Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller

"A great addition to the series"

Since its first appearance on the Dreamcast, Crazy Taxi has always been the favorite arcade hit of millions of gamers. Brought to the Dreamcast in early 2000, it has since seen two ports (Gamecube and Playstation2) and two sequels (1 of which appears exclusively on the Dreamcast) and the latest as an Xbox exclusive.

Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller takes place in a city known only as Glitter Oasis. Like the previous two versions, this city is modeled after a true to life city. This time around, you’ll be driving people around glittery and flashy Las Vegas.

Gameplay - 9
Crazy Taxi 3 controls just like Crazy Taxi’s for the Dreamcast. In fact, if you are used to the Dreamcast control scheme, you’ll be able to pick this one up and start playing immediately. For those of you unfamiliar with Crazy Taxi, shame on you. For a quick run-down of the controls, just consult you manual.

For those of you how have never picked up a copy of Crazy Taxi before, fear not. Crazy Taxi 3 will let you play what Dreamcast owners have been fussing about for years. Both stages from Crazy taxi 1 & 2 (West Coast and Little Apple) are in here along with all of their cabbies. So, in all, Crazy Taxi 3 includes 3 gorgeous stages and 12 cabbies (four to each stage).

If you are unfamiliar with the glory that is Crazy Taxi, I’ll give you the run down. Your goal in this game is to pick up passengers (up to four at a time) and get them from point A to B in a certain time. Now, the beauty of this game is, anything goes. Find any route, go anywhere, disobey the traffic laws, just get your customer to their destination before the time runs out. There is an arrow at the top of your screen to help you out. At the end of your run, you’ll be ranked and given a license according to how you did.

When you start a new game, you have four options. You can play for 3, 5 or 10 minutes or you can play by normal rules. If you select the normal rules mode, you can have a virtually endless game. You start the game with a certain amount of time (30-70 seconds, you can change this in options) and your goal is to pick up a passenger and quickly get them to their destination earning you more points when they reach it. The faster you get them there, the more time gets added to your overall time. Once your overall time reaches zero, you’re done.

Now, Crazy Taxi isn’t all mindless mayhem and traffic violations, there are also challenges just in case there’s a slight chance you might get bored with the main game. Each addition of Crazy Taxi usually packs in a couple of different challenging challenges ranging from fun stuff like Crazy Bowling (bowling with your car) to just plain frustrating challenges such as Crazy Poles (getting a number of passengers from pole A to pole B in a certain time). But Crazy Taxi 3 packs 12 different challenges. A few noteworthy challenges are Crazy Home-run in which the goal is to speed up and hit a ball into the stands. And interesting one is Crazy Tornado in which a tornado spews cars all over the place and you have to dodge them while still getting your passenger to there destination on time. For all you football fans, Crazy Football in which a quarterback just hopes in your car and you have to drive him to the end-zone while dodging cars trying to block you and pushing you out of bounds. For Circus fanatics, Crazy Ring where you’re only goal is to jump through a ring a specified number of times. Crazy Plates is an odd one where you have to climb (or rather jump) your way up a series of plates. Some challenges are quite challenging and some will only take you one try to beat. It’s really a good mix. For more on the challenges, consult your manual.

Of course, they don’t expect you to beat all these challenges without a few tricks. You got a total of four tricks at your disposal and you can use these at anytime an infinite number of times. For, you have the classic Crazy Dash. It allows you to either accelerate quickly or to gain additional speed for a second or two. The Crazy Drift allows you to do a sharp turn, compare it to drifting on any racing game. The Crazy Through is perhaps the easiest stunt to pull off; this move is simply driving incredibly close to someone else on the road. And finally, the Crazy Hop allows your car to jump. The faster you’re going when you perform the Crazy Hop, the further and higher your car jumps. During the main mode, these tricks will earn you additional cash so try doing them often.

Of course, this game will not actually allow you to run anybody over, they all manage to dodge or duck out of the way just in time.

Graphics - 9
Crazy Taxi 3 has all the amazing graphical effects, coloring and frame rate you come to expect from the previous two. There is some slowdown in the Glitter Oasis stage from all the lights and flashing effects (it is Las Vegas) but it only happens occasionally and not for a noticeable amount of time. Each of the other two stages is just as you remember them only with some slight graphical improvements.

One cool feature is that you can save and view replays (only in the challenges though). But, you can only save replays of challenges when you actually beat it. I think that it would’ve been better if you could save after any run. Some of them crashes are pretty cool and I’d love to watch them again.

Sound - 9
The only thing that I can see as to how to improve this is to add a jukebox feature so that you can play your own tunes off the harddrive. But, Crazy Taxi 3 has such an awesome selection; I guess it doesn’t really matter. With songs by Bad Religion, The Offspring and Citizen Bird, one can hardly complain. In the options, you can change what bands go with what stage. Don’t like a certain band? Turn them off.

There is more to this game then just the music as awesome as it is. There are also passenger, driver and pedestrian commentary. Such as, the passenger may say “left!” and your cabbie may respond “right”. or, if your passenger is barking too many commands and pointing hysterically, you cabbie may blurt out “sit down and shut up.” If you are pulling up to someone, you nearly ran them over, they’ll say something like “you nearly killed me, it’s alright, just take me to…” whatever or “what are you trying to do, kill me?” Also, when you get to the destination, they’ll critique your driving such as “wow, you’re one hell of a driver” to “you lousy driver”. Of course, there are more voice effects then just that, and I hardly do them justice here. It’s just one of those things that have to be experienced.

One thing that really gets on your nerves is the announcer. During gameplay, you hardly hear him at all unless you go the wrong way or don’t pick up a passenger in a certain amount of time. But in the challenges, he can get quite annoying. If you fail one of the challenges, he’ll say something like “were ya going?” or simply “failed.” In some of the harder challenges, this can get quite annoying.

Replay - 8
Crazy Taxi 3 is a great and fun game, but the lack of a multiplayer mode even in the third installment kind of kills it for me and many other player. True, there is always the controller passing method and try to beat each others scores, but at this point in video games, making a single player racing game is unheard of. This game still maintains its high replay value simply because of its humor and fun factor but a multiplayer mode would definitely improve it.

Overall - 9
Crazy Taxi remains in a genre all to itself. Though it may be considered racing, it is very different then your average racing game. Maybe it’s uniqueness makes it one of the most popular arcade hits to be ported to any console. Though it may be often duplicated, there is only one Crazy Taxi. And as of right now, that latest of the series is exclusive only to Xbox.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/31/02, Updated 07/31/02