Buy Crookz - The Big Heist

8.5/10
** GREAT GAME **

Hilariously funky puzzle game with high production value and replay-ability.
Crookz is pretty much what the title implies, you control 2-4 bandits in a turnbased 'slash' realtime environment, pause the game whenever you feel like it, give your Crookz walk, pause and action commands and lean back to enjoy the show, if your plan fails, jump in and quickly adjust or take over all together, it's up to you and works like a charm. The controls in Crookz are very well done, never in your way and quickly to learn, which means your more likely to return for a quick level of Crookz

Playing Crookz is like being in a Austin powers and shaft movie, full of funky tunes and cleaver remarks, Graphics and audio are great and matches then 70's funky style very well, you really feel the countless of hours art directors, musicians, designers, artists and animators have put into this game. Cut scenes are great, funny and engaging, if cut scenes is not your thing, you may skip them without getting lost in your mission. In-game graphics are great, smooth, well balanced with a groovy atmosphere, the artists even made sure, your able to disgusting active and passive objects from each other, this may seem as an obvious choice, but too often down prioritized or forgotten all together, a bad example of this is "12 is better than 6", nice little game but hard to play due to it's black and white pallet.

Gameplay is fun, engaging, mind-boggling with many different solutions and paths to victory, the levels are very well balanced, doing my play, i felt challenged, inspired but never lost or stuck, which is quite an achievement.

Replay-ability is high, i often revisited a level just to try out a new angle to beat my time and get that forgotten briefcase with cash, i can't wait to drop back in to finish the game.

Downsides:
i honestly don't have that much bad to say about Crookz, if your into a casual laid back stealth game this would be one for you, that said, i do have one serious grudge with Kalypso the published, in my version of the game, the Crookz launched is basically one giant and confusing advertisement for "Grad ages medieval", at first i thought steam had installed the wrong game, on top of that the ask you to login or signup to something you don't have a clue about, very aggressive and confusing, i have to say it out loud, Kalypso your an ♥♥♥ and i'll rate you 1/10.

A very polished, stylish and well executed game. Blends puzzles with actual gameplay. The game can be both real time, or turn based. Controls are easy to master and reasonably intuitive views and perspectives are easy to control. The game is stylish. It's somewhere between Payday (before they screwed it up with payday 2) and xcom.

I am very glad i bought this.

Fun turn-based puzzle game. Very addicting. Fun/funny story.

Payday: The Strategy.

Crookz – The Big Heist is a game about a group of trained thieves, as the game title implies. The game introduces you to six professional crooks who were betrayed by their boss and ended up in jail. Upon release from prison, the crew reunites and is bent on exacting revenge against their traitor. The game is a tactical stealth strategy game played from a third person isometric perspective. Each heist mission begins with a preview of what the venue for the upcoming heist looks like. You choose four of six members of your crew, buy tools from the workshop from your income earned from previous missions. There are some members who must be used for certain heists, but you get to choose the other members according to their unique skills.

The brains of the crew is a female who runs like the wind and can hide in floor hatches. Other members include a professional locksmith, a contortionist who can crawl through vents to reach other areas of a venue much faster than walking, a technician who can turn off security cameras and manipulate switchboxes, a muscleman/pro wrestler who can knock out guards, and a robot that can be cloak in front of cameras and guards. Although the brains of the crew is fast and stealthy, I used her less than I thought I would, especially as the missions became more complex since her skills were not as useful as the skills of the other crew members.

There are 18 missions in the main story set in San Francisco, CA in the 1970s with lots of funky music. The missions begin in a straightforward manner, teaching you how to unlock doors using your professional locksmith or find the proper key throughout the mission. The missions become more complex since there are more doors that can only open by finding the proper switches and there are laser barriers protecting the rooms. There are switches that open doors in the immediate area, but at the same time close doors in other areas. These intricacies require you to move your crooks so that they end up separated from each other. For example, you may have one crook toggle a switch to open a door while another crook is in separate room toggling a different switch to open another door. The game is designed to be very slow paced and you will have to pause many times so that you can execute commands to each crook by marking waypoints. Venues for heists include a museum, a mansion, the Federal Reserve bank, and the famous San Quentin prison. The crew actually plans to get arrested on purpose at the end of one mission that leads to a mission in which they must escape from the prison. Each mission ends with a score and how much “heat” you picked up. Any heat will result in bribe money to be deducted from your earnings.

The use of commands and waypoints is part of the game interface. The interface is pretty easy to learn, although it took a little time for me to learn the basics in the beginning. There is a context sensitive menu that you can use to make a crook use his/her specialized skill. In the case of the locksmith, you can right click on a security/steel door to bring up the menu that displays a key to indicate that he can lockpick that door. It is important to know each crook’s skills in order to choose them properly for a specific heist mission. This require a lot of planning before the mission begins. The planning phase also includes a look at the locations of the guards and their patrol routes. Therefore, the planning phase in this game provides ample opportunity for you to know how to approach a heist mission. You can also see the vision cones for each guard and camera so that you know when you can be detected.

There are useful tools that you can find in each mission and they can be purchased from the workshop. Tools include blowtorches to open safes and steel doors, dynamite to destroy to cracked walls, noise emitters to distract guards, and door blockers that can cement doors to trap guards in a room. Some missions have enough tools of a certain kind such as keys and crowbars, so that would allow you to choose a crook that would not include a locksmith. I think that skill for skill the locksmith was the most reliable crook of the crew because of his ability to unlock doors. The game requires access to many different rooms.

Completing main story missions unlocks challenges and there are ten of them. Challenges are based on some of the venues from the main story, but are all on a timer. You will have to complete the main objective, then head for the exit before time runs. One challenge begins with each crook in separate rooms and they must find a way to help each other reach the exit. This requires some serious puzzle solving with doors, barriers, cameras and guards. The challenges made my brain work so much since they require quicker coordination than main story missions and there is less margin for error.

The save system is one that is uncommon for games of today. You can save wherever you want and whenever you want. The game also seems to auto save every few seconds. However, there are technical problems with save files. There were times when I tried to load the game, but it would crash to my desktop. There were also times when I tried to manually save the game, but I would receive notification that an error occurred. These technical issues were more apparent when playing the challenges.

I would conditionally recommend Crookz because it is designed to be a slow paced, tactical stealth strategy game and it is a decent one. If you like tactical strategy games that require a lot of pausing before issuing commands to multiple characters I would recommend it. If you like fast paced games that don’t require much pausing, you may want to consider another game.

My Score: 7/10

A greatly underappreciated and underecognized game. This game is a lot of fun, mix an almost board game style setup with an rts about stealing stuff! Missions have decent replayability as well with lots of options and approaches to how you get the job done.

This is an incredible game! I'm not sure exactly what to compare it to, it is fairly unique. Runs well on win 10, graphics are fantastic and just right from an interface perspective. Controls are extremely simple; right mouse sets a waypoint/performs an action on an item, left mouse allows swapping characters, scroll wheel zoom, middle mouse runs the camara angle. space bar pauses. There are a few hotkeys you can map and the best thing of all, even though it is real time, you can give/change orders while paused. Funky 70s background music, excellent voice acting, a storyline that would make an excellent movie, and a feature I love, the ability to skip cutscenes, or to replay them if you want to see if you missed any clues.

This game probably has 50-100 hours of play, and you can redo heists to get a higher score/faster time so there is some replayability.

This is not a shooter, its not multiplayer, its not really RPG (although you choose your specialists and their loadoat for each mission) so if that is what you want then look elsewhere. Otherwise get it. You won't be sorry.

I give this a thumbs-up with some reservations.

It is an under-rated game in that there is a surprising lack of players for what is a competent (but sadly not exceptional) stealth game.

One thing that Crookz does very well is having a planning stage, where you can watch the guards patrol and examine the level in detail prior to picking a team and initial equipment to tackle it. This changes the feel of the game somewhat: Instead of a scrappy sneaky thief making things up as you go along, you are a master criminal crafting and then executing a devious master plan. Or something like that anyway.

You have several characters with mutually exclusive skills only some of which can come with you. In practice however, you almost certainly need the only character who can pick locks, the only character who can cut cameras, and the only character who can take out [most] guards. Item choices can partially mitigate this, but once you have found a team that fits your style, the other characters aren't really involved much.

The other big drawback to the game is that the skill development is not terribly exciting. For example, one character can sneak through light barriers. Except later on the higher security complex have laser barriers instead. Except that later on, your character gets a new skill allowing her to sneak through laser barriers as well. Yawn.

There are some challenge levels that are much harder -- and force you to use a particular set of team members and equipment. However, I did not have enough interest to want to continue once I completed the main campaign.

Overall, a decent game. But not an exceptional one. I bought it on sale, and suggest you do too.

It's great!
This game is a gem for sure. Grab it and enjoy no matter what price.
It took me a while to decide to buy it but it turned out to be one of the best buys I ever made on Steam.
This game will always call you when you are looking for something to pass a few minutes. Then when you start to play again it will remind you how original and fun this game is ...

You can save when you want to. You can pause when you want to. You can play at your own pace. You can try different strategies. You can reload levels and give it another try on just a click of the mouse. And most important you can just have trying different plans.

Play this for a while and stop when you find something more flashy to play but this will always call you back.

FOXY CLEOPATRA robs the ♥♥♥♥ out of the 1970s in a cool as hell stealth rts. it is funky fresh.