Dom Robinson reviews

for

Distributed by
Sega

Price: £29.99

Players: 1

Not so much Crazy Taxi 2, but "part 2" as the sequel to one of the best Dreamcast games is released, swapping the up/down arena of San Francisco for inner city New York, complete with the World Trade Center, with the option of "Around Apple", for the complete NY experience or "Mini Apple" for one closer-knit section.

The premise is still the same: drive around town, pick up fares, drop them off, then move onto the next unsuspecting punter. Each time they have a time limit. The sooner you arrive, the more cash you'll score. Some people will also pay more than others, depending on the colour surrounding them.

When you stop, your fare will tell you where to go and a picture of their destination is shown. A green arrow will appear atop the screen and if you follow it you'll get closer, although note that it doesn't always point out a direct route. When you're nearly there, the arrow turns yellow and eventually changed to red before zooming off and pointing out the place the stop. If you can't see it after that, then you are the proud owner of a white stick.

If you have to get to where you're going by not quite sticking to the roads, then so be it. You can drive into the parking lot and jump off the first floor, cruise down the railway line or underwater and I even managed to replicate John McClane in Die Hard with a Vengeance when he drove along the interstate, saw what he wanted was on the road below and just took off from the side of the road to land down below with a thump. At the start of game, choose from the original or Arcade tracks, then one of four new drivers each with their own attributes and then choose whether to play for 3, 5 or 10 minutes or as long as you can manage before running out of time, the latter not being particularly easy as you get extra time for picking people up and doing the right thing.

There are two additional features to this version, the first being that you can take a group of people around to several locations, but rather than collecting customers individually, you'll find a group of up to four to pick up in one go. Then visit the various destinations to drop them off before you can move on to someone else. The second feature is the unrealistic but fun "Crazy Hop". Pressing the Y button makes your taxi hop into the air, which is useful for jumping up to a higher freeway or clearing a line of traffic in front of you because there's more vehicles about in this game making for a trickier game. The graphics are basically the same as the first game which could be construed as a problem since there's still pop-up from other cars from time to time and when doing some of the sub-games I found it slowed down when I came a cropper and fell from a great height. Also, I'd like to have seen some improved physics and damage to your car, but no such luck. The sound stays the same too, but I'd like to have seen the return of The Offspring's "All I Want", which made the first game for me, musically. The rev of the engine is useful when determining if a "Crazy Dash" has worked. The following bit is repeated from my original Crazy Taxi review as it also applies here: The handling of the car takes a little while to get used to and I find it's easier to perform tight turns by using the D-pad and not the analogue joystick, so tend to use that throughout most of the game. There's also special moves to consider such as the aforementioned Crazy Dash and Limit Cut which will take some time to perfect. At times, if you get involved in a crash it's not always easy to tear your way out of it if there are several cars involved and the time continues to tick down... Hints and Tips A personal tip I have: when you drop someone off, as the camera spins around, try to spot another fare waiting to be picked up. Thanks to The Great Cthulhu from uk.games.video.dreamcast for his advice on Crazy Dashes and Limit Cuts : When you start before you accelerate,put the car into R then straight into D and accelerate if you get a fast start (no wheelspin) that's a Crazy Dash (CD) (the engine pitch goes up real high). Use the same principle when you are moving, it works easier when you are moving at speed. Let go of Accelerate, shift into R, straight back into D then floor the accelerator. Make sure your finger is completely off the accelerator when you shift from D to R and back to D, it's really all in the timing. Practice doing them from a dead stop then you'll know if it's working or not and you'll get used to the engine noise that you should be hearing. A Limit Cut is a CD straight after a CD, you need to do the second (or third, fourth etc) CD just before the previous CD winds down, once again you need to learn what noise the engine makes. This should be all you need to know,it's basically a matter of timing, then practice, practice, practice...........

This time again we are also provided with extra mini-games which include running the long-jump, bashing balls, popping balloons and driving customers along a VERY high-up track which is so easy to fall off. Overall, if you enjoyed the first game, you'll enjoy this one too. It is more difficult though as the inner city structure is more densely packed and the gameplay is no different so if you were expecting much of a change you'll feel a bit disappointed. PS. Don't try the internet option. It takes you to a screen that purports to take you to the CT2 homepage at: ct2.hitmaker.co.jp/eu/index.html and then tells you that "the requested URL /eu/index.html was not found on this server". Eh-oh.

GRAPHICS SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC PLAYABILITY ORIGINALITY ENJOYMENT
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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2001.