Crazy Taxi 2

"Ever notice how sequels to RPGs mainly use Roman Numerals, and sequels to other games use Arabic Numerals?"

OPENING STATEMENT
I had high expectations of Crazy Taxi 2. The original Crazy Taxi was my all-time favorite Dreamcast game, and I had mastered the environments to a point where it was impossible to play without me getting a Class S License. And yet I kept playing. And playing. And playing. Well, finally Sega got their act together, and made a sequel to that pinnacle of Dreamcast play. Sadly, it is not as good as the original. Try as it might, it follows the rule of sequels which all movies seem to abide by. The sequel is just not as good as the original. Crazy Taxi 2 is by no means a bad game. It is just nowhere near as good as it could have been if Sega had put a little more effort into it.

GAMEPLAY--10
The gameplay is the sole area where I actually think that Sega improved Crazy Taxi 2 over the original game. The same insane driving through traffic jams, city streets, and beautiful parks is back. Now Sega has basically added hydraulics to your car. By pressing a button, your car can Crazy Hop. This adds a lot to the game. Many times, now, instead of having to drive around and find an entrance ramp to a higher road, you can just jump up to it. Crazy Hopping also brings you most of the shortcuts in the game. Leaping over a building here, on to a flat roof there, you cannot get the most out of your time limit without Crazy Hopping. And how far and how high you Crazy Hop depends entirely on how fast you are going when you jump, so get a running start so you do not crash head first into a semi when you are attempting to leap over it, something I have done many times before.

The returning gameplay, though, is where Crazy Taxi 2 really shines like a lighthouse on a dark Rhode Island shore. Your entire objective is to get the passenger(s) in the back of your cab to their destinations within the time limit. You do not need to obey any traffic laws, just get them there as fast as you can, damned be the consequences. The addition of multiple fares also changes Crazy Taxi 2 quite a bit. When you have two, three, or four passengers, you really need to have an idea of who to drop off first, who to drop off last, and in what order to drop of everyone in between. Because Hitmaker opted not to give you all that much more time than when you have only one passenger going to the same destination. Your cab is not exactly 'street legal' in my opinion either. You can easily bypass the maximum speed limit on your vehicle by using some strategies. You can whip around instantly by using another one. Mastering these speed boosts, and turning mechanisms is the key to succeeding in Crazy Taxi 2.

GRAPHICS--8
The graphics are actually worse than those in the original Crazy Taxi, which was released an entire year earlier. The main reason for this is the incessant pop-up. Fare areas, buildings, trees, people, even semis pop-up suddenly in front of you. This is very, very frustrating. Unbeknownst to you, there is an invisible city bus in that enormous patch of wide open asphalt in front of you. Whenever you see open road, or even when you do not, proceed with caution. You never know when a garbage truck could appear like a deer out of nowhere on a rural two-lane highway through the woods.

Everything else in the graphics department is about as perfect as perfect could be, though, which tells you that the pop-up is rather substantial to lower my score two points. The view changes that you can pull off are marvelous (sorry, I just really wanted to use that word in one of my reviews), and, when in the Replay Mode, you can create your own little video like those scripted ones from Dallas that you can see every single day on Cops. I hope that if Crazy Taxi 3 or Crazy Taxi 4 or any Crazy Taxi whatsoever is set in Los Angeles, that there is a code to unlock a white Ford Bronco. That could just plow through everyone, and the replay video scenes would be fantastic.

The taxi's themselves always come with that newly waxed car shine on them. Now we know what those poor cabbies do in their spare time. Perhaps Hot-D's arthritis (I'm just assuming) prevents him from reaching the top of the car, so he pays Iceman to do it for him. The buildings look like real buildings with a slight cartoonish flair. And considering that the game is set in downtown New York City, it is very good that the buildings are among the best things graphically in Crazy Taxi 2. Sega may have not instructed Hitmaker to go for photo-realism, but Crazy Taxi 2 looks great nonetheless.

MUSIC--7
SOUND--9
The music is substantially worse than the original Crazy Taxi's music as well. Methods of Mayhem just does not fit the Crazy Taxi game as well as Bad Religion did. Also, The Offspring had better songs in the first Crazy Taxi. The most fitting song in this version of Crazy Taxi is The Offspring's ''No Brakes.'' In a game like Crazy Taxi, where braking is so vital, I found that tune quite ironic. The songs really did not motivate me to get my sorry butt in gear as much as the songs from the first game either. Apparently, Bad Religion should be included over Tommy Lee in Crazy Taxi 3. Sega take note. Also include Lit and Eve 6.

The screech of the brakes, the whine of the engine, the screams of a herd of mimes. These are the sounds of Crazy Taxi 2. Your passengers are far more interactive this time around. Picking up four mimes, and listening to them scream at the top of their lungs while you roar down a hill is really quite funny. The cheerleaders sound like they are straight out of Clueless, and the guys with afros sound like they could be from a bad seventies sitcom. These voices are hilarious. Sadly, the actual cabbies voices are kind of disturbing (Hot-D sounds like an eight-year-old, not a seventy-eight-year-old.) and I would have preferred that Sega and Hitmaker had spent some more time on finding them. The other sounds, like car noises, and sounds of ramming into buildings and other things, are well-done and they really do not act like open sores in Crazy Taxi 2.

CONTROL--9
Crazy Taxi 2 controls for the most part, excellently. The advanced techniques can all be carried out with a little bit of practice by all players. Everyone is able to pull them off if they know what to do, and that really adds to the accessibility of the game. 'Y' works great for the Crazy Hop maneuver, which is good because you will find yourself leaping over things more than you would think you would. Reversing and returning to a forward gear is easily done by pressing 'A' and 'B.' Moreover, 'R' and 'L' seemed designed to make cars accelerate and brake in games such as this, and that is why the Crazy Taxi series fits so much better on the Dreamcast controller than it probably could on any other. Make sure to practice those advanced moves though, because they are far more necessary in Crazy Taxi 2 than the original Crazy Taxi.

FUN--9
Crazy Taxi 2 is a very fun game. But, when its predecessor only costs 19.99 and is much easier to simply pick up and play than Crazy Taxi 2, do you really want to pay the extra twenty or thirty dollars. The answer to that is yes. You should buy both Crazy Taxi and Crazy Taxi 2. The exhilarating experience of ripping around turns to drop off a little old lady at the Hard Rock Cafe should be missed at no cost. You can get all of that road rage out on the slow tractor trailers within this Crazy Taxi 2 before you hit the real road. You will be all tapped out. If the court orders anger management counseling for traffic anger, Crazy Taxi 2 should definitely be in that room with the odd little couch. The psychiatrist can be someone in the 'passenger seat' yelling at you to get moving and asking how many more minutes until we are there. Anyway, even when you get bored with the actual game, the Crazy Pyramid will be great fun. Progressing through that blasted pyramid to unlock the secrets of Crazy Taxi 2 is one of the most rewarding experiences in the game. And the Replay Mode is a whole lot of fun as well. You have a minute and a half to create the most entertaining driving video that you can. Get started right away. Five...four...three...two...and action!

CHALLENGE--HIGH
Remember those moves in the original Crazy Taxi, like the drift turn, that helped you get higher scores but you did not actually need to know to succeed in the game? Well, in Crazy Taxi 2 they are absolutely necessary to master to even snag a Class C license in Arcade/Normal Mode. Why did Sega opt to rename Arcade Mode, 'Normal Mode' anyway? 'Arcade Mode' sounded so much better. Back on track, if you do not master these moves, do not expect to ever snag any good licenses. Also, do not expect to advance beyond the first row in the Crazy Pyramid. While I believe, at least for the first three rows, that the Crazy Pyramid is easier than the original Crazy Taxi's mode of the same name, it becomes far more difficult when you reach the second row. Master those moves. Master them. Use the force (pack) if need be, but find whatever way you can to master them.

REPLAY VALUE--HIGH
Sure, I still play the original Crazy Taxi even though I own it's sequel. That does not mean that I do not play Crazy Taxi 2 an awful lot as well. Granted this rating would have been an awful lot higher with more than four default cabbies, multiplayer and/or online play, and a host of other things I would have liked to see Crazy Taxi 2 include. In fact, I kind of consider Crazy Taxi 2 almost an expansion pack to the original Crazy Taxi, so they might as well have included the cities from the first Crazy Taxi as well. You will still play Crazy Taxi 2 a lot, trying to beat your highest scores. I even replay some of my favorite Crazy Pyramid mini-games trying to beat my highest scores. Crazy Taxi 2 is by no means a game that you pick up and play once, never to touch again.

PROS
*Your taxis can now jump over traffic, instead of weaving through it.
*Two new cities for Crazy Taxi masters.
*Among the highest replay value for any game.

CONS
*More pop-up than a children's book.
*The music is not as fitting as the original's music.
*Not nearly as much of a pick up and play game.

CLOSING STATEMENT
Sure Crazy Taxi may not be quite as good as the original game. But that hardly trumps the fact that it is a masterpiece in its own right, and it should be mandatory purchasing for all Dreamcast owners, like the original game, Soul Calibur, Street Fighter Alpha 3, and Marvel vs. Capcom 2. Now go to the store and pick it up, and start mastering those advanced maneuvers now!

OVERALL--9

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/01/01, Updated 07/18/01