Crazy Taxi Review

Back in the day, there were two arcade games that I played a ton of: Cruisin’ USA and Crazy Taxi. Both were great, but the reason I played them so much is simply because they were in more places than just an arcade; they were in places like Wal-Mart too. I liked Cruisin’ better, simply because I was better at it and well it wasn’t that hard to win a free game on that one.

Both of these great arcade games made their way to home consoles eventually. Cruisin’ was on the N64, and Crazy Taxi on the Dreamcast. I never owned a Dreamcast, so I missed out on the home console release of it. As luck would have it, I did eventually get the Crazy Taxi retail game for the original Xbox. I played that for a while, but ultimately never went back to it.

I was browsing the Playstation Store back in December and came across Crazy Taxi on sale. I had the funds in my Playstation account, so I went ahead and purchased the game. I’ve played it a fair amount since then, and it’s still fun. Of course I still suck at it; I’ve never been able to get more than a Class C license. Not in the arcades, not on the Xbox, and not now on the PS3.

It doesn’t matter that I’m no good at the game though. Crazy Taxi remains just as fun today as it was many years ago in the arcades. The PSN release isn’t as good as the original arcade version, despite being pretty much the same thing. I say it isn’t as good because it doesn’t have the real-world locations like KFC. The places are still there, with made-up names, but it isn’t the same. I understand why they’re not in the game though.

The main draw of Crazy Taxi, for me anyway, is that it’s extremely fast paced. It’s pretty much the same every time, and it’s a great to jump into for a couple of games and be done with it just as I did in the arcade version. The game is “HD,” but it doesn’t really look good by any means. Considering I only play for 15 or so minutes at a time, I can forgive the lousy graphics. The soundtrack though is pretty bad, which is too bad considering that the original was quite good.

The game is now back to being $9.99 on PSN, and I think it was something like $2.50 when I bought it (sale plus PS+ sale). It’s worth $2.50, but while I like it I just can’t see it being worth $9.99. Crazy Taxi diehards no doubt bought it when it first came out years ago. If you haven’t gotten it yet, there’s no reason to purchase it now (though maybe if it goes back on sale).

Crazy Taxi gets a two out of five: DECENT.