Already the author of Train Life: A Railway Simulator in 2021, the SIMTERACT studio is now abandoning the railways for the road and a very different profession: taxi driver. Their first game did not receive an enthusiastic reception from critics and garnered rather mixed opinions. However, intrigued, we decided to play it and give it a chance.
Poor and tasteless content
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As its name suggests, the game puts us in the shoes of a taxi driver where our objective is to take customers to the four corners of the city. These races allow us to earn precious euros which we can later spend in our vehicles. They are of several levels of complexity, from easy to difficult, with better gains depending on our choice.
It is also possible to get a tip in addition to the fare if the passenger is satisfied. This obviously involves respecting the Highway Code: turn signals, respecting speed limits and signs, but also by the condition of our taxi. In fact, our vehicle has three gauges corresponding to tank/battery, cleanliness and condition. A car that is too dirty or too damaged may put off certain customers and thus impact on obtaining potential tips.
During journeys, some may also have requests such as asking us to open the window or clean the windshield with the windshield wipers for example. Others will even be able to initiate the conversation, which will allow us to respond to them with different choices or ignore them.
Unfortunately, customer requests are ultimately quite rare and too anecdotal to have a real impact on our gaming sessions. Boredom then quickly rears its ugly head. There is a lack of a real objective to give interest in earning money and shopping. And it's not the two types of challenges offered: a race with a time limit, but no need to respect the Highway Code or, conversely, a race with the obligation to have impeccable driving skills that will make the difference.
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A management part that is too basic
Once you have enough money to buy a new vehicle, it is possible to hire staff to drive our old taxi and thus create your own taxi business. Several candidates are presented to us, each with advantages and disadvantages. Once the choice has been made, you can assign a vehicle, a neighborhood and a working time slot.
Our drivers then make their rounds and bring in money for our company, but nothing more. The “Management” part of the game is ultimately very basic, one could have imagined having to face competition to acquire control of a district and maximize income, launch advertising campaigns for your business and many other things to give no more material in this portion of the game, it's a shame.
What remains then is the customization and improvement of our vehicles. For a few euros, we can change parts of our taxis to increase their statistics (speed, braking, handling, etc.) or give them a different appearance via the color of the bodywork, the rims, the interior trim or even neon lights. . There aren't a thousand and one options available, but it's still enough for the seven cars on offer.
A pleasant city and a relaxing drive, but bugs galore
Despite the poor content described earlier, one cannot help but find a certain pleasure in traveling through the city. The map takes part of the city of Barcelona and offers us a rather convincing version of it. Whether it is small narrow streets lined with café terraces and parked cars and motorbikes, large avenues close to the sea and its palm trees or its residential areas, the city is alive. The buildings are colorful and full of details, the streets are lively with many passers-by and motorists. Some events such as works, accidents or broken lights also enrich our journeys for our greatest pleasure.
The city is also full of monuments and street art to collect, the latter being reproductions of monuments and works of art that actually exist in Barcelona. It's a shame not to have had the right to a larger map and monuments such as the Sagrada Familia or the Camp Nou.
To match, the ride is quite relaxing. It may surprise you at first use, especially when turning, but you get used to it quickly. Unfortunately, these good impressions are marred by bugs and quite regrettable lack of finishing.
We can thus cite untranslated texts, a capricious GPS which sometimes does not indicate the route to follow when we select a destination, passers-by who go back and forth on pedestrian crossings or even stop there, vehicles who go crazy and crash into us at full speed, an overall very stupid AI, the reverse gear which remains blocked, the few passenger models or even the animations of passers-by and passengers getting in/out of the taxi. Note that we also encountered several drops in framerate, often around gas stations, again detracting from the pleasure of the game.
Tested on Xbox Series