Developed: Team6 Game Studio
Published: Lion Castle
Genre: Arcade/Racing
Release Date: Feb 22nd, 2021
Price: $30
*Game provided by publisher
**Insert Offspring music here**
Taxi Chaos is an arcade taxi delivery game set in good ol New York and is developed by Team6 Game Studio and published by Lion Castle. Taking the reigns from the classic titles like the Crazy Taxi series by SEGA on the SEGA Dreamcast, Team6 aims to revive dormant franchise and do it justice by making a game that not only pays homage to the games before it, but to try to make it something of their own. But is it something they succeed at? or is this one big apple we should refuse to take a bite out of. Guess we'll just have to find out!
Game Play:
Back in the year 2000, gamers around the world were greeted with a very small, but endearing arcade delivery game, that not only entertained us, but also blew our minds with its whacky game play style and killer soundtrack. It's a title that till this day when you mention the word ''Dreamcast'', you can guarantee someone in the room is going to yell back ''Ooh! Crazy Taxi!''. Having been released in 1999 in Arcades, but now ported to Dreamcast, it gave us gamers at the time something completely off the wall in terms of game play and its delivery system mechanic. The game was many things. It was straight forward and simple, it made you race your butt off as fast as you can, made you listen to a head bangingly good soundtrack and required you to take your customer to their preferred destination, all set within a specific time limit. It was all very simple, yes, but satisfying as heck. Now we arrive to the year 2021 and It's Taxi Chaos's turn to take that baton from Crazy Taxi and kick the tires and light the fires big daddy.
Once you have booted up the game, you're thrusted onto a very basic title screen that gives you the option of playing Arcade mode, Pro mode, Free roam and Trophies. Three of the four options are different game modes with different rules, some more hectic than others. While the fourth option, trophies, houses all the extra content you can do as you trudge your way around the city and take passengers and VIP's to their destination. Now if you've never played Crazy Taxi before and you aren't really sure about the controls, then I suggest hopping right into free roam mode in order to learn all the games basics and mechanics before jumping into Arcade mode or even pro mode or else you might struggle quite a bit due to not knowing the routes to take around the city.
During free roam, you're not subjected to a time limit for the stage to end, instead you're allowed to freely drive all over the city as long as you want and learn all the secrets and tricks and routes to move your way around the city whenever you feel confident enough to take on Arcade mode. As you freely move about the city, pick up as many people as you can from all difficulties, ranging from blue, who are the easiest routes, yellow, who want to go a further distance and then red, who take the longest to get to their destination, but ultimately give the best rewards. It's imperative that you do this because the more of the city you learn and memorize, the easier it will be when you actually hit pro mode, because oh my lord, Pro mode is no joke. But I'll get to that mode very shortly.
After you've gotten used to the game during your time in free mode, it's time to jump into the action and see just how good of a driver you really are. But I won't be the one to judge you on your skills, whether you have what it takes or not will be totally up to Louie, so be careful. Once you have hopped into Arcade, you'll be able to pick from two characters, Vinny and Cleo. However, It really doesn't matter which character you pick as neither have individual stats, nor do they have individual cars. Yes that's right, there is no difference between either character or their cars and this is where I run into my first issue with the game. With no incentive to play as either character over the other, it kills off the games replayability value for me and just gives you one less option to choose from. But I won't harp on and on about that because we still gotta get to the overall game play now, don't we? Well I'm afraid that won't take very long either to talk about, which can be seen as both a positive and negative, depending on the type of gamer you are.
Once you have started your run in Arcade mode, it gives you 90 seconds to pick up and drop off as many people as possible to their destinations and the faster you get them there, the better your money and rank reward will end up being. But don't focus too much on the overall time frame they give you though, because each individual character you pick up also has a time limit that they set for you to get them to where they want to go and if you do not meet their demands, they will jump out of the car. Seriously some of these people have a death wish. If this happens to you, not only do you lose your 20-30 seconds getting them to that destination, but also lose your reward for getting them to that location as well, which is extra time added to your clock that you severely need. Do not mess around too much either because getting money isn't the only thing you need to worry about, not even, you also need to get higher ranks with star ranks in order to unlock new vehicles that allow for better handling and better acceleration that will make your life even less stressful.
Learning the city is key to your success, it's not as simple as turning a corner and making it to a destination, so you have to improvise and use your cunning ingenuity to find ramps and other building hazards where you can utilize your jumping mechanic. Much like Crazy Taxi 2, here in Taxi Chaos, you're allowed to jump at will over cars and earn combo points per dodge around cars in order to bolster up your high score. However that's not all its used for, nope, you may also use it to jump on top of lower leveled buildings and form a new pathway through alleys and into parks or other inner workings of the city. I can't stress enough to you how important it is to learn every route and secret by jumping around because you're going to need it, badly, since your next destination is Pro mode. This is a mode I was NOT very good at, it was quite embarrassing.
Pro mode is the same city, same customers, but this time there's no indication of which direction you should head in, you're blind to your destination. This is why I told you that you had better pay attention during arcade mode and free roam mode because this the end result of all your drivers ed. This mode for me was really hard because I'm terrible with directions, I mean REALLY bad and yes I know, I know, I can hear the jokes now, ha ha, but I have a feeling you'll have the same issues I did, so as Fonzie would say ''Sit on it''. The concept is the same as arcade mode overall, that much is obvious, but its more frantic and fast paced because when you lose your own sense of direction and you struggle trying to remember where a store is, where a monument is, you are just like a chicken without its head running around aimlessly not knowing what to do. It makes for some frustrating times and at the same time some really funny moments too. Definitely a really fun mode. So what else is there? well.. once you've done free roam, arcade mode and pro mode for a half hour, um, you're basically done, that's basically all the main game has to offer you. Yes, I'm serous.
Extra Stuff:
Hold on. Where are you going? while I did just say that's all there is to cover in the game, there is still a little bit more. But its not in regards to the game play, but more so in regards to the in game collectibles using the Trophy mode that is selectable at any time to see your progress and objectives. In trophy mode it allows you to see quests you can take on such as deliver a mascot, find jerry jones, find sandy miller and many others. These specific quests and objectives, along with 4-5 star ratings during your normal game will unlock new characters, new cars, and many other extras. It can provide some quality fun if you're a completionist looking to milk all the time you can out of this game. So I say its worth giving a go!
Overall:
At the end of the day Taxi Chaos tries its best at living up to the legacy of Crazy Taxi, but while it does provide some of that good ol classic feel and extremely fun game play, there's just not enough there to keep you wanting to go back over and over. If you play free roam for a half hour or more, you've basically played everything the game has to offer you, just without time limits involved. It doesn't change drastically that much to give it that extra oomph it needs to make it a must play right this second. Trophy mode does offer you more incentive to keep playing, that is true, and it is a solid game overall, don't game me wrong, but if I have to be 100% honest, at the current price they're asking for it, clocking in at $30, I just can't give the thumbs up and say buy it now. Once again I want to reiterate it's not a bad game, its really dang fun in spurts, but I feel it lines up more with what you would pay for at the $20 range, rather than $30 due to there not being enough gas in this taxi's tank to get us to the destination we need to be. So with that verdict, GameNChick says Wait. At least for a price drop to $20
