Crime Boss: Rockay City

 PlayStation 5
Metascore
47

Generally unfavorable reviews - based on 9 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 9
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 9
  3. Negative: 6 out of 9
  1. PlayStation Country
    Jul 8, 2025
    80
    Crime Boss: Rockay City surprised us. As unheralded as it was, this is a great game that does stealth and action equally well. The setting, the missions and the vibe of it felt a bit like playing a really good Xbox 360 game. And that means something now that most games are open-world borefests.
  2. COGconnected
    Jun 20, 2023
    55
    For every infrequent good idea, Crime Boss: Rockay City seems determined to undermine it. First-person roguelike mechanics in a narrative-focused game is an intriguing concept, but between bugs, bland performances, and rote action, the killer concept is dead on arrival.
  3. PLAY
    Sep 6, 2023
    50
    Lacklustre if played solo, but if you can reliably scrape together a squad of friends for online play the budget asking price isn’t a complete robbery. [Issue#30, p.88]
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  5. Gaming Age
    Jun 26, 2023
    42
    While Crime Boss: Rockay City isn’t particularly fun, as I said up top, I’ve also played far, far worse games. For all its faults (and it certainly has many), nothing here is egregiously terrible – which means, ultimately, that Crime Boss’ biggest sin isn’t that it’s a bad game, but rather a very boring one.
  6. IGN Adria
    Sep 15, 2023
    40
    All in all, you have a really bad shooter with even worse acting, non-existent mission variations, bugs that have been around for over half a year, and a ton of other things that will put you off ever starting this game again - you could say that it's “criminally bad” (pun intended).
  7. PCMag
    Jul 11, 2023
    40
    Crime Boss: Rockay City is a heist-shooter that squanders nearly every fun opportunity with its glitches, bugs, and severely undercooked gameplay.
  8. PSX Brasil
    Jul 9, 2023
    40
    As much as a pretended nostalgia for the action movies of the 1990s can make us overlook many of Crime Boss: Rockay City's flaws, it is inevitable to conclude that this is a game that failed in all its objectives, even to make us laugh.
  9. Worth Playing
    Jul 6, 2023
    40
    Crime Boss: Rockay City isn't a complete disaster. The idea of fusing together managerial duties with action-oriented shooting works well on paper since the gameplay styles complement each other. However, neither aspect plays out that well, and when you combine it with a lackluster story and worse than mediocre performances, the experience doesn't improve as you get further into it. Unless you're hard up for a crime-based game, there's little reason to give this title a shot.
  10. PlayStation Universe
    Jun 20, 2023
    30
    If Crime Boss: Rockay City pulled off even one part of its package, it’d be passable. In reality, it doesn’t do a whole lot of anything right. So we’re left with a lot of wasted potential and a game that is about as pleasant and exciting of an experience as being stuck in a lift with Kevin Sorbo.

Awards & Rankings

75
#75 Most Discussed PlayStation 5 Game of 2023

User Reviews

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User Score
3.4

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 10 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 10
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 10
  3. Negative: 7 out of 10
  1. Halfpint82
    Jul 16, 2023
    2
    This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view. Game feels like a 360 game it sucks. It moves sluggish and the story is weak.… Full Review »
  2. DAXTERSTARSRIBA
    Jul 15, 2023
    1
    This has to be hands down the worse video game I’ve played in many years. Story, makes zero sense. Pacing makes zero sense. Game flow,This has to be hands down the worse video game I’ve played in many years. Story, makes zero sense. Pacing makes zero sense. Game flow, levelling, and unlockables are painfully slow and make zero sense. The difficulty is unbalanced and mostly unfair and insane. It’s easy to get flanked, overwhelmed and out gunned. In Payday you could lock onto a target, pick it off, then quickly move to the next. Here, you’re constantly swarmed with little chance at defending yourself. Glitches and bugs happen often, you’ll get stuck on scenery, find yourself inexplicably unarmed, hit by unseen projectiles, and even—experience instant sudden death for absolutely no apparent reason. It was the latter that made me finally uninstall the game after a couple of painstaking hours of trying to give it a chance.

    The game is a complete and utter mess. From the UI, to the character animations, the clunky and unreliable controls it’s literally horrible in every way imaginable. Even the voice performances from the cast are utterly horrendous. The actors sound either drunk, high, or both, at best sound like they’ve phoned in their voice lines from a phone box whilst reading their lines from an email. There’s no depth, emotion or even any enthusiasm whatsoever. Michael Madsen particularly sounds absolutely wrecked, most of the writing is just cringeworthy and cheesy, it doesn’t even come across as funny or satirical.

    I’d give the game a score of one for including a cast of famous actors. However their inclusion is utterly wasted and adds literally nothing to the experience. The graphics are mild, bland, surprisingly washed out for a neon metropolis setting. I wouldn’t even pick this game up out of curiosity, it’s a complete waste of time and money.    … Full Review »
  3. OhNoItsSenpai
    Sep 11, 2023
    3
    There appears to be a fun campy game here. The idea is unfortunately where the fun ends however, as the game really doesn't run on the PS5. IThere appears to be a fun campy game here. The idea is unfortunately where the fun ends however, as the game really doesn't run on the PS5. I had three crashes and several cut scenes that just weren't playing as I attempted the game. So many of the stages are simple repeats, and you'll find yourself doing the same thing on those maps over and over again. That I could deal with if it wasn't for the gun play. Often times the pistol, or a single rifle is your only viable weapon as ever other weapon has so much drift you will never hit your opponents. Add that with the fact that the game is brutally hard, fighting at minimum 12 swarms of gangsters, or at minimum three cops that spawned from anywhere on the map. You're expected to level up and die and restart constantly until you get one good run, which isn't the worse thing in the world, but the main issue with that is the difficulty keeps ramping up alongside you, so at no point does anything ever get more manageable.… Full Review »
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