Crazy Taxi: World Tour Closed Network Test review – Sega’s multiplayer revival

Sega’s classic Dreamcast driving game returns to modern formats and somehow makes competitive multiplayer work, with deeper driving mechanics than expected.

There were times when playing the recent closed network test of Crazy Taxi: World Tour, when my brain literally felt like it was overloading.

If you remember the chaos caused in the original’s downtown version of San Francisco, then multiply that by five rampaging taxis, amp up the traffic, and introduce a finish line to foster everyone’s competitive spirit, as your vehicle becomes a petrol-guzzling tornado blowing through the city.

Sega’s new sequel to the classic 1999 arcade driving game revives the formula of ferrying passengers to new destinations as quickly as possible, only this time you’re competing against other taxi drivers. There are new modes and controls, but the premise is just as simplistic as it always was, and that’s entirely the point.

When it’s released next year, the full game will feature a mission-based single-player campaign set across five open world cities, plus a time-based arcade model.

However, what I played during the network test at the weekend was two online modes that somehow managed to inject even more mayhem into the game. The first was a five-player race format in which you have to speed through a linear route, stopping in designated zones so passengers can hop in your backseat, before you shoot off to their destination. And therein lies the first potential problem of Crazy Taxi: World Tour.

This is a racing game in which constantly stopping and starting every 20 seconds is built in. That doesn’t sound fun. And yet, thanks to the relentless speed, destructible environments, and relatively nuanced control scheme, it is.

There are, for example, different ways to pick up passengers. You can simply hold down the left trigger to break, which takes a bit of time as your momentum slows. Or, if you’re a bit more dexterous, press circle and then left trigger, which slams on your breaks in a shower of sparks.

To get going again, you can either hold right trigger to accelerate or press circle then right trigger to get a sudden boost of speed, in what the game calls a ‘crazy dash’. You can take this further, timing rhythmic presses of circle and right trigger to keep on crazy dashing along the course, then triggering crazy stop to pick up passengers. Circle is essentially the crazy button.

This results in a strangely compelling driving game where you’re constantly pressing button combinations throughout the entire route, almost as if prompts were flying at you like in Guitar Hero.

Overshoot the mark and you can even pull off a quick reverse dash by hitting circle and left trigger. These extra methods of control gives an otherwise simplistic game, about belting from point A to point B, some well needed extra layers. But it doesn’t stop there.

There’s a strategy to boost management. Triangle triggers nitrous, which gives you a burst of speed as blue flames emanate from your tyres. The best time to do so is when you’re in heavy traffic, because it sends path-clogging cars flying out of your way like fluttering litter.

More aggressive players can save their boost until they’re in the vicinity of rival drivers. Hitting them with nitrous hurls them out of the way and shuts down their engine for a second.

Also, dangerous driving builds nitrous. This includes drifts, shunts, and airtime. In the San Francisco map I dashed off hill crests to get some juice and then triggered it in bursts to wipe out other drivers (this works especially well on corners).

In Germany, which mashes a Cologne Cathedral lookalike together with Sega’s take on Neuschwanstein Castle, I took advantage of its many twists and turns by chaining drifts and spent nitrous on the final rampage down a packed autobahn.

And rampage is an understatement. The game is at its best when five players are neck-and-neck, blazing a trail through busy traffic as screaming pedestrians scatter, parasols splinter, and congested traffic is sent barrelling down the road like it’s been hit by a blast of Godzilla’s radioactive breath.

Add to this an incredibly on-the-money rock/punk soundtrack featuring more than a few songs by The Offspring (yes, Crazy Taxi fans, All I Want is back), and you have a game that’s hard to take your eyes and ears off.

The second online mode for the network test was Cops and Robbers. Here, in a small hub, one team of taxi drivers attempts to pick up passengers while another team of police cars smashes into them. Doing enough damage shuts the taxis into a fenced-in car park until other taxi drivers break them out by breaking through the walls. It’s fun, but only as the cops.

That’s because, for law enforcement, that 15-second gameplay loop is driving then crashing. As taxis, the loop is driving then being crashed into, with the ‘reward’ being a time-out as other drivers get to continue playing. In terms of appeal, it’s like Mario Kart’s balloon-popping Battle mode: something you’ll play occasionally as a palette cleanser before returning to the main event. Still, seeking out moving targets rather than inert pedestrians does offer a welcome spin.

In an effort to add more depth, Crazy Taxi: World Tour lets you modify your ride with perks. These allow you to, for example, generate boost faster, turn corners sharper, and suffer less penalties when going off-road. It’s hard to really notice their effects in practice, though. Especially as your choice of vehicle offers a bigger difference.

There are three kinds of car type: the racer archetype is built for speed but slows massively upon impact with obstacles, the heavy carves through traffic but falls short on long straights, and the all-rounder is a solid mix of everything. Your vehicle tends to dictate the optimal route through the race. As a heavy I preferred to stay with the pack and try and knock people off course, while as a racer, I was constantly evading other players by taking side streets. Despite the game’s arcade spectacle, there’s subtle strategy in abundance.

Multiplayer Crazy Taxi shouldn’t work, but after spending a weekend in the Crazy Taxi: World Tour network test, consider me pleasantly surprised. This is an absolute riot of colour and collisions. Somehow, Sega has managed to make a quintessentially single-player game work as a competitive online title.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (previewed), Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Sega
Release Date: 2027

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