I, like many other Crazy Taxi fans, was skeptical at the announcement of World Tour. It came during a time when Sega was all in on live-service titles, a time which subsequently came crashing down this year, and was part of a project that would see the company revive old single-player IPs as games-as-a-service multiplayer titles.
Given my disdain for this type of game, the way in which they try to extract every penny from consumers, and their ridiculously high failure rates, my expectations were low.
After spending 30 minutes with the title’s single-player mode and speaking to the series’ creator, Kenji Kanno, at this year’s Gamescom, I’m delighted to report that I was wrong, and Crazy Taxi might be back.
Crazy Taxi: World Tour Is The Revival Series Fans Desperately Wanted
Throughout my interview with Kanno, which you’ll be able to read at TheGamer in the coming days, the director constantly referenced how this game was “for the fans.” It certainly felt that way.
Aptly, given Gamescom’s real-world location, my demo was set in World Tour’s Germany-inspired map, where, for some reason, series favourite Axel was in his signature yellow taxi.
Kanno promised that there are story reasons for this.
Immediately, in the foreground, I spotted my first fare, so sped towards it and scooped them up. There was no pressure to do this, it was a far more chilled experience than the original game, and I was free to explore the map, but instinct kicked in, and as the client jumped in the car, so did The Offspring’s All I Want. That first "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah" hit like crack and I was in.
I dropped the first person off, then the second, then the third, before running out of time on the fourth. I skidded, I jumped, and I crashed multiple times. It was the Crazy Taxi I’d been missing all these years. As my run ended, I was graded, and my score hit the leaderboard, but rather than being kicked back to a menu to start another run, the game transitioned back into the open-world. It was all very fluid.
After another run, this time managing to complete five fares and earning a currency I wasn’t able to spend, I decided to explore. Alongside the passengers desperate for a ride, there were missions dotted around - some related to helping certain clients, others more akin to the Crazy Box Challenges in the original game, so I dove in.
My first challenge was to get as far away from my starting point as I could in ten seconds. Simple, but it served to break any monotony, and of course, it was graded up to S Rank, adding another element for high-score chasers.
My second was more involved. After driving to a castle, there was a pompous ladies man, complete with a flashy white suit and a giant bouquet of roses, awaiting a ride. He needed a lift to the airport, while his previous lovers sought to take him down. I made it to the plane just as it was leaving the runway, got underneath it, and my passenger flung himself onto the plane wheels as it took off. It was a different, almost Burnout-esque, type of challenge, and it added to the bizarre narrative Kanno and his team are clearly trying to spin.
It was a different, almost Burnout-esque, type of challenge…
While the voice lines started to wear thin pretty quickly, with Axel exclaiming, “I’m just doing my job,” what felt like every few seconds, the music certainly didn’t. The soundtrack included series staples like The Offspring and Bad Religion, and it has retained that grungy ‘90s feeling so many associate with the game.
Voice lines aside, and perhaps run times that felt a little short, Crazy Taxi: World Tour is shaping up to be everything I wanted from a new Crazy Taxi game. It takes everything that made the original so special, and modernises it in a way that makes things more fluid and dynamic for newer audiences. Any fears I had have mostly been washed away, and this might now be one of my most anticipated upcoming games.
- Genre(s)
- Racing, Action, Adventure
