Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire Review

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Game Description

Floor it

Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire puts you in charge of an upstart cab company, with the ultimate goal of earning a ton of money and overtaking the local competition. Seems like a decent enough start. Just don't download it expecting anything even sort of resembling an arcade racer.

Grow the Brand

So you want to be a taxi empire mogul? Well there's not much to it. Seriously, there isn't much to it.

• Always be expanding. Every new cab you buy means earning more money over time.
• Try to match the right driver with the right car. Some cabbies have a particular favorite vehicle. If you can match them up well (look for a pretty noticeable heart icon when buying a cab), they'll be even more profitable.
• Upgrade cabs as often as possible. Every cab you have can be upgraded from the menu, and each level increases their overall hourly earnings. Even the earliest, lowest earning cabs can make some serious bank if you level them up enough.
• Don't forget to promote your drivers. As you play you'll start to earn driver-specific licenses. When you've collected enough you can use them (plus a little cash) to promote that driver and increase their earning potential even further.
• Always deliver your scratch tickets. You'll earn these somewhat regularly while playing. Once delivered you can scratch them off to earn more cash and possibly new licenses, but deliveries take time. Scratch tickets will NOT be useable otherwise, so make sure one is always on the way when you can.
• Keep an eye out for special icons. When you're on the city screen tapping away on fares, other beneficial things may pop up like VIPs, stunts, and what I can best describe as a speed boost of sorts. Each of these will earn you a bit of extra cash if you can act fast enough.

This is Fine

Despite having a more interesting start than most, Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire still boils down to the average idle clicker experience. Tap a couple of menus, close the game, wait for a few hours, repeat. It's not necessarily bad, but it's also nowhere near as exciting as the arcade games.

Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire Review

A Bit of a Shift

Remember how Crazy Taxi was this over the top wacky arcade racer? I mean I don't because I never really got into Crazy Taxi 'back in the day' but I'm sure there are others who remember it fondly. How could there not, what with all the re-releases and spin-offs it's been getting? Well, all of that is out the window for Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire, which is way more of an idle clicker than any sort of racer. It's not a bad clicker, but it is a clicker.

Command the Streets

At first, Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire actually seems like it could be something slightly new. You're put in charge of a ragtag cab company (for... some reason) and need to compete with some sort of monopolizing robot cab corporation. It's weird. The point is you need to make lots of money so you can spend it on upgrading everything so you can make even more money so you can upgrade more of everything and earn still more money, etc, etc.

And what a ragtag cab company it is. Pretty much from the start it beats you over the head with how 'different' everybody is. The cabs you purchase look more and more wacky and the drivers look like they came from a cosplay rave. I actually really like how completely over the top most of the character designs are (Whisper and Underwood struck me as particularly cool), however it does come off feeling a tad heavy-handed at times.

The 'slightly new' bit comes in the form of recklessly driving fares all over the city. There's no direct control, so it's definitely not like regular Crazy Taxi, but in the context of a clicker it's at least a little different than most. This is because you actually have to tap on specific icons to pick up fares, rather than just tap anywhere on the screen to generate income. It's a very small change, but Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire feels more immediately engaging than other clickers because of it. At least for a little while.

Unfortunately it doesn't take long for things to slow down significantly. Once you've earned enough money to expand to another section of the city you'll likely have to put the game down for a while and let your cabbies rack up cash for you over time. It just hits this point where the money needed to buy a new cab will take a while to earn. Another problem is that once you reach this point, the screen tapping that's pretty much the only thing setting this game apart from other clickers becomes largely irrelevant - the gains from directly picking up fairs won't come close to how much you can earn for doing nothing. Not until you've purchased a small army of cabs for whatever section of the city you're in, anyway.

While we're on the topic of the cabs and the tapping and the whatnot, I'm not a fan of stunts. I mean I don't mind that they exist, even if they're kinda pointless since you're not actually controlling any of the vehicles directly, and they also serve the purpose of earning you a little extra cash whenever you can tap on them. What bothers me is how the camera always zooms in on the stunt, as though watching an awkwardly animated brick of a car not meant to be seen up close launch itself through a building is somehow an impressive spectacle. Even worse, time doesn't stop while these stunts are happening so it's entirely possible to miss out on picking up a high-paying VIP fare because you're stuck watching a superfluous (and repetitive) animation.

Funky but Not Fresh

As far as idle games and clickers go, Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire is fine. It's got a neat style, and when tapping is actually relevant it's at least a little bit more engaging than other similar titles. It does slow way down when transitioning into new territories, though. And anyone expecting a more 'classic' Crazy Taxi experience will be sorely disappointed.

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