| Crazy Taxi As you will already know Sega have turned multiformat and have stopped the developement of their Dreamcast console allowing them to bring some of their classics to other consoles and the PS2's first arrival from Sega is Crazy Taxi apparently one of the DC's finest games. Acclaim have handled this port and apparently haven't done too bad although I can't comment as I haven't played the DC version, but worringly the PS2 engine has some awful pop up and small amounts of slow down which weren't present on Sega's machine but with those problems aside, the graphics are nice although not anything special. Crazy Taxi is a very simplistic title and I can see why it appeals to so many people as anyone can just pick up, play and enjoy. You pick from four drivers then speed around two cities watching for people with $ signs over their heads, picking them up will reward you with extra time. Next its your job to get them to their destination as quickly as possible with some crazy driving (which is rewarded with even more cash) up on getting there you will be given time bonus's depending on how quick you were, speedy means +5 time bonus while normal means +2 and Slow means nothing apart from sand in your face or a kick in your door and finally bad means you didn't make it at all as the passenger jumps out of your car, well that's about all the gameplay covered apart from the crazy box mode. Crazy box mode is basically a selection of mini games and is actually good training for the actual game requiring you to do stuff like popping balloons in a certain amount of time or perfoming a massive jump, the difficultly of these games are mainly hard but just like anything else, practice should make things a whole lot easier. Crazy Taxi's sound is certainly a strong point as the drivers and passengers both talk to each other, passengers say stuff like "have you got your eyes closed?" or "pay more attention " when you crash, but that good point actually has a bad point contained within it as long sessions of playing will cause the speech to get repetetive as there isn't too much of it. I found that two cities just wasn't enough as on easy mode any level of gamer should have both the cities complete in no time at all but extra difficulty levels and the crazy box mode should add some extra lifespan, but what after that? well leaving it for maybe a few weeks might make you thirst for more Crazy Taxi! There's no doubt about it that Crazy Taxi is a decent title. It is what games are supposed to be, which is fun, and shows that Sega are just about to make the PS2 even better.Simon Wigham 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Opinions Round-Up "Crazy Taxi is real good fun, it's the kind of game where you keep putting coins in down at the arcade, hard to put down while it lasts, shame it doesn't last, arcade fun on your black box!" Chris Wigham |
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