Taxi Chaos Reviews
Taxi Chaos is a fun, flawed game that takes a lot of inspiration from Crazy Taxi, but does genuinely improve upon the formula in impressive ways.
Taxi Chaos feels very much like a proof of concept; it's certainly evidence that a taxi game has its place in 2021, though it's lacking that vital spark that would truly make it a must-play title. The city itself is well-made, with plenty of sights to behold, but the overall visual design feels a bit generic and lacks its own voice. There are few incentives to play for extended periods of time, so how long the game lasts is largely dependent on your own willingness to climb the online leaderboard. Nevertheless, Taxi Chaos is an admirable revival of a genre that's been dormant for far too long, and a good foundation for a potential sequel down the line.
While some additions to the old formula provide value, particularly the ability to leap onto buildings to shave time on fares and online leaderboards, falling short on all the other parts of the experience drags the entire game down. The lack of Crazy Box-style minigames further reduces any replay value. Crazy Taxi succeeded by offering players the feeling of chaos and excitement, either through its then-novel gameplay mechanics or its untouchable sense of style. Taxi Chaos brings neither to the table and offers only minimal appeal to folks who might have missed all the hoopla twenty years ago. 3/10 beaded seat covers
Taxi Chaos is fine in short bursts if you want to chase high scores, but for $30 to $35 depending on your platform, there just isn't enough content here to recommend this. Especially considering you can still buy Crazy Taxi on Xbox Live for a third of the price.
Copying a formula doesn't necessarily replicate its success. Taxi Chaos is an OK-ish game with good intentions, but it lacks the charisma and fun factor that made Crazy Taxi a classic.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
No more advanced than Crazy Taxi was back when it debuted all those years ago, and without the same trademark attitude, Taxi Chaos is a real missed opportunity to modernise an arcade favourite.
An utterly pointless remake of Crazy Taxi which adds nothing new to an ageing arcade game and somehow manages to remove what made the original so playable in the first place. A missed opportunity to improve or update the gameplay renders this instantly moribund.
I’m sure the biggest question on Crazy Taxi fan’s minds is how well does Taxi Chaos scratch that very specific itch. I can happily report that it scratches it very, very well. The Arcade and Pro modes will give you the same rush you got out of Crazy Taxi, and the new Free roam mode will have you spending hours scouring the city for hidden collectibles. Of course, if you’re not a fan of hunting down collectibles, Taxi Chaos might lose it’s steam pretty quick. The visuals do the trick, with only a few minor hiccups. There are some occasional glitches here and there – this one time I hit a weird jump and ended up flying in the air as high as the tallest buildings – but they’re few and far between. The voicework gets repetitive real quick, but eventually I just learned to zone it out. I do wish they had some licensed tracks here, but I get music licensing can be pricey. While I’ve easily logged in a dozen or so hours into Taxi Chaos, I’m still itching to get back into Free roam to find every last collectible. I truly hope the team at Team6 Game Studios are hard at work at some DLC, because I would love more content.
If all you want is a facsimile of Crazy Taxi that you can play without dusting off your old Dreamcast then Taxi Chaos just about fits the bill. But that's all it does. For anybody coming into this without the benefits of nostalgia or more money than sense, Taxi Chaos is just a dull arcade driver with precious little to offer other than the dubious pleasure of chasing a high score. Send this one to scrap yard.
Now, that does not mean you should not give Taxi Chaos a single thought. It just means if you were hoping for the spiritual successor to Crazy Taxi, you would be better off going back and playing the original.
Overall for £30 ($40USD, $55AUD), Taxi Chaos is too limiting to really recommend picking at the minute. Even on sale I could not recommend it unless you are a mega fan of arcade taxi games. The framework is there for a good game and it unfortunately feels incomplete in its current state. If further additions are added later down the line then I will make a part two to this review.
Between the scant content, absent personality, and dry gameplay loop, it's not worth the outrageous fare.
The spirit of Sega's legendary Crazy Taxi returns in Taxi Chaos, a game that manages to capture the shallow fun of the coin-op classic.
Is Taxi Chaos going to blow you away? Of course not, but it is pretty decent. You won’t care for its soundtrack, its visuals won’t wow you, and its handling is as simple as can be. Blasting around New Yellow City while picking up passengers and dropping them off at their desired locations is fun though, while pro mode is highly rewarding for those who learn the ins and outs of the game’s map. So, if you’re after something to scratch that Crazy Taxi itch, Taxi Chaos may well be of interest to you.
The danger of playing with nostalgia and doing it injustice means that the high bar that was set before it is the bare minimum that needs to be achieved to be even deemed worthwhile. There are a lot of call backs to Crazy Taxi in this review and that is due to the derivative nature that Taxi Chaos borrows its concept from. The sub-par graphics, generic map, bland soundtrack and lack of new ideas or the ability to even replicate what came before it has destined Taxi Chaos to the copycats of shame bin. If, even after reading this review there is still some urge to play Taxi Chaos then it is highly recommended to go and track down a copy of Crazy Taxi and Crazy Taxi 2 and play these instead.
This is not the Crazy Taxi you're looking for. Move along.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
In a city the size of New York, you'd think there'd be two things: a massive city and all kinds of people. Taxi Chaos doesn't really have either at the end of the day, and it leads to a barely-above-average experience as a result. I suppose you could rip through a podcast backlog just driving around the city, but if I wanted to do that there's plenty of options for open world driving on Switch as it stands.
Much like the Cab drivers within the game, Taxi Chaos succeeds in driving its customers away. Unless you have an insatiable desire to play a modern-day Crazy Taxi knock-off, you’d best steer clear of this one.
If someone never heard of Crazy Taxi, played Taxi Chaos, and then tried Crazy Taxi; they would think that Taxi Chaos was some sort of rudimentary precursor to the series. It's not a terrible game but it's certainly not nearly as enjoyable as its 22 year old counterpart.
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