Crazy Taxi is one of those games that means a lot to certain people, myself included.
I can safely say I’ve spent more time playing the Dreamcast version of Crazy Taxi – and later its Xbox 360 re-release – than most games in my life. There was a time when I became so obsessed with it back in the Dreamcast days that I could make a single Arcade mode run last around 40 minutes because I knew the best order to pick up every passenger.
The news that Sega was working on a new Crazy Taxi, then, filled me with both excitement and trepidation. Sega has dabbled with sequels and spin-offs in the past with mixed results – Crazy Taxi 2 and 3 were solid sequels, but attempts to bring the series to GBA and PSP weren’t great, and mobile games Crazy Taxi City Rush and Crazy Taxi Tycoon were nothing like the real thing, offering Temple Run-style swiping and a business management sim respectively.
The idea of a new Crazy Taxi that takes players around the world and offers more than just the simple arcade gameplay of the original had me curious but cautious – it’s the simplicity of Crazy Taxi’s premise that made it so endearing in the first place, so could an attempt to pimp this particular ride end up with the original bodywork being unrecognisable?
Thankfully, after going hands-on with it at Gamescom this week, I’m satisfied that World Tour looks set to deliver a reboot that isn’t necessarily intended to replace the original, but instead offers a modern day Crazy Taxi experience that – unlike the original classic – is designed with consoles in mind, rather than arcades.
Whereas the original Crazy Taxi was based in San Francisco and its sequel had a New York stage, World Tour lives up to its name by taking the player to a variety of cities around the globe. Given that the demo took place at Gamescom, it was only fitting that the map in my demo was set in Germany.
If the rest of the game’s cities are handled with the same care as this one in terms of layout and general design, it bodes well. Other than an airport area which seems a tad too open (but may be used for stunt-based tasks at some point), the streets have a pleasant Bavarian style to them that undoubtedly differs from the US-based cities in previous games.
That said, it would be remiss not to mention Sega’s confirmation that generative AI was used during the initial research phase, nor its assurance that it wasn’t used for the actual creation of any art assets in the game. While this article is focusing on the demo presented to me at Gamescom, you can decide where your line in the sand lies with regards to this ongoing topic.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/features/crazy-taxi-world-tour-feels-like-the-offspring-of-the-original-crazy-taxi-and-forza-horizon-in-the-best-way/
