Crazy Taxi is a light hearted and adrenaline pumping arcade game that is all about gameplay and gameplay alone. It’s one of those games you pick up and learn within seconds but can take substantial amount of practice and time to get really good at. This makes Crazy Taxi extremely accessible, immensely playable and also gives it potentially endless replay value. Even today, the game still manages to be quite a lot of fun.
The game has four cab drivers, each having a different cab with unique characteristics of speed, handling etc. Once you select a driver you’re pretty much set to go. The objective of the game is to keep the ‘game time’ running for as long as possible, and you can extend this time but picking up customer and driving them to their destination as quickly as possible. While time is needed to keep the game going, what you really need to do for ‘score’ is to collect as much taxi fare as possible. It’s a rather simple idea but you’ll be surprised at how challenging it can be to get a decent ranking.
Hopping in for a crazy day of work.
The key to success is to know the city map well enough to take advantage of all the shortcuts and the best routes. While there is a convenient arrow that points to where you need to go, players still need to know the streets well enough to get the best times/fares. Navigating the city can be quite a challenge with all the tight turns and narrow streets, but the biggest headache (just like in real life) is the traffic. Sure, you get to break the traffic rules and do whatever you want, but that won’t stop those annoying little cars from getting in your way. Also, knowing techniques such as drifting can do wonders in improving your performance. A lot of players will probably just choose to drive around as quickly as they can, but in a game where every second counts, players will be wise to spend some time learning these really simple but effective skills.
Now it’s not just about getting your passengers to their destination as quickly as possible within their time limit (which in itself will score you a massive fare) but you also want to give them the craziest ride of their lives. Jumping off ramps, narrowly passing by other vehicles and drifting around will fire up a passenger, which in turn allows you to score some well earned tips.
While the game plays exactly the same as it did ten years ago, the controls are now starting to feel a bit stiff and jerky. One of most annoying flaws of the game are the collisions, as they can be extremely awkward and glitchy. Your taxi cab will often get stuck in a corner and have a weird seizure of sorts. Sometimes you will grind along a wall and even get into a messy crash with other cars and get stuck in an awkward jam.
Crazy Taxi drivers are too cool to obey the law.
The graphics of the game are largely unchanged, the pop up issues are still present and the character models, textures and animations are dated now, but they still work well enough for a fun arcade title courtesy of the bright and vibrant colours. One of the biggest changes in this version of Crazy Taxi can be found in the soundtrack as gone are the memorable tunes of Bad Religion and Offspring that pretty much defined the game, what you get instead is a random assortment of punk rock tunes by bands we’ve never heard of. Fans of the series will be displeased with this change, especially considering that Offspring’s “All I Want” was the anthem of Crazy Taxi. The game just isn’t the same without that song and the others. That said, some of these new songs are actually pretty cool and they somehow make this port feel a bit fresher. Another noteworthy change is that the port does not have the licensed locations of the original, so instead of driving your passengers to a ‘Pizza Hut’, you will be driving them to some generic pizza place. When it comes to modes of play this port is identical to the home versions, and so you will find the Crazy Box, Arcade mode, Original mode (which offers a different layout of the city) as well as several variations of the rules.
Crazy Taxi is still as crazy and fun as it was ten years ago, and while the game plays exactly the same, drastic changes to the soundtrack and licensed locations somewhat bog down the classic experience. Fans of the series who already own other versions of the game are better off replaying those, and even newcomers are better off searching for those versions as they offer the original and unaltered Crazy Taxi experience. But for those who don’t have access to other means, this version of Crazy Taxi isn’t that bad a deal considering that it’s only 800 Microsoft Points.
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