Published by: Acclaim Developed by: Acclaim ESRB Rating: T for Strong Language For: PS2, Gamecube, Sega Dreamcast Version reviewed: Gamecube

Crazy Taxi first appeared in American arcades as a popular game, warmly welcomed because of the refreshing twist on the driving genre. The simple fact was, it made errand running fun. After incarnations on the PS2, and Dreamcast, it finally came out with a less-warmly received sequel, Crazy Taxi 2. Then the Gamecube game came out, but it too was not well liked because it was just more of the same. Xboxers rejoice: now you too can enjoy the pleasing romp through cities that might resemble famous American cities in Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller. However, Gamecube owners are stuck with an old, but fun, rehash from the mid-\'90s, full of rockin\' punk music from The Offspring and Bad Religion and so much cursing it will scar your ears.

Graphics

The only good thing here are the cars that you drive, because everything else has a blocky look to it that looks as if it might have come out of the Dreamcast era, or possibly the early days of the PS2. People are angular blocks that have blurry faces and ugly animations. The game is just not pretty to look at. C\'mon. With the Gamecube, at least, they could have had better graphics, but this being a straight-up port and all. Oh well.

Game play

Probably the best part of the game. The idea here is to try to get as close as possible to traffic, without actually hitting the cars, kind of like in Burnout except without the boost. If you happen to jump, slide, and do daredevil stunts in your cab, you get tips. You must not hit cars to maintain the tips. However, all the game play really boils down to is \'deliver passenger A to destination D and repeat\' in the allotted amount of time. A feature that was much hyped was the Crazy Box mode, but this is really just an excuse for some extra mini game style levels that are super hard. While the game remains a classic, it is not worth revisiting for people who have played the first two, or even the third, games. That is, unless you are a die hard Crazy Taxi fan. In that case I\'m worried. Very. Worried.

Sound

The sound is mediocre in Crazy Taxi. The real highlight is actually the music, which is a blast to listen to. Not only is the music fun to listen to, its also not even relavent to the game. I think the designers thought that the target audience was skater punks, but just the same. Done by The Offspring and Bad Religion, the music will stick in your head, day after day after day after...until one day KABLAMO!!! your head explodes. Just kidding. But the music is really very catchy, and your toe will be tapping along to the tunes, until you know the lyrics, and there you are, an armchair cabbie singing punk music. Really. The voice acting in this game is competent, but there are some minor, okay major, quips I have with it. 1) Way too repetitive. I constantly found myself mocking the passengers after they started yelling the same things over and over. 2) Man is there cursing in this game! And it\'s done all wrong, too. All the cussing has the wrong emPHAsis on the wrong syLLAble. 3) Think it could sound like the cars are shifting gears? I mean, really, since when in recent history(like, maybe since cars actually started having gear shifts) did a car not change gears, be it automatic or stick shift? The cars in game end up sounding like that monotonous math teacher everyone hated in high school that you were stuck with for two semesters straight. 4) Besides the things the passengers yell at you, there are also things that potential passengers yell, and it again gets incredibly repetitive. These things can vary from \'Watch it man!\' to \'Dagnabit!\' and \'Whoa!\'. That\'s almost it. There is not much variety in this game in both the audio and visual, as well as game play departments, as is shown above, and this does spell the recipe for success in games. This means that you can easily see, and hear, the arcade roots of Crazy Taxi.

Control

Well, this game at least does something great. It controls spot on. All you really need to know is that, at the default setting, R is accelerate, L is brake, and A and B change gears from Drive to Reverse, and vice versa. Those are the only gears. You can\'t downshift at all, which is a loss in the realism department, but it certainly keeps the game action-oriented.

Appropriateness

This game, like most, has one or two issues in terms of appropriateness. One of these is the language issue, which basically is involved in almost every aspect of the sound department, excluding the music for the most part. Not only is this really offensive, it is also really unnecessary for the developers to be using that kind of language in a game. While Crazy Taxi does have quite a few problems with language, there is nothing that is really wrong with the game in this respect. Overall, Crazy Taxi is just a mediocre, old title with tons of bad language. Not a bad buy if you like driving games and can find this for cheap.