The concept behind Crime Boss: Rockay City is undoubtedly fascinating: taking some of the most iconic action movie stars of the 80s and 90s, giving them a new youth thanks to modern technologies and transforming them into the protagonists of a heist game practically identical to Payday, but with the added strategic focus. and managerial superstructure.
The topic is certainly current and artificial intelligences will not stop giving their opinion in the coming years, so in terms of scenographic requirements, Ingame Studios' debut title is probably a first step in the direction of a renaissance that in some way monetize once again the nostalgia of forty-somethings.
However, beneath this glamorous and shiny veneer, is there really any project that has anything concrete to say? We tell you everything in the Crime Boss: Rockay City Review.
History: Hollywood-style gang war
La history from Crime Boss: Rockay City is about a criminal empire that loses its points of reference, giving rise to a ruthless war between gangs for control of the territory. The protagonist in this case is Travis Baker (Michael Madsen), a criminal determined to become the new boss of Rockay City who will soon discover how far from simple this enterprise is.
Despite being able to count on the precious suggestions of Nasara (Damion Poitier) and Casey (Kim Basinger), as well as the tips of Gloves (Danny Glover) and the armed troops coordinated by Touchdown (Michael Rooker), Baker will have to compete for the city's neighborhoods with four other gang leaders (including Dollar Dragon, played by Danny Trejo, and Hielo, played by Vanilla Ice), in addition to guarding the back of the unstoppable Sheriff Norris (Chuck Norris). .
The use of all these stars will surely have had a significant impact on the game's budget, but in our opinion it does not produce an adequate performance on a narrative level: the intermediate sequences in which the different characters The characters who interact with each other are quite static and unattractive, with the sole exception of those with Chuck Norris, who jokes about the stereotype of the infallible policeman and can count on the presence of a "comic sidekick."
Nothing to say about singles. interpretationsLet's be clear: with the exception here of Norris, who seems too apathetic in his jokes, the entire cast did a great job, Madsen with his very peculiar style and Rooker who undoubtedly stands out thanks to his convincing portrait of the hothead. and, to say the least, a crude hitman. Simply put, the idea of interlude scenes imbued with star power that add value to an inherently flawed product seems a little old-fashioned to us and perhaps less brilliant than the authors thought.
Structure: organized crime, not heist game
The Crime Boss: Rockay City home screen allows you to access three different way, excluding the tutorial: Baker's War, that is, the campaign that acts as a fulcrum for the entire experience and tells the protagonist's journey in his attempt to take control of the city; Crime Time, a kind of "quick game" in which it is possible to participate in short, random missions; and finally Urban Legends, a collection of six mini campaigns with a purely cooperative character.
The campaign begins literally from the end: Baker and Sheriff Norris face each other in a merciless duel on the roofs of a building, but ours gets the worst: at that moment her life "rewinds" in a kind of sliding door that does not It has a door. purely narrative function, but rather underlines a Roguelite in which the death of the protagonist implies the inevitable end of the game and the obligation to start over.
The producers of Crime Boss: Rockay City want to emphasize that their game is not a simple heist game, but a organized crime game, and from a structural point of view this translates into a strategic and management component in which you will have to monitor your finances, hire men to then improve and equip them, sell stolen goods on the black market, make deals, ask for loans, buy luxury items, but above all conquer all the territories to win.
Then when you get to the real action, the game's heist soul appears, which alternates Payday style shots (complete with drills, bags, security systems, escape vehicles and police) to armed confrontations with rival gangs to conquer new areas or defend those under our control. If Baker ends up dead on one of these missions, the permanent death will decree the end of the game, but with a concession: when starting the campaign again we will be able to keep all the improvements and the level of experience obtained up to that moment.
Gameplay: Like Payday, but twelve years later.
As mentioned, in terms of game Crime Boss: Rockay City is clearly inspired by Payday: The Heist, but at the same time it lacks the complexity that characterized the more advanced heists in the Overkill Software series, as well as being marred by significant limitations in terms ofAI, both from your teammates and your enemies. However, let's proceed in order.
La map The Rockay City reference shows the areas under control of Baker's gang and those managed by his rivals, with a "day by day" progression that limits the number of actions that can be taken based on the availability of men and money. There are therefore two activity with which we can try our luck: the shootouts for the conquest or defense of the territory, which are basically team death matches within a small scenario, and the missions themselves.
The latter serve to finance our criminal empire and stage a dozen different situations that arise cyclically: Raid a shopping mall, a jewelry store or a bank, hold up an armored van, recover valuable materials from a guarded warehouse or eliminate rival lieutenants hiding in a construction site, a garage or a warehouse near a beach. Then special tasks appear that mark the progression of the campaign, such as recovering a briefcase, robbing a train or a docked ship.
Generally there are several ways to deal with shots, for example you can opt for a stealth approach destroying or deactivating security systems, ordering guards to the ground, tying them up or keeping them away from prying eyes, breaking locks and opening back doors so that our colleagues can access the guard building without activating alarms; or don't mind, proceed with guns blazing, eliminate anyone who stands in our way but prepare to resist the police assault.
It is worth repeating that this dynamic is identical to that of the Payday series, where the police initially also try to stop us with neighborhood patrols, and then call in SWAT and gradually armored units or even special agents with substantially higher resistance than average . ; all while perhaps waiting for the drill (which can jam if we try to speed up its functions carelessly) to open the safe with the most precious loot and then collect everything, fill the bags and get to the van that is waiting for us. run away.
even the shooting It seemed fundamentally the same as the Starbreeze series, with very different mechanisms from the classic Call of Duty, short magazines and limited ammunition, a lot of oscillation of the scope, some difficulty in headshots (also due to the not always accurate hitbox) and enemies always quite hard, especially when the level of alertness (and therefore the difficulty) increases after predominantly chaotic behavior.
We were talking about complexity: the game does not focus on planning shots or deploying stratified situations, it is all quite linear and simplified but at the same time the tendency to repeat becomes sensational after a few hours, one more robbery in a jewelry store or in a bank that is always the same. Furthermore, artificial intelligence, or the lack of it, weighs heavily: both in the impossibility of giving orders to comrades and in their behavior that is sometimes tinged with imperfections, and in the routines managed by enemy units, incapable of perceiving our presence. even if we run. behind him to shoot at point-blank range.
Obviously the situation changes in a cooperative, where you manage to organize yourself with three friends: in this situation the experience of Crime Boss: Rockay City can provide some satisfaction from a job completed cleanly and even some laughter at the bugs that usually accompany the most difficult ones. phases, excitement of the action, in the hope that post-launch support will smooth out these rough edges and, above all, add substance to the package.
Technical realization: from the stars to...
At the beginning we said something sensational. cast of actors hired for the intermediate sequences of the game, which do not involve much but which can be criticized very little on a purely technical level, given that they use extremely detailed polygonal models capable of representing the different actors in their grace period. for the umpteenth time except for Chuck Norris who seems a bit fake, so to speak.
However, when we move on to the actual graphics, the scene changes and all those details and those trendy color tones, which seem like something out of a Midjourney composition, give way to extremely generic and outdated assets, barely discreet animations, scenarios with some highlights (and good use of screen space reflection to beautify them), but quite limited in terms of length, and finally disappointing optimization.
In fact, if in the first missions of Crime Boss: Rockay City it allows 60 fps even at 2160p and with all settings on Ultra using an RTX 3070, as long as you keep the DLSS in the "balanced" preset, as soon as the action It becomes more intense and chaotic and it becomes necessary to quickly go down to 1440p: a resolution that is finally presented as the natural size for the GPU of the now defunct NVIDIA mid-range, but which in this case is not justified by the graphical complexity. of the game.
As for the audio, the Ingame Studios title does a good job, also here thanks to the investments in performers and rights: the colonna sonora makes use of a few but precious licensed songs, integrating the rest with perhaps anonymous but functional music, while the dialogues of the various Madsen, Rooker and Glover (in English, but with Spanish subtitles) reign supreme, strongly characterizing the experience.
PC system requirements
Test setup
- Processor: Intel Core i5 13500
- Video card: NVIDIA RTX 3070
- Memory: 32GB RAM
- Operating system: Windows 11
Minimum requirements
- Procesador: Intel Core i7 4790, AMD Ryzen 5 1600
- Scheda video: NVIDIA GTX 1650, AMD RX 570
- Memory: 16GB RAM
- Storage: 90 GB of space required
- Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit
Recommended requirements
- Procesador: Intel Core i5 10600K, AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT
- Video scheme: NVIDIA GTX 1070, AMD RX Vega 56
- Memory: 16GB RAM
- Storage: 90 GB of space required
- Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit
Conclusions
Tested version PC with Windows digital delivery Epic Games Store Price 39,99 € Holygamerz.com 7.0 Readers (10) 6.8 your voteCrime Boss: Rockay City is a heist game clearly inspired by Payday, but with a strategic and management superstructure capable of adding a pinch of depth to the experience, also due to the excitement of the roguelite approach and permanent death. Of course, the shooting lacks the complexity of the classic Overkill, the variety of situations leaves much to be desired and in a single player you really feel the weight of a truly basic artificial intelligence, but the very low price (in the Epic Games Store there is even a introductory offer), the promise of updates and all those '80s and '90s movie stars could make Travis Baker's adventure more fascinating than it really is.
PRO
- The Payday formula still has its charm
- Sensational cast for nostalgic
- Traditional but attractive strategic superstructure
AGAINST
- Limited and limiting artificial intelligence
- Very few situations, it tends to be repetitive.
- Graphic dating
