If there's something SEGA is especially good at doing better than almost any developer is ACTUALLY making great sequels. Not content with using the same engine, slightly improving the visuals, and making marginal improvements in gameplay, SEGA usually goes all out with their sequels. Need examples? Virtua Fighter to Virtua Fighter 2, Virtual On: Cybertroopers to Virtual On Oratorio Tangram, and House of the Dead to House of the Dead 2 are but a few. The leap in graphics and gameplay are so dramatic in these examples, no wonder SEGA has one of the most dedicated fans in the video game industry. Now we have Crazy Taxi 2 drifting into stores everywhere today, and with the phenomenal first Crazy Taxi game, Hitmaker had a mountain of a task to make the sequel even better. So is Crazy Taxi 2 better than the original?
To better answer the question, let's talk a bit about what makes Crazy Taxi 2 so great (and yes, I realize this is a one-way conversation). Crazy Taxi was one of those few titles, much like Tony Hawk Pro Skater that had both mass-market appeal and great gameplay depth. The premise in Crazy Taxi is simple: pick up a passenger, take them to their destination, and drive as fast and as recklessly as you can. The simple mechanics allowed almost anyone to instantly enjoy the game, but once you started playing, there's a wealth of tricks, shortcuts, and advanced mechanics to discover that made you better and better. Awesome controls, appealing characters, keen visuals, delightful mini-games, and blistering speed made Crazy Taxi a gigantic hit, and that makes it that much harder for Crazy Taxi 2 to be better than the original.

Hitmaker's attempt to make Crazy Taxi even better was to keep it basic: keep the same great driving elements, searing frame rate, and gameplay mechanics and add things that would spice it up a lot more. To this end, they've introduced four new characters, increased your viewing distance, and created the setting for the game in a larger, city filled with tons of traffic and obstructions - New York City to be exact. Furthermore, they've added two major elements to the gameplay: the ability to pick up multiple passengers for huge amounts of moolah, and the "hop" feature that enables you to leap buildings in a single bound. Let's not forget new mini-games that hone your skills in the new gameplay features and it seems like it's a great recipe to make the sequel even better than the original, right?

In some aspects, it definitely does and I'm specifically talking about the improved viewing distance. You're able to see quite far into the distance, with minimal pop-up problems and little slow-down. There's a whole lot more cars in both Small Apple and Around the Apple modes and leads to some major tips from your fellow passengers. Speaking of which, when picking up multiple passengers, you get a multiplier for any Crazy elements your perform successful (i.e Crazy Jumps, Crazy Drifts, etc.) depending upon how many passengers your carrying - carrying four cheerleaders will multiple the tips you get four times the normal amount! You want speed? Crazy Taxi 2 gives you plenty of throttling speed that will leave you with virtual backlash. Finally, as ridiculous as it looks, the hop feature is instrumental in the game; with the huge blocks of building in the game, it's often better to jump on top of building to take the short "high" road. Sounding great so far, right?

Well, there's some nagging problems that are specific to Crazy Taxi 2. I hate to say this, but I really don't care for any of the new drivers in the game. With the exception to Iceman, all the characters seem too "happy, happy, joy, joy". Don't get me wrong, my primary selection in Crazy Taxi was the hip-hopping B.D. Joe so it's not like I hate happy characters. They just seem to lack any real emotion; with B.D. Joe, he was cool but he had an attitude when he said, "Shut up!" With these new characters, they don't seem to have any real spark to their personality. Secondly, all the cars seem way to easy to swerve and drift. No matter if it's Cinnamon's ultra-light car or Hot-D's tank of a car, all the cars feel as if their rear if the car fishtails and "lifts" off the ground way too easily. It takes some time to adjust to the new controls if you really want to get those drift bonuses and for me, it was often frustrating.

I love the new city destinations of FAO Schwarz, The Gap, Burger King and many others, but it's quite tough navigating through the city. Veteran players shouldn't have a problem once they learn the map (which you can also look at once you've gone through the Crazy Pyramid), but I fear beginning players will be downright discouraged with some of the narrow "blind" turns, combined with the increased amount of traffic. The differences between Small Apple and Around the Apple are pretty noticeable; Around The Apple spaces out the city congestion in three main areas while Small Apple puts every drop-off point within a couple of blocks from each other. Obviously, the music made a huge difference in Crazy Taxi as the Offspring certainly had us bobbing our heads and scream "AI-YAI-YAI-YAI-YAI" in our off-tuned voices. Once again, Offspring graces the music selections of Crazy Taxi 2 along with Methods of Mayhem who provide some pretty nice tracks as well.

With the split-screen versus mode gone as well as the online play feature, what's left for extra options is the Crazy Pyramid. Yes, there is an Internet feature on the main menu screen, but it leads to the Crazy Taxi 2 homepage. As for Crazy Pyramid, all the mini-games are just incredible and I wonder how Hitmaker thought of some of them; you really have to see the Crazy Golf mini-game to really appreciate the great sense of style and humor of Hitmaker. I also have to applaud the new "cinematic" replay feature, so you can check out your best runs.

The biggest gripe I have about Crazy Taxi 2 is the lack of any huge or ground-breaking improvements in both gameplay or graphics. There might not be a whole lot more you can do with Crazy Taxi 2 than adding multiple passengers and the hop feature, but certainly the graphics could be improved more so than it is. In our interview with Hisao Oguchi he mentioned that he wanted the Xbox Crazy Taxi Next to have night-time driving sequences as well as different passengers that appeared only at certain times. That certainly would have made Crazy Taxi 2 seem like a worthy sequel. Obviously, the omission of the versus modes, offline and online, probably would've made a huge difference as well. The questionable controls and lack of personality from the characters also made me lean more to preferring the original than the sequel.

Crazy Taxi 2 may have new gameplay mechanics, new cities, and new mini-games than Crazy Taxi but that doesn't make it better than the original. And like I said above, there are some controls issues that I noticed, but that really doesn't effect the enjoyment of the game. For that matter, it's not that I didn't enjoy Crazy Taxi 2 at all; the new gameplay features, new mini-games, and new maps will certainly make most Crazy Taxi players feel home as they go out and make some more - but not better - crazy money.