Summary: Georgio Manos is the worlds first revolving limousine driver. Join her on the ride of her life full of metaphorical and literal twists and turns in 2014’s hidden gem: Roundabout.
Overall: For $10 it is hard not to recommend this game. It’s unique hybrid of mechanics and story that doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s on PC, PS4, Vita, and as of right now it is included in Xbox Game Pass.
Control: Roundabout is a driving puzzle game. Georgio Manos drives an ever turning limousine. While you simply move with the left stick or d-pad, the challenge comes in moving with the constant turning to dodge obstacles. From the start you can boost with the right trigger. Outside of just speed, this can be used to get Georgio synced up with the moving obstacles. The camera can be moved a little with the right stick, but the isometric camera is pretty fixed. Y will start missions or challenges when Georgio is over top the start point, and upon completion tapping LB or RB will restart the mission and bring up the bonus objectives respectively. Later on Georgio gets access to upgrades she can use with X. These are on a charge so you can’t spam them and are unlocked through various criteria ranging from killing pedestrians to completing the campaign. Just as the third act comes to a close Georgio gets the ability to jump by pressing A.
Missions: Roundabout is an open world game where the player starts missions by driving to yellow stars on the map. All of these are checkpoint races. Occasionally a checkpoint will be replaced with a unique one off task, but those are a rarity. The missions do not get boring however because every last one is given a juicy narrative. The world is designed in a way that gives the developers and players a large number of routes and each hub is used just enough so that everything is used without getting repetitive. Missions also occasionally add unique obstacles to further freshen things up. The late game gets really linear, but that’s an exception to the rule. Every mission has bonus objectives like collecting coins, not taking damage, and of course beating certain times. There are other more unique bonuses like not bouncing off of tires or not jumping, but these aren’t always included like the above ones. The missions are not this games strongest aspect, but they offer some satisfying structure to the crazy concept.
Challenges: Challenges take the games more unique objectives and turn them into score/time attack challenges. Some are unique to the challenge themselves. These are hard. I mean I’m not very good at the game, but I hit par on one of these. I am glad these exist though. Particularly the two unlocked for beating the game. One of these is a speed run of the whole game without cutscenes which is tied to three unique achievements: completing it, not dying while completing it, and beating a rather vague developer time which is somewhere in the 25 minute range. The other is also the game’s credits, and it is a lovely tribute to a classic bad game with a fittingly terrible achievement to boot. You can look it up if you want, but I refuse to spoil it as it not only was a great surprise, but spoils the game’s story.
Collectibles: Roundabout is an open world game so outside driving from mission to mission there are collectibles to grab. Wads of cash are hidden across the map and they can be used to buy real-estate which can be used to make more money and buy more real-estate so you can buy new hats and paint jobs for Georgio’s limousine. You can earn money by building up a combo, but that is a slow process. Other collectibles include sick jumps. Which are found off the beaten path. Alternate horn sounds are also hidden about as well. While I only ever collected all the real-estate I had a blast finding and collecting all of these. My one complaint would be that the checkpoints can really make some of these a pain, particularly in the late game.
Story: Roundabout is one of the funniest games I’ve ever played. Not the funniest, and the humor is derived almost entirely from camp, but this game is hilarious and full of heart.
Once the story gained focus in act two I was actually invested in where it was going. Act 1 introduces all the wacky characters, act 2 gives Georgio a goal, and act 3 is the fallout of achieving that goal. It’s a good story. The acting isn’t great, but it’s not supposed to be like the setting of the late 70s, the cutscenes themselves are designed to evoke the low budget production of that era. The cutscenes are entirely shot in the front and back seat of a car with green-screened windows with one angle for both seats. There are minor exceptions where a character is outside the limo, and some out of copyright b-roll is used to hilarious affect, but the story is all told from inside a “limo”.
The limitations of what can be filmed is used to push the humor. Costumes are Halloween quality and not one character doesn’t get reused. This not only emphasizes the low budget, but in a roundabout way makes all of the characters feel a little more important. Each character gets a story arc of some form. They don’t all grow as characters, but they all end up somewhere different than where they started.
