It's inevitable, really, if you think about it. Designers constantly strive to emulate more and more varied aspects of life in an attempt to come up with a truly original and groundbreaking concept for a game. But to do so, they must pull out of the generic and typical streams of life to convert into digital entertainment, such as sports simulations or real-time strategy war games, and move into the wacky, the bizarre, or the downright mundane. This game, for its starting concept, hits the third of these options. It's unlikely that being a tax collector could be described as being wacky or bizarre. However, the people at Sego obviously disagree, and so here we have Crazy Taxman, the tax collector simulation.


A.... Tax Collector?

Yep, that's right. You get to be a tax collector and chase down the tax-dodging scum of society. The game starts out with a cry of "Let's go make some crazy money!" and you're propelled into the menu screen, from where you can choose to work for three different local authorities, which act as difficulty levels for the game. Each difficulty level makes the tax-dodgers you chase worth more, but they become ever more adept at hiding away and evading your attempts to chase them down.

Once you've chosen your authority, you get to choose which of four different tax collectors you want to play as. You can be the suave Duncan, slightly unhinged Bryan, glitzy Aileen, or hard-nosed Mike. None of the selections actually change how the game plays - you just get a different set of polygons representing your main character. There is, however, a nice but pointless bit of customisation available at this point, allowing you to design your tax collector's tie by using a series of pre-defined emblems and patterns. Tie designs can be saved for later use if you make one you really like. So, you've got your authority, you're looking good, it's time to get out there and collect some tax!


A Taxing Occupation

The game starts with you sitting in your car outside the local governmental office in the middle of town. There is only one town in the game, the coincidentally named 'Cashville'. It's quite a large map, though, and you can spend a few games without visiting the same place twice. It's always a sunny day in Cashville, but you're about to rain on some poor criminal's parade, taxman style!

The concept of the game is quite simple: You drive around town, finding the fraudsters, chasing them down, and extracting some cash from them. The finding part is not as difficult as it may sound. Each perpetrator is marked out clearly by a large coloured dollar sign hanging magically above their head. The colour of the dollar sign indicates how much the person owes, with green denoting a fairly small debt, and red marking out a really notorious fraudster.

So, you've picked out your target, now lets go and extract some payback, literally! You can get pretty close to the perpetrators without them spotting, but as soon as they catch a glimpse of the tax department badge in the window of your car, they can react in a number of different ways. Lower value criminals might not attempt to escape at all, some higher value fraudsters may run into a side alley and evade you on foot, and those of the highest value will probably hijack the nearest car to you and make you enter a daring cross-town high-speed chase to capture them.

Once the chase phase is entered, it is your job to get the criminals back on foot (if they took a car or other vehicle), and close to within a certain radius of them to make them give up. If they don't try to escape, you can just walk up to them. Those on foot might require you to leave your car and chase on equal terms. If they're in a vehicle, you can ram them off the road or, if you're really clever, work out where they're heading, get there first, and set up a one-car roadblock. The artificial intelligence is really fair in this way in that the opposing driver doesn't know where you are if he can't see you, so there are no 'clairvoyant' escapes by the computer controlled characters, which would otherwise cause much frustration. However, given the option of ramming and blocking, I would take the former. Much more fun!

Speaking of the artificial intelligence, though, it isn't just going to let itself get caught, and the sheer variation of escape routes it can think of are mind boggling. Picture the scene - it's the middle of the day, you've chased your target through midday traffic as he drives a beat up old saloon car. You're sure he can't get much further in the smoking wreck, just as you pull into the harbour part of town. You chase the car through the docks, past piles of crates towering on either side of the roadway as pedestrians and dockworkers jump frantically out of your path. Suddenly, the fraudster makes an error and heads straight up a jetty, where only a watery end can await him. That is, until you notice the large ferry just pulling away. You floor the accelerator, but the other car is already at the far end of the jetty. There is a flare of revving engine noise as your opponent takes off, and a loud thump as his car slides to a halt on the deck of the ferry, followed by the loud screeching of your own brakes complaining as you stamp on them to prevent yourself from going into the water. Sure, the port authorities might catch the guy, but you've missed your opportunity to claim him yourself, and all you can do is drive away to find another target while marvelling at just how fantastic the chase was. The game hits just the right zone between not being so realistic that every driving error is penalised too heavily, and not being so easy as to be unchallenging.


Now Where's Those Little Thumbs?

Assuming you managed to track down and stop your target, you have some more work to do. His car is a smouldering wreck, you've chased him down a side alley, and finally he stands in a quiet back street, hands in the air as you approach. Now you have to 'persuade' him to hand over some money. Here you have a number of different tactics to apply, each offering different success chances against different types of people.

A menu pops up at the side of the screen, unseen by the hard-looking mobster type in front of you. You peruse the available options. Quiet chat? Not likely, you don't think he's up for a cup of tea and a biscuit. Threaten to wreck his car? Umm, his car is already a wreck! Threaten to break kneecaps. Yes, that'll do it! One quick flash of the baseball bat in the back of your car, and the tough guy is more than willing to part with his pennies. Another job well done.

Of course, this is an extreme situation. As well as having money to collect, you also have a reputation to maintain. You start the game with a certain amount of 'Rep Points', and each bungled collection decision can cost you a number of points. Hit zero and it's game over. Of course, you also have a time limit to fight against, which is only increased a little once a collection is made, so being speedy in your collections is absolutely vital. Even so, threatening to break poor Granny Mabel's thumbs for missing her last social security payment is going to cost you big in Rep Points, while only gaining you a small amount of cash. It's something you get better at with experience, but there are a lot of pre-defined set pieces and recorded sections of dialogue to add some humour to the whole process, although a lot of it is pretty corny.


A Tax Collector on a Mission!

Some of you might be wondering what incentive there is to go beyond the area just around your own tax office, to actually get out and explore the farthest reaches of the available map. This incentive comes in the form of special one-off missions, announced by your in-car radio as you drive. These direct you to search out fraudsters all over the map, which usually relinquish very high levels of cash and give an extra bonus to your all important game-timer.

If you're in the middle of chasing down another target and a mission pops up, you have to decide whether to ditch the current pursuit and head to the area indicated, or to continue with the current chase. Some of the mission targets are very hard to find, and they are randomly generated, so it's rare to find one in the same place twice. Still, if you decide to take the risk and head into the unknown, the target perpetrator will be clearly marked with a big golden dollar sign over their head, and they are usually the most evasive of opponents - expect some epic car chases!


A Job Well Done

This game is such a well-rounded concept, centred around a very simple idea. It brings together some fun elements from classic games in the past, such as Chase HQ and Grand Theft Auto, and moulds them together into a truly fun gaming experience. You'll come back to this one again and again, and when you unveil it at parties, it reaches a whole new level of fun, as your mates yell out unhelpful directions and advice while you try to track down your foe. If only there were a multiplayer mode, this could be very nearly perfect.

But, if nothing else, this game will guarantee one thing: After playing it, you will never miss a mortgage repayment again.

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