Game: Taxi Chaos
Genre: Racing, Arcade
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam, PS4 and Xbox)
Developer|Publisher: Team6 Game Studios | Orange One
Age Rating: EU 3+ | US Everyone
Price: US $34.95 | UK £31.49 | EU €34,95
Release Date: February 23rd, 2021
Review code provided with many thanks to MMPR
Hey, It’s Time to Make Some Crazy Money
Back in the day, I loved Crazy Taxi on the Dreamcast and PS2. An arcade-style game that featured all the high octane feel of the arcade days. The series ended up receiving two sequels and even entries on the PSP and Game Boy Advance of all things. It’s been better supported unlike so many long-forgotten Sega IPs, but, outside some rubbish mobile game, we haven’t heard a lot from the series for a while. When that happens it’s only a matter of time before the Indie developers come in to fill the void. This is when Taxi Chaos takes to the streets. A game that is essentially Crazy Taxi, but really still has it’s L plates on – read on to see if it passes its test.
Catch a Ride
Taxi Chaos is a driving game where you play a wacky taxi driver who picks up passengers and drives them to their nearest destination as fast as possible within a time limit. Ignoring traffic lights and general traffic wars. Clearly, I need to rethink my career because passengers pay a lot of money to take a ride in these taxi trips. You get to choose between two main characters Vinny and Cleo, both of whom are friendly but really try far too hard to be funny. As you drive about your driver of choice will banter with the passenger and often these conversations are just irritating. It got to a point where if I heard another character use the term ‘#’ I was going to throw my Switch out the window.
New York
You explore a large open-world city inspired by the city of New York. You drive through areas inspired by Central Park, shopping districts and even past the docks seeing the Statue of Liberty in the background. It’s a simple warm colour scheme designed to make you smile with its innocence. As you drive about you can smash through lamp posts and traffic lights but hilariously trees are indestructible and may prove to be your biggest threat to getting to a destination quickly. I found the graphics became more detailed in TV mode with the taxis looking a bit shinier. The game did appear to perform well in both TV and handheld modes, but I noticed much more pop in the graphical details when playing portably. When driving in the park it took a few milliseconds for grass to come into focus. Fortunately, this didn’t interrupt gameplay and acts as a minor niggle.
Driving School
The controls are easy to pick up and play for a casual driving game. You use the trigger buttons to accelerate and reverse. If you combine the two together you can boost your car forward. You can also jump ridiculously high in the air for some reason. It does come in hand to leap over fences but it also leads to me getting the taxi stuck in the environment on some rare occasions with the only fix appearing to be quitting the game.
While the controls are simple they lack depth. There are no cool moves like drifting or handbrake turns as you can do in Crazy Taxi. The developers just went with pick and play simplicity and called it a day which is a bit of a shame.
Follow the Arrow
The game offers three modes. Arcade is the main event and where I sunk most of my time into gunning for a high score. You can compare scores to others online but since others are far better at this game than me I just stuck to comparing my own score. In arcade mode, you have a limited time to drive as many passengers to their destination as possible. By picking up a new customer you gain a little more time. For me a whole session usually ended in under five minutes, making this very appealing for those quick gaming bursts if you’re short on time.
When you pick up a passenger a guide arrow helps point you in approximately the right direction. Sometimes it just didn’t feel helpful at all. It wouldn’t always point out the most efficient route to your destination and taking your own shortcuts through side streets seemed to confuse the arrow. Occasionally, when I picked up a new customer the arrow pointed in the opposite direction which was a pain. The more you play the game, the easier it becomes to deal with this niggle, but, it may confuse the casual gamer.
Pro mode is the same as arcade mode only the guide arrow is removed. This mode feels only suitable for those dedicated enough to learn the layout and map of the game, something I’m not willing to put the time into and doubt others will either. This feels like something that you could adjust in the options, as opposed to getting its own mode entirely.
Finally, there is free roam. A sort of zen experience where there’s no overall time limit, you can pick up customers and drive them to locations to your heart’s content. It’s in this mode you may find special customers that give you mini-missions while driving over collectables scattered randomly around the open-world map like toolboxes or lucky clovers. This feels like a small attempt to be a bit different from Crazy Taxi but it doesn’t flow well with the gameplay and I just didn’t engage with it. By playing through these modes you can unlock several different taxis in the game with different stats.
Fare Play
If you somehow never got to play Crazy Taxi or you no longer have access to play it, then Taxi Chaos is a decent pick and play an arcade game to enjoy in small gaming bursts. It’s a valiant effort but it kinda lacks the magic of the game it’s inspired from. Lacking memorable characters, pumping music and that atmosphere I used to feel in the arcade feels absent here.
Taxi Chaos also doesn’t try anything new with the formula. For myself I found myself wanting to dig out Crazy Taxi and play that instead. But I guess when I’m too lazy to do that I’ll probably still give Taxi Chaos a drive-through.
Final Verdict: I Like it
