I have a cultural gap when it comes to Crazy Taxi, as I haven’t actually played any of the games myself outside of demo stations in clothing stores and a vague memory of playing it on what was probably the Dreamcast at a friend’s house. Nevertheless, it’s one of the recent game announcements that really had me excited, and I think The Offspring soundtrack played a big part in that.
When I got behind the wheel of the Cray Taxi: World Tour demo at Gamescom, it was also The Offspring that blasted from the headphones, and my smile widened to its maximum size instantly. I felt like a kid again. The demo takes place in Germany of all places, which was of course, very fitting for Gamescom, and you could even visit the Dom (the giant church in the centre of Cologne), but sadly there was no way to drive by the Kolnmesse where Gamescom takes place.
The controls of the car were super smooth and arcadey, and I was drifting through corners to charge up boost in no time. Picking up various clients and dropped them off at their desired locations. That would become old pretty fast, so Crazy Taxi: World Tour adds in a bunch of super extravagant fares that have silly requests, like this pizza chef who wants your help in delivering pizzas to various spots around the city.
Later, I started a race against someone who had too personal a relationship with their car, and discovered that it was OK, nay, required! to cheat and just cut time by simply racing downhill and ignoring the road. The demo was pretty sizeable already, with 3 major regions on the German map alone and a lot of wildly humorous clients to drive around. I’m curious to see the sights in the other countries and what kind of requests will be in the full game.
As you can see, though, it’s not a visually impressive type of game, especially when it comes to its character models, but the game makes up for that in its completely unserious approach. As long as they keep The Offspring blasting cool tunes, I’m willing to forgive A LOT of other shortcomings.
Robby lives and breathes video games. When he’s not playing them, he’s talking about them on social media or convincing other people to pick up a controller themselves. He’s online so often, he could practically list the internet as his legal domicile. Belgian games-industry know-it-all.
