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GTA plus Payday starring Chuck Norris—how did it go so wrong? - Crime Boss: Rockay City Quick Review

7K View2023-03-31

PLAY IT OR SKIP IT?

I strongly suggest skipping Crime Boss: Rockay City. The game looks fantastic on the outside, promising epic heists like those of Payday 2. It also stars a cast of legendary pop culture icons like Chuck Norris, Vanilla Ice, Kim Basinger, and Danny Trejo. Appearances can be deceiving, though. Crime Boss has one of the worst storylines I’ve ever experienced, and is held back by unbalanced gameplay and some serious performance issues.

TIME PLAYED

I played Crime Boss: Rockay City for three and a half hours. Each mission took me anywhere between five to ten minutes to complete. Because of the unbalanced gameplay, I faced a lot of setbacks and had to restart the campaign a handful of times.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• Epic cast. There aren’t a lot of things that I like about Crime Boss: Rockay City, but the incredible cast has to be its best talking point. From Machete’s Danny Trejo to Guardians of the Galaxy’s Michael Rooker and even classic meme icon Chuck Norris—it’s awesome to see these familiar faces featured as characters in Crime Boss: Rockay City, even if it feels like most of these actors will be looking to forget this role ASAP.

• Visuals. Crime Boss: Rockay City’s polished visuals reminded me of Grand Theft Auto V. Add on a clean interface, and this is one of the few positive points for the game.

WHAT SUCKS

• Story. The plot for this game sucks. Despite being the worst part of Crime Boss: Rockay City, story takes up almost half of the playtime. The script is extremely cringey and filled with corny jokes, exaggerated commentary, and unnecessarily frequent swearing that serves no actual purpose. Crime Boss tells a typical story about a gang rising to the top of a crime-infested city. This predictable, boring narrative lacked any sort of depth to keep me interested any longer than a few minutes.

• Wasted cast. Although some notable actors lend their voices to Crime Boss: Rockay City, the performance often feels forced as a result of terrible writing. The line reads came across so annoying that I actually found myself skipping dialogue, which feels like an insane waste with such a star-studded cast.

• Roguelike design. In Crime Boss, the campaign restarts from the beginning when the main character dies, like a roguelike. I didn’t always have to bring said main character on missions, since I could control hired goons. But those missions can be very difficult; I failed and lost many recruits to unbalanced missions over time. Eventually, inevitably, I was forced to use the main character, which always led to me restarting the campaign. I wish there was a way to save the game or fall back to a checkpoint, which would’ve made progression so much more comfortable.

• Repetitive missions. There’s a variety of missions to complete, but all of them feel pretty much the same. I was either stealing something or killing someone, and nothing new ever really happens. While the difficulty bounces all over the place, from incredibly easy to painfully challenging, the formula doesn’t change.

• Unbalanced gameplay. Speaking of difficulty, Crime Boss never manages to find a middle ground where gameplay feels perfectly balanced. This lack of balance was particularly upsetting when I’d spend so much time in the campaign, only to face multiple setbacks because of one single mission spiking in difficulty, losing so much progress because of it.

• Bugs. I encountered many bugs and glitches and occasional crashes while playing Crime Boss: Rockay City. The worst of these included finding myself trapped inside doors and walls, as well as instances where my character would just freeze and be unable to move. I also faced a lot of crashing, despite having a PC strong enough to handle games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Grand Theft Auto V. And worst of all, because of the game’s roguelike nature, experiencing one of these bugs in the middle of a mission often led directly to having to restart the campaign once more.

• Boring multiplayer. Even with online multiplayer side stories, Crime Boss: Rockay City still manages to feel dull. The multiplayer mode offers up the same repetitive missions seen in the campaign and doesn’t add anything new besides another player joining in on the mediocre action.

💬 Are you going to play Crime Boss: Rockay City or will you skip it? Let me know in the comments!

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