N-Philes

Crazy Taxi

Posted by Archived.

Here's the greatest idea in the world. Let's take a two-year-old Dreamcast game, do absolutely nothing to it, and sell it as a Gamecube game. Better yet, we won't port its sequel that has already been out six months, we'll just port the original. Sound good? You betcha. And thus how we get Crazy Taxi for the Gamecube.

I personally think the graphics are nothing short of gorgeous. Some people do have do have problems with it. "Oh, there's pop up. The characters are lacking in polygons. I can't see forever." You know what I say to those people? "You're spoiled!" Up until last week, I was perfectly satisfied with my N64 graphics and I've found every Gamecube game to be amazing. Sega originally did the Arcade and Dreamcast versions, and it shows. Driving along the streets, I kept saying to myself, "Cool, this looks just like Sonic Adventure." They are very, very similar in level construction and the street texturing is the exact same. Not saying it's bad, I just feel like I'm playing Sonic every now and then.

Okay, I know I'm gonna sound like a major hypocrite when I comment on the sound, so I just wanted to get that out of the way. The music is amazing for this game. The Offspring and some other band that I simply can't remember the name of because my brain is frazzed did the entire soundtrack. I'm not a huge fan of the Offspring, but the music is catchy, fast, and all around suited for some fast crusin'. Here's the hypocrite part: there are only seven songs. Remember when I said in my Tony Hawk 2 retro review about how a mere six songs gets annoying? Yeah, well, it works here. I was at work all day today and I couldn't get the songs out of my head. The passengers also talk. When you crash into something, they'll say something along the lines of "Watch it! Are your eyes closed?" And then my cabbie, I like B.D. Joe, will simply go, "Shut up!" It's cool. Certain customers are more sassy to me, and I've learned to just avoid this person. Whenever I pass her, she complains, "You gotta pick me up." Ungrateful polygonal characters. Despite the coolness of the voices, there are only about five samples, and it doesn't matter what character it is (the priest, construction worker dude, Mohawk man), there are only two different voices: male and female. It's small, minute, and shouldn't really that big of a prob, but it's slightly annoying.

When I first got this game, I didn't know anything about it except for the fact that you drove a Taxi. I fired it up and from the get-go, I was extremely disappointed. Only two courses and four drivers. Goody goody. I guess I've been spoiled on F-Zero X, with its thirty racers and twenty-four courses. I started and was immediately pulled into it. I like going fast. I like crashing into stuff. It's the perfect game for me. The basic premise is to pick up passengers and deliver them to their destinations, in a super big environment, as fast as possible to get money. The first person I picked up wanted to go to Kentucky Fried Chicken. How's that for product placement? You can also go to Levi's, Tower Records, Fila, and Pizza Hut, though strangely not Taco Bell. The game shows its Arcade roots, in that you have like 50 seconds to deliver somebody, pick someone new up (adds a bit more time to your total) and keep on going. Eventually, you become very pressed for time and then you lose. Remember that stupid Cruisin' USA, "Checkpoint!" and if you didn't make it, you lost? Same concept. It makes me mad though when I'm low on time and have to deliver someone all the way across town in ten seconds, and when I don't, they tell me that "I suck." Hurts my self esteem. But the game, whoa, it's fast and furious and crazy cool. The game's level design is very non-linear, you basically just drive around delivering passengers. There's no set path you have to follow with passengers, you just drive. Don't worry, there's a new customer every five feet, so you won't drive around wondering where to find somebody. On a weird note, the characters do have their set locations. It's not like an independent spawning feature where the game's never the same twice. I have designed my own path. For instance, I always pick up the same girl who wants to go to Levi's, then half a block after I deliver her is a guy that wants to go to the subway, I then pass this lady that annoys me (the one I referred to earlier) to find the Fire Station guy, then Cafeteria, Japanese restaurant, and from there, I'm usually low on time a pick up whomever I can find. This is both good and bad. One, it hurts the replay value. Two, it makes it so players can hone their skills and find the best path, and not complain about, "Well, this time I found a guy that went in a weird place and it was really far and messed up my score. It's not fair."

There's no real way to "beat" the game. You can attain high scores and different degrees of licenses, but that's really it. But believe me, when you finally get that S-license, woo wee, that's a good feeling. You simply do a run and see what you can do. One would think that only two levels would hurt a game's replay value, but I'm starting to figure out the maps, and I can really cruise then. Even if you don't know the maps, there's an arrow that points you in the right direction, and unlike stupid games, the arrow is good. Most stupid games have an arrow that points directly to the target, but sometimes, there's a wall there and you have to guess your way around. This arrow gives you the path on the streets, although it sometimes points right, so you take a turn, but you really had to take the right turn after that. The replay value is high, because the runs are so short (always less than ten minutes), that people can sit down and give a go at beating the high score. Those of you out there saying, "Wow, this sounds hard," my thirteen year old sister is getting pretty good at it. That's the beauty of the game, it is easy to learn, but hard to master. But she's trying to beat her high score, and I'm trying to beat mine, and that's what makes it fun.

This game gets an N-Philes score of A-.

I honestly expected this to be just another crappy game I had to review, and I was pleasantly surprised by a refreshing gameplay experience. I thought it was gonna be short, but it's got depth the likes of which I've never seen. Do yourself a favor and give Crazy Taxi a go.

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