Taxi Chaos [Xbox]
On the surface, Team6 Game Studios’ Taxi Chaos is a shiny new homage to one of the classics of my childhood: Crazy Taxi. A simple premise, you’re a taxi driver in the busy NYC (New Yellow City), and your customers will pay handsomely for some fast transport - and if you can make it fun by pulling off some sick jumps, they’ll pay even more. Crazy Taxi was released back in 2001, but after its success, spawned a number of sequels as well as clones paying homage. One such clone, released in 2002, was Taxi Challenge Berlin. And who developed Taxi Challenge Berlin, you ask? Why - none other than Team6 Game Studios themselves. They then went on to do a number of different Taxi-based games over the years, finally bringing us to Taxi Chaos.
There are a few different game modes available, with a standard Arcade Mode, Pro Mode and Freeroam. Arcade Mode is the one you’ll play the most, but frustratingly it doesn’t last very long each run. The timer has a set amount to begin, but it’s very easy to pick up your second or third passenger and run out before you’ve even got to drop them off. It’s quite a bizarre choice to have the timer done in this way, instead of having the main timer tick down between jobs and have the passengers’ own timers during. Pro Mode is ultra frustrating, as it is the same as Arcade Mode, but minus the directional arrow. Whilst the passenger will point out the direction of where they want to go, they can sometimes be a bit slow to react and it’s easy to miss their pointing, as it’s not constant. Obviously, the alternative is learning the map - but as the world is mostly built on a grid layout (makes sense for NYC), with a lot of similar looking structures, this makes it pretty hard to figure out where you are and what way to go at any given moment. Freeroam obviously has the benefit of having you doing jobs without an overall timer, and allows you to scope out any shortcuts and familiarise yourself with the city but it’s still difficult to get your bearings. If you can keep a few key landmarks in mind, at least those will be useful for some jobs.
Playing as either Vinny, the seasoned cabbie; or Cleo, the influencer; you’ll be able to pick up passengers with specific quest lines that have a little more depth to them than the standard customers. The conversation flowing back and forth between you is entertaining, and felt really well done, whereas non-quest-based pickups would repeat the same few lines over and over. It’s fun to play, and challenges you to try and squeeze in as many passengers as you can - but it definitely could be doing with a bit of tweaking on the timer front for the Arcade Mode, as it feels very unsatisfying to be ripped from the game because your timer ran out, when there’s pretty much no way to extend it by more than around 20 seconds each job (which is less than what it takes to actually complete a lot of jobs).
Visually, it isn’t bad, but it’s not great either. The world is pretty simple, with a lot of generic buildings and grassy areas that you can pick up and drop off customers, although admittedly some of it is recognisable as certain parts of New York. It has a cartoony-realism vibe that, whilst nice to look at, doesn’t really make the game stand out in any way. There’s mostly other taxis in the streets (not too strange for New York), a few other vehicles, as well as police cars that will fine you if you bump into them. You can dodge most of the obstacles in your way, as well as take shortcuts over roofs with a well-timed jump, that requires nothing but a tap of the A button, which feels pretty satisfying when you find a useful shortcut to bypass a lot of the grid system. The voice acting is okay, but has a tendency to repeat itself way more often than necessary. Over the multiple separate times I’ve played, I’ve had at least 75% of my customers say the same line about how they’re “one step closer to the retirement home”. The baffling thing about this is that they were all different pedestrians, with different appearances and voices, yet they repeated the exact same line. It would have been so much easier to just give each different voice actor separate lines to prevent this repetitiveness from being so apparent. And whilst the developers have implemented additional tracks for the music in a Day One patch, it still lacks personality. I wasn’t expecting The Offspring by any means, but they definitely should have looked at some decent music (possibly licensed, although I accept that has a hefty price tag at times) instead of the fairly generic tunes it has currently.
The controls are straightforward, with the usual driving controls at play with the left and right triggers for braking/reversing and accelerating, respectively. Drifting round corners feels satisfying, and nabbing a 5-star rating from your passengers is great (although at times you’ll feel robbed!). At its core its a fun game, with unlockable taxis and side-quests to follow with certain pedestrians having their own storylines. There are a bunch of collectibles dotted around the world for you to find, too - so you’ll need to keep your eye out for those.
Oh, Taxi Chaos… how I had high hopes. There’s so much potential here that just isn’t utilised. It is still fun to play, but just doesn’t have a lot to keep me invested. Priced at £25.99 on the Xbox Store, it’s a surprisingly expensive title for what it is in its current form. Team6 have done a lot of Taxi games in the past, so I was hopeful for something groundbreaking, but the developers have been vocal about wanting to hear opinions from fans and are looking to take all of this in for future updates - so I really hope to see things improve over time, as despite its flaws it’s fun - and has potential to grow.
In the end, we decided to give Taxi Chaos the Collecting Asylum rating of 6/10.
Have you played Taxi Chaos yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Lion Castle Entertainment for the Taxi Chaos Xbox review code!
