The Game Boy Advance has quite the library of games. A good number of titles were created exclusively for the system, and then found sequels on the Nintendo DS (Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for example). Just as many were titles from the Super Nintendo, ported onto the handheld. Then there were some….arcade games, ported to the Sega Dreamcast, and then ported over to the Game Boy Advance. Take Crazy Taxi: Catch A Ride for instance. No really, take it – please.
Now I can pull out a number of cliches when it comes to describing the over ambition of developer Graphic State, but I’ll refrain for doing so this time. Although they did try to replicate the Crazy Taxi experience as best as they could, there’s too much driving this game into a wall to make it worth your time (that just made my previous sentence – entirely pointless). Everything you hear sounds too static filled, minus the surprisingly crisp and clear voices, which become repetitive beyond all comprehension. You can tell the music tries to closely resemble that of the home console versions, but the quality is just so poor.
It’s not just an audio authenticity that Graphic State seemed to be going for, but graphically as well. The GBA could only handle so much at once and Crazy Taxi: Catch A Ride unsuccessfully pushes the graphical envelope. You have a huge city to drive through still, but the frame rate is so woefully choppy, the action feels like its going way below the speed limits. Your fares all look strikingly similar, sound the same, are hard to differentiate from either regular citizens walking around, or even a red light up ahead. Your eyes will bleed by the time you find a fare, drive them to their destination and drop them off.
Do you see the gap between the taxi and the blue car on the right? According to the game, I'm hitting the car from there.
Driving your fare, thanks in part to the shoddy frame rate, requires the patience of a saint. Not only is it tough to navigate through traffic, but the fact that the collision detection has some issues, really negates any further purpose at trying to play the game. When going head on with some vehicles, you seem to get through okay, without much in the way of shoddy collision detection, but when you try to go around traffic going the same direction you’re going, you often times bump them without being close to them. When you hit a car or a wall, and it’s only a matter of time that you do, your forward progression will come to a near stand still.
As poor as the game turned out, I do have to applaud how ambitious of a project this was. Graphic State tried their best to shoe horn a massive game into a miniature body, though they failed pretty miserably. But just to prove how overly ambitious they were, to such a fault, I present to you the kiss of death to any cartridge based video game:
Wow....just....wow.
Rating: 2.8
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