn’t everything. In fact, it’s a reminder that a celebrity cast does nothing for a game when it’s void of anything interesting or fun to support it. When run-ending bugs appear, Crime Boss is miserable, but even when I’m running a mission bug-free, I lay witness to a painfully dull take on organized crime. At its best, Crime Boss functions – I can shoot weapons at enemies, empty bank vaults and warehouses for loot, watch cutscenes with recognizable faces and voices, and grow my empire – but it never captures my attention in a meaningful or memorable way. Instead, it pushes me further and further away, leaving me with no desire to ever return to Rockay City.
By no means is this a groundbreaking or genre defining game. This is Payday without all the wasted time, and while it doesnt have the depth either, it strips out all the worst parts that come with a deep and confusing meta and replace it with a repeatable rougelike, in which you learn that as frustrating as your mistakes are, very few of them will be detrimental enough to end a run.
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PC
Although certainly rough around the edges now, Crime Boss is an otherwise interesting and fun single-player oriented take on the PAYDAY formula, offering both cooperative heists and a dedicated single-player roguelite campaign.
Pros:
+ A full-fledged roguelite story mode revolving around taking over the Miami-inspired city, offering turf war elimination matches, heists to finance our criminal empire, and some occasional scripted story missions. The available opportunities (and muscles to hire) slightly differ with each playthrough, offering a slightly different experience for each run, even though the roguelite gameplay basics remain the same. During each run, our protagonist gains XP, unlocking new skills with each level up, making subsequent runs slightly easier to progress through by buffing our protagonist, our gang's cash flow and general strength, or the quality of equipment and muscle we can buy.
+ The two co-op modes are also serviceable, with Quick Play being similar to the **** screen of PAYDAY2 (offering the same heists we encounter in Story Mode in a standalone fashion), while Urban Legends being more akin to the multi-day heists of PAYDAY2 and the grand heists of GTA Online, each spanning three levels.
+ Some minor gameplay enhancements compared to PAYDAY2. For example, we can temporarily speed up the speed of our drills, or can unlock doors via dedicated minigames. We can also carry up to two loot bags at the same time, although in that case, we are restricted to our sidearm.
+ The visuals are okay, the city really conveys that 90s Florida setting pretty well.
+ All-around performance is also acceptable. I'm running the game on a rig with a i7-4790 CPU, a GTX 1070 VGA and 32 gigs of RAM, on a 2560x1080 ultrawide resolution, with the High detail preset. With this setting, I only experience some occasional hiccups during larger battles.
+ AI companions are serviceable, being able to loot the goodies independently, pick up dropped loot bags, or deliver them to the escape van on their own. We can also order them to follow us or stay put, and can seamlessly switch into them whenever needed. Granted, if we want to stealth, they may not be reliable, but they serve the single player campaign well enough.
+ All-around stealth is easier than it is in PAYDAY2. We have an unlimited amount of zipties and bodybags available, while guards don't wear pagers, so as long we can divert/separate them from other NPCs, it's easy to dominate and tie them up without trouble. We can also move tied NPCs around.
Cons:
- Writing and voice acting is horrendous. Chuck Norris' performance is probably the worst VA I've ever heard in a video game. Michael Madsen at least tries putting in a performance, but in his case, it's really off-putting to hear a 35-40 years old protagonist talking with the voice of a 65 years old guy. The game also doesn't have separate stealth and loud voice lines, meaning that you dominate guards by shouting at them (undetected) even when in stealth.
- Gunplay is serviceable, but could be a lot better. You can't really "feel" any of the guns, and most of them feature really annoying bloom - it's hard to land shots even with semi-automatic pistols and rifles.
- Lone wolfs might be bothered by the fact that even though you can play the Quick Play and Urban Legends heists solo with bots, you cannot create private lobbies. As such, if you don't fill the slots with bots, others can easily join in. Also, as I understand, the co-op game modes don't have any special rewards, you can only unlock the higher-level characters in them for story play.
- Customization is only rudimentary, with each character being able to wield a two-handed weapon, a sidearm, and a special gadget (e.g. a number of throwable rocks or bricks).
- Map variety is also not the game's forte, as all three game modes seemingly sharing the same combat map pool of roughly ~two dozen levels, with some minor randomization during each run (affecting guard patrols and camera placement). This, however, could change in the future.
Summary:
TL;DR, I like the game, and I think it worth the discounted AA price it cost during the preorder campaign, but it can certainly use some additional polish, a redesign of the rudimentary customization features, and extra robbery/heist maps. Still, if you are looking for a primarily single-player PAYDAY experience set in an over-the-top 1990s setting, you can definitely take a look at the game. :)
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PC
I heard about this game in December 2022, and since the trailer was so well done, I was eagerly anticipating it with hope and joy...
Let me say straight away that my hopes were pretty much dashed in less than 2 hours of gameplay.
After completing the tutorial and making progress in the campaign, my verdict on the single-player experience is extremely mixed.
It's very reminiscent of Payday 2 (at this point, one could even call it plagiarism) in remastered 2023, which means it's graphically pumped up on steroids and simplified to the extreme in terms of management and gameplay. The campaign feels like a dud, the kind of high-budget Hollywood action movie that's overacted by the actors and in which you participate in a few action scenes that are ultimately pointless. The budget seems to have been absorbed by the cast, which may be the only positive aspect of the game when it's forgotten in 6 months. There's no creativity in the gameplay or the story; it's all very basic. The actors overplay their parts, it's a real flop. However, it could become a cult classic, and at times I wondered if the entire scripted part was meant to be a big joke. What a waste for these good '90s action stars who seem lost in this production.
But let's get back to the gameplay. It's not an open world, you can't explore the city, you can only choose missions in a particular location, and it's always the same: infiltration, action, extraction... In Payday 2, during the extraction phase, we sometimes, or even often, had an accident, and we had to transfer the loot from the crashed van to a new vehicle, which added extra tension at the end of the heist. We never knew if we were going to get away "easy" or if we were going to have to face the police again, in the middle of an intersection, next to a park. But there's none of that in Crime Boss. In Rockay City, the cops mind their own business.
In short, I'm very disappointed at the moment.
As for multiplayer, I get the impression that you can only play with your Epic friends, not with random guys...
I still hope that the developers will improve the game in the future or that the rest of the single-player campaign will be better than its beginning. Even though what I've seen is lackluster, the game has considerable potential, and if the developers add the missing features, it could become a reference.
In conclusion, here's my advice: if you like Payday 2, stick with it; if you don't like Payday 2, you won't like Crime Boss (it's the same gameplay, with ultra-simplified complexity, wrapped in modern graphics and a poorer story); and if you don't know Payday 2, wait for the third opus, which should come out this year.
Today, I give it a 4/10 for the cast, Kim Basinger, the graphics, and the technical execution (I haven't encountered any bugs yet).
I'll revise my rating later based on my continued experience with the game.
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PC
If the gameplay was the only thing that needed work here and the voice acting/ storytelling was good an average score might be justified but I'm not sure this game has any redeeming qualities.
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PC
Summary Rockay City. A thriving metropolis with excitement buzzing from the sandy bay to the towering skyscrapers. But beyond the glamour, there is a fierce turf war raging on... After the demise of the previous crime boss, there's an open vacancy for a new King of Rockay City - but it isn't just you who is fighting for the throne. Choose your c...
Platforms:
- PC
- Xbox Series X
- PlayStation 5
Initial Release Date: Mar 28, 2023
Developer:
- InGame Studios
Publisher: 505 Games
Genres: