And Baker is the hero of that waking nightmare. Everything about this game is like what happens if a Boondock Saints poster and the cover of a PlayStation 2 GTA do the Fusion Dance and miss the finger touch at the end. The campaign stars Travis Baker, a de-aged, cowboy hat-wearing, smarmy Michael Madsen clone grown in a vat at a video game protagonist factory run by an AI chatbot. Smells like a 2009 dorm room in hereĬrime Boss: Rockay City is a head-scratching blend of “turf wars,” first-person shooting-slash-stealth heist action, bizarre stunt casting and… it’s also a roguelike? It’s almost like a mixture of WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!, and Grand Theft Auto with an unending stream of small snippets of gameplay strung together by cutscenes featuring grown-ass adults yelling to each other about doing crimes like a group of teenagers who just watched Scarface together for the first time. This game is a fascinating blend of vibes, genre, and sound mixing that feels out of time and place with such profound confidence I almost felt like it was my fault for being confused. The first thoughts being, “what in tarnation have I brought upon myself” and “wait, is that Body Count?” Developed by INGAME Studios and published by 505 Games, Crime Boss: Rockay City is the strangest game I’ve played so far in 2023. But it was the third thing I thought of after playing Crime Boss: Rockay City. Until today I hadn’t thought about Drug Wars for years. The novelty of these crude renditions of Super Mario Bros., DOOM, and Phoenix was powerful, but only one game captured long-term interest: Drug Wars. These gimmicks lost their luster soon enough but in that moment, news these things could play games spread all hush-hush-like from the one guy in class with a personal calculator and a USB cable.

We got to use graphing calculators, hulking slabs of plastic with Game Boy-sized screens and a million buttons most kids would never press.

Years and years ago, there was a brief moment in time when math class was exciting.

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