Roundabout is a crazy driving Full Motion Video (FMV) game that tells the story of the rise to fame of Georgio Manos as the world’s first revolving Limousine/Taxi chauffeur. The game is set in 1977 and uses a lot of live action cutscenes to tell its story.
Georgio Manos is a flame-haired woman that commandeers a limo that spins around for no reason. As she drives, she picks all kinds of customers and drops them off at the destinations of their choice.
Before and after you undertake a story mission, you get to see full motion video cutscenes, and they are pretty awesome. The very first one is with a driving instructor who is teaching you the gameplay basics. The game is very easy to pick up, but it does take a little while to get used to. Naturally after the introduction you pass and are given your first report card. Yay!
Beth is a regular customer who seems to have taken quite a shine to Georgio, and she even asks her to move to the city with her! It is pretty clear we will see a lot more of Beth as the story progresses. Another regular is Mickey, a mechanic. Meeting him unlocks the Limorama so if you suffer car damage just drive in and you will be fixed up in a second! You can also customise your limo to your liking, but first you have to find horns (which look like purple spray cans). There’s s total of 49 to find, so be sure to search everywhere.
The game is very crazy, goofy and funny. It can get kind of frustrating after an hour or so, but it get’s a little easier for a time once you unlock the jump ability about 1/4 of the way through the game. With said ability, you can avoid obstacles which changes the dynamic, but even with the jump ability the difficulty spikes at every step you take.
When you pick up a passenger, you have optional objectives you can tick off your report card. Unfortunately, there is no way to see what those objectives are until after the mission, which seems a little daft to me. This forces the player to play every mission twice just to see the objectives. Some of the optional objectives consist of not hitting anything or not using upgrades, and each report card has around eight objectives.
Aside from the story missions you have a plethora of collectibles to find in this massive open world game. 157 sick jumps (blue arrows), 129 cash stashes (green boxes), 23 properties (grey shaded houses), and let us not forget about the 49 horns as well! The properties can get really expensive, so a good way to earn some bucks is to go back to properties you bought and click on the triangle button to see a return on your investment.
None of the collectibles are visible on your map, so you have to roam the streets looking for them which is a ver time-consuming effort, but a financially rewarding endeavour.
Also, the map does show repeatable challenges, and each city has around 5-6 of these. They’re not very difficult, and they vary between bouncing on the balls on the roof of the limo to driving through the whole city.
No Goblin has made a wonderful game that is very funny, very crazy with lots of collectibles. The challenges do provide some replayability, the full motion video cutscenes are charming, and the dialogue is very fun. Overall, I found the game to be very charming during the many hours I’ve playing. Finishing the game will take you roughly 8-12 hours for the full 100% completion of all story missions, challenges, collectibles, and report card objectives. Just enjoy the game and have lots of fun!
