When PAYDAY 3 arrived with a thud last fall, it paved the way for other games to take the “cooperative heist game” crown. Surprisingly, the one to take that crown actually came out before PAYDAY 3, and it came from the same publisher, 505 Games. That’s right, Crime Boss: Rockay City first launched on Epic and then consoles early in 2023, meeting somewhat mixed reviews. Since then, InGame Studios has released numerous updates to address player feedback and overhaul multiplayer progression. Now, Crime Boss: Rockay City has just expanded its territory by launching on Steam, giving us a perfect chance to review it.
Crime Boss begins with a single-player tutorial that teaches the basics of gameplay. The tutorial can be skipped if you’re in a hurry to hop into multiplayer, but it’s only 5-10 minutes long. The solo campaign opens with the tutorial anyway, so most players will end up completing it one way or another.
The campaign starts with a cinematic depicting the death of the old crime boss of Rockay City. In the old boss’s absence, Baker (the main character, voiced by an aged Michael Madsen) and other gang leaders now vie for the top spot. Several other celebrities lend their voices to the campaign, including Michael Rooker as Baker’s foul-mouthed lieutenant, Danny Glover, Danny Trejo, Vanilla Ice, Chuck Norris, and Kim Basinger. These big-name voices don’t all do a great job at voice acting, but they do lend the cinematics a certain movielike atmosphere. For better or worse, Crime Boss’s cinematics seem to be partially responsible for its huge installation size: nearly 90 GB on Steam. That’s approaching Call of Duty levels of disregard for players’ storage space.
As for the mechanics of the campaign, Baker and his gang must work to expand their territory throughout the city. Each in-game day, players will access a map of the city and choose whether to perform heists, attack and steal rival territories, and more. On these missions, the player will select and command a squad of NPC teammates. Directing subordinates to steal loot, tie someone up, and other activities is as simple as looking at the target and holding “up” on the d-pad. Underlings will also fight and revive you if you’re downed, so they’re surprisingly fun to bring along. However, teammates can only be used once per in-game day. Players must pick and choose what to do each day in order to get the most bang for their bucks. Upgrading the team, selecting and completing optional goals, and managing the gang’s finances are also part of the campaign experience. If you fail during a campaign run, you get to restart while keeping some upgrades, so there’s a roguelite element too.
Online multiplayer is where most players will spend the bulk of their time, and it’s entirely co-op. Missions can be played individually or in sets via the Shuffle and Urban Legends options. The Shuffle option lets the team choose to play through a short, medium, or long playlist of missions, culminating in a longer and more challenging heist. Urban Legends, on the other hand, is a set of short multiplayer campaigns with cinematics that play between missions. Completing Urban Legends will unlock unique characters for hire in other modes. Co-op players can join the team during the lobby phase and even mid-mission, incidentally.
Most missions involve going somewhere and stealing something; players have the choice of doing this with stealth or guns blazing. Stealth options include tying up innocent bystanders and enemies and then leading them to where they won’t be discovered and/or destroying security cameras or disabling them from a security room. Bystander and enemy awareness is clearly communicated by a colored eye that appears when someone starts to notice a player. Once a shot is fired or enemies become hostile, the stealth option disappears, and cops start to arrive. The police response resembles that of the Grand Theft Auto series; the greater the crime committed, the higher the star rating and the deadlier the police become.
The mechanics of multiplayer missions are surprisingly simple. While characters do have unique perks that affect their survival and performance, everyone on the team can do the same basic things. Each player will need to sneak, shoot foes, fill their bags with loot, deliver the bags to the getaway vehicle, and then evacuate as a team. Downed players can be revived a few times, but running out of lives will take you out of commission for the rest of the mission. As long as the crew still completes the mission, the dead player will receive their portion of the rewards and return to life for the next mission. Most missions are fairly easy on Normal difficulty, so bringing a less skilled player along won’t tank the team’s chances of success. Missions that involve waiting for a drill to open a vault tend to be tougher and more stressful, however, because the police presence ramps up continually while the drill slowly does its thing.
Every successful multiplayer mission contributes to the player’s overall level – a relatively recent addition to the game. Upon leveling up, players can choose from three randomized rewards of varying rarities. These include various types of weapons and character skins. Unlocking items via leveling up only makes them available for purchase, however. To actually use these items, players must buy them with money earned from multiplayer missions. The long-term goal is to unlock all items, of which there are over 200. The full list of unlockables is helpfully available on the main menu. Climbing through the levels and earning enough money to buy everything will keep players coming back for a long time.
After a year of updates, Crime Boss: Rockay City has become a well-oiled and addictive heist game. The campaign has a unique structure and good replayability, and cinematics can be skipped if you don’t care about all the criminal braggadocio. Co-op missions are nice and short for the most part, and the option to play them individually or in a set gives a welcome amount of choice in game session length. The only thing the game lacks a bit at launch is mission variety. Some missions and locations tend to repeat heavily in the shuffle playlist. It’s likely that the DLC (which we haven’t played yet) helps with the variety issue, and the game’s roadmap indicates that more content will arrive in the future. Right now, Crime Boss is a slick-looking game with intuitive gameplay. Find a crew to play with (or even just join up with randoms), and you’re bound to have a deliciously ruthless good time together.
Crime Boss: Rockay City sells for $19.99 on Xbox Series S|X, PlayStation 5, Steam, and Epic. The Steam version is fully Steam Deck compatible.
A Steam download code was provided by the publisher for this review.