Hello all! First of all, thank you to Nacon for releasing Taxi Life – A City Driving Simulator game on Epic Games Store! One of better Nacon’s games where Epic Achievements actually work (unlike RoboCop Rogue City)!
Alright, you may not know this fact but I used to be a huge gamer and recently (maybe 1.5 years ago) I got into Epic Achievements Hunting race. Over the last 15 months or so I already amassed 59 platinums!
Alright, let me do a quick Taxi Life – A City Driving Simulator review in this post so you will know whether or not it is worth you time.
Taxi Life – A City Driving Simulator review
So I played Taxi Life – A City Driving Simulator game for around 5 hours. Do you think it is genuinely enough time to play a game to make a review? Yes and no. In this case – it is a yes. In the game you are a brand new taxi driving in Barcelona – I have been to Barcelona 4 times, perhaps, but can’t tell how realistic the game map is to the real Barcelona.
Your goal in this game is to pick up a passanger and deliver him/her to their destination. Remember, this is NOT GTA so you have to be very careful when driving. Instead of a timer, you have passenger’s patience meter. As long as you drive – you have pretty much unlimited time, however, if you break the rules then the patience meter decreases.
In Taxi Life – A City Driving Sumulator, there are tons of collectibles – they give you experience points towards your next level. Levels, just like in any RPG, give you skill points that can be distributed amongst several skill trees. Those skills include higher XP, more money, less maintenance costs, etc …
The game itself is not bad but becomes quite a grind fest if you are after Epic platinum (or PS platinum / Xbox full 1,000 GS). In order to get the platinum / full completion, you will need to drive 500 km and do 150 rides in a single career. In 5 hours – I already covered 90 km and did around 21 job. Of course, I also completed all the collectibles, meaning I spent majority of time not doing my job.
Anyway, the game also allows you to hire other taxists. However, I haven’t unlocked this feature or I don’t know how to do it. The game doesn’t explain how to hire other taxists or how the feature works. There are a few skills that allow you to hire for cheaper and earn extra but I haven’t put a single skill point into that skill tree.
Taxi Life – A City Driving Simulator’s bugs
Game’s AI is very dumb. Even in real life people and drivers are a lot smarter than the ones in game. Pedestrians will start walking across the road, especially around the corners and, god forbid, you hit one of them. You get 100 euros fine and the mission completely fails. Some pedestrians walk across the road and then turn around and walk across the road again.
Almost the same can be said about AI drivers in Taxi Life – A City Driving Simulator. Some drivers won’t signal and turn. When you stop at traffic light – some drivers won’t thus bumping in you and greatly reducing passenger’s patience.
Some kerbs feel like invisible walls while other – not at all. There is police but they will never chase you – you just get a fine and that’s it … even if you drive against traffic flow or hit another vehicle / police.
Another great bug that can be found in Taxi Life – A City Driving Simulator is flying cars. Yes, flying cars – some cars just float / fly up in the air. I am certain that it is not intended.
The verdict
So to summarise the game – it is not bad but not great either. Some annoying bugs and AI needs to be fixed. Graphics wise – game looks OK, decent size map with potential to get even bigger (DLCs 😉 ). Taxi Life – A City Driving Simulator game still doesn’t beat Crazy Taxi series or taxi feature in GTA games.
