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Rating: 
Summary: Great Concepts and Great Art
Review: I agree with the previous reviewer, that a lot of villains in RPG's seem to be knock-offs or some boring concept that you could have easily done yourself. Not so with Crooks! I found the villains to be interesting, compelling, and in some cases, very different. Witness the variety in the femme fatales, the punk rock anarchist Choke Chain, the avatar of decay Carrion Queen, and the materialistic Clique, and the neo-Nazi supremacist Blitz. The art is great, full colour on every page, and the write ups are full of ideas, complex history and motivations, and good "Capers" to get them to loggerheads with your heroes.
The book also includes new feats, most more suited for villain, like "Human Shield" or "Diplomatic Immunity" or "Gang-Up", and guidelines for PC villains in a hero group.
Also, very interesting, is a Crisis chart, determining, roughly, what effects the heroes have on your work, depending on who they defeat, and what schemes they foil. This is an interesting mechanic allowing you to stat out your PC's "making a difference."
A good work!
Rating: 
Summary: Solid character concepts here.
Review: The problem with many superhero RPG villain books is that most of the villains are bad . . . bad in design, bad in concept and bad in general. This is not the case with CROOKS. I won't tell you that every one of them is a gem, but there is good material here for any GM of any superhero system to latch on to. The artwork is great and the fact that it is hard-covered will make it much more durable than similar products. Even if you play one of the other superhero RPG's (Like Champions), the heroes can be easily converted to suit your needs. Green Ronin is doing a wonderful job supporting Mutants & Masterminds with supplemental materials like this.
Rating: 
Summary: They could do better
Review: This book has a strange ambivalence about it. On the one hand, it strives to foster a Four Color/Silver Age light-hearted feeling with goofy characters like the Atomic Brain (complete with base on Volcano Island), or the themed-villain Player 2 (with his obsession with using video game memorabilia to commit crimes). On the other hand, it tries to cram these characters into a campaign world that is unusually cynical and bloodthirsty. For example, EVERYTHING the US government does is heartless, mercenary, and cruel; ALL authority figures are engaged in conspiratorial, murderous schemes to further crass pursuits of power. Moreoever, the superheroes mentioned seem either spineless tools who are almost as bad, or complete sell-outs who are just as bad. Mind you, these qualities do not in and of themselves make a bad premise for a role playing game, but they are a poor fit for the sought-for tone. It's like the publishers hired one group to come up with wacky, off the wall, over the top villains, and another to come up with hard-boiled seedy backgrounds for them, with the two groups never meeting. The sections describing "Unitrol" are in poor taste. Unitrol is your basic villainous secret society trying to take over the world, but this books doesn't leave it at that: it has to actually claim that nations like Zimbabwe, Argentina, and Albania are run by megalomaniacal criminals, instead of leaving things unspecified, or even just inventing fake countries in the grand comic book tradition. The worst part of this book, though, is an especially hateful reference to two real-life people. Drew Barrymore and Marilyn Manson are described as meeting a particularly gruesome and undignified death. Comic books, whether four-color or nitty-gritty, wisely utilize some restraint and invent people for this sort of thing. The Green Ronin staff, though, did not. All in all, a sophomoric outing for what is otherwise a serviceable product line. Do yourself a favor and skip this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Meh.
Review: This book is alright. It has some really great villians in it, but most experienced GM's will want to make their own. It has good Mooks (minions), but not enough of them. It adds a few really neat feats, and some weaknesses. Not a bad book at all really. But at the price Green ronin is asking for it, it's a rip off. They are asking $28, but are only offering $15 worth of content in this slim offering.
Rating:
Summary: They could do better
Review: This book is somewhat of a let down compared to the Player's Handbook, and the Freedom City Source Book. Many of the villian concepts are strained, while the artwork is inconsistant, with multiple artists and styles. It lacks the consistency, development, and ingenuity of the characters in the previous two books. Dr. Dungeon and Murder Boy are two examples of characters that pale in comparison to say the Atomic Brain, and Gepeto. There are more plenty more that just aren't there, too.
It is not the same level as the other two books. In retrospect, I would pay 10 bucks for it, but not the 20 plus shipping that I paid.
Rating:
Summary: Not as Good as the PHB and Source Book
Review: This book is somewhat of a let down compared to the Player's Handbook, and the Freedom City Source Book. Many of the villian concepts are strained, while the artwork is inconsistant, with multiple artists and styles. It lacks the consistency, development, and ingenuity of the characters in the previous two books. Dr. Dungeon and Murder Boy are two examples of characters that pale in comparison to say the Atomic Brain, and Gepeto. There are more plenty more that just aren't there, too.
It is not the same level as the other two books. In retrospect, I would pay 10 bucks for it, but not the 20 plus shipping that I paid.
Rating:
Summary: In a word, uninspired
Review: When I was a wee lad I played a game called Villians & Vigilantes. It was a superhero RPG supported by some excellent supervillian-related supplements. I expected "Crooks" to be as good, but was sorely disappointed. My first peeve is that several of the villians contained in "Crooks" were reprinted from the M&M basic rule book. Apparently the authors were pressed for ideas, and assumed we would not mind paying for reprinted material. Second, several of the villians repeat themes. For example there are three, count 'em, three villians with a nazi/racist theme. This shows a lack of imagination, and frankly it takes more than being politically incorrect to be a decent villian. Third, the sad fact is that many of the villians herein are just plain lame. For example there is "Miss Martian" an alien/movie star/mind controller. Yeah, I'm shakin' in my cape and cowl. This isn't to say that the book is worthless though. Several of the villians are quite intriguing. I personally was drawn to the "The Clique", a team of "fashionable femme felons" who were clearly inspired by anime. In addition, the book provides pages of mooks for heroes to wade through in battle. Not just various types of humans, ranging from thugs, to terrorists to ninja to cultists. It also contains zombies, stock demons, combots and other flavors of cannon fodder. There are also templates for designing werewolves and vampires. Finally, there are several new feats (mostly intended for villians, such as "diplomatic immunity") which promise to add fun to your game. In conclusion, "Crooks" isn't a bad supplement, it just isn't a great one. I recommend trying to get it second hand at a discount.
Rating:
Summary: In a word, uninspired
Review: When I was a wee lad I played a game called Villians & Vigilantes. It was a superhero RPG supported by some excellent supervillian-related supplements. I expected "Crooks" to be as good, but was sorely disappointed. My first peeve is that several of the villians contained in "Crooks" were reprinted from the M&M basic rule book. Apparently the authors were pressed for ideas, and assumed we would not mind paying for reprinted material. Second, several of the villians repeat themes. For example there are three, count 'em, three villians with a nazi/racist theme. This shows a lack of imagination, and frankly it takes more than being politically incorrect to be a decent villian. Third, the sad fact is that many of the villians herein are just plain lame. For example there is "Miss Martian" an alien/movie star/mind controller. Yeah, I'm shakin' in my cape and cowl. This isn't to say that the book is worthless though. Several of the villians are quite intriguing. I personally was drawn to the "The Clique", a team of "fashionable femme felons" who were clearly inspired by anime. In addition, the book provides pages of mooks for heroes to wade through in battle. Not just various types of humans, ranging from thugs, to terrorists to ninja to cultists. It also contains zombies, stock demons, combots and other flavors of cannon fodder. There are also templates for designing werewolves and vampires. Finally, there are several new feats (mostly intended for villians, such as "diplomatic immunity") which promise to add fun to your game. In conclusion, "Crooks" isn't a bad supplement, it just isn't a great one. I recommend trying to get it second hand at a discount.
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