Crime Boss: Rockay City Review – Battle for the Soft Throne

Czech development studios release a considerable percentage of games to the world, but only a few of them, despite their undeniable quality, manage to achieve world fame due to great competition. Factorio, Kingdom Come: Deliverence or projects from Amanita Design that broke through among the imaginary elite. And now it looks like another game might be on the scene that could captivate players outside of our state. This, of course, is about the cooperative shooter Crime Boss: Rockay City, which clearly relies on a lot of jokers in the form of action stars and interesting topics. The following lines will tell you how this bet paid off for its creators.

• Platform: PC (review)
• Publication date: 03/28/2023
• Manufacturer: INTERNAL STUDIOS
• Genre: Co-op first person shooter
• Czech localization: No
• Multiplayer: Yes (collaboration)
• Data to download: 85 GB
• Game time: 15+ hours
• Price: 940 CZK (epic)

This city in Crime Boss: Rockay City is looking for a king

Every gamer has ever dreamed of becoming a crime boss. If you belong to such a group, then the story of Crime Boss: Rockay City will give you the opportunity to experience just such an adventure. And this is accompanied by the stars of the era of action movies, full of blood, harsh words and guys who literally poured testosterone. But you’re starting almost from scratch, because you don’t want to experience the same fate as Tony Montana in the game based on the legendary movie Scarface. But the king is dead and it’s time to find a new one.

A number of crime bosses oppose you, among which you can find, for example, Danny Trejo or rapper Vanilla Ice. Everyone has some kind of territory full of drugs, electronics and, above all, guys. Employees in Crime Boss: Rockay City, like pigeons, are looking for new jobs very quickly after losing their boss, so you have to fight their masters. With aggressive raids, you cut down enemy territories and expand your sphere of influence with the help of the obtained funds, and most importantly, try not to lose it along with the territory. However, you always need to be on the lookout, because the local law enforcement officer is Chuck Norris with his deadly kick and mounted saber.

Your opponents and friends are characters from another era in Crime Boss: Rockay City, and they behave accordingly. For some, their approach to life may be revealing, but some parts of the players may seem like a set of stereotypes. However, the actors perform decently and perhaps I wouldn’t be afraid to spin all the action around them, which is otherwise pretty much mediocre. In fact, I consider server handling to be more of a problem. Where exactly is the problem? In the absence of any form of creativity, so I often had only a bunch of black blonde virgins with plump forms, reminiscent of the famous work of Yaroslav Hasek.

While I criticize the handling of most of the expansions, there is one point with the chosen companions that I would praise in the case of the story’s handling, and that is the character-focused passages. For example, I was very struck by the line of the Vietnam War veteran Ranger in Crime Boss: Rockay City. In fact, this is a dream come true for all fans of the legendary FPS Vietcong. Another factor that I can appreciate is, without a doubt, the ability to arm gang members and, above all, move them in a certain way, which makes their loss even more painful.

No bank robber fell from the sky

While many members of your crime ring would love to start their career by robbing a bank full of cash, Crime Boss: Rockay City won’t give you that opportunity. Everything is going well here. In the beginning, you and your group will only be visiting local stores as part of the burglary, and even there, most of their members probably won’t perform at their best. However, as you progress through the campaign, you will start to open new stores, from which you will receive not only a few dirty bills and some electronics, but straight bags full of capital, expensive jewelry and so much cocaine that even the Mexican cartel could not sniff.

The main idea of ​​all missions is based on the format you know from the Payday series for example. Your gang enters the scene unannounced, which puts the element of surprise on your side. And actually the whole direction of the event. In some missions, the situation is easily resolved without firing a shot. However, you will not always be able to carry out the operation so that the ubiquitous police do not wake up. The world of Crime Boss: Rockay City is designed in such a way that it reacts to stimuli that, under normal circumstances, it probably shouldn’t. Consider, for example, the situation with a small warehouse. Three guards. At first glance, a simple job. But that shouldn’t be alarming after the third silent elimination to make the overall experience a bit more interesting.

I actually understood a lot more about activating an alarm in the case of cameras or detecting a pile of loot, but without loud annoyances, I couldn’t think too much about why the alarm should actually go off. And then, of course, there was AI, which works in two modes. Out of combat, the guards are really easy targets, with which neither the main character nor ordinary thieves have the slightest problem. One hit is enough and the enemy will disappear. That is, if you are not standing right in front of him, or you are not yelling at him in an attempt to push the guy away, you need to lure him a few meters so that he can be eliminated with one blow and hidden in a bag. Yes, bodies can be stuffed into sacks in style right after a kill. However, during the game, I did not find any reason for this, because the AI ​​is one of the most boring in comparison to the genre.

The combat mode of Crime Boss: Rockay City is activated by artificial intelligence the moment it sees you, the alarm goes off, or the whole mission just depends on you robbing a car with money or clearing the enemy territory of the dirt that littered it. Works a little better in combat than out of it. Although he is still not an opponent capable of serious tactics, he sometimes shows some kind of trick that attracts your attention. But in most cases, it fails, which can be caused by several factors. But the fact that the characters under her control most of the time rush at you like soldiers when they are about to use bayonets seems to play into the hands of Prim. However, card design can certainly play a role.

Is there power in smallness in Crime Boss: Rockay City?

In terms of maps, I’ll draw the comparison again with Payday, which is probably the closest in theme and gameplay to what Crime Boss: Rockay City is trying to represent. As mentioned above, most missions are based on a silent action format, where you head to a well-defined point in an attempt to get an item or just a bunch of things. Of course, you have the opportunity to deal with the situation by sneaking through the entire level, but more often than not, everything develops in the direction of big gunfights. The directions in which the action takes place are quite small by the standards of the genre and, as a result, not fully developed. You just have a dot with a van in front of you and that sort of stops it.

The size itself probably wouldn’t be such an issue if the creators managed to layer the places you go to, for example, so that each excursion was a unique experience. After a few hours of playing, I was pretty bored due to the lack of a wider variety of maps. Another factor that I would criticize the developers for is how the borders of the battlefield are handled in Crime Boss: Rockay City. Instead of giving the player the feeling of being in a living and almost tactically unlimited world, the title puts senseless pressure on them as they cross invisible boundaries, despite the fact that the player is basically just performing tactical maneuvers.

In fact, I could imagine a more useful space for the gang to operate in most maps. Similarly, the duration of the missions themselves can represent a much longer period of time. Maybe it’s my pace, but in a lot of cases I just dived, got to the destination, and then quietly took the loot after “five” minutes and left in a trailed van. Operations will probably pay off for you very quickly due to this factor, since you practically jump from one to another and as a result they differ minimally from each other.

However, within the framework of the campaign, I probably could accept the stereotype, because the game positions itself as a roguelike, and in them a common occurrence, sooner or later certain locations / elements are played out. One of the main drawbacks of Crime Boss: Rockay City is the absolutely pathetic level of AI companions that “should” accompany you on missions. Of course, a human could handle most of them alone, but few could carry so many sacks of prey on their backs. The AI ​​here is so dull that when you call your companions, it doesn’t even think about sending them to the alley. He sends them right into the midst of enemies. However, not so that they walk unnoticed, but rather crouch and right in front of their opponents. After all, what if someone accidentally overlooked them, right? The co-op is much better, but the campaign cannot be completed in it.

Creators of Crime Boss: Rockay City came up with an interesting but half-realized idea

The cornerstones of Crime Boss: Rockay City aren’t inherently bad at all. Even the idea of ​​a man coming up with a roguelike shooter focused on organized crime is something that is not easy to see. In addition, the creators managed to pick up a decent cast. Creation of a gang is simple and missions are completed quickly. However, their processing itself after a few hours strongly smacks of stereotypy. But it must be said that, at least from the very beginning, stable doses of endorphins are poured into your veins for their successful implementation. On top of that, you’ll be rewarded with experience, weapons, and here and there a map that actually stores your long-term progress.

As for the story itself, it’s not a very difficult ride, full of legends repeating the same words over and over, although not a masterpiece, it does have a few moments that have a certain power for veterans of the FPS genre. Overall, however, the resulting processing is rather half-baked. So at least the AI ​​is perhaps the main drawback, and in this case it is the artificial intelligence that controls the enemies and your companions, without which, unfortunately, there is little you can do. Another problematic layer is enemies that often appear out of thin air and relatively simply processed maps, which after some time and constant repetition of the same locations you know almost by heart. In my opinion, there are a lot of shortcomings or frankly unfinished moments, and tuning will probably take some Friday. However, over time, Crime Boss: Rockay City was able to develop into a relatively original project.