Crime Boss: Rockay City – Dragon’s Gold Cup DLC Review

Last month, Crime Boss: Rockay City got its first DLC titled Dragon’s Gold Cup. Coming back to a game I reviewed at the start of the year, there were some new jobs and updates I liked and some odd issues I encountered that I had to fix — ones I’m sure were not in the game before.

The latest expansion takes place in, for lack of better words, an alternative storyline where Travis Baker (Michael Madsen) and The Dragon (Danny Trejo) decide to team up to reclaim the former “King'' of Rockay City’s gold reserve by force. A reserve stored behind iron bars grounded to an electrical current, laser sensors over every door, and for extra protection, mounted turrets that will f**k you up. And don’t forget, only two people can open it: Sheriff Norris and The King himself.

Played outside of the main campaign, you begin every run on day six, with all factions having an equal number of turfs, plenty of recruits, and a ton of dough at your disposal. As well as planning the stealthiest heist in the game so far, you can use the abundant resources on offer to squash the rival gangs and get the money, drugs, and achievements while you’re at it.

But forewarning, Dragon’s Gold Cup can be best described as a lyric from a Bloodhound Gang song, “short and hard like a body-building elf. " To succeed properly, and not by the skin of your teeth as I did, you need to develop a beefy Baker before you can bask in the King’s bounty. Like all the heists, you have to do a lot of pre-mission to gain an upper hand in the big job. In the Gold Cup, you have to do all that, but with the right people and in a timely manner. One mistake can set you back hours of work to do it all over again, several times over the number of playthroughs it takes to complete the whole run.

Or you could have planned everything flawlessly, made a perfect team with Juniper as she can carry an extra bag, and Cracker equipped with an MG for support. Only to get wrecked ten minutes in because the game thought adding two heavily armoured SWAT guys (The Hurt Locker-looking mofos) balanced out the assemble.

All of the missions after the second story ones require patience and stealth to complete. I’ve got to be honest; I can only have one or the other at one time. Take what I say in this review as someone who tried to do the right thing but didn’t care about setting off the alarms by the end. I hated the story missions for the repetitive stealth I had to do, but loved everything else about the game mode. With each run, everything was different: recruits were a mixed bag of basic white shirts to the named gangsters, where your turf was and who neighboured you, and everything you unlocked (perks, weapons) carries over some spice (girls).

What I also loved were the new gigs you can do. One is a gas station where you rob a truck full of electronics as it’s filling up, and the car dealership brings a bit of danger to the mix as the building itself is three-fourths glass, leaving barely any room to take cover from fire. And lastly, ambushing more than one armoured convoy. I’m not sure that they exclusively came with the expansion, but they’re new to me, so I’ll count them as.

Something else I think came with the expansion is a new “feature” where you cannot interact with the drills/saws, revive fallen crewmates, and escape in the getaway van without having a full magazine. Even if you fire one shot, you have to reload before you’re “free” to get a move on. I had to refigure the controls to fix the issue, but it nearly and unnecessarily killed one of my runs when I was none the wiser.

The wooden voice-acting that I and a lot of people complained about is back, and I somewhat like that they match the original deliveries. What I mean is that if In-Game Studios had made a better effort for the expansion’s dialogue, people like me would propose that they re-dub the rest of the game to fix the previous bland voice lines. More specifically, Madsen’s lines because he consistently mumbles everything he says.

I really enjoyed returning to Rockay City and getting “Groundhog Day” over and over again. I can’t wait to see what the studio has in store with the next DLC. Only make the next one a run-and-gun sort of deal for idiots like me who don’t have a patient bone in their body.