Crazy Taxi – GC – Review

Crazy Taxi is a taxi driving game (now there’s a revelation!), one that has
entertained hundreds of thousands of hardcore gamers, casual gamers and even
non-gamers. Real-life taxi driving isn’t overly appealing and most people aren’t
too thrilled with making it their profession. People want cool jobs. They want
to be doctors, actors, police officers, fire fighters, etc. So what is the huge
attraction to Crazy Taxi? That is the question asked by those who haven’t played
it, because anyone who has played it knows that the reason why this game is so
good does not matter. It’s fun and that’s all that we care about.

But saying that isn’t enough for some gamers. You’re not going to buy a $50
game (that’s the MSRP — it may be cheaper at some electronic stores) just
because I said it was good, unless I give you several reasons as to why it is as
good as I claim it is. So I’m here to tell you what makes Crazy Taxi so great.

Start a game and select one of four taxi drivers, each with their own unique
cab. Press the A button and the game will begin. Hit the gas and cruise around a
little, getting a feel for the tight controls. Sorry kids, but you can’t run
over the pedestrians walking around, this isn’t Grand Theft Auto 3. You can try,
but they’ll just run out of the way. If you’re too close to them, the
pedestrians won’t have time to run away and the car will go right through them.
Once you’ve taken in all of the sights and sounds, look for a pedestrian with a
green, yellow, red or orange dollar sign hanging over his/her head. The person
will tell you where they want to go, but if you’re new to the game, that little
tidbit of information is not going to help you find the location. Crazy Taxi’s
city is enormous. The kind of enormous that makes people get that Keanu Reeves
"Whoa…" look on their face. That is why Sega decided to include the now-famous
green arrow. The green arrow points you in the direction of your destination.
You’ll still need to memorize as much of the city’s layout as you can if you
expect to master the game, but until then, the arrow is a really big help.

Now drop off your customer and say goodbye. What next? Look for another
customer, of course. This is the base of the game — you drive around, pick up
customers and drop ’em off at their destinations. The goal of the game is to
score as many points as possible. Earning taxi fares isn’t the only way to get a
high score. You can obtain a high score by performing various special maneuvers
with a passenger in the back seat. The best (and hardest) maneuver to perform is
the Crazy Through. To perform a Crazy Through, you must drive past a car as
closely as possible. The closer you are to the vehicle, the more points you’ll
earn. If you Crazy Through more than one vehicle in a row, the amount of points
earned will rise continually for every additional Crazy Through. But if you
touch one of the vehicles or bump the side of a building, tree or any other
object in the game, you’ll break the chain and have to start all over again.
Extra points can also be gained by performing a Crazy Drift (which spins your
cab in circles). Every spin gives you more points, but if you incorporate the
Crazy Drift into your customer’s destination and slide the side of your cab into
the building, you can gain a ton of points without having to worry about finding
an empty spot to avoid running into traffic. However, doing so will waste more
time and could take away from your regular earnings, which should be your
primary concern.

Crazy Taxi sounds simple, and it is, but it is also very deep and more
addictive than most of the exclusive GameCube titles. Replay value is key when
it comes to buying a new console, because if you spend $200 on something that
only has games worth playing through once, you’re going to feel like you made a
mistake. Rogue Leader offers an impressive amount of replay value and the demo I
played of Pikmin was more addictive than most of the games I’ve played all year
on any console! In its day, Crazy Taxi was just as addictive. For those of you
who haven’t played it before, I see no reason why it wouldn’t just as addictive
right now. If you don’t love Crazy Taxi, you should go to the doctor and have
your brain checked. When I say that this game rules, it’s not just my personal
opinion. Gamers from all around the world love Crazy Taxi. No one loves it as
much as I do, but that’s okay because I think it would be unhealthy for anyone
to love this game as much as me.

Between games of Star Wars: Rogue Leader, Super Smash Bros., Pikmin, Super
Monkey Ball and Luigi’s Mansion, most GameCube owners don’t have the time to
play a port of a nearly two-year-old Dreamcast game. But if you missed out on
Crazy Taxi before, make the time to play it now. If you’d rather buy the cheaper
Dreamcast version ($20) or the cheaper PlayStation 2 version ($30), then go
right ahead and save the cash. Then you can put that extra twenty-buck towards
the purchase of Extreme G3 or any other great game you have yet to pickup. It
really doesn’t matter what system you play Crazy Taxi on because all of the
versions are excellent.

Gameplay: 9
Crazy Taxi stood the test of time and has proven itself as a true classic. I
played the arcade and Dreamcast versions to death when they first came out. You
would think that I would be sick of the game by now, and normally I would. But
there is something really special about Crazy Taxi, something that prevents the
game from getting tiresome. Crazy Taxi is just a Dreamcast port, which really
sucks, because they could have really taken advantage of the system’s true power
and expanded the city even further. But if you don’t own the DC version, get
this game ASAP. There’s a lot more fun to be had with Crazy Taxi than you could
ever imagine, and is definitely one of the top five GameCube games of the year.

Graphics: 5.5 
Two years ago, Crazy Taxi’s graphics were great. On the GameCube, they’re
barely above average. Technically they’re below average, because every other
GameCube game out there looks a whole lot better.

Sound: 8
If you like the Offspring and have never played Crazy Taxi before, then your
ears are in for a treat. However, if you don’t like the Offspring or have played
CT as much as I have, then you’ll probably want to play a CD on your stereo and
avoid hearing "All I Want" for the thousandth time.

Difficulty: 7
Crazy Taxi is easy to learn, but very hard to master.

Concept: 6 
Acclaim’s mission: to port one of the greatest games of all time to every
console out there (except Xbox, which will be receiving an exclusive version of
Crazy Taxi developed by Sega sometime next year). Acclaim succeeded with flying
colors, retaining all of the greatness of the Dreamcast version. But, since it
is only a port, would I have expected (or even accepted) anything less? Of
course not. The GameCube is more than twice as powerful as the Dreamcast. It’s a
shame Acclaim didn’t take advantage of that factor and add something new to the
game.

Overall: 9
Anyone who doesn’t own this game should stop what they’re doing right now
and head to the nearest electronic store to buy it. There are no other driving
games on the GameCube and even if there were, it wouldn’t matter because this is
one of the best video games ever made. Parents afraid of letting their young
kids play a game with the oh-so-scary "Teen" rating should relax. All they have
to do is turn off the music (or hit the mute button on their TV) to eliminate
all of the vulgar Offspring songs, making this game suitable for gamers of all
ages.