Developer: Simteract
Publisher: Nacon
Release Date: 7th March 2024
Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X | S, PS5
Reviewed on: PS5
Price: £34.99
Code supplied by publisher
I’ll come straight out and say it – I could shit all over this game, it’s got a lot going against it and the few other reviews I’ve seen of it certainly haven’t hesitated in their criticism. I’m not going to though, not because it doesn’t have issues but because there is a core of a good game in there somewhere.
Taxi Life is exactly what its subtitle says – a driving simulator. You take the role of a taxi driver ferrying around various passengers across the streets of Barcelona.
This immediately brings me to a definite plus point of the game – its world. Having never actually visited Barcelona myself I can’t comment on how accurate it is to the real life city but it certainly comes across as pretty authentic. I would even go as far as to say the visuals for the world we are driving around in are pretty impressive. Here is a video (not mine) taken from a taxi’s bumper cam to show you what I mean:
I’ve compared the in-game map to the Barcelona I can find on Google Maps and it certainly looks like a reasonably faithful representation of a chunk of the city near to Barcelona Beach. Liberally scattered across the game world are points of interest (POI) which again I can’t verify if totally accurate but I’m willing to give Simteract the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are. Visiting these POIs either as you carry a passenger to their destination or free driving as you please gives you experience points which are key to progressing through the game.
I did like the variety in the type of roads you traverse in the game. There is a pleasing contrast between large dual carriageway avenues with 60 kmph speed limits and narrow back lanes which can barely accommodate a car at their 30 limits. I presume this was a deliberate choice on the developers’ part to introduce variety to the game and one I think works well.
So, as mentioned, the basis of this game is picking up passengers and taking them to their destinations. This simple mechanic works exactly like the Sega classic Crazy Taxi with the key difference being in Taxi Life you are supposed to obey the rules of the road. I say supposed because you absolutely can put your foot down, run red lights, drive the wrong way down a one way street etc. Indeed you most likely will do all of these things and more inadvertently at some point!
Driving around in your car is fundamentally quite fun – the car itself controls quite nicely and the world you are navigating is an attractive one. It’s not action packed and it’s clearly not meant to be. I think some people will definitely find it quite a pleasant, chilled experience.
However, it does become quite repetitive quite quickly. Pick up a passenger at place A, convey them to place B. Rinse and repeat. It is broken up sometimes by passenger requests but these tend to be quite perfunctory and only add to the game superficially. But then, “simulator”, right? Also the voice acting of your passengers makes the original English dub of Shenmue seem like a work of art. (Yes, I’m exaggerating but not by much.)
You have an in car radio but my advice to anyone wanting some tunes to drive around to would be to fire up Spotify in the background…
There are two kinds of repercussions to breaking the rules of the road: your passenger’s “Patience meter” will run down much quicker than if you are driving sensibly. If this runs out completely the passenger will disembark your vehicle and you will receive neither the fare for the ride nor a tip. This is an issue because (being a simulator) you need money to do pretty much everything you need to do in the game.
Apart from this there are police cars patrolling the city and speed cameras set up in strategic positions. Get caught speeding or otherwise breaking the law and you will receive fines which again hit your bank balance. I didn’t drive recklessly enough to receive more than a few fines so I don’t know if the punishment for repeat offending escalates into anything more serious like penalty points on your licence or similar.
Reminding you that this game bills itself as a simulator and definitely not an arcade experience is the maintenance aspect. You need to keep your car fuelled up, in good working condition and even simply clean. To do this you can visit various garages and car washes distributed across the map. If you run out of fuel or damage the car significantly there is an emergency menu you can access to use stop gap fixes until you get to your base.
I could see this being a bit of a chore to some players but I think if it wasn’t present in the game it would negatively impact immersion. Personally I had no issue with it – probably my favourite game of all time, Elite Dangerous, is exactly the same with fuel and maintenance – it quite quickly became force of habit to fuel and attend to my car as I did my ships in Elite.
As you gain experience points and build up a healthy bank balance you get to explore the management side of the simulation. You can upgrade your car, buy new cars, customise their appearance and even hire other drivers to expand from a one man operation to a fully fledged taxi company. At the time of writing this review I have only just started to manage my firm with extra drivers but it definitely looks like an intriguing part of the game.
OK, so that all sounds fairly decent, right? I mean a taxi driving simulator is never going to be the most exciting, glamorous game out there but it doesn’t sound like a terrible premise in a gaming market that includes such gems as Powerwash Simulator and PC Builder Simulator.
And maybe it will get there but at the time of writing this review, some three weeks post launch, the game has issues. Big issues.
The immediately noticeable one is the performance. I have no way of measuring frame rate on my PS5 but it is always low and slows down particularly badly in certain areas like gas stations. This tends to result in you losing control of your car as you over compensate when the game becomes unresponsive.
In fact in the release build, before any patches were pushed, the game would actually freeze for a second or two intermittently for no obvious reason. Thankfully the first post release patch has indeed fixed this but the general poor performance remains obvious.
According to developer blog posts the team at Simteract are aware of this (as they would be pre launch but let’s not go there) and are working to improve the game’s framerate. How long this will take and how much of an improvement is as yet unknown. As it stands though I find it difficult to recommend a driving game with such poor technical performance.
The other major issue is the AI in the game. Both pedestrians and NPC drivers behave extremely erratically. Pedestrians would practically jump out in front of your car at crossings! Yes, they have the right of way but when they appear right in front of you with almost zero warning it can be difficult not to take them out. Along with the performance the development team have acknowledged this and have made it a priority for future patches.
Indeed after patch 1 I did notice a slight improvement with fewer NPCs apparently having suicidal tendencies but it definitely wasn’t completely addressed and still happened to some extent.
Likewise, NPC drivers drive in quite bizarre ways frequently. I’ve noted that the game encourages you to drive in a law abiding fashion – well I saw many NPCs not doing the same! Running red lights, driving on the wrong side of the road, ramming other drivers among other less than legal manoeuvres.
I found this strange behaviour from the inhabitants of the world rather off putting. It breaks immersion and for a simulation game this is an issue. I was also extremely unimpressed visually by the walking NPCs. They don’t look very good at all and there is apparently a very small pool of character models as the world seems to be populated by clones.
So, to return to my initial point – the core game on offer with Taxi Life is decent if not great and the game undoubtedly has potential to improve. It’s just really not there yet and could have benefitted with more time in the oven rather than releasing in a poor state and patching it after the fact. I can imagine a lot of people won’t give Taxi Life a chance after reading about the performance and AI issues and that’s not surprising.
If you don’t get bored doing the repetitive bread and butter taxi missions the management aspect of the game will add longevity and depth and that’s definitely to be commended. Quite a big “if” though…
-Calum