On paper, Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator seems like a great time. Leisurely picking up fares in one of Europe’s most beautiful cities, Barcelona. Exploring and finding points of cultural interest, forming and customising your own taxi company — it all sounds like a relaxing experience, right? Wrong.
While there’s no denying that the beauty of Barcelona has been captured and Taxi Life gives up a visually spectacular offering, this feels like it’s at the detriment of the player experience. Moving between areas, the frame rate frequently tanks, causing some major input lag and turning what should be a smooth and relaxing title into a bit of a nightmare.
Taxi Life wants you to act as if you’re actually driving. There are no GTA-style manoeuvres here — you’ve got to abide by traffic regulations. You’ll get fines for speeding, going the wrong way up roads, running red lights etc., and you’ll get granted less tips and fares from customers if your car is beaten up and damaged. Unfortunately, penalties sometimes seem hard to avoid with AI drivers and pedestrians inducing more road rage than their actual real-life counterparts. Slowly coming to a stop at a red traffic light frequently saw us being rear-ended, with our customer asking if we actually knew how to drive.
Taxi Life has so much promise, but in its current state it’s extremely hard to enjoy. Some menu options still have Xbox buttons assigned to them – press A, we were told. One accident we were in saw our car flipped onto its back (maybe the road rage had gotten to us at that point), and we had to quit the game and reload just to be able to move the taxi again. The lack of polish feels evident throughout the game, and it’s a real shame, because the concept is a compelling one.