Crazy Taxi Review

With the original Crazy Taxi being such a big hit on the Sega Dreamcast Console back in the year 2000, many people including myself where stoked about the news that the game was coming to the Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network.  Among starting it up and playing, memories were brought back and I found myself having just as much fun as I did in the past, while I began to realize a few things.  The game is literally untouched from the Dreamcast version.  So the graphics are horrible and everything is exactly the same.  Same Modes, same gameplay mechanics and same goofy narrator.

The one change that was made was the original soundtrack was replaced so there is no more ‘Offspring’ or ‘ Bad Religion’ songs that were in the original Dreamcast version, which is a bad thing and I am personally pissed about.  Instead you’ll here more modern punk songs with a pop tone to them and are all underground, ‘no-name’ bands.  It’s not the worst thing in the world but doesn’t come close to comparing with the ‘Offspring’ and ‘Bad Religion’ Soundtrack which never got repetitive for me while these songs do.

The game is supposedly HD while running at 60 FPS and does it smoothly as expected with its box shaped hands on the people graphics.  But the game is not all that bad, because the original was so good.  I guess they took that into account and figured the game didn’t need any changes.  So I found myself playing the game for hours because Crazy Taxi is just that much fun.  You can unlock Avatar Awards for playing for 5 and 10 hours, with 5 hours of gameplay getting you a vintage style Crazy Taxi T-Shirt and 10 hours of gameplay unlocking another shirt.  The game has come to this generation of consoles and added Achievements/Trophies which is a good thing since I don’t even own a Dreamcast anymore.  So just for the fact that I can now play Crazy Taxi again while netting some achievements is great.

It is just a shame they could not have updated the game adding new modes, online capabilities and even change the mechanics of the game, being how hard it can be to pull off the moves in the game.  To pull off all of the moves like ‘Crazy Dash’, ‘Crazy Stop’, ‘Crazy Drift’ and so on you have only drive, reverse as well as steering.  They could have made it easier to pull some of the moves off in the game instead of basically giving you 2 buttons to work with, but this is a straight port from the Dreamcast version minus the good music.  The modes are still all there with Arcade, Original and Crazy Box.  Crazy Box has you doing certain tasks like knocking down blowing pines to popping all balloons in an arena to getting customers to destinations on a narrow path without landing in the water.  Arcade as well as Original mode are pretty much the same thing where picking up customers and dropping them off at their destination in time is the goal with the option of playing them with original game rules, 3 minutes, 5 minutes or 10 minutes.

Anyone that mastered the original Dreamcast version of the game should have no problem annihilating in this version with S rankings and what not.  Completing all of the Crazy Box Challenges will unlock the Rickshaw/Bike for a ride.  This ported version of Crazy Taxi is fun but maybe not worth the price tag of $10 or 800 Microsoft Points.  If it was $5(400 MSP), I would say it would be definitely worth it being that the game is super addicting and will lead to hours upon hours of fun.  But with no added features, especially some type of online mode it is very disappointing as the game could have been one amazing arcade game had they worked on the rather than just porting it.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox 360.