Crime Boss: Rockay City preview: looking for a payday that ain’t coming

You can’t count on an operation going down no matter how meticulously you have drawn it. It’s important to adapt and make the most of the mess. Grand Theft AutoOnlineOder Payday 2 their emergent thrills — especially when you’re able to secure the bag.

Crime Boss: Rockay City from upstart developer Ingame Studios tries to emulate those moments with the vibe of a ’90s action flick, but the game itself is an example of an operation going south with little hope coming out of the other end with the bag.

It took me just over an hour to finish the task. Crime BossThe four-player, co-op cooperative first-person shooter. After playing through five separate missions in the “Urban Legends” mode, I came away finding it tough to conjure up enthusiasm for the “organized crime” shooter. The game’s shallow mission design leaves much to be desired, and its foundational aspects — gunplay, encounters, and stealth — aren’t impressive enough to carry the weight.

My first mission started on a Miami-esque beachfront where my team of four had to eliminate a gang leader who’s posted up in a restaurant. Of course, it’s heavily guarded and it turns into a shootout. The target himself is a bullet sponge who I chased into a nearby apartment complex before wearing him down and getting the kill — standard shooter stuff. Next was an attack on a warehouse that had been fortified. Four of us were required to steal it. This was a great opportunity to be stealthy, but it quickly turned into walking crouching through plain sight past security guards in order to launch a fight from the backdoor. Although it had some thrills clearing out generic gangsters while lugging bags of loot and trying to survive the SWAT squad’s melee, it also highlighted the fluid gunplay required to eliminate enemies.

Image: Ingame Studios/505 Games

My team reached a predetermined objective point. After realizing that it was a set up, we tried to battle our way through well-armed mobs, including an armored police force, and rival gang members with assault rifles. It’s here where Crime Boss’ encounter design started to show its limits, sending enemies in large numbers without much care for challenging you tactically. My only option was to keep it at an extract point or safe and call upon my friends. CS:GOAnd ValorantHabits until it was time for a change.

The last mission felt like it could’ve been a highlight: raiding a yacht to snatch up tons of cocaine stashed in vases and statues — for money, not to get skied up. While cops are careful to guard the main path, there was an alternative path that could be found. By this point, however, I began to see how the game’s stealth mechanics weren’t quite capable enough to support the notion that you can, and should, maintain a low profile throughout. And if you think you can slide between cover to get a silent takedown, just hope that the unreliable melee attack works in your favor, because as soon as you’re caught, all hell’s gonna break loose.

Image: Ingame Studios/505 Games

Problems with gunplay and stealth are compounded by Crime Boss’ operators — the characters you choose to play as in each mission. Each one has their quirks, perks, and nerfs, like damage output, movement speed, and how they’re affected when carrying loot, among other things. But they’re subject to fixed loadouts. If your roster of operators doesn’t include someone with silenced weapons, or at least a gadget to support a stealthy approach, expect to go in and get out guns blazing.

In the full game, due to arrive March 28 on Windows PC (PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions are also planned), you’ll theoretically build out that roster by hiring more operators with the money accumulated through missions. And if your character dies in a mission, then they’re gone for good. Although it’s a cool premise that adds stakes on top of a mission’s success, the lack of flexibility or depth with their loadouts in the demo left me with little to work with aside from a rifle or SMG that hardly makes a dent in the multiple SWAT squads barrelling down on my team.

Although the objectives and tasks may change from one mission to the next, the overall gameplay strategy remained constant: Take it as long as possible, then shoot the enemies. There’s something to be said about improvising and adapting, using whatever you have and trying to make it work, but without the right tools (or any tools, really) to work with, you’re left with too few options.

Image: Ingame Studios/505 Games

Whatever the hell is going on with the game’s characters isn’t going to make up for what Crime BossThere is also a lack of gameplay. The dialogue I heard in the cutscenes between missions sounds almost like it was written for an old script. Chuck Norris is the worst offenders. The performances and tone of the film are not up to the standard. I expected moments of stupid, self-aware humor from the likes Michael Madsen and Danny Glover. I struggle to imagine these aspects landing in a full story based on the preview’s snippets of corny dialogue and half-hearted delivery.

Crime BossThe company wants to be compared with Hollywood celebrities and movie stars, even though its core gameplay is just as poor. The hope is that other game modes, missions, or characters create room for deeper tactical considerations, or at least lead to scenarios where objectives and maps set the stage for a better dynamic than the normal stealth-to-shootout-to-extraction flow. Because there’s space in the market for more four-player co-op shooters, especially the variety that encourages teamwork in moments of high stakes tension. I just don’t think I’m picking up what Crime BossIt is the act of putting down.