Developer: SIMTERACT Sp. z o.o.
Publisher: NACON
Platform: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PC
Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator – Review
We have tried our fair share of simulation titles over the past, and some were better than others. We have gone from tinkering with cars and fishing to cleaning properties and mowing lawns, but driving around a taxi in its very own simulator was a brand-new experience for us. We found ourselves in a small part of the city of Barcelona driving around passengers to get them safely to their destinations. Even though the offset and atmosphere are quite nice in Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator, there are many bugs and an overall blandness that hold the game back.
Story
Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator comes without any actual story value. You choose a profile picture at the beginning of the game, as well as a logo, a character name, and a company name, and you’re good to go. The game will guide you through a short tutorial, and that’s about it. We found it a shame that there isn’t a notion of an actual story here, even if it was just the cliché from rags to riches plot. Of course, the absence of a story isn’t a big deal for a title such as this, but it would have added some much-needed flavor to an otherwise drab experience.
Graphics
Graphically, Taxi Life isn’t an ugly game at all. The city of Barcelona looks well-crafted, albeit a bit bland at times, and the car models aren’t too shabby-looking either. The pedestrians and clients, however, all look a bit like lifeless dolls with very awkward animations. This sometimes ruined the immersion, which is not ideal for a simulator. Even so, it was amusing to cruise through the city, until we noticed that after dropping off a few clients, there truly wasn’t that much to see. On top of that, the performance of the game is horrendous on PS5, sometimes making it almost unplayable. Taxi Life suffers from extreme texture and model pop-ins, slowing down the game significantly at times and often even causing very short freezes. This wasn’t only annoying from a graphical standpoint, but it also affected the gameplay heavily.
Sound
The sound design of Taxi Life isn’t too bad. The clients have a few voiced lines, but it’s actually the radio stations that give you proper cruising music. The different stations offer fairly generic tunes, but they add a bit of flavor to the monotonous task of driving around almost identical-looking passengers. The tracks loop very quickly, however. We would have perhaps loved a few more chatty customers who told us more about themselves, their day, and so on. You can have a few conversations with clients, but these are very shallow and bland. While everything is very serviceable, we would have loved a bit more flair.
Gameplay
Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator is, as the name clearly states, a simulator game in which you drive a taxi in the streets of Barcelona. The game’s offset is very straightforward, as you simply pick up passengers, drop them off at their requested destination, buy new cars, repair when parts are damaged, and eventually also hire other drivers. It’s all straightforward stuff, and while the game does have a few enjoyable aspects, it fails in almost every aspect of its execution to create a truly enjoyable experience.
Truth be told, there is not much more to the game than picking up clients and dropping them off at their desired location. It’s up to you to drive safely, respect traffic rules, and make sure the passenger is content. This is, however, super basic. Passengers hardly have any requests, except for rolling down the windows, turning down the volume of the radio, and so on. Sadly, the game doesn’t really care if you respect the traffic laws, as getting a speeding ticket will only set you back around 20 bucks when clients pay you over 300 dollars just to be dropped off a few blocks further. So, it’s often best to get the client to their location in time, rather than following every rule in the book. That being said, if you drive too recklessly, the client might still cancel the ride. We mainly wasted money on the horrendous AI that would just ram us in the back at nearly every traffic light. We were then always forced to pay the repair costs ourselves, even if almost every accident we had wasn’t our fault at all.
The AI is horrendous in the game. You’ll have cars just stopping in the middle of intersections for no reason, cars standing still at the green light while driving through red lights, pedestrians gliding over the floor or going back and forth over crosswalks, and so on. Even if the latter happens and a pedestrian runs into your car, you are fined and you lose your fare. We also encountered seemingly stuck cars, forcing us to pass them by, breaking other traffic rules, and upsetting clients.
After playing the game seriously for an hour or two, you’ll already have seen most of what the game has to offer. You can buy new cars, and you can assign drivers to those cars when they are not in use. Your drivers will net you some extra cash, and as long as you keep playing, your drivers will also earn you an additional income. There is not really that much more to the game, except for the day and night cycle, which does give you different vistas of the city.
Sadly, the performance on PS5 is atrocious. The game constantly suffers from short freezes, which are super annoying and sometimes even reset what you were doing. If you were turning left or right, the freeze may reset your steering for some reason. You might take off with an additional boost when a freeze occurs, causing an accident. The list goes on, and we had to take regular breaks as the constant freezing truly got on our nerves. It also seems that performance is an issue on other platforms as well, so we do hope this gets patched in the future.
Conclusion
If you’re into simulators, and you have always wanted to drive around a taxi, then Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator might still offer a fun experience when you can buy it at a hefty discount. If you love simulation titles with a lot of depth, you won’t find it here, as Taxi Life is a very shallow experience that will hold no more secrets after playing the game for a few hours. With constant stutters and bland gameplay, we suggest waiting for a few patches, tweaks, or as mentioned before, a massive discount. Negativity aside, the game isn’t the worst we have played in the genre, it simply is very bland.
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