Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator Review (PlayStation 5)

by Jim Smale · March 27, 2024

Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator Review, Climb into the driver’s seat of your car and your business, transport passengers across Barcelona, and grow your company! Can you help relieve the transportation challenges of a city that never sleeps?

Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator Review Pros:

Decent graphics.
6.71GB download size.
Platinum trophy.
Controller settings – can remap controls, vibration intensity slider, and set controller type.
Character and company creator – name, avatar (four choices), company name, logo (twelve choices), and company colors.
Opening flyover of Barcelona with facts and points of interest shown.
You start by doing a driving school set of tasks.
Voiced narrator.
Four driving views including bumper and out of car behind.
In the car camera lets you look out the side windows, lean forward, and also look over the headrest behind you.
The full damage model is in play.
A radial dial can be used for easy access to menus and when open it slows down time.
A full 3D world with camera control.
After a job, you get a breakdown showing exp earned, cash earned, distance traveled, and a 1 to 5-star rank with a customer patience score.
The map allows you to select any available job.
When jobs and directions are given you get the route on your mini map to help.
The game uses the rules of the road and you earn exp by following it like indicating and braking.
During jobs, you can get Interactive prompts from the passengers.
Landmarks can be seen on the map and visited for bonus exp.
You can get a car wash and even watch it happen in real-time, what a treat.
Petrol stars ions let you manually top up or fill it all the way automatically.
The game offers petrol and electric cars.
Player progression is a series of skill trees you put your skill points into and they are split into – driving, proficiency, maintenance, law obedience, and company.
Garages are where you go to repair your car, customize your taxi, and buy new vehicles.
Full stats screen.
Three difficulties – Easy, normal, and hard.
Gearbox modes – Arcade, semi-arcade, simulation, and simulation and clutch.
Supports steering wheels.
Gameplay settings – acceleration sensitivity slider, braking sensitivity slider, and then both again at low and high speed.
Save and load when you want.
Speed cameras are dotted around and do show on the map.
Breaking any road rules takes money off you.
It’s a chilled-out relaxing experience.
Accidents can happen and show on the map.
Bonus street graffiti to find around the world.
You can put your own map markers down.
Level up to get better exp rates including one for having no passengers.
Play how you want.
Day and night cycle.
Customizing your car lets you do the interior color and dashboard items like Bobbleheads and the gearstick nob.
Upgrade parts of your car like transmission type and wet tires etc.
Eventually, you can create and run your own taxi firm.
Great checklist gaming.

Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator Review Cons:

Can only pick four male avatars, no female ones, and no way to change or edit them.
Minimal controller settings until you actually get into the game itself.
No graphics settings.
The game encourages you to use your handbrake by having your car constantly moving backward, even in cutscenes and text prompts.
The voiceover sounds like a computer voice.
Driving is fine but it does need time to fit or a few weeks of the sensitivity sliders as out of the box it’s all or nothing.
Road rules and all of that stuff only come into play when you have a passenger as it’s only enforced by speed cameras and the occasional police seeing you.
The AI is really bad at times like not obeying the rules intentionally ramming you or staying at a green light.
No radio or game music.
The handbrake is ridiculously sensitive.
Hitting the points of interest for exp is not ideal as you have to hold a button down and on a particular angle for it to count.
It’s possible to get stuck many times on other cars or the scenery. The only fix I found was to save and quit the game.
The camera shake for crashes is way over the top.
It’s not possible to just take a fare, you have to select the customer on the map to trigger the fare.
Takes a while to get going.
Having to always name your save even when overwriting one is a pain.

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