by
Lee Mehr
, posted 2 hours ago / 212 Views
Some credit where it’s due: most teams would’ve stopped supporting a game like Crime Boss: Rockay City by now. But over the course of a year, it’s now finally seen a Steam release (currently at a reduced standard price) and added two expansions free of charge for original owners: Dragon’s Gold Cup and Cagnali’s Order. With the latter releasing on the base game’s one-year console anniversary, it’s intriguing to consider what Ingame Studios has done since then. Sadly, this is just a has-been expansion latched onto a has-been shooter.
The concept shows promise by borrowing Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon’s vibe: the fun 80s-themed synth music, discount Terminators, overabundance of reddish-pink lights, and so on. A new tech-billionaire woman’s company, Cagnali Industries, has come to Rockay City. Her stated goal is simple: assist Sherriff Chuck Norris and Rockay PD with the city’s overwhelming crime problem. Now being squeezed by robots & police alike, Baker (Michael Madsen) is forced on the offensive lest he loses his bid at a criminal empire.
Like the main game itself, it’s a relatively simple narrative framework mashed awkwardly into a rougelike template. The opening cutscene introducing Cagnali’s forces is undercut by Baker choosing between a red or blue mint before having a hallucinatory nightmare of these robots overwhelming him. Because I guess The Matrix belongs here? Whether it’s possible to beat said dream sequence or it’s mechanically setting up their insurmountable numbers (a la Halo: Reach’s epilogue) is hard to determine, given how nothing of note comes from failing. Like most of the game, it feels like a hollow gesture put in between a confused motley of 80s & 90s references.
After that brain-addling prologue, Baker is back in the office dealing with a refreshed turf war against various rivals; this time, however, the purple color-coded plots of conquered territory are overrun by Cagnali instead of Don Barbaro and his “Scudos.” Apparently your second-in-command, Touchdown (Michael Rooker), forgot his canned ethnic insults against Italians wouldn’t translate over to androids. Just like before, there’s a push/pull in territory control along with an ever-changing slate of secondary criminal activities: heists against department stores, banks, jewelry stores, and so on. On top of that, campaign missions remain permanently fixed for you to tackle whenever you wish.
As a means of more narrative context, a second corkboard is set alongside Baker’s main map to categorize Cagnali and their potential ulterior motives. By itself, it’s a serviceable means of laying out info while a Cagnali turncoat/hacker, known only as “Servo,” provides supplementary voiceover. The problem is this scant plotline only lasts three missions (not counting the dream sequence): break your crew out of jail, hack the corporation’s files revealing their intentions of replacing the police, and then destroy their main factory. It’ll take roughly a half-hour to see Cagnali go from police assistant to public enemy, with no proper sense of stakes or build-up. Ironically, Crime Boss’ game design is better served by clichéd crime short stories than something with an implied three-act structure. Here, you just get the worst of both worlds.
There’s plenty of wishful thinking to be had for its gameplay too. Is it better since the initial release? Well, marginally so. It’d be unfair to expect a pair of free expansions to showcase a bevy of new environments, mechanics, and so forth; that said, I’m not being unfair to expect a reliable framerate in Performance Mode. Sure, it’s only wonky and unreliable whenever the action heats up, but anyone should expect better by now. There are other appeals one can point to, such as slightly more polish to shooting kinaesthethics, teammate AI when collecting loot, and more, but all of that melts away when there are newer shooters that mechanically outclass it already.
While not directly tied to Cagnali’s Order, Ingame’s level design additions and tweaks do a better job at moving the needle. I still maintain some disagreements with the rougelike structure – especially with Baker’s death restarting it – but at least there’s more variety and interactivity at play in the backend. My favorite example was retrying a department store heist several times over and the game’s systems impeding previous routes I’d taken to the security room; it’s as though a contractor was hired between retries to grind off the emergency fire escape, bar the windows, and lock up the garage port. Even though it’s not as dramatic, even small details like having to loot several semi-trailers on a highway did just enough to separate from the generic armored truck heists near a nondescript industrial area. Even if still Great Value Payday, at least it’s something.
But what does this expansion deserve credit for versus incremental updates and new content Ingame has drip-fed over time? Because the expansion proper, i.e. the specific campaign missions exclusive to it, don’t exemplify the best of Crime Boss’ heists or rougelike elements. If counting the dream sequence, only one of its four exclusive missions has any balance between objective-related activities while stashing as much dough, drugs, etc. in between locations; worse yet, said level’s places are just the same two-story motel and abandoned building models from before with a few splotches of sci-fi window dressing. The rest vary between stealth sequences and dull shooting galleries. The last level in particular remains one of the most flagrant examples of enemy vomit in recent memory and a horrendous misunderstanding of what “difficulty” means.
That slim one-hour campaign is all there is to it, aside from a new sci-fi weapon, new robotic variants, some new synth tracks, and so on. They are playable in the campaign and co-op, both as individual levels or as an Urban Legend, requiring you to play all three main missions back-to-back. Of course, it’s fair to remind readers that this is – currently – a free expansion for any purchaser of the base game. The question is for how long and what’s the cost after said window closes? Discarding these unknowns, what’s here still makes a difficult case for it being worth your time, not only for being latched onto the original game but also in failing to add much character in its own right.
Cagnali’s Order is a case of increments for a game in desperate need of seismic improvements. While acknowledging the better foundation, Blood Dragon exemplified a great expansion by reinterpreting Far Cry 3’s mechanics and visual themes through an 80s filter; in contrast, this feels hastily thrown together to have a fun, kitschy tone for the sake of it. Thanks to jejune writing, phoned-in voice acting, and a scrawny runtime, Ingame’s story attempts feel hollow and dull. There have been subtle – yet tangible – updates made since I last played, but most of Order’s new missions don’t even capture the “best” of Crime Boss: multi-layered heists. Original owners won’t feel like they’ve been pilfered of their hard-earned money, but they still won’t be respected for their time.
Contractor by trade and writer by hobby, Lee’s obnoxious criticisms have found a way to be featured across several gaming sites: N4G, VGChartz, Gaming Nexus, DarkStation, and TechRaptor! He started gaming in the mid-90s and has had the privilege in playing many games across a plethora of platforms. Reader warning: each click given to his articles only helps to inflate his Texas-sized ego. Proceed with caution.
This review is based on a digital copy of Crime Boss: Rockay City – Cagnali’s Order for the XS
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