Why are there so many games that simulate common and seemingly mundane activities in our daily lives? Powerwash Simulator, Bus Simulator, Garden Simulator, Farming Simulator, Truck Simulator, plus there’s Teacher Simulator and its new addition, Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator, where, as the name suggests, you have to take a taxi through Barcelona. Many of these games are very entertaining (yes, Powerwash Simulator), but this new title doesn’t fall into that category.
Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator was developed by Simteract, a software company that originally developed simulators for training train drivers, among others, in the United States. Since 2018, they have been transferring the experience gained in this area to the video game industry, where they have already released Train Life: A Railway Simulator and now Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator.
In this game you have to make a living as a taxi driver in a detailed recreation of the city of Barcelona with more than 460 kilometers of streets and highways. Your job, of course, is to pick up customers and transport them to their destination while making sure they are happy and satisfied, because happy customers are generous customers.
On the road, you need to ensure that you obey traffic rules, talk to customers, keep the car clean and tidy, comply with their requests, such as: B. adjust the temperature of the car, and of course remember to refuel and repair any damage. This happens in the garage, where you can also buy new cars, equip new brakes, tires and a second gearbox, giving your vehicles new upholstery, shiny rims, different taxi signs and a new coat of paint, among other things.
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Everything sounds great so far, but the game gets noticeably worse as you drive through the city. The biggest problem is artificial intelligence, which is deficient in both other drivers and pedestrians. This can lead to drivers stopping at green lights because they think something is in the way, which of course leads to a traffic jam. But it can also have the opposite effect in that they sometimes run a red light and crash straight into the side of the road. of your car, which doesn’t make customers happy at all and is therefore bad for business, because it’s worth remembering that happy customers are generous customers.
Even worse are the pedestrians who walk right in front of your car or do the Michael Jackson-style moonwalk, and if you hit them, not only do you have to pay a fine, but the customers get so angry that they do it to the car left without paying. It is extremely annoying to lose customers and therefore money and get a fine because a pedestrian suddenly wants to walk in front of your car, which happens often.
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If you manage not to wipe out the pedestrian population, you will gain experience and money, which will give you access to various benefits and new cars. After purchasing your second car, you can hire other drivers and have to decide where in the city you want to drive and at what time. Some of the drivers are skilled and provide financial benefits that they can use in the shop, others occasionally get sick, mess up the cars, or, even worse, cause damage that needs to be repaired. In this case, it is better to fire her and hire someone else. Let’s see if there are any improvements.
The graphics of Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator are very good. The interior of the car is full of details and the modeling of the car is very well done. The same can’t be said for the rest of the cars in the city, which are angular and crude and since this title doesn’t have licenses from real brands, you won’t see any “real” cars on the road, but there are still plenty of recognizable ones. I have seen cars that were very similar to the Audi A3, the Fiat 500 and the Citroën C3. Unfortunately, there aren’t many different types, so you’ll see the same type of vehicle over and over again.
If you have ever been to Barcelona, you will recognize many of the areas with the city’s beautiful buildings, parks, monuments and other iconic places. However, the technical part is a bit questionable, as there can be pauses of one or two seconds in the graphics before it continues. This happens often and although it doesn’t directly affect the rather slow gameplay, it is by no means flattering.
Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator is very similar to other titles in the genre, a quiet game to relax and unwind. A calm that can be interrupted at any moment by a damn pedestrian and can raise your blood pressure to slightly dangerous levels.
This title is just as monotonous as many other everyday simulators like the ones I mentioned at the beginning, but that’s probably one of the strengths of these games. The repetition of the same thing over and over again is what makes them so popular. Finding peace in repetition. Our real life is so hectic and stressful that we decide to recreate the quietest and most trivial moments in life, as is the case in Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator.
Taxi Life: A city driving simulator is inherently a bit more demanding than, say, a train simulator, as it takes into account traffic, traffic rules, non-working traffic lights, roadworks and many other variables, but the big problem is: as I mentioned earlier, artificial intelligence is such a thing serious problem that it affects gameplay.
We find it difficult to recommend Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator in its current state. It certainly has potential, but the developers need to take action regarding the AI as it is currently ruining a large part of the gaming experience.
