Released: 20000201 Publisher: SEGA Developer: Hitmaker Genre: Action

Review by: Matt

I'm sure that one of the main reasons a lot of people bought a dreamcast was because of Sega's famed arcade to home conversions - Virtua Cop, Sega Rally, Virtua Fighter, or in this case, Crazy Taxi. I seem to be one of the few reviewers out there that hasn't played this game in the local arcades, but let me assure you that whether you pay $1 for a quick game at the arcade, or $50 for the home version, you'll have a hell of a lot of fun.

The interface is simple and you can get a game started relatively quickly - that's all we really want to do right? Options include time difficulty, amount of traffic and several others that aren't worth discussion. All in all the interface is very easy to use and fast.

Not too much to say about the visuals, except that they are what we've come to expect from the dreamcast. A lot of little animations - like pedestrians diving out of the way, or the cab driver looking backwards and resting his arm on the passenger seat when reversing - are what make these graphics great to look at. Combine that with an incredibly smooth framerate and fast loading times, and you've got some very tasty eye-candy indeed. There are some minor clipping issues, but nothing so major that it takes away from the game overall. Generally the game is speeding along at such a rate that you don't notice too many of the flaws anyway.

Onto the gameplay. Basically, the idea of this game is relatively simple - deliver passengers to their desired destination, and collect the fare. But it's a whole lot deeper than that. Your fare increases when certain manouveres are performed, such as weaving through traffic, spinning 360 degrees, or launching the cab into the air via a conveniently placed ramp. You can play the game in a couple of different modes, which give you the option of playing for either a set amount of time (10 minutes max), or with an ever decreasing clock that only increases with a successful passenger drop-off. This encourages the player to get to the destination as fast as possible, while still trying to pull off crazy moves to pick up the extra dough.

The sound in the game adds to the atmosphere tremendously. Fast paced music is featured in the game, most notably by the Offspring. The soundtrack adds to the urgency of delivering those clients to their desired locations. Character speech in the game is also top-notch, and increases the humour associated with the game. Passangers will say "Hey, watch it you idiot!" when you crash, and will equally cheer and praise you when you successfully weave your way through oncoming traffic.

Crazy Taxi is an incredibly fun game, but it does fall short in a couple of areas that decrease it's final score. Only two cities are available in the game, and although they are large, it takes very little time to master them. It does get boring cabbying for the same old cities all the time, and the inclusion of some sort of rewards or progression system would have been nice. Still, it's hard to give the game a bad score for replay value - I bought it a three months ago and I still slot the disc into my DC when I feel like a laugh.

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