Crime Boss: Rockay City is a game that quite simply shouldn’t exist, for a litany of reasons. Morally, the ‘accosted in a lift’ quality of the performances from its stunt cast of washed-up has-beens carries a grotty air of elder abuse. Technically, it’s a disaster. Visually, it’s a sterile, overly-shiny migraine of cheap assets and muddy textures. Aurally, it’s like being stuck in a Superdrug queue next to a tinny radio blasting out Absolute Radio 90s. Spiritually, it feels like a cancelled Xbox 360 launch game, an awkward artefact from a time when videogames were embarrassingly desperate to be taken seriously as adult entertainment.
Crime City Boss Man is a roguelike first-person crime shooter management sim with separate co-op campaigns because nobody involved could decide what this game should actually be, assuming it wasn’t conceived as an elaborate tax write-off. You are Michael Madsen in a cowboy hat, a character you probably vaguely recall appearing in any number of middling crime movies released over the last forty years. You’re here to take over the crime-ridden Rockay City – a metropolis not so much inspired by Miami as it is inspired by several-times removed inspirations of Miami seen in other try-hard videogames and movies desperate to capture the authentic sleaze and edge of late 80s/early 90s media.
Your route to domination is a series of bite-sized heist missions and more straight-forward shootouts, interspersed with some tedious book balancing and micro-management – usually via a stilted cutscene with your secretary, a tragically oblivious Kim Basinger who sounds like she’s only here under a court order. Heist missions play out like an early alpha build of Payday 2, where telegraphed stealth takedowns aren’t guaranteed not to just clip harmlessly through a guard. Before heading out to a stock warehouse or shopping mall, you can hire and equip up to four goons, each with their own particular quirks, who can be switched to on the fly or left at the mercy of a remedial bot intelligence.