I can still remember sitting and playing the original Crazy Taxi on Dreamcast for hours and hours. Rushing around the maps to pick up fares, frantically carting them to their destinations, and dropping them off blew my mind in 1999, so getting to jump in and see how the Crazy Taxi: World Tour fares in this closed network test has been an interesting experience, to say the least.
Upon jumping in, there was no tutorial or anything of the sort (the game suggests you go and look up the manual on its website) aside from vague tips on the loading screens. All you can do is go into various types of multiplayer matches (which is normal considering this is a test, of course). Four drivers await your selection, as do several different car types, all with their own traits.
I got to take a look at two different multiplayer modes; pickup races and cops and cabbies. Players can either choose to play ranked matches where you increase your rank by playing, or custom matches that let you create lobbies of your own or jump into someone else’s. Ranks start at F and work you up to higher tiers as you compete, of course.
All F-rank matches will find you practicing against bots, but once you get to the E rank you’ll start to get matched with other players (with remaining slots filled by more bots). It doesn’t take long at all to get to E rank, but each mode has its own ranks you’ll need to work through first, which includes separate ranks for both the Cops and Cabbies side of the second mode.
Pickup races are sort of what they sound like. The match begins and all racers have to rush to pick up fares and deliver them. The first to deliver their final fare wins. For the most part, this is just a normal race but with a Crazy Taxi theme, as they’re set on linear paths. I had some frustrations, as it’s all too easy for your taxi to get stuck on something for long enough to screw you over.
One particular instance that vexed me was when another taxi had pulled in for their pickup sideways, which caused me to crash into them. I was then unable to move forward due to them blocking me. It’s not unusual to find things like this that fully bring you to a stop. The momentum and joyous nature of the original games seems to be somewhat missing from the handling here, to be sure.
The Cops and Cabbies side, on the other hand, is more interesting. The six players are divided into four cabbies and two cops, with cabbies focusing on delivering as many fares as they can while the cops rush to stop them. Cops do this by using a boost to slam into a cabbie. Disabling a cab locks them up in a cell, with the cops winning if all four cabbies end up busted.
It’s a solid idea, although matches can end very, very quickly if the cops nab everyone fast enough. As stated, you’ll have to rank up cabs and police separately, which I thought was a bit strange, but it’ll at least help with keeping things more fair (and letting the cabbies get more fares, along the way). There’s not really much else here aside from these two modes, although players can add spike strips to pickup races.
In terms of performance, the framerate can chug quite a bit even on capable hardware, as I would sometimes drop into the 30s. It can also take a while to get into matches, which was more than a little irritating. I don’t want to wait for longer than a minute just to play for two-and-a-half minutes before I have to wait for yet another match.
I didn’t walk away from Crazy Taxi: World Tour’s closed network test particularly impressed, even if it’s certainly nice to see the series again. The test’s two maps were at least reasonably fun to drive around in, as a remade version of the West Coast map from the original game returns alongside one set in Germany. We’ll have more for you in the coming months to see just how this all shakes up, but hopefully it’ll be a markedly smoother experience in the end.
