| Product: |
Crazy Taxi (DC) |
| Date: |
26/07/00 (14 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Arcade 'perfect'
Disadvantages: Pop up
Have you ever crawled into a taxi after a few drinks and tried to get the taxi driver to shut up and get you the hell home so your swollen bladder can do it's best Niagara Falls impression into your toilet? If you think this experience in bad, just imagine it in a taxi that defies the laws of physics - a common occurrence for a taxi you might say, but not one from this game. Picking up people in a totally non-sexual kind of way has never been so fun. Read on to know more...
First impressions of Crazy Taxi are excellent. There are plenty of options available - the arcade city is there and of course the new Dreamcast city makes its entry. The arcade city is a supreme tour de force for your taxi offering the opportunity for power slides down main roads and massive ramps occur frequently throughout. This city is like a big loop so you think you are driving in a giant metropolis when it is a collection of small hubs - the main shopping area, home to Tower Records, Fila, KFC among others gives way to the suburbs and the harbor based around an outside road. The new city is impressive, but seems to lack the scale of the original. Still with a whole new city its hard to complain especially in the relatively short development time given to Crazy Taxi by AM3.
No game on the Dreamcast has yet to disappoint in the graphical region and Crazy Taxi is faithful to the arcade version. No shrinking of the characters (as seen in Virtua Fighter, Soul Calibur, Street Fighter Alpha 3, etc...) here and the crisp cartoon visuals are vibrant and colourful.
On a graphical minus note, there is a lot of pop-up which occurred in the arcade version so we can't expect Dreamcast's slightly sub-Naomi specs to eradicate. Although to be honest they take little away from the game, the action is so fast and furious you have little time to look too far in front. Animation is good throughout - turn a sharp corner and your passenger sways realistically -
and when you naturally attempt to run people over you find they roll and leap out of your way with a unnatural trick sliding through other vehicles. Not to say the clipping is bad... just that your fare has a habit of jumping out the back of your cab and disappearing into thin air when your are too slow.
Cabbies come in your usual assorted genders, ages and colours. Each one has their own set of phrases - "Shut up...who is doing the driving" crops up as your fare screams into their ear as you clip a tanker a bus and a building in one ram-off. It hardly fails on the wow factor. The different cabs have slight handling differences, but the best has to be the secret rickshaw. Combining superb acceleration, speed and handling it truly is a crazy sight as you pin through rush hour traffic at 200kph.
For single-player extension AM3 have added skill tests in the form of massive ramps, timed pickups and other similar things. Completing them gives you the rickshaw for your trouble. The other secrets (see our cheats here) are mainly for experts where the directional arrow is removed or some other thing changes. The 'another world' cheat is truly the best cheat in any game because it changes the whole layout of the passengers and starting positions. A whole new set of challenges and routes abounds.
Crazy Taxi may not be the most long lasting game ever, but for what it is - an top notch arcade conversion - it does exactly as it says on the 'tin' , Ronseal style, and provides classy Naomi action at home. The main letdowns are the popup, lack of multiplayer and the un-randomness of the pickups (I suppose the another world cheat is some compensation).
Summary:
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