Crazy Taxi 3 PC Game Highly Compressed

Crazy Taxi 3 is High Roller for the Xbox has everything from the previous two games. It has the West Coast and Small Apple levels, all the previous two games' cab drivers, the same frantic action, and the minigames from Crazy Taxi 2. It also has a brand-new circuit, the Glitter Oasis (modeled after Las Vegas), four new drivers for that course, and a lot of new minigames. That sounds like a lot of good stuff, but unfortunately, that's about all there is. If you're a huge fan of Crazy Taxi, or if you've never played any of the previous games, you may find a lot to like about Crazy Taxi 3--if nothing else, it's a compilation of the previous two games that improves upon those games' maps and gameplay. However, if you're not a huge fan or a newcomer to the series, you may find that Crazy Taxi 3 doesn't have much more to keep you coming back.

Crazy Taxi 3 features some new drivers and a new course

The original Crazy Taxi hit arcades in 1999, and it later appeared on the Dreamcast in 2000. Both versions were good, simple driving games in which you played as a cab driver who had to drive the streets of the West Coast (in a city modeled after San Francisco), pick up passengers, and drive them to their destinations as quickly as possible. Crazy Taxi was easy to pick up and play, and thanks to the Dreamcast version's time-based missions, which let you play for three, five, or 10 minutes at a stretch, it was also easy to pick up and put down again. Crazy Taxi 2 was released for the Dreamcast in 2001, and it had a new level called the Small Apple (modeled after New York City) to play in. It also let you pick up multiple passengers and had a new maneuver--the crazy hop--that let your taxi leap into the air.

Crazy Taxi 3 looks better than the previous games in the series, which used simple textures in their 3D environments so the games could run at consistently fast frame rates. The game features enhanced versions of the West Coast and Small Apple levels, including better-looking textures on the buildings and reflections off car bodies and windshields. And all three of Crazy Taxi 3's driving levels have new special effects as you drive, like the new smoke trails behind your taxi when you perform a crazy dash and the new motion-blur effect on your taxi's chassis and headlights, which is most noticeable when making a sharp turn. Unfortunately, the new Glitter Oasis level, which begins on a busy thoroughfare that's supposed to resemble the Las Vegas strip, is a bit too busy. At certain points in the level, you'll run into some very nasty slowdown, especially if you try to perform a crazy dash or crazy hop in areas with lots of oncoming traffic or obstacles.

Crazy Taxi 3 doesn't sound quite as good as it looks. The new Glitter Oasis level has a few new fast-paced, frantic music tracks that seem suitable for the first few minutes, but they have long-winded guitar riffs and insipid choruses that become repetitive pretty quickly. Crazy Taxi 3 also includes all the upbeat rock songs from the previous two games. They're as suitable an accompaniment as ever for flying down a straightaway or tearing around a corner at high speed, but if you've played the previous Crazy Taxi games, you've heard them before, and you may even be tired of them already. Like the previous games in the series, Crazy Taxi 3 has humorous voice samples for your drivers and their passengers. Basically, they'll curse you out for driving too slowly, and your driver will tell them to shut up. However, some of the samples seem too quiet, especially for groups of passengers, who often mumble their lines. Also, for some reason, your passengers will sometimes give you wrong directions--they'll sit up in the back of the cab and demand that you turn left or right, even if the objective is straight ahead. Finally, Crazy Taxi 3 reuses the same announcer as the previous games: an actor doing his best impression of American radio personality Robert "Wolfman Jack" Smith. In fact, rather than offering all-new voice work, Crazy Taxi 3 reuses most of the voice samples from the previous games.