Remember that feeling of pure, unadulterated arcade joy? The kind that made you crest a hill in San Francisco and barrel down towards the ocean, soundtracked by The Offspring’s infectious energy? Well, Sega is trying to recapture that magic with Crazy Taxi: World Tour, and after a hands-on demo at Gamescom, it seems they might just be on the right track. While the use of generative AI has cast a shadow over the revival, the core gameplay loop remains undeniably fun.
Back in the Driver’s Seat
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Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega
Availability: Out 2027 on Xbox Series X/S, PS5, Switch 2, and PC (Steam)
Axel is back, sporting his signature green hair and Hawaiian shirt (though the six-pack is now more “demurely hidden”), ready to sling passengers around in his Cadillac-inspired taxi. The music of The Offspring and Bad Religion provides the perfect nostalgic backdrop, making World Tour feel like a direct sequel to the Dreamcast classic.
The core gameplay remains familiar: pick up passengers, drop them off at their destinations, and rack up points by performing tricks. Axel’s taxi is equipped with the usual arsenal of moves: Crazy Dash for speed boosts, Crazy Stop for slamming on the brakes, and, most importantly, Crazy Drift for those signature sweeping turns.
A German Adventure
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The Gamescom demo focused on World Tour’s Crazy Rush mode, mirroring the original’s sandbox-y solo taxiing (multiplayer is also planned). The new addition to the gameplay loop is a newly revealed Germany map. It feels like a great statement of intent in that regard.
The demo began with a frantic escape from an airport underpass, immediately launching into a satisfyingly freewheeling drift. This was quickly followed by a sharp gasp as I found myself hurtling down a runway, suddenly forced to slalom between the wheels of a jumbo jet as it thundered my way.
Once free of that sweaty-palmed surprise, I was lost in a busily chaotic mess of sprawling tarmac and tight turns as I wound between airport terminals and control towers – desperately trying to settle into the slapstick driving rhythm as I swerved to avoid baggage carts snaking across the concourse, slammed through stacked luggage, and kept watch for potential passengers waiting for a pick-up.
Once you start ferrying passengers – wild with delight as you chain together tricks and rack up the points – it’s not long before they’re sending you to destinations further afield. Soon enough, the airport makes way for the clock towers, quaint pastel houses, and picturesque storefronts that form World Tour’s cartoonish take on a German tourist town.
Streets and roads are busy enough with people and vehicles that they feel lively without hampering your momentum, and there’s enough environmental clutter ready to explode at your touch – those restaurant tables and market stalls, road signs, and rubbish bins – that your presence feels like it has an impact on the world.
More Than Just a Ride
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Mini-games have now been incorporated directly into the map, meaning you’ve new distractions as you tear across Germany in search of your next job. You can initiate brisk driving challenges like checkpoint time attacks by passing through gates, giving you something new to do without breaking the taut arcade loops.
Even better are the Odd Jobs; challenge-based passenger missions building on the core driving action in daftly surprising ways. Each map has a number of these, which you can set a waypoint arrow to at any time, and they’re a riot.
During one Odd Job, I picked up a man in a squirrel suit who wanted me to utilize Crazy Stop in order to fling him as far as possible. Another saw me picking up a city worker who needed to clean up the rubbish in the area. She clambered into my cab, stood on the back seat armed with a vacuum, then it was up to me to smash through as many bins and boxes as possible before the timer ran out so she could hoover up the trash as it exploded into the air.
A Wild Ride Ahead
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Toward the end of the demo, I met a young man named Pierre – a bouquet of flowers clutched firmly in his hands – who insisted I take him to the airport as fast as I could. And as soon as we were off, a seemingly straightforward taxi job suddenly transformed into a messy high-speed chase through the countryside – although I mostly ignored the hairpin bends and just bounded ludicrously down hills and across fields, dodging nitro bombs and using my own nitro boosts to escape our pursuers.
It all ended – with pleasing symmetry for my Gamescom hands-on demo – back on the runway. Only this time, it was me desperately trying to catch up to a plane as it hurtled toward takeoff so that Pierre might escape.
It’s silly, exhilarating, and a load of fun, which is pretty much exactly what I want from my Crazy Taxi. It’s just a shame that a potentially jubilant comeback has been somewhat marred by all the controversy around its use of generative AI. But did I enjoy my time with World Tour? Am I thrilled to see such a treasured classic make a seemingly solid return after all this time? As The Offspring famously sang, “Y-” – well I think you know where I’m going with that one.
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