Crazy Taxi 2

"It's a great game, but with some glaring omissions"

After months of waiting, we finally have Crazy Taxi 2! Hitmaker's sequel has a lot to live up to; after all, it's the sequel to one of the most addictive and playable arcade games of the last few years. So how does the sequel hold up? Perhaps it depends on your expectations.

I picked up my reserved copy today and played it literally all evening, for at least a good 4 hours. Now I feel obligated to let you all know both how it compares to the first game, and how it is as a game all by itself.

I'd mention story, as the review guidelines want, but there really isn't any, so here's an overview instead. You are a taxi driver in the Crazy Taxi Cab Company, and your job is to deliver customers where they want to go. That is your ONLY job. Things such as following rules of the road, abiding by the speed limit, staying on the road, etc. do not apply. In fact, you will need to break all these rules to do well in this game :)

Graphics/Sound: 9/10

The graphics are exactly what you'd expect from a Dreamcast game nowadays. The city is composed of sharp, detailed structures and filled with a variety of sharp, detailed vehicles (including a double-length bus you'll come to really hate). The slowdown that occasionally came up in the first Dreamcast version is practically gone. Overall, the environment may seem a bit less varied than the cities in the first game, but when you're deeply involved in racing customers to their destinations, you'll hardly notice.
You'll recognize many of the speech and sound effects from the first game; many have been recycled. All of the customers and cabbies, though, have new speech, and you won't get tired of it so quickly. The New Yorkers will spit such quotes as ''Watch it, dumb---!'' and ''You almost killed me!'' in convincing voices. All in all the speech seems less repetitive than the speech in the first game.
As for the music: did you like the first Crazy Taxi's music? If you did, you'll get to enjoy 4 new Offspring tracks during gameplay, and clips from another Offspring song as well as Methods of Mayhem tracks during other scenes (like the menus and ''ending''). If you hated the CT1 soundtrack, you'll be turning this one off too. I like the music however :)

Gameplay - 10/10

The core gameplay of Crazy Taxi has not been changed much; after all, why mess with a good thing? As in the first game, you pick up customers, then deliver them to their destinations as quickly as possible. However, the few tweaks that have been made really do enhance the gameplay.
First of all, the Crazy Hop has been added. By pressing the Y button, you will ''jump.'' The height you can ''jump'' depends on the speed that you're moving. You can jump over just about anything -- cars, buildings, you name it. You'll also earn tips from your customers, for being in the air. Jumping is not necessary for most tasks, but can be really helpful if utilized properly. Once you're used to it, you can skip small sections of your routes and avoid collisions that would have slowed you down. Shortcut nuts will love it!
The second major change is the multiple-passenger feature. In addition to being able to pick up a passenger, you can now pick up a group of 2-4 passengers all at one time. Each passenger will request a different destination, and you'll have to deliver them all. Tips earned for Crazy Throughs, Drifts and Jumps are multiplied by the number of passengers currently in the cab, so if you're on the highway or a similarly congested area you can really rake in the change. However, you MUST deliver ALL members of the group to make ANY money at all. The passenger timer is shared by all members of the group, and if it runs out (or the game time expires), you will make NOTHING. So you're basically taking a risk. Experts beware!
The physics have also been tweaked a bit; the much-loved (or much-hated, depending who you are) ''wall trick'' (sliding along a wall at high speed) seems more difficult to do, in particular. I think these changes were for the better, and overall, CT2 plays beautifully. A perfect 10.

Features - 7/10

The first Crazy Taxi for Dreamcast was loaded with options. You could save records for 4 separate players, register the top 20 ''arcade rules'' scores, drive around two huge cities, play minigames, and more.
There's plenty to do in Crazy Taxi 2, true, but fans of the first game may feel cheated. I'll get into this later.
There are two variations of the city to play on: Around Apple and Small Apple. Small Apple is only one of the main city's three or so areas, although more destinations have been added; Around Apple is the whole big thing. As in the first game, you may play by arcade rules (start with 50 seconds, earn time bonuses for picking up and delivering customers, game ends when time runs out), or you may play with set time limits of 3, 5 or 10 minutes. Despite the fact that Around Apple is a pretty big place, it still feels like there was a lot more ground to cover in the first game, which contained two large and completely different cities.
Also affecting the game is the lack of options. In the first Crazy Taxi you could change starting time limit, time difficulty, and traffic difficulty. On the easiest levels, even a novice who didn't know how to do a Crazy Dash could do well, even over $5,000. Well, those options have been removed in the sequel, and you're stuck playing on one set of options. For people who would set the difficulty lower on the first CT, this game will be MUCH more difficult. While this will be the true test for ''who's better than who else,'' it's a glaring omission nowadays, when arcade-style games usually come loaded with options. I'm not sure if these options can be unlocked, but that's irrelevant... they should have been there to begin with.
The game sheds its arcade roots even more when you consider that there's no real high score list. Sure, you can see your top ten records for each mode in the Ranking menu, but when I placed in the ''top 20,'' there was no rewarding ''Enter Your Initials.'' While some might consider this a stupid, mindless complaint, it would have been an easy feature to keep.
Lastly, the option to keep track of up to four separate players' records has been removed. Now all records are merged into one chart. If it's just yourself playing it really doesn't matter, but if other people play on your system (like they do mine), it's another thing you wish they hadn't removed.
What's been added to Crazy Taxi 2? First off, there's an Internet mode. The included DreamKey browser will connect you to the CT2 homepage, where (presumably) you can post records and replay saves (more on those shortly). I haven't been able to try this yet, but the Internet modes in games like Jet Grind Radio and Shenmue were always fun, especially when ranking your scores against other players.
The mini-game mode has also returned. Crazy Pyramid has a brand-new set of 16 games. The games themselves include re-done versions of popular Crazy Box games (such as Crazy Jump 2 and Crazy Balloon 2), plus originals that test your Crazy Hop skills (Crazy Hurdles, Crazy Steps) and more. The difficulty on them ranges from really easy to ridiculously difficult. As you complete them you will be rewarded with maps for the game's two courses, two new vehicles (one of them being the bike from the first game), and additional mini-games. The last two are very hard! One of them challenges you to drop off 29 customers in a preset course within 6 minutes... that took me almost 2 hours to beat. The very last demands that you drop off one customer in what seems to be EVERY Small Apple drop-off point (about 33 in all), in ANY order, within 6 minutes. This is a challenge because you are given practically NO help! If you complete it, however (I haven't yet) you will be rewarded with a pleasant surprise from the first game.
The other mode added is a Replay mode that allows you to start in one of ten positions, drive around for two minutes, receive a score based on how crazy your driving was, and watch or save a replay of it. This seems utterly pointless to me, but hey, maybe you'll have fun with it. By the way, you can also save replays of Crazy Pyramid mini-games, if you attain the #1 ranking for the game you played.
In summary, there's plenty to do, but some of the features I expected were left out--and I'm sure I'm not the only one who expected them.

Replayability - 7/10

The first game was VERY replayable, due to the player tracking, two cities, selectable difficulties, etc. Most players will want to play this game about as much as they did the first one, since the gameplay is even better. However, novice players WILL be turned off and frustrated by the non-adjustable difficulty. Experts may be disappointed, too, since the first game could have been made harder. And those that enjoyed having two completely different cities in CT1 may eventually get bored of what is essentially a single city in CT2. The minigames can be replayed for record-breaking but will wear out quickly if played to death. The Internet mode will appeal to record-comparing players, but it seems that most people don't connect their Dreamcasts to the Internet. Therefore I must warn that CT2 may not be as replayable as CT1.

Overall - 8/10 (not an average)

I must admit that I had high expectations for CT2, but that's mostly because CT1 was as good as it was. Personally, I do not feel that CT2 holds as much replay value as CT1, and this is an arcade-style game's most important aspect. Now I answer the question: is Crazy Taxi 2 worth putting down $40 on? That of course depends on who you are. If you have not played the first Crazy Taxi, or own a PS2 and not a Dreamcast, the first game would be a much better investment and a more varied, complete package, one that you'd play longer than CT2. If you didn't like the first Crazy Taxi, you won't like this one either. If you're like me, and you loved the first Crazy Taxi, you will at least want to try the sequel. The problem is that there are an awful lot of great $20 games out there right now, like Confidential Mission, Project Justice and Mars Matrix, not to mention the recently-expanded line of ''Sega All Stars'' games. Honestly, I feel that any two of the above may be more worth your gaming dollars than CT2 right now. To a Crazy Taxi fan, this may not matter though.
I can at least guarantee that if you enjoyed CT1, you will enjoy playing CT2. The only question is: for how long?

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/31/01, Updated 05/31/01