Crime Boss: Rockay City Preview – A co-op shooter looking for a Payday

thesixthaxis.com:

Crime Boss: Rockay City was a bit of a mystery following its announcement and reveal at The Game Awards last year. Here was a game with a snazzy trailer filled with Hollywood talent, all eerily lip synced to a familiar song in a neon-baked Vice City-esque locale. But what actually is it?

A gameplay reveal trailer long after gave us our first real look at Crime Boss, a first person co-op shooter with some serious Payday vibes, and that’s an impression that is backed up by going hands on with the game.

Except that it’s aiming to be more than just a Payday wannabe, even if it’s sure to appeal to that series’ long-time fans the most. As well as diving into Crime Time mode co-op jobs, there’s a full single player campaign here – a story that plays out around a roguelike structure with Chuck Norris’ Sheriff hunting after Michael Madsen’s up and coming gangster, while you try to expand to control all of Rockay City at the expense of rival gangs – and then there’s mini-campaigns called Urban Legends as a different twist on the co-op experience.

We got to sample two of these Urban Legends, each one coming in at three missions long and linking together short and sharp levels and scenarios. Whether it’s pulling off a hit on a rival gang’s lieutenant, robbing a warehouse for stolen contraband, or making an escape from a cop ambush, there’s a good variety here to what you’ll be asked to do.

The general intention here is that, while stealth might be an option for certain parts of a stage, you’re always going to end up in a gunfight. That certainly held true to what (and how) we played, though you can absolutely have some fun with sneaking in the early stages, scoping out a location before an alert is raised (if it’s not a level that