Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller
Reviewed by Bluce_Ree on 01/11/2004
Hey Hey Hey! Are you ready to be unimpressed?
Introduction
Hands up who bought a Dreamcast? Not many of us it seems. Whilst the majority of people went and bought a PS2, which you have to remember had almost no good games for it's first year, the rest of us were sampling the authentically arcadey goodness of games such as Virtua Tennis, House of the Dead 2 and, of course, the excellent driving game Crazy Taxi.
Crazy Taxi was the first game I ever played on a DC and it was enough to make me go out and buy one. Sure, it had all the depth of a Britney Spears lyric but it remains one of the truely great pick up and play arcade games of all time. Even now I'll have a quick drive around on it whenever I unpack the console.
Of course things got less good when a the thoroughly uninspiring sequel was released. Gone were the vertigo-inducing slopes of the first game, sadly replaced by a NY-style concrete hell with all the charm of a contraflow system so by the time that CT3 came out as an Xbox exclusive I wasn't too jealous. After all I had Pro Evo Soccer 2 to play after I sold out to Sony.
But, as is the way of all Xbox exclusives, a pc version has turned up. So can it bring the series back to some sort of glory?
At the time when Crazy Taxi came out it was definately considered something of a beauty. Only the Dreamcast could give you the feeling of playing an actual coin-op arcade game and Crazy Taxi definately had arcade-quality graphics. With that in mind this game is really disappointing.
Even on the highest resolution it still looks like a highly average console port with the scenery suffering from a little bit of pop-up and a lot a whole heap of bad design (especially the new 'Glitter Oasis' level which also is ruined by terribly pixelated blurring effects). Also the other vehicles in the game are all pretty badly designed with no real attention to detail.
The game includes the cities from Crazy Taxi 1 and 2 which is a nice touch but these don't feel as solid and arcadey as the Dreamcast versions and both have that feeling of being a cheap pc conversion with some fragile and jagged textures.
Audio (7/10)
The only bad thing about Crazy Taxi 1 was the fact that there were only two tunes in the game (made even less bearable by one of them being by fake punk ladyboys Offspring). There is a bit more variation to be had here but it's all pretty uninspiring stuff even if it does seem to suit the action.
The usual manic voiceovers are still present as is the sound of burning rubber. Not bad, but nothing special.
Gameplay (7/10)
So is the gameplay still intact? Well yes and no. The 'Small Apple' level (from Crazy Taxi 2) is still rubbish and the new 'Glitter Oasis' level is a little better but too ugly to be much fun (at least until you get out of the main strip and into the desert where it just gets boring instead).
To be honest, I found myself wanting to go back to the West Coast setting of Crazy Taxi 1 and it was there that the problems with the game were more apparent. It still looks and plays like Crazy Taxi but for some reason it doesn't feel right. It's hard to put your finger on it, maybe its the slightly pedestrian pace or the feel of the graphics but it just didn't have the same excitement that it used to have.
The Crazy X mode is full of the usual subgames and these offer some degree of fun, especially a bizarre variation on baseball but by now you'll have seen most of it before but it does offer a tough challenge though for all you seasoned CT players.
Concluding Thoughts (14/20)
Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller may look, sound and play like a Crazy Taxi game but on a pc it is much colder experience than it should be. As ever pc gamers who want to dumb down for a few hours with a console game are instead given a cheap, lazy and thoughtless port to play with.
View/Post feedback on this Firstlook (17 replies)
Graphics 6/10 Audio 7/10
Gameplay 7/10 Concluding Thoughts 14/20
Total Score 34/50
