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Crazy Taxi Reviewing titles that have spawned across multiple platforms is a difficult task indeed. As such, this review has to be directed towards two types of people: those who have experienced the original Crazy Taxi in the arcades or on the Dreamcast or PlayStation 2, and those who have not. I am one of the second category, and so my reviewer’s tilt may be a little higher as I am judging the game on its own merit (having never played either version on other systems for any length of time). For those who already own one or the other, I will say straight out that there is nothing new for you here. Everything is a direct port, except that some minor graphical issues with the DC and PS2 versions seem to have been ironed out, but it’s barely even noticeable. This is a direct conversion, and if the GCN is your only system, it’s worth looking into. And therefore, I will spend the rest of the review evaluating Crazy Taxi on its own merit as a game, and not as a port. For those who are not familiar with the arcade/DC/PS2 versions of Crazy Taxi, this is how it works. You’re set loose in a city with a set number of seconds on the clock. You pick up a customer and drive them to a specified location. Time bonuses and score bonuses are awarded for a speedy arrival to the destination and daring maneuvers in traffic, respectively. Leave it to Sega to come up with something this bizarre as an idea for a game and execute it so skillfully. People who have never picked up this game will find their first few ‘races’ to be quite a rush and extremely entertaining. However, because there are only two cities to choose from (as large as they may be) and because of the limited amount of things to do once you’ve explored them both, this game’s fun factor only lasts so long. The graphics are pulled right from the arcade, and this is
expected on the GCN hardware. Popup has been lessened slightly, as it rarely is
noticeable except when the buildings are tall, and the screen is busy with
pedestrians, cars driving back and forth, and a bunch of interactive objects.
The game The soundtrack rocks. With upbeat songs by Offspring and Bad Religion, there really isn’t much to complain about here except that you hear the same seven tunes over and over again. Personally, I still haven’t grown tired of the music, as it fits the game extremely well, but I can see where some people (particularly those who do not like Offspring’s style of music) may be put off by it. The voices for the game do suck, as I’ve come to expect with most arcade titles of this kind, but they’re not so annoying that they ruin the game in any way. Control is tight. It’s easy as ever to perform Crazy Drifts and Crazy Jumps in an effort to get customers from one side of town to the other. The only problems with the control are mostly due to Crazy Taxi’s style. The game is fast-paced, and sometimes it’s all too easy to accidentally miss your destination if you don’t adjust to the arcade-style speeds and use the brake sooner rather than later. Like I mentioned before, though, the rush from this game only lasts for so long. It also lacks multiplayer support, and I think a two-player competition mode would have been an extremely cool addition to an already solid game. As a fan of most arcade racing games of this type, I did enjoy Crazy Taxi. For anyone who hasn’t played the original, definitely check it out, at least as a rental. OVERALL:8.0 |
looks fairly good and stays locked at 60fps no matter how busy the onscreen
action gets. The problem is that the engine just doesn’t push the GCN’s hardware
at all, and compared to titles like Super Smash Bros. Melee and Luigi’s Mansion,
Crazy Taxi does not stack up graphically. It is worth noting that if you have
both a PS2 and a GCN, I recommend picking up the GCN version, as some of the
graphical issues (jaggies, popup, slowdown) have been lessened slightly or
eliminated. The texture quality, however, is extremely questionable. It’s very
low, especially when you get too close to a building or piece of terrain. Yes,
it gave me bad memories of the ‘vertigo’ textures of the N64 games of yore. And
out of a machine with a texture pipeline as large as the GCN’s, texturing
resolutions should not even be an issue.