Story:
Crime Boss Rockaway City has a very simple story with poor execution. You play as Travis Baker, a criminal who was wronged during a job. His ultimate goal is to be the next kingpin with the largest criminal empire in the city.
The cutscenes that tell the story look gorgeous and are well-voice-acted, but the issue is that the story is split up between the cutscenes, dialogue during missions, story choices, and mission briefings. This causes an issue because if you’re not hanging on every word and concentrating on the dialogue, you’re likely to miss a crucial element.
Gameplay:
Crime Boss Rockaway City is a very unique and exciting experience. There is a solo campaign mode, online multiplayer, and special ops missions that are both single-player missions and co-op online campaign missions. Having game modes gives a good variety to the game that I wasn’t really expecting which was a nice surprise.
The game is played from a first-person perspective during missions, not unlike your everyday modern first person shooter. These missions can range from gathering illegal substances, taking out a specific target, taking control of an area to expand your empire, or selling enough goods to the right buyer. Missions are completed by either making the correct dialogue choices, completing specific objectives, selling goods on the marketplace, or getting a specific character to join your cause. Experience points and rewards are given upon completing these missions, and spending the points and choosing the right rewards will help you during firefights and with the expansion of your empire.
When you choose a mission, you can recruit up to three people to join you and you can choose how to approach each mission based on the environment and the task at hand. You can go in guns blazing, or approach it more tactically using stealth mechanics. However, if you’re going to go the route of using stealth, you might want to either consider taking on missions solo, or bringing in friends through online multiplayer and implement voice chat. This is due to the NPC AI not being all that smart when it comes to allies and there was more than one occasion where I attempted to be stealthy and one of my AI team members went in guns blazing and blew my cover.
Graphics and Performance:
Crime Boss is extremely detailed from the number of objects in each environment, to how the enemy behaves and takes damage. You can enter a gas station for example, and you can find things like a to-go cup sitting next to the register that might have been left by an employee. But that’s not all, as you will find a ton of things throughout the building that help to capture the realistic nature of the environment that you’re in. The enemy AI is much more advanced than what you find when AI is on your team.
Unlike the team AI I mentioned above, the enemy AI can and will flank you to try and take you by surprise. If you’re on a mission that involves taking some illegal substances, the enemy can and will take it in an attempt to prevent you from taking it. When taking down an enemy, depending on where they take damage, they may not be able to fight back or may be down and yell to a fellow enemy for help.
With the amount of detail listed above, it’s easy to see why it’s an exclusive for the next-gen platforms and modern PCs. This allows for spectacular performance with absolutely no slowdown and butter-smooth FPS. The only hit in performance it takes is the load time heading into a mission, but that is forgiven with the amount of detail this game offers. Everything in the game has a very realistic look to it from a texturing and environmental standpoint, making this game easily one of the most graphically impressive and realistic looking FPS games I have ever played outside of a military shooter.
Sound:
Music in the game helps to keep you pumped and ready for a fight, regardless of how you approach each objective and keeps to the genre of the modern FPS rather than the time period of the 1990s. Gunfire from each gun, bullets ricocheting off of materials, enemies yelling and their voice-carrying, all make for an exquisite experience in the sound department of Crime Boss Rockaway City. All of it comes together to give the game a sense of realism.
Conclusion:
Crime Boss Rockaway City is a beautiful and realistic experience that is unlike any other first person shooter I have played. The exception being something like Call of Duty Modern Warfare II due to military shooters, which pride themselves on realism and graphical fidelity. The only blemishes the game has in my opinion are the fragmented story and the reliance on the online element. Instead of the story being broken up as mentioned at the start of this article, the story should have been told in a more cohesive and methodical way. The game prompts you to connect online multiple times before you can even get the chance to play and this should have been restricted to when you select multiplayer instead of being done right at the start of the game.
Even with these issues, the game has great graphics, mechanics, and a sense of realism that is unparalleled in its genre. For these reasons, you should definitely give Crime Boss Rockaway City a chance!
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.