Crazy Taxi has primarily been a single-player experience. The PSP iteration was the lone outlier, offering a two-player simultaneous mode on one map and a score attack for specific fares, all through ad-hoc local wireless. Crazy Taxi: World Tour is taking a much bigger swing at multiplayer, and although the game isn't scheduled to launch until sometime in 2027, Sega held an online multiplayer test this past weekend that gave us our first chance to try part of it.

Before jumping into multiplayer, you can customize your driver and car. The aesthetic options weren't available in the network test, but the gameplay customization offered a good indication of how seriously multiplayer is being treated. There are four drivers, which are the original four from the first game, and they're purely cosmetic, with no statistical differences. You can choose from six cars, each with different passenger capacities, speed, ramming power, and other attributes. Cars can also be equipped with buffs, such as faster nitro gain while drifting, allowing you to tailor them to your play style. It's too early to tell whether these differences create meaningful advantages, but they didn't appear to in this limited test.

The beta featured two multiplayer modes, but it's unclear whether more are planned. The first, Pickup Race, is essentially a checkpoint race with a Crazy Taxi twist: checkpoints are passenger pick-up and drop-off points. You're still ranked by how quickly you complete your fares, but those rankings don't affect the outcome. The mode uses dedicated courses rather than open worlds, so there are shortcuts but little room to create your own routes. It also adds nitro pick-ups, although you can still build nitro by drifting. Pickup Race is perfectly serviceable, but it isn't particularly memorable.

Cops 'n Cabbies is much more interesting. It's an asymmetrical mode that pits four cabbies against two cops. The cabbies must transport passengers to their destinations, while the cops try to stop them by ramming their cars. The test map had only two drop-off points, which encouraged cabbies to use the Crazy Taxi 2 mechanic that lets them carry multiple passengers at once. Unlike Pickup Race, Cops 'n Cabbies feels much closer to the core game, with more open environments and plenty of opportunities to find your own route.

When a cop disables a cabbie, the driver is sent to jail and loses any passengers they were carrying. Other cabbies can free them by ramming the holding pen, however, so captivity rarely lasts more than 30 seconds. Cops earn points for each cabbie they disable, with bonus points for catching one carrying passengers.

The result is chaotic in the best way. Two cops are enough to keep cabbies constantly looking over their shoulders, especially since the cabbies' higher point potential makes finding passengers more important and dangerous. At the same time, ramming other taxis is so much fun that you may not care whether they're carrying passengers when you hit them. The constant cycle of chasing, escaping, and breaking teammates out of jail fits Crazy Taxi's personality far better than Pickup Race and is likely to be the mode that keeps players coming back.

One surprising aspect of the multiplayer is its ranking system. You can't immediately play online with other people. Each mode initially requires you to play against computer-controlled opponents and allies, presumably to help you learn the rules before facing experienced players. That's a reasonable approach, as it gives newcomers a chance to get comfortable rather than throwing them straight into competitive matches. The downside is that reaching rank E takes roughly five matches per mode on average, and the relatively slow progression could frustrate players eager to get online.

The biggest concern is the game's online performance. The gameplay doesn't slow down, so the sense of speed remains intact, but opponents frequently judder and skip around the environment. They never suddenly appeared far ahead or behind me, but the effect was noticeable and occurred in both modes. That's understandable for a closed network test, which is specifically meant to uncover problems like this, but it's something Sega will need to address before launch.

The game is being built in Unreal Engine, which brings some visual benefits and drawbacks. Ray tracing and HDR support are present, making the cars particularly shiny; you can even see passengers reflected on their trunks. HDR doesn't seem fully implemented yet, though, as the vibrant color palette you'd expect from Crazy Taxi isn't quite there. Performance also dips below 60fps outside of gameplay, which isn't a major concern but should be addressed during optimization.

More concerning is the game's pop-in. During my first match, the usual circles indicating passenger pick-up and drop-off areas didn't appear at all; they only loaded in during the second match. That's particularly problematic in an arcade game where players need to read their surroundings quickly. A poor first match caused by missing visual cues could easily leave a bad impression.

Despite those issues, the closed multiplayer test gives plenty of reason to be hopeful about Crazy Taxi: World Tour. The cars feel good to drive, and the levels shown so far look promising, even if the short multiplayer sessions don't provide enough time to fully appreciate them. The modes work well, with Cops 'n Cabbies standing out as the clear highlight, while online performance and visual pop-in still need some work. With the game still set for release sometime in 2027, there's plenty of time to improve these areas, and hopefully we'll get a better look at the single-player content before launch.