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Preview  Crazy Taxi
- By Nathaniel Walker
There is good news for gamers who just couldn’t get enough of Crazy Taxi in the arcades or on the Sega Dreamcast: they will soon be able to score an extra dose or two on the GameCube. Almost all of us can be counted among the gamers who enjoyed the initial rush of barreling through the urban jungle at breakneck speeds, all the while exchanging verbal blows with a bewildered public—and almost all of us were impressed with the crisp clarity of the game’s textures and the constant speed in which they flew past our eyes. When the game was released two years ago as one the Dreamcast’s star titles, it was a breath of fresh air.
Crazy Taxi is a mission-based racing game in a genre all its own. The player will have four options, at least in the beginning of the game, when selecting a cab and driver. These options are delightfully different from one another, both in terms of character and sexual viability. If handling is your thing, than you should probably start off with Axel. If you prefer speed to graceful u-turns, than the affable B. D. Joe may be your choice. Gus is an old favorite that will certainly be more than welcome to veterans of the game who rejoice to see that their automotive bullying can now emit from a little purple cube. Gena is the token cutie-pie, the kind that we always associate with public transit in the private sector (?). Her take on crazy taxiness was always my favorite, as her acceleration and braking are unsurpassed.
Your job is, rather simply, to pick up fares and deliver them to their respective destinations within a limited amount of time. Take too long in getting there, and the fare will bail out—regardless of your speed or proximity to moving vehicles. Get them to the record shop or the bank or the neighborhood KFC on time, and they will reward you with cash. There are no laps, no competitors, and no red turtle shells—the object is simply to keep your timing meter above zero and to accumulate as much dough as possible. In this respect, the game’s unique take on racing is exciting and different. To its detriment, however, it can often feel a little pointless. For while your urban setting is incredibly detailed and relatively large, it is the limit of your territory. There are no other cities to advance to. And while making money is all fine and good, you can’t exactly spend the stuff. If it was possible to advance to new locales, or use that hard-earned money to soup-up your ride or purchase new background music (the Offspring and Bad Religion songs get a little looped out), it might be more gratifying to succeed. High scores and impressive Taxi titles were not sufficient rewards for this particular gamer. Nonetheless, the game is definitely unique (despite the imitation titles lining up to cash in on the title’s previous success…The Simpsons Road Rage, anyone?), and its replay value should keep any GameCube from going altogether cold. As if that would be a problem.
Now that we have gone over a bit of the game’s fundamental ups and downs, lets take a gander at what the GameCube version will have to offer in particular. Crazy Taxi’s Nintendo-exclusive enhancements can actually be summed up best by the Irish:
Have I told you the story of Tommy MacGinnit?
Shall I begin it?
Well that’s all that’s in it!
In other words, Crazy Taxi’s improvements and additions are discouragingly sparse. The GameCube is decidedly more powerful than the Dreamcast—and that means smoother textures, enhanced character models, and maybe a few tweaks here and there. But overall, it seems that most of the title’s potential innovations have been reserved for Crazy Taxi 2. This is, perhaps, an understandable move on the part of Sega’s creative community, but an unfortunate one for future GameCube owners who have already played the game to their little hearts’ content on other systems. Sure, the GameCube logo on the case will be a welcome impovement. But is that really enough to garner interest for an old product in a new market?
Okay, I will admit that the game has enough strengths to warrant the port over to GameCube. But now one must face the fact that many months have passed since the game first saw light. Acclaim, who has taken the publishing duties off of Sega’s hands for the title, could have used those months to pursue some gameplay improvements in the hopes of wooing Nintendo’s own. But for the most part they did not—and the disappointing lack of fresh features and updates takes a little luster off of Crazy Taxi’s previously impressive polish. As I said before, the arrival of the game to the Nintendo GameCube is good news for gamers who just couldn’t enough of Crazy Taxi. But for those of us who had enough, and want something new and exciting, there are other games to bank. And even when we get that itch to burn supercharged petrol through a decently rendered digital San Francisco, it will still be better to dust off the Dreamcast and switch cables around than to drop the extra cash and pick up the GameCube edition of what will more or less be the same Taxi, craziness and all.
- 10.29.2001 |
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Release Date:
11.15.2001
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