Reinvigorating a Classic

What do you get when you cross the classic arcade game Crazy Taxi with the flying cars of The Fifth Element? The newly released PC game Mile High Taxi from solo developer Cassius John-Adams attempts to answer that question. Sometimes the coolest things are made from mashing two concepts together, and in the case of Mile High Taxi, the results aren’t perfect but are still compelling and fun.

In an interview with The Guardian, Cassius says “I’ve always liked games you can pick up and play for 10, 20, 30 minutes, and go about your day without getting too involved in a thick, plot driven storyline”. I can say without question that he’s achieved making a game that encompasses the arcade style gameplay of the Crazy Taxi game era. The game still has issues and it’s pretty clear it’s a solo developed project, but for those with an affection for this kind of game, the flaws might be easy to overlook.

License to Drive

For those unfamiliar with the style of gameplay in Crazy Taxi, it’s quite simple; your goal is to pick up and deliver passengers while a timer counts down to a fail state. Each passenger you pick up gives you extra time on your counter. It’s designed around eating the quarters of arcade goers while providing a brief high-intensity experience that rewards higher skill levels with extended play times. This is not an uncommon arcade design; if you go back to games like Pac-Man, brief exciting experiences that make you want just one more round is what they’re designed around. Crazy Taxi eventually got a home port many consider a classic, but on consoles the shallow depth of an experience like that doesn’t shine as brightly as in arcades, and unlike Mile High Taxi, was a full priced game on Dreamcast.

It’s appropriate that Cassius wants Mile High Taxi to be a brief 10-30 minute experience, and succeeds in that regard, but the longer your play sessions go the lack of depth becomes apparent and feels like diminishing returns. Fortunately, it’s balanced by a price tag of $16.99 USD. So while it’s not a game you’ll want to play for hours at a time, it is a reasonably priced game that you’ll have a lot of fun with in short bursts. Considering that Crazy Taxi was $1 per turn while in arcades, unlimited turns for the price of 17 turns in the arcade isn’t bad for this unique spin.

Flying High In a Cyberpunk City

Now that you know a bit more about the game mechanics Mile High Taxi pays homage to, let’s get into what changes with the addition of flying cars. The city in the game is a labyrinth of skyscrapers inspired by Toronto, Canada. It’s a futuristic vision of an overcrowded city that borrows liberally from the setting of the film The Fifth Element. You’ll see references to the film all over the design and advertisements for the film’s famous “Multi-Pass”. You can never see the ground or top of buildings but are set within a range of floors high in the sky. It’s hard to describe in real world terms the actual range of height of the gameplay area, but it’s enough to be satisfying, and makes you wish there was more verticality to the game. Rather than just dropping off passengers on a flat map, you must pay attention to the floor number of passengers’ destinations, which requires not only finding the destination but being at the appropriate height. In theory it’s very simple but in practice it’s one of the more challenging parts of the game, especially when you reach a destination and obstacles are there that don’t simply allow you to raise and lower car. Additionally, being on the right floor in advance rewards you because the car is quite slow to raise and lower.

The flying is both the highlight of the game and its biggest issue. It can be incredibly frustrating trying to control the vehicle, especially when trying to pick up or drop off passengers, but flying from location to location controls quite well. However, the car also lacks the energy or whipping around corners in a drift that you got in Crazy Taxi. It’s still fun, but I found myself wishing the cars had something that made them feel more dynamic and energetic; imagine if Mario Kart didn’t have the drifting or drift boost. It wasn’t a deal-breaker, but it is an aspect of the game that could use improvement in either updates or a sequel. To be fair I did spend my early rounds driving timidly but became more reckless as I adjusted to the game and had more fun.

A Bit Too Authentic

From a distance, the graphics of Mile High Taxi look good, but upon closer inspection the game sticks close to its inspiration. In what appears to be an intentional design decision, the game looks like it comes straight of the late 1990s or early 2000s. At first glance it was a bit jarring and I wish it had better fidelity but the gameplay made me forget about it pretty quickly. On the upside, this game will run quite well on a wide range of hardware. I tested it on several of my systems and could never get below 120 frames per second on any.  Players that are into this game for the nostalgia might actually prefer this graphic style, but it could benefit from having some more options to enhance the visuals a bit.

M.I.A.

Speaking of, the options are a big area where this game flounders. There are literally 3 graphics options, no resolution options, no accessibility options and a whole list of other things. If you can think of an option, it’s probably not there. You can only change motion blur, post processing, and anti-aliasing on and off. Even the game’s camera is tied to the 3 different vehicles available and cannot be changed independently. A very strange choice, exacerbated by the details of each car’s handling and camera mechanics shown only on the screen after selecting the vehicle (at least in the review build I’m playing). I recommend trying different vehicles to find one that suits your play style best. I personally found switching to the vehicle with loose controls greatly increased my fun factor, though it’ll depend on your preference. Unfortunately, no matter the vehicle, going into reverse never felt right and I avoided it when at all possible. Sometimes it was just quicker and easier to do a U-turn than deal with reverse.

Great but Grating

Like the game’s visuals, the audio falls prey to a bit too much homage. The passenger voices are just as obnoxious and grating as in Crazy Taxi, which gave me plenty of nostalgia, but quickly got old. It’s a matter of taste, but unless you’ve played the original game you might just find them irritating. The soundtrack is again a good homage to the original, but without a ton of variety. It’s all good quality audio but can get a bit annoying and a few times I stopped playing just to get away from them, since there’s no audio option besides languages. Subtitles are always on, but they are small and too low on the screen. It’s really important to pay attention to the audio or subtitles because that’s how the passengers tell you what floor they need to get to. I’m not sure if it’s intentional but the game will frequently warn you that you are driving too low or too high, even when you’re driving at the floor level of the destination. It’s slightly irritating and it should occur closer to top and bottom height limits, or not have passengers requiring drop off close enough to frequently activate the warning.

Navigating the city can be a chore. My eyes spent more time looking at the mini map, since the city’s streets aren’t super distinct except for a few areas. It’ll take you a long time to navigate this city by the architecture itself, and this is supposed to be mitigated by the navigation arrow at the top of the screen. Initially, the arrow was too small and unhelpful but seems to have improved several times during the review period. It’s still not as effective as in Crazy Taxi but the rate of improvements just in the brief time I’ve had with the game makes me confident that the developer will continue to optimize it with help from user feedback.

A Hopeful Future

Besides subtitles and a difficulty option, the game has little in the way of other accessibility options. It would be nice if there was more but as a solo developer, it’s entirely possible that many of these issues could be addressed in future updates and just weren’t available in time for release. The developer is very active on Twitter and may be open to specific accessibility requests if enough people request certain features.

As was the developers intent, for better or worse there is little story besides your gruff dispatcher admonishing you and the environmental story telling of the setting. It’s not surprising given the game’s goal of emulating a classic arcade game, but some more engaging features would be welcome. As of now only 3 modes are available: a standard time attack as detailed before, a free roam option and sequential mode. Sequential mode requires picking up passengers in order and dropping them off, rather than randomly picking up passengers. It’s a fun and simple mode that new players may want to start with.

Paying the Tab

Considering the reasonable price, no performance issues, and fun factor of the game, I can easily recommend this game to anyone that’s looking for short gameplay escapes or is a fan of the original Crazy Taxi. It’s not perfect, and does have issues that need addressing, but even in the short period I’ve had the game there have been steady updates and the developer seems committed to improving it. It’s pretty incredible that it was done by one developer and I’m genuinely excited to see their future projects as they gain experience and grow as a developer. If you’re looking for some arcade nostalgia and unique ideas, I recommend grabbing Mile High Taxi. I think The Fifth Element’s director Luc Besson would get a kick out of this Homage.