Whacksy Taxi

Common sense and intuition would suggest that taxis are for short haul journeys, like from the pub to the nearest kebab shop.

Whacksy Taxi does away with common sense - it's a game that sees you ferry your passengers hundreds of miles and leap effortlessly over traffic in your souped-up craft.

However, while the setup is very futuristic, the basic gameplay is as old as the LED hills.

Travelling a constantly straight three-lane highway from New York to San Francisco, you tap the 'left' and 'right' buttons to dodge traffic, or slam the brakes to avoid hitting bumpers.

As well as slaloming through traffic, you can also jump over cars. Trucks aren’t quite such an easy foe, however, and leaping into the back of these vehicles tends to mess up your bodywork.

Even though it sounds a little overpowered, bounding over cars takes some practice to properly pull off, as it can be hard to judge distance and speed at the angle you view the road from.

Pick-ups appear throughout the journey, giving you a speed boost or adding some extra time to the clock, which is constantly ticking down threatening to end your run.

Apart from the jumping and the power-ups, the general principle of Whacksy Taxi hasn’t changed since similar games appeared on LCD keyrings decades ago.

Like with those toys, the game can quickly become repetitive, with very little variation and depth to play.

It's possible to reach a Zen-like state of mindlessness as you weave through the traffic, although whether this is a particularly positive emotion for a high-speed action game to evoke is open to debate.

Whacksy Taxi's vintage-style gameplay isn’t quite refined enough to be a perfect example of its type, but it's perfectly serviceable for a few minutes here and there.