Taxi 2 (video game)
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"Ce n'est pas Schlesser, c'est un taxi ! "
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Taxi 2 (Also known as Taxi 2: Le Jeu) is a racing game published by Ubisoft for PlayStation, Sega Dreamcast, Microsoft Windows and Game Boy Color only in France. While the Dreamcast and PC versions were developed by Blue Sphere Games, the PS1 version was developed by DC Studios (Not to be confused with DC Comics) and the Game Boy Color version was developed by Visual Impact. It is based on the movie of the same name and it was originally scheduled to land at the same time as the film, but due to possible development issues, the game arrived a little late, releasing three months later for PC and Game Boy Color, one year and nine months later for the Dreamcast and almost two years later for the PlayStation.
Why It Sucks
NOTE: PS1, Dreamcast, and PC versions only
General
- Unbelievably god-awful graphics, all of the textures of the game look incredibly blurry to the point that it reminds a lot of the results of applying the configuration of a video of LowSpecGamer to a recent game, the 3D models of the vehicles, and some of the structures look very blocky and the skyboxes of the levels consist of pictures of real-life landscapes, which could look great if it wasn't for the fact that these landscapes are of very low quality, looking even worse than the textures.
- The sprite used for the cockpit view, which consists in the cockpit of a real Peugeot 406, looks really out of place in the game, and despite the fact that the previously mentioned sprite looks particularly good, it contrasts a lot with the rest of the graphical section of the game, which seems to try to be realistic and cartoony at the same time.
- The general gameplay is quite monotonous and boring, all of the levels of the game consist of driving from point A to point B while reaching checkpoints before the time runs out, there are no additional objectives, no open-world elements, and no variation between levels apart from the implementation of some new mechanics and elements.
- Atrocious handling and driving physics that resembles a lot to the Test Drive 6 driving physics, but with a worsened and slower pacing. In general terms, the handling of your car is very poor because it takes the curves in a quite open way, meaning that if you want to take a closed curve, you have to stop your car, readjust your position by going in reverse, and then turning to the side that you want to take, and in the case of the PC and Sega Dreamcast versions, your car moves painfully slow, even if you reach the maximum amount of speed with or without using the nitrogen tank (240 and 320 km/h respectively), the car will still feel very slow and like if you were driving a truck carrying more than two cargo boxes. Due to this, the sense of speed in the game is quite inexistent and the pacing ends up being quite slow, also, it takes a lot of time for the car to reach the maximum amount of speed, in most cases, it takes more than five seconds just to reach it.
- Due to the terrible driving physics and the handling of the vehicle, the controls can feel very slippery and stiff at the same time, and sometimes the controls can get quite unresponsive for no apparent reason, especially on the PC version, as Jeuxvideo stated that the keyboard controls were too sensitive.
- The control scheme for the Dreamcast and PlayStation versions is very strange and awkward. To accelerate the car, you have to press X or A in the case of the Dreamcast, which is okay but to break the car, you have to press R1 or R2 for the PlayStation controller and the right trigger for the Dreamcast, which makes no sense, mostly because almost all of the games of that era used square to brake and there is no reason why there are two buttons assigned to a single command, and to make things worse, this is not even the only one, as the horn can be activated by pressing L1 or L2.
- The game has an extremely short length, with only twelve missions available for the PC and Dreamcast versions, while the PlayStation version has only nine, and all of them can be completed in less than 30 minutes.
- The game makes use of certain clips taken from the movie for the cutscenes and introductory images, however, all of these clips have very low quality, looking very pixelated and the colors looking very distorted and blurry.
- You don't have any mirror or button to look back, instead, you have to go back just to see what's behind your car. The PlayStation version has even a worse time dealing with this because the camera will not move to the back part of your car when you go in reverse, instead, the camera will switch temporarily to the cockpit's view.
- The turbo is unlocked at the fourth level, and while this may sound useful for saving time, using it very often will burn your car's engine, resulting in an instant game over, however, the problem is that the game doesn't tell you when to use the turbo again to prevent overheating, in other words, using the turbo is a hit-or-miss situation because you will never know if it's safe to use it or no.
- While the music composed for the game is not bad, the main theme of the game is very lazily done, as it consists of just a loop of two seconds.
- All of the sound effects are awful, for instance, your vehicle sounds more like a blender than a real car. Some other sound effects are misleading from the PlayStation version, like the sound effect that plays when you crash your vehicle.
- Even after beating the last level, the credits won't show up on the screen, giving the impression that the game was terribly rushed and left unfinished.
- Almost no sense of reward, beating the game will only unlock the arcade mode, and if you're wondering, the arcade mode is basically the same thing as the mission mode, the only difference is that here you compete against your rival of the second level.
- No replay value, as stated before, beating the game will just unlock a different mode with the same levels and objectives of the story mode, but with the difference that you will be racing against your rival of the second level, there are no additional vehicles, no unlockables, and no collectibles.
PS1 version only
- The graphics look even more blurry and blocky in comparison to the PC and Dreamcast versions of the game, something that has no excuse since the game was released almost two years after the first versions of the game were released, many games in the same console that were released the same year or even years before looked much better than what the game did.
- As for the cockpit view means, it still presents the same graphical style for the sprite, but the problem is that this sprite is different and it looks very pixelated and poorly trimmed, like if a kid tried to trim it in Adobe Photoshop without knowing anything about the usage of the program.
- The car animations are painfully stiff, when you brake and turn your car to the sides, your car will feel more like if you were moving a box with both hands, especially when you notice that the wheels of your car don't even move to the sides while turning.
- In the case of the handling, the complete opposite happens. Here your car is much faster, but the problem is that the handling issues still persist and in this version are much worse because your car has very slippery handling, and taking into consideration that the speed of your car is superior, you will experience many problems while trying to take a curve adequately. As for the maximum amount of speed means, in this case, you can reach it in less than one second. Another thing to mention is that for some reason your car will get stuck in a single amount of speed for a considerable amount of seconds if you slightly break or stop pressing the accelerate button.
- For some strange reason your car is very prone to tilt to the sides while driving, even if you're driving on flat terrain, the car will still tilt to the left or the right side, something that can get really annoying.
- If you're using a dual-analog or a dual-shock controller, the controls of your vehicle will break completely, if you use the d-pad for turning the vehicle, the sensibility of it will be exaggeratedly low, but if you use the analog, the complete opposite will happen, making the driving even worse.
- The guidance arrow was present in the PC and Dreamcast versions to guide the player to the right way in many of the big and maze levels, but in the PlayStation version is not present, making those the levels more confusing for the player, and as if this wasn't enough, taking the wrong way will lead you to an instant game over, something that didn't happen in the previously mentioned versions.
- This version has more bugs and glitches than the original versions. One of the most noticeable examples is that when you press the reverse button and spin the car while accelerating, the animations will get more stiff than usual and the car will move in a very strange and impossible way.
- Extremely broken collision detection. In a similar way to FlatOut 3: Chaos & Destruction, crashing at high speed with another car can either destroy your vehicle or just make a little damage, and what's even worse is that hitting a wall or a fence at high speed will cause your car to fly off to the left/right side without decelerating and barely suffering damage.
- The AI of your rival of the third mission (The part where you race against a rally driver) is also broken and very unfair, he races much faster than you and will often crash your car from behind when you finally overtake him, but the worst part of this is that he can seriously damage your vehicle even if he slightly touches you, making the task of beating your rival very tedious and hard.
- Terrible camera that will always try to focus in the back part of the car, something that can be quite awkward because it will adjust in several uncomfortable angles each time you're turning to the sides. Another thing to mention is that the camera will also get too far away from the position of your car if you slightly use the turbo, and not only that, it takes several seconds for the game to adjust the position of the camera in the same place as before.
- As mentioned before, the PlayStation version of the game has only nine missions in comparison to the twelve missions of the original versions, but not only that, the levels that were not deleted from the PlayStation versions suffered several downgrades, as they're shorter than they should be and some of the missions were split in two, like the mission of the beginning, in which the first part is used for a tutorial and the second part is the "real" content of the game. Another aspect to mention from the downgrade of the levels is that all of the streets are narrower than they should be, making some of the levels even harder taking into consideration that the handling is quite slippery and unresponsive and the collision detection is entirely broken.
- In the PC and Dreamcast versions you have ten seconds to reach the first checkpoint of each level, but in the PlayStation version, you only have five seconds to reach the same checkpoint, probably because the levels are smaller and more narrow.
- Because of the radical changes of the levels, the terrible handling, the issues with the collision detection, and the broken AI of the rival driver, beating the arcade mode in this version is almost impossible.
- The PlayStation version has the arcade mode unlocked from the beginning of the game, meaning that any kind of replay value that the original game could've possibly had in the past is gone, or even any kind of play value if we get stricter is completely gone.
Redeeming Qualities
- Surprisingly, the Game Boy Color version is a fun and a much better version of this mess:
- The gameplay is pretty similar to Rad Racer for the NES, which can be great for old-school gamers, as it is very fluid and entertaining.
- Graphics look very colorful and all of the skyboxes and sprites of the vehicles are very well detailed, it can even be considered one of the Game Boy Color games with the best graphics that ever existed.
- It also implemented a full-motion video for the cutscenes, and while these cutscenes don't look that good as you might expect, it's still nice to see them in a Game Boy Color game, mostly because only a few games for the aforementioned console implemented FMV cutscenes.
- Apart from the main menu music, the soundtrack composed for the game is particularly good, consisting of a combination of drum & bass and rock, a mixture that may sound strange in theory, but in practice is quite enjoyable. If you're curious, you can listen to all of the songs here.
- Apart from being the worst version of the game, the PlayStation version shows a visual upgrade of your car after you get the turbo, something that the Dreamcast and PC versions lacked.
- It is one of the few PS1 games that have an auto-save system, and unlike the saving system of Motorhead, this auto-saving system actually works.
Reception
Since the game was only released in France at a very bad era because of the release of the new generation consoles (PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Nintendo Gamecube), the game was considered a massive commercial failure, to the point that almost nobody has reviewed it, the only magazine that reviewed the game was Jeuxvideo.com, which gave the PC version a 7/20[1] (An equivalent of 35 out of 100) and mentioning the sensitive controls, the broken physics, the linear nature of the levels, the abuse of some of the textures for the levels and the low-quality footage grabbed from the movie. Shortly describing: "Un jeu comme on aimerait en voir moins souvent. Pauvre sur tous les plans, on sent qu'UbiSoft n'a vraiment misé que sur la licence pour vendre son jeu, a éviter! "
The PlayStation version has a lower score of 3/20[2] (An equivalent of 15/100). In their review, they criticized the ugly-looking graphics, the low-quality textures, the uncountable amount of bugs, the repetitive missions, the broken physics, and the voices that are not synchronized with the footage of the movie (Something that they also criticized in the PC version). The only thing that they slightly praised about the game was the order of the levels that was fair to the movie. In their final verdict, they said the following: "Attention, jeu pourri! Comme son homologue PC, Taxi 2 n'apporte strictement rien au genre. Des jeux de bagnoles on en trouve déjà des tas sur PS One et celui-ci est certainement le plus mauvais.
However, the Game Boy Color version received a 15/20[3] (An equivalent of 75/100). Being the graphics, the good handling of the vehicle, the sound effects, and the usage of full-motion videos for the cutscenes were the positive aspects of the review, while the short length and the music were the negative ones. Shortly describing: "Un jeu de voitures tout à fait convenable pour la Game Boy qui cependant aurait mérité d'être un peu riche en possibilités afin d'en augmenter la longévité.
Trivia
- The game engine was used in another game called "X'treme Roller".
Videos
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Reviews
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References
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