Crazy Taxi was a big hit, both in the arcades and on Sega's ill- fated Dreamcast console, and it has been now been brought to Nintendo's new console making the Launch title list. But if your expecting it to boast any new features for the Cube you will be very disappointed. This unfortunately is an exact port of the Dreamcast version. But if you have never played Crazy Taxi before, now wouldn't be a bad time to start...

Graphics:

The graphics are nice and smooth and very colourful. The drivers and the people in the cities are very well modeled and they do move fairly realistically. However they do seem too smooth when looked at closely, almost like porcelain dolls. The taxis are also well presented, well detailed and a lot of realism. However, this cannot be said about the other cars and vehicles on the roads. They're not as smooth as the taxis are, and almost look like they're made of cardboard or something.

The two cities in the game are just massive to say the least. They may not look too big at first but take a long drive around without picking anyone up and you'll soon see the true size of them. But this massive size seems to come with an annoying drawback. Every now and then you'll find yourself driving down a street and it will seem as if there's no buildings at the end of it, when suddenly they all just pop up out of nowhere. This is something that you would think could have been easily fixed with the power that the Cube has, but unfortunately this power has not been utilized, and the game suffer bad 'pop up' as a result.

Sound:

The speech in the game leaves a lot to be desired. Although in the beginning it sounds pretty cool, you will soon grow tired of all the American-surfer like accents and sayings. The entire dialog will very soon become extremely repetitive and dull. Bands Offspring and Bad Religion do the music that accompanies the gameplay, and once again when you first play you will be enjoying the rockin' tunes coming out of your TV speakers, until you realize that there's only like 4 songs in total. After hearing them play over and over you grow tried and will be reaching for your CD collection to play some of your own songs. The sounds of the vehicle are pretty decent, but much like the rest of the game, they are nothing special.

Gameplay:

You have 3 different modes to play with. "Arcade" offers you the chance to drive around the city used in the arcade machine. "Original" is a second city for you to pick up fares in. and then there's "Crazy Box". In both Arcade and Original you can choose to play the game by Arcade rules or simply play for 3, 5 or 10 minutes. Crazy Box is basically a mini game mode. Here you can try your skills at completing certain tasks within a certain time limit, and is a great place to learn and improve your driving skills.

You have four drivers to choose from, each with their own different taxi to tear around the cities in. You might not be able tell the difference between each driver early on, but as you play more you will see that they all have slight advantages and disadvantages over the others. For example Gus' taxi has better tyre grip then the other three taxis…

The aim of the game is simple - find a passenger (these will be the people with huge $ signs above their heads), and take them to their destination in the fastest time possible. The faster you get there the more cash you make. You can also earn extra cash by driving like a maniac and give your passenger a good thrill; this can be done by making jumps, narrowly missing on coming traffic, sliding round bends, etc. At the end of your game you're marked and are awarded a license class.

It's all good fun to begin with, but with only three play modes the game feels disappointingly short.

Playability:

Like with any arcade style games this game is very easy to pick up and play. The control system is nice and simple, and performing special moves such as the Crazy Drift are easy to do with just a few quick button presses. The default controls have the brake and acceleration functions assigned to the shoulder buttons, which can be a small bit awkward in the beginning for those of us that are used to the standard A and B set-up. The controls can be changed to this but it takes almost no time to get used to the default settings.

Lifespan:

Fans of arcade style games will find this has that "Just one more go" feel to it. Unfortunately this won't last very long at all. The game becomes very repetitive in almost everyway from gameplay to sound and music. Maybe if they added things like random starting points and/or the destination of every passenger change every time you play there could have been a lot more life in the game. The only thing that might have you coming back for more would be the Crazy Box mode, but once this is completed, there is next to no pint in playing the game. A multi-player mode might even have added that extra touch the game so badly needed but sadly there is none.

Final Say:

This game is good for quick laugh, but that's about it. No multiplayer, and limited gameplay means there's not much life in this game. If you own the Dreamcast version don't bother spending your cash again. If you don't and have never played it before I'd suggest you rent this first before you purchase.

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