Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator

If I'm honest I'm stunned at some of the reviews of this game, on both PC's steam and consoles like the PS5. It has gotten very low ratings which I can only attribute to a buggy launch, however I've put in around 20 hours and I'm really enjoying every minute of it. It's a smooth relaxing game you can play while listening to a podcast or have some music on in the background. Perfect for after those sweaty PVP games or after grinding yet another tough platinum.

Firstly I played on PS5. I started playing after 2 patches had already been released so they may have fixed all of the big issues as I had an almost flawless experience. They also released another patch while I was playing only recently, but tbh I didn't notice any changes whatsoever to AI, mechanics or visuals. A good thing in my opinion. The developers plan to keep updating the game with new character models, taxi paints etc so that's a positive too.

The gameplay is very good, you're given a tutorial of the driving which takes place in a parking lot with a loan car to get the basics of driving, reversing, parking, signalling etc. A very solid start.

Once you begin you have a great sized map to explore, not a massive map but the perfect size to learn the routes and streets. It's also a very good looking map as you see the sights of Barcelona from the narrow streets right down to the beach and waterfront. Aside from driving to pick up regular passengers you can do other tasks such as speed challenges (I'll be honest I was horrible at these) collect graffiti and visit places of interest such as museums or historical buildings. This is great to mix things up so you can take a break from picking people up whenever you want.

I really love the progression in Taxi Life as you work towards getting progressively better cars and hiring new employees to make even more money. There's a lot to spend your money on in terms of cars but also customisation options. From tires, paint jobs, neons, interior colors, brakes, engines, even cool little bobble heads. Lots to choose from for sure.

Visually the game is good, not great. The map of Barcelona itself is beautifully recreated but smaller things like pedestrians are pretty poor and have horrible animations to them. The taxi visuals are superb though and having lots of camera angles to play with makes it really enjoyable. It also features fully working mirrors, something very few games have.

I honestly couldn't think of a better taxi game unless you spent millions adding features like walking around, owning an apartment and customising it etc but that's far beyond what any studio would do for a taxi game.

The one and only negative I have is the pedestrians. As I mentioned the character models are pretty bad but also their animations are pretty awful too. These models are meant as a way to slow you down because if you hit one of them its costly in terms of cash you need to pay out but also you lose any passenger you have regardless of how far you've travelled. They walk straight out in front of cars from the walkways which is fine, but will often just stop moving for a second or so, and even get to the other side then instantly start walking back across again. Very strange AI behaviour that can make you easily hit one of them but if you're driving normally you begin to learn their patterns and can avoid that.

Overall a superb Taxi Simulator that has great driving mechanics, a solid amount of customisation, a great progression system, a beautiful map of Barcelona and is a great laidback game to play, about as good as a taxi game can get in my opinion and well worth checking out as it's far cheaper than most games these days.