Easily the best new game I've played this year. Fully commits to the N64/PS1 aesthetic and plays out like a cross between Crazy Taxi and Banjo Kazooie.
The catch here is that you don't have a traditional jump button despite being a platformer- momentum is key to reaching great heights (kind of like a certain vidya game about a blue hedgehog). Your cute little cab instead has what's called a "flip o' will", which is essentially a dash you can trigger at any time to pick up a burst of speed. Additionally, you can get twice the speed by accelerating right after the cab twirls during the flip o' will. The timing on this is perhaps a little too strict at first, but it's very satisfying when you manage to send the cab soaring into those hard-to-reach places by getting it right.
The only thing keeping it from being a perfect game (imho) are the timers in some stages. Some stages will see you transporting NPCs across the map Crazy-Taxi style to increase a constantly-ticking timer. The problem with this is that the game also wants you to explore and mess around with the physics in order to find gears (the primary macguffin) as well as golden bunnies (not essential for any% and often require tough stunts to obtain). It was kinda annoying having to stop what I was trying to do to go drive some people around and hunt down clocks so I wouldn't Time Out. It would have been better if these levels were their own thing as breaks from the semi-open world exploration.
Even with that, Yellow Taxi is an absolute blast once you get the hang of its controls. It's very much like this Penny's Big Breakaway in that it's not going to click instantly like most other platformers, but when it does, it's quite spectacular.
The catch here is that you don't have a traditional jump button despite being a platformer- momentum is key to reaching great heights (kind of like a certain vidya game about a blue hedgehog). Your cute little cab instead has what's called a "flip o' will", which is essentially a dash you can trigger at any time to pick up a burst of speed. Additionally, you can get twice the speed by accelerating right after the cab twirls during the flip o' will. The timing on this is perhaps a little too strict at first, but it's very satisfying when you manage to send the cab soaring into those hard-to-reach places by getting it right.
The only thing keeping it from being a perfect game (imho) are the timers in some stages. Some stages will see you transporting NPCs across the map Crazy-Taxi style to increase a constantly-ticking timer. The problem with this is that the game also wants you to explore and mess around with the physics in order to find gears (the primary macguffin) as well as golden bunnies (not essential for any% and often require tough stunts to obtain). It was kinda annoying having to stop what I was trying to do to go drive some people around and hunt down clocks so I wouldn't Time Out. It would have been better if these levels were their own thing as breaks from the semi-open world exploration.
Even with that, Yellow Taxi is an absolute blast once you get the hang of its controls. It's very much like this Penny's Big Breakaway in that it's not going to click instantly like most other platformers, but when it does, it's quite spectacular.