Crime Boss: Rockay City is looking for a payday that ain’t coming

polygon.com:

No matter how carefully you draw it up on the board, once an operation starts playing out, you can count on it going south. But adapting to the situation, and making the best of a mess, is what gives games like Grand Theft AutoOnline or Payday2 their emergent thrills — especially when you’re able to secure the bag.

Crime Boss: Rockay City from upstart developer Ingame Studios tries to emulate those moments with the vibe of a ’90s action flick, but the game itself is an example of an operation going south with little hope coming out of the other end with the bag.

I was able to get hands on with a little over an hour of Crime Boss, the four-player co-op first-person shooter that flexes its cast of Hollywood stars from yesteryear. After playing through five separate missions in the “Urban Legends” mode, I came away finding it tough to conjure up enthusiasm for the “organized crime” shooter. The game’s shallow mission design leaves much to be desired, and its foundational aspects — gunplay, encounters, and stealth — aren’t impressive enough to carry the weight.

My first mission started on a Miami-esque beachfront where my team of four had to eliminate a gang leader who’s posted up in a restaurant. Of course, it’s heavily guarded and it turns into a shootout. The target himself is a bullet sponge who I chased into a nearby apartment complex before wearing him down and getting the kill — standard shooter stuff. The next was an assault on a fortified warehouse, and four of us had to loot it for all its worth. It was an opportunity for a stealthy approach, but devolved into crouch-walking past guards in plain sight to start a shootout from the backdoor. Clearing a bunch of generic gangsters and lugging around bags of loot while