Neo Cab

No matter if we're talking about games, television or movies, taxi cab drivers have always been portrayed as being a bit crazy. I'm not sure that's the word I would use to describe Lina Romero, the driver at the center of the new game Neo Cab. This is a normal, level-headed woman who came to the city of Los Ojos looking for a new start. Nothing crazy about that. But when her friend goes missing and she gets caught up in a criminal conspiracy against the biggest corporation in the world, Lina will see her life get flipped upside down and changed in unthinkable ways. All this might sound insane, but don't go into Neo Cab expecting Crazy Taxi.

It's the near future and self-driving cars are beginning to make taxi drivers a thing of the past. Lina drives for an Uber-like company named Neo Cab, which is also one of the last remaining taxi services to employ real people. But this practice may be coming to an end, if the overbearing tech company Capra has any say in the matter. On top of controlling almost every aspect of your life from money to housing to entertainment, Capra is also trying to outlaw human-operated taxi cabs.

Lina isn't aware of any of this as she heads towards Los Ojos. All she knows is that her former best-friend Savy has a spare room for rent, and the prospect of starting a new life in the big city sounds appealing. But this plan is undone when Savy goes missing. Without a place to stay and very little money, Lina is forced to tirelessly work at Neo Cab in order to keep her head above water. She'll do all this while investigating clues in an effort to find Savy and solve the larger mysteries found in the seedy underbelly of Los Ojos.

As a Neo Cab driver, a lot of the job involves chatting with the passenger and making sure they give you five stars. So much of the early part of the game feels like a series of random sketches, with each passenger (or pax, as they call them in the future) forcing Lina into a lot of different and weird conversations. There are the two guys from Germany who refuse to believe Lina is not a robot, an actor bouncing ideas off of the driver, an insecure woman meeting her long-term boyfriend for the first time and even a fake doctor that may or may not be romantically interested in our unattached cabbie.

The goal is to earn at least 35 CapraCoins and pick up as many as three different paxes per day. Lina will need to refuel from time-to-time and make sleeping arrangements at the end of each shift. If she can maintain a rating of at least four stars, then she'll keep her job with Neo Cab and can live to see another day. But watch out for those one-star reviews, as it will limit who can be picked up and how much Lina will be able to make. The trick is to keep everybody happy and make them want to recommend Neo Cab.

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It's actually more complicated than that, because we're also actively investigating what happened to Savy. Sometimes the people in the back seat will actually have useful information that will broaden the search, but Lina can't push too hard without possibly sacrificing a good rating. There's a tug-of-war between keeping the pax happy and furthering the storyline. Sometimes the dialog options will seem straight-forward, while other times they'll lead in directions that leave everybody pissed off. It's especially difficult because every passenger is different and sometimes their expectations are unreasonable, maybe even illegal.

It's important to note that Neo Cab is not a driving game. Despite being behind the wheel most of the time, we're never given control of the car. Our interaction is largely limited to choosing dialog options and deciding who to pick up. I don't mind that the focus is entirely on the story and characters, but it would have been nice to see more interaction. Everything from the camera angles to the backgrounds to the facial expressions all repeat with each pax, and that started to wear on me after a while.

I was reminded of the game Wheels of Aurelia while playing Neo Cab. That was another car-based interactive story that was all about the dialog and characters, but it put you in control of driving through the cities and countrysides. Neo Cab needed that extra level of interaction, even if it wasn't really about the driving. For as interesting as I found the mystery and conversations, I couldn't shake that I was merely along for the ride.

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The other problem is that the story ends just as it's getting interesting. One of the things I really like about this game is how ready it is to bring up heavy social and political topics that don't have easy answers. There's a lot to explore when it comes to the way technology replaces low-wage workers and the evils that come from major corporations controlling every aspect of our lives. So much of this game feels like an intoxicating mix between Taxicab Confessionals and Black Mirror, and that's why I was initially excited to see where the story went.

Sadly, none of this pays off in a satisfying way. There's a point in the game where the curtain is pulled back and we suddenly understand what's going on. This should have led to a whole new part of the game where this knowledge colors every conversation you have, both in good and bad ways. I was excited to take the information I learned and convince the people I met along the way to help in the good fight and connect all the dots. But there's nothing like that here. Instead we get a few lines that explain what happen and then a brief coda. It left me a little angry that I was robbed of the most exciting part of the game.

The saving grace is that there are quite a few different paths you can take and characters to interact with. There's a lot of value in going back and seeing how things play out if you make different choices. This may not lead to you to a more satisfying ending, but it will give you more time to enjoy the colorful characters and their crazy conversations. And when it comes down to it, that's the best part of Neo Cab.