Crazy Taxi

May 29, 2001

Originally released in early 1999 in arcades and in January 2000 on Dreamcast, Crazy Taxi is a fairly old game. Nevertheless, Acclaim managed to snag the rights to it for PS2, as well as 18-Wheeler and Zombie Revenge, from Sega, so it makes sense to try and make as much money on it as possible.

With the port being handled by Acclaim Studios Cheltenham, things didn't look that promising in the beginning as the first screenshots of the game looked downright disgusting when compared to screens of its Dreamcast counterpart. However, Acclaim has brought the game a long way since then and the final product is a faithful port of the Dreamcast version, plus a few bugs.

Gameplay For those that haven't played Crazy Taxi on Dreamcast or in the arcades, you've been missing out. This is a classic arcade game and is something that must be experienced to be understood. The premise is extremely simple -- you're one of four cab drivers and you must pick up people and bring them to their desired location under the time limit. The time limit is extended a little as you drop off and pick up passengers and points are awarded for getting the people to their drop-off points as quickly as possible.

Simple? Yes, it's very simple. But don't let this stop you from playing the game, as its simplicity is one of its strongest points. Crazy Taxi can be picked up and played by anyone, and will be enjoyable for those who play it, regardless of skill. And before you think this is just a game for casual gamers, there's a tremendous amount of depth and skill required to really get good at it. Learning the map, the different tricks and knowing which passenger is the best to pick up at certain times all takes a lot of practice and technique.

Even so, the game's really over much too quickly. The Original mode (a new track created for the DC version and ported to the PS2) and the Crazy Box, which is a set of different mini-games, does add a little bit of replay value to the game, but most players will have filled their Crazy desires after a full weekend with the game. It has that pick-up-and-play quality that makes it a game that one will likely want to play it again at a later date, but the initial replay value is a lot less than a week.

Graphics As a port, Acclaim has done an adequate job of moving over Crazy Taxi from Dreamcast to PlayStation 2. If you put both games side-by-side, the first impression is that they are identical. However, upon further inspection, you'll find that the PS2 port has slightly less-detailed textures on the cars and some of the background elements and when you play through the game thoroughly, you'll most likely come up against a crash bug or two that weren't there on DC.

Thus, as a port Crazy Taxi isn't too bad. However, a slightly less-than-perfect port of a year-old Dreamcast game isn't something to get all wet and gooey over. When you pit Crazy Taxi's visuals up against other games on PlayStation 2, you'll find that the visuals are painfully average. There's simply way too much pop-up and slowdown, and you can't blame the PS2's memory problem for the lackluster textures, because we've seen great textures in many other games on the system already.

Sound The music selected for Crazy Taxi really fits the mood and tempo of the game just as much as anything could. The tracks are addictive, will get your juices flowing and, well, sound pretty much all the same. Even though there are several tracks in the game and each gets cycled through during gameplay, you'll be hard pressed to tell them apart. It's not that the stuff from Bad Religion and Offspring is bad, it's just that there's not enough variety in the different tracks and when you consider how much one will likely play Crazy Taxi is such a short amount of time, this isn't a good thing.

You can also chalk up the new voices in the game to "this isn't a good thing." For some reason, Acclaim has changed (or maybe was forced to change) the character voices and the end result is some rather boring voice samples. The voices don't fit the game nearly as well as they did on the Dreamcast and in the arcade and one really has to wonder why they were changed in the first place.