After Nearly 20 Years, Crazy Taxi: World Tour Is A Perfect Return To Form For The Franchise

The Crazy Taxi series was a consistent success for Sega during the turn of the century. Debuting in arcades before making its way to consoles, the series tasks the player with venturing around massive cityscapes and picking up passengers to drop them off. The series leans into absurdity for the sake of absurdity, sending players flying across the streets at top speed, bouncing off cars while trying to do their stated job. It was an absolute blast during the 2000s, but the series has only released mobile spin-off games since 2007.

Twenty years later, that drought is finally coming to an end with Crazy Taxi: World Tour, which retains all the bombast of the older entries while using modern touches to expand the gameplay variety and introduce new types of challenges. During a hands-on preview attended by members of the media (including ComicBook), Sega’s return to Crazy Taxi proved itself to be a worthy inheritor of the franchise’s name and reputation. Even if you never actually played the original games, the innate sense of fun baked into Crazy Taxi: World Tour makes it one of 2027’s most exciting gaming returns.

Like Riding A (Very Over-The-Top) Bicycle

Crazy Taxi is a blast from the past in all the right ways, with a level of tight design that makes it an ideal return for the series. The demo quickly threw players into a massive sandbox, full of potential passengers and would-be racers. The gameplay is fast-paced and frantic, befitting a series that always thrived when it allowed the player to just cut loose on the road. The controls are tighter than ever, with a certain fluidity to hitting curves or jumping off cliffs that makes each turn feel like you’re in perfect control of yourself. The various challenges lend themselves well to that underlying gameplay loop.

Rushing across the map to drop off passengers is just as intuitive as it was in previous games, with the scavenger hunts and competitive races sprinkled across the map being just as engaging and entertaining. The kinetic force of each hit adds to the experience, especially if you’re trying to cause some serious damage on the road. The result is a game that feels light without becoming weightless, where each sudden move feels under your control even when you’re pulling a mile-long drift up a mountain road.

It’s escapism driving at its finest, a colorful and vibrant blast that retains the spirit of the older games even while updating everything with a modern sheen and shine. There’s something simply rewarding about sending your taxi flying over an opposing racer or dropping off a passenger with seconds left on the clock, a feeling old-school fans of the series will recognize in an instant. There’s a reason fans have been clamoring for a new entry in this series for years, and Sega’s latest take on the material does not disappoint.

Hitting The Open Road Has Never Been So Much Fun

The really impressive aspect of Crazy Taxi‘s big return is that it embraces the open-world sandbox experience in a way the previous entries in the series never could. The previous entries were largely focused on the central objective of being a taxi driver, limiting the player’s time in the game by how many people they could drive to their destination in a set amount of time. This mechanic is still present in the game, with players able to set it off by picking up a single passenger and driving them to their desired drop-off spot. Doing this doesn’t end the playthrough, though. Instead, it’s primarily a way to level up and earn quick cash while the rest of the game remains open-ended.

Players are given large landscapes to explore, with the demo focusing on a Germany-inspired city and nearby mountain range. Exploring the location reveals new missions, like a race on the autobahn against a man married to his car, easter egg hunts with guys in easter bunny outfits, and helping send a stuntman soaring across the city with a well-placed cliffside drive. These are just a few of the available missions waiting for players to discover in Crazy Taxi: World Tour, highlighting the versatility that Sega is bringing to the franchise’s return. The act of driving around is itself fun, especially as a natural means of getting the player to practice their skills on the road.

The game gives the player plenty of natural excuses to explore and test their mettle against various other drivers or even just themselves. It’s the epitome of a massive sandbox, with a nigh-indestructible car giving the player plenty of reason to throw themselves off cliffs or drift through busy city streets. All of it is scored to a perfectly bombastic soundtrack and brought to colorful life thanks to the vivid graphics. It’s everything fans of the original series have been waiting for, a genuine return to form for a series that has been without a mainline entry in decades. Even if you’ve never played one of these games before, the kinetic and chaotic fun of Crazy Taxi: World Tour speaks for itself.