Crazy Taxi 2
System:
Dreamcast
Publisher: Sega
Devloper: Hitmaker
Released: June 2001
Genre: Arcade Racing/Action
Capabilities: VMU, Jump Pack, VGA Box, 4x Memory Card, Racing
Controller Compatible, Modem(Upload High Scores and Replays)
Review Written: July 2, 2001
The Game
Crazy Taxi 2 is the sequel to Crazy Taxi. Which Sega released around February 2000, and which Acclaim snuck the publishing rights under Sega, and released the same exact game, only with a few more bugs, on the PS2 in June of 2001 (And they wonder why they’re losing money). Any ways, Crazy Taxi 2 is developed by the same folks who brought us the first one, Hitmaker, and the game has the same premises as the first one where you drive around taking passengers to their destinations as fast as you can with a new cast of cabbies. Will this game fare as well as the first one? Let’s get onto the review and find out.
The Cast
The games cast of cabbies are all new. This game’s cast is Slash, who is just some guy who just looks like he’s ready to freak out on someone. The next guy’s name is Iceman, and I don’t know if Hitmaker intended to do this, but in my opinion, with his long hair and goatee and deep voice throughout the game, he’s very familiar to a drug dealer. Our next cabby is Cinnamon whos a young African woman who everyone likes. The last cab driver is the most ridiculous gimmick I’ve ever seen. His name is Hot-D, ad he’s a 78 year old African rapper. Yes, you heard me right.
Graphics
If you’ve played the first game, you should know what the visual capabilities of Crazy Taxi 2 should be. They’re pretty much the same thing. Instead of driving around San Francisco, you now drive around New York City, and we got all knew special licensed buildings to drive too. Like instead of driving to KFC and Pizza Hut like in the last game, we now drive to The Gap and Burger King. And Hitmaker must of went out and took real models of the building, because they look very similar the way they do in real life, as a matter of fact, the whole game looks very lifelike, which is quite odd considering it’s an arcade based game. I mean, even though the four main cabs in the game are very unrealistic, they still look awesome with there varying designs like a convertible and Volkswagen. The rest of the game looks just great, all the other cars have animation, like they use there blinkers, for example. The game runs at a much smoother rate that the first one and the slowdown is at an absolute minimum when performing the wackiest stunts like Jumps, and mixing them into combos. The games easy to use menus are back, so you’ll be hopping right into a game in no time. Another improvement in here is the ability to view and save replays, they just look plain out awesome. I just have to say that the graphics in here are magnificent and are a key strong point of the game.
Sound
I guess the guy who introduces the game and who does the main voice overs for the introductions and ends of all the game modes kind of grew on me. For some reason, his odd voice became less annoying in this years game. The game uses a lot of voice samples. We got passengers who can yell out a lot of things at you. And the cabby always yells right back at them. And I swear, they must repeat themselves a lot, but for some reason they don’t get annoying, even though the voice acting for them is a significant step down from last years game, and it won’t capture the feeling of the original. The game has an all new soundtrack as well. The Offspring is back and they licensed 5 songs for the game. Plus the Methods of Mayhem is in here for a couple of tracks also. So sound is another vital point of the game, that would get a perfect score if it wasn’t for all the slightly cheesier voice acting.
Game play
The game controls are nearly identical as the first one. You accelerate and brake with the shoulder buttons. Your only two gears are drive and reverse, which are easy to switch from. When start driving in the games main modes, you look for people with an octagon around them and pick them up. You then get a picture of where they want to go and an arrow pointing you there with a time limit. If you get them there fast you get a nice big tip. Get them there slow, you get the minimum pay. Or if you’re so slow, they’ll just hop out and leave. You can also do different tricks during your drive to get extra tips, like the crazy drift, through, and dash from the last game. A new feature is the crazy hop, where your cab now has the ability to jump, which comes in handy to go to upper stories without the necessary driving. And another new feature is the ability to pick up more than 1 passenger at once. You can run across certain groups of people, up to 4, and if you get the whole group to all there desired destinations in time, you get even more cash.
The game has two versions of New York city to race around. The original course is labeled the “Around Apple” course, and the Dreamcast exclusive being, “Small Apple.” Unlike last year’s version you don’t have user profiles to save your record times in. The high scores are still there, but it doesn’t have the initials of all the top racers, just the name of the cabby. I find that a tad disappointing, because it takes away from bragging rights. I mean, let’s face it, bragging rights are one of the high points of single player games. Speaking of single player games, this game was intended to be a 4 player multi player game, and I even saw pictures of it in action, but it was scrapped at the last minute. And like I mentioned before there is the new feature to save and view replays of your runs. And our last mode is the Crazy Pyramid, which is nearly identical to the Crazy Box from the first game where you have a slew of mini games for you to choose from. Some of these are remakes of last year’s mini games like there’s Crazy Jump 2 and a few others. And we even got more new ones like Crazy Golf, for example.
Replay Value
Not to be a nitpicker, but I was really looking forward to that multi player mode. It seemed like a must for this game. I’m also mad about the lack of user profiles. But there are extras to keep you playing this game for a great deal of time. Like the bonus “Little Apple” track, and the Crazy Pyramid. Oh, and the game is Internet compatible, where you can upload your high scores and replays and download and view replays of other runs.
In Brief
+: Same great graphics from the last game, another kickin’ soundtrack, great new game mechanics like Crazy Jumps and ability to pick up more than 1 customer
-: Cabbies voice acting isn’t all that great, your kids shouldn’t see Iceman in action, no multi player
The Final Ratings Rundown
Graphics: 9.1
Sound: 9.6
Game play: 8.5
Replay Value: 6.7
Overall: 8.4
Rounded to fit GameFAQs Score: 8
Comments
This game is very similar to the first one. And if you loved the first one then I definitely recommend buying this one. But if you’re like me and am always looking for the maximum extras, I’d say you’d be best off with a rent. The cut of the multi player was the reason I didn’t buy this game.