Crazy Taxi (Dreamcast)

I just missed the Crazy Taxi hoopla. After being mostly a PC gamer throughout the late 90's and early part of this decade, I broke in by purchasing a new-style PSOne, then upgrading to a PS2 around the time that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was released. It was then that I was hooked on console gaming and it a way it sealed Crazy Taxi's fate because of the taxi mini-game in Grand Theft Auto. Fast forward to 2005 where the Dreamcast is long gone and the major game resellers are beginning to clear their shelves of their old Dreamcast GDROMs. I found Crazy Taxi at EB Games for less than $2. Why not I thought. At worst I could possibly sell it and even get a small profit, or keep it as a collector's item. In the end, I'm glad that I didn't get caught up in this craze, because I probably would have lost a lot more money.


Gameplay

Crazy Taxi is an arcade driving game. It's not a racer in that you compete against other drivers, but rather you compete against the clock. The faster you complete tasks, in this case picking up and dropping of passengers, the more time you'll store away for the future. There is another mode where you have a set time to deliver passengers and you do not receive a time bonus for each drop off. If you take you're time, you might not have enough time to drop your next passenger off. The difficulty comes not only with the clock, but also the obstacles, traffic, and landscape of the city.

The object is get the most money. You can accomplish this through various means. The most common way is to pick up and drop off passengers with a quickness. That is, the faster you drop off people, the more money you get and you can also extend the game a little longer in the arcade mode. Whereas if you take too long your passenger might hop out of the taxi and all that time is wasted. Another way of gaining extra cash is to perform crazy stunts along the way. This is very similar to the nitro meter in Burnout 3 in that if you cut close to traffic, run your taxi off ramps, or even combine the two, you earn extra money. While doing this isn't going to make up for your passenger's fare, but over time it can make up for a few mistakes you made in the game.

The city you drive through is a representation of San Francisco. This is a good choice as it has a lot of hills to jump, landmarks and plenty of unusual obstacles like cable cars. Another great aspect to the city is its design. I have yet to see a true dead end. The roads, just loop around, and are filled with shortcuts. Unfortunately, given the pace of this game, it's hard to really go exploring. Though it is possible if you assign yourself a long time limit and just go driving around.

You have the choice of playing one of 4 characters. It seems as if each one is designed to appeal to a particular demographic, but they do not seem to differ in terms of how fast their car goes or how it handles. It does affect what they say to customers, but I'll get to that in the audio section. The car itself handles like a shopping cart. The steering is a little too lose, and the brakes respond a lot like a freight train's. This does add a little challenge because you're forced to pick up and drop off passengers in specially marked zones. However, this can be really frustrating especially when you catch big air and land right in front of the zone only skid right out the back of the zone. Turning and reversing are also very clunky and will add a ton of time to your trip if you have to turn around. Sometimes, I even get stuck while pulling a U-turn, which is especially frustrating. You can get an extra kick out of your taxi by drifting then re-shifting from reverse back to drive, but this technique isn't evident for novice users and might only be accidentally stumbled upon.

Finally, there's a Crazy Box mode that's filled with minigames. These minigames range from making jumps to driving around popping balloons. Some of the Crazy Box minigames force you to perform certain advanced techniques that the game doesn't inform you of. Therefore making a certain jump will seem impossible if you just floor the accelerator. Overall these modes can be interesting and it's a decent diversion, but in the end they're rather shallow.


Controls

The controls in Crazy Taxi are pretty simple. The analog stick steers the car, the right trigger hits the accelerator, the left trigger brakes, while the A button shifts the car into reverse and the B button shifts the car into drive. There's also another configuration where you can replace the brake and accelerator buttons with the drive and reverse gear buttons. The controls respond pretty well, though you're going to need a little bit of stopping distance when braking. You can also get more performance out of your taxi by letting up on the accelerator, shifting into reverse, then back into drive. It's rather simple to do, but most gamers might not figure this out until they've put in quite a few hours. A technique like this is also required for many of the Crazy Box minigames, which seems kind of silly. It might have been nice to have an advanced control set that allows you to manually shift gears to optimize your acceleration.


Graphics

The graphics are surprisingly good for a Dreamcast game. The draw distances are pretty well done for a game where you have to drive fast and avoid traffic. Rarely did a vehicle appear out of nowhere, where otherwise I would have been able to see it. Most of the vehicles are obscured by hills or other objects which is understandable.

The framerate is also pretty good. This makes it much less frustrating to avoid traffic when the car doesn't seem to jump all over the place. Even with a lot of cars and pedestrians on the screen, the game performs pretty well.

Despite this, the models and backgrounds aren't as good as they could have been. The characters, while zany looking, seem kind of blocky and their textures aren't as detailed. The same can be said about the taxis and other vehicle models. There are only a few objects that you can interact with on the road, which are weirdly placed crates and carts. Buildings do not take damage, nor does your taxi or other vehicles. What's even more frustrating is I can slam into some skinny poles going over 55 MPH, and be stopped dead in my tracks. Even worse being the fact that I have to reverse direction.

Finally, there are some really frustrating graphical glitches. Sometimes if you slam into a building or object hard enough, you'll get stuck. While I can understand this from a certain perspective, being stuck in a building that doesn't take any visual damage is still frustrating given Crazy Taxi's arcade style. Luckily it this doesn't happen too often.


Audio

The soundtracks of Offspring and Bad Religion are a good fit for a game of this type. However, also like this game, it seems wild and crazy at first, but would begin to grate on the nerves of a good number of gamers who would play this game for more than an hour.

The voice acting is acceptable. The tone of the voices are generally upbeat, but can be edgy at times, something I'd expect from a game of this type. However, one aspect that seemed really out of place is the occasional profanity. While I didn't hear the F word, there were a few words that would have gotten my mouth washed out with soap if I spoke it as a kid. While I realize that parents tend to be more relaxed about this, it does kind of limit the demographic on who can play this game. I wouldn't mind my daughter playing this game in a year or two, except the fact that I wouldn't want her to learn to use some of the words spoken in the game.


Replay Value

I didn't find much reason to continue playing this game. Passenger drop off points are not random, so starting off the game can be very scripted depending on how good your memory is. The minigames, while offering a decent diversion from the classic game, just aren't very deep themselves. The gameplay in general is pretty generic and the gameplay dynamics are very simple and shallow. In many ways, this game has been improved upon in so many areas that most hardcore gamers would get bored fast. Even casual gamers would have trouble playing this game for more than an hour in one sitting. What Crazy Taxi needs is more gameplay dynamics to separate itself and create goals for the player to accomplish. It would be nice to be able to pick up powerups on the fly like super brakes, gliders, nitro packs, etc... Also simply playing for a high score just doesn't make the cut for today's modern games. Even the taxi driver minigame in the GTA games offered more of a reward that made you sweat while picking up those last few passengers. Besides, the money that you earned allowed you to spend it on different items in the game. There just isn't much satisfaction in playing this game.

In the end, I can't really recommend Crazy Taxi. The gameplay is too sluggish and shallow for an arcade game. Sure it's zany, but that wears thin. If you pick this up for under $5, it might be worth a shot, especially if you like these types of games. Otherwise, there are other games that are simply more worth your time.