CyberTaxi

Genre: Driving Action

Players: 1

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Review:

CyberTaxi, released on PC in 2020 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2021, is a driving action game that has players picking up taxi fares and violently gunning down attackers in a post-apocalyptic European city. For gamers who played the 1994 PC game Quarantine, its subsequent port on 3DO the following year, or its sequel Quarantine II: Road Warrior, this will undoubtedly be a familiar experience, as this game was designed as a spiritual successor to that series.

Still, while 27 years have passed since Quarantine, you wouldn’t necessarily know it from this game’s presentation. Everything here is very low-poly, from the environment to the character models for cars and pedestrians. Yet despite this, the game still has some noticeable issues with pop-in and noisy-looking textures due to some sort of resolution issue. And everything in the game is bathed in the black of an interminable night, which fits the theme of the game but also conveniently obscures some of these graphical flaws… as well as the gameplay, unfortunately.

The other elements of the presentation don’t fare much better, with a poorly-localized story delivered by a heavily-accented narrator. There is one bright spot here, though – the “synthwave” soundtrack to the game is quite good, though it’s a bit repetitive and unfortunately I don’t have any examples here to show you. However, despite the lack of musical variety and decidedly unimpressive graphics, this game still requires over 2GB of space on your Nintendo Switch’s memory.

There is another element of the presentation that interferes with the gameplay, and that is the game’s omnipresent HUD, which covers up two-thirds of the screen, yet doesn’t provide enough information to the player. Namely, players will be completing tasks on the game’s convoluted maps, but must constantly pull up a separate map screen to see the route to get to their destination. There is a compass pointing players toward their destination, but given the messy nature of the game’s streets, this isn’t nearly as helpful as one might like.

Unfortunately, other elements of the gameplay fare poorly here as well, whether it’s the car driving that lacks nuance or responsiveness, or gunplay that requires precision aiming that’s not independent of the direction the car is facing. There’s also nothing in the way of a tutorial here, just an introduction screen pointing out different parts of the interface. This game does provide some interesting options, such as upgrade shops to buy and equip new weapons, and a variety of mission types beyond simply getting to a destination in a timely manner, but it’s hard to appreciate these features when so much of the game makes this experience difficult to enjoy.

It’s a shame that so much of CyberTaxi seems trapped in the past. The unique concept and some of the gameplay elements here are still fairly unique even today, but so much of the experience playing this game is dealing with its dated flaws – the terrible graphics, the confusing screen-obscuring HUD, the lack of a user-friendly map. Even though this is a recent game, it plays very much like a game right out of 1994, and not in a good way. Fans of Quarantine looking to relive the glory days without much in the way of progress may find this to their liking, but most players are better off steering clear of this apocalyptic mess.

tl;dr – CyberTaxi is a post-apocalyptic Driving Action game that’s a spiritual successor to the 1994 game Quarantine. Unfortunately, this is an extremely dated experience with far too many issues to be worth putting up with now, in particular an interface that takes up most of the screen and an unhelpful map. Unless you’re a fan of Quarantine looking for a successor that hasn’t advanced much in the last 27 years, skip this one.

Grade: C-

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