Metro Cross

Gamepad or keyboard. Accelerator, brake, and steering as standard. Avoid civilian cars. Cross checkpoints under the time limit to advance. Score combines time and traffic-cleanliness across the stage.

Metro Cross is a top-down urban racer with checkpoint stages threading through cityscapes. The format is closely related to Crazy Taxi (1999) without the passenger pickups, focusing instead on point-to-point racing through traffic. Thirty stages, eight cities.

What works is the traffic AI. Civilian cars react to your presence by braking and swerving, with horn cues when appropriate. They are obstacles but they are responsive obstacles, which means weaving through traffic is a skill rather than a memorisation puzzle. The traffic flow is realistic enough to read.

Thirty stages spread across eight different cities. The roster covers global capitals from Tokyo to Cape Town. Each city has a visual personality and characteristic traffic density. Mumbai is the loosest and most chaotic city in the roster. Sydney is the cleanest, and Tokyo is the most precise grid layout. The city variety prevents the format from feeling samey.

Tested with gamepad and keyboard. Both work; the format does not depend on analog precision because urban speeds rarely require it. Touch is supported but the screen real estate gets crowded.

Where the game earns its four stars is the city texture. Visual details (street signs in local languages and weather appropriate to the location, with traffic patterns matching real-world conventions) make each stage feel grounded. This is research-driven design that you do not see in browser racers often.

Where I would push back is the music. Each city has its own track, which is the right idea, but the tracks are short loops that repeat too quickly. Longer composed pieces would have served the urban-cruise atmosphere better.

Four stars. Strong urban racer with excellent traffic AI and city texture. Recommended for racing fans who want point-to-point stages rather than circuit racing.