Taxi Chaos Reviews
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.
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.
So, how does Taxi Chaos stack up? Well, it's definitely not going to make you go praise it out on the streets. It was certainly fun for a period of time, that period being about an hour, after which it loses its novelty. I never really played Crazy Taxi as kid, but Taxi Chaos doesn't really instill in me a desire to play Crazy Taxi. Taxi Chaos isn't very chaotic, but there are taxis. There is a bit of personality in the interactions your chosen cabbie has with the passengers, but these get reused so quick you'll know them by heart after about twenty minutes. There isn't nearly enough draw for the game to really warrant much attention. Yeah, I might have had fun with it for about 15 to 20 minutes, but it isn't something I would suggest for anyone looking to really invest themselves in.
Taxi Chaos sought to emulate a 22 year old classic, thus having 22 years to learn what made Crazy Taxi great. Despite this, Taxi Chaos falls flat and fails to recapture the thrills and high-speed gameplay of its progenitor. At its high price point on the Nintendo eShop in relation to the content within, I cannot recommend Taxi Chaos in its current, shallow state.
Taxi Chaos presents some fleeting moments of chaotic gameplay but lacks the required personality to reach its inspiration’s heights. You can tell there is some passion behind it, and there are some interesting ideas, but its graphics and music are uninspired, and the overall package offers lacklustre of content. When played casually, you can get a few moments of fun out of it, but only the staunchest Crazy Taxi fans will be able to get some enjoyment from this attempt to revive its formula.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
This is not the Crazy Taxi you're looking for. Move along.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
If you somehow never got to play Crazy Taxi or you no longer have access to play it, then Taxi Chaos is a decent pick and play an arcade game to enjoy in small gaming bursts. It’s a valiant effort but it kinda lacks the magic of the game it’s inspired from. Lacking memorable characters, pumping music and that atmosphere I used to feel in the arcade feels absent here. Taxi Chaos also doesn’t try anything new with the formula. For myself I found myself wanting to dig out Crazy Taxi and play that instead. But I guess when I’m too lazy to do that I’ll probably still give Taxi Chaos a drive-through.
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.
I have fond memories of playing Crazy Taxi on my SEGA Dreamcast in the noughties. When offered the chance to try out Taxi Chaos – a perceived spiritual successor to Crazy Taxi – I was keen to see whether the classic arcade racer’s gameplay could be brought back to modern screens in style. I was also curious about whether I had improved my virtual driving skills in that time. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I haven’t.
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.
Taxi Chaos is a simple and fun game for casual playthrough or to enjoy with young children. The control of the cab is accessible and the scenery is very colorful and well designed. This spiritual successor fulfilled his mission to reproduce Crazy Taxi's gameplay, but failed to bring the chaotic atmosphere of the title that inspired it. The repetition in the objectives, dialogues and music makes it quickly become tiring. For a game that has Chaos in its name, it misses a little bit more chaos.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
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
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.
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.
Taxi Chaos has aspirations to be something far grander than it ever achieves. It lacks a personality of its own, a reason to keep coming back to its flat city, and really anything memorable. This is simply a pale imitation of Crazy Taxi, and just doesn’t do anything new or inventive for the genre in the 20 years since that game debuted. Taxi Chaos isn’t a spiritual successor, it’s a mundane offspring.
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.
Taxi Chaos is nostalgic arcade fun. For better, and for worse it takes the Crazy Taxi formula and modernises it without breaking new ground. Fans of the genre will find a lot to like here.