Roundabout is a cheesy low-budget FMV game starring a limousine driver, a mechanic, a lady in a hat, and a $40 skeleton bought off of Amazon.com with surprising entertainment value.
In Roundabout, you control a constantly rotating limousine. You play as Georgio Manos, the world’s first revolving limousine driver. Your limousine is constantly rotating at all times, which forms the core of the game’s gameplay – you know how to get from point A to point B, but your constant revolution makes your life a lot more difficult. Early on it is fairly simple, navigating your way around stationary obstacles, but as the game progresses, things get increasingly more difficult, with moving obstacles, barrels which cause you to bounce in the opposite direction after striking them, platforming (done while spinning all the while), and the odd unique gameplay challenge to make things harder.
The core of the game are the “rides”. At the start of each ride, Georgio picks up a passenger, each of whom has a little bit of dialogue to start things off – a reason for going from point A to point B. There’s also a narrator, who chimes in, and both the narrator and the passengers are pretty chatty – every mission contains numerous lines of dialogue, as well as at least two FMV videos, one at the start and one at the end – with some rides having additional FM Vs interspersed in the middle.
The passengers are deliberately terribly acted – every character acts in a very cheesy way. The videos are shot to look like something made in the 1970s, and the game itself is set in the 1970s, with references to Jimmy Carter and Disco present throughout the game, and a 70s aesthetic to the entire world.
But while the characters are campy as heck, they have a certain degree of Narm Charm to them – the acting in this is one of those “So Bad It’s Good” sort of things, and deliberately so, and it more or less works. It is impossible to take the game seriously, and the game knows it, and so plays it to the hilt, with “serious” events being comically ridiculous due to context, acting, and the very low budget of the game.
The game itself outside of the FM Vs looks reasonable – it is not the highest quality of graphics, but the cars have an iconic quality to them, and while there’s nothing particularly special about the graphics in the game, they’re very serviceable and look decent enough.
While you can play through the game and just beat it, the game is not very hard in and of itself – the game is very generous with checkpoints, and it is impossible to fail at a ride.
All in all, this game is remarkably fun for how low budget it is.
VideoGame Delightfully campy
Roundabout is a cheesy low-budget FMV game starring a limousine driver, a mechanic, a lady in a hat, and a $40 skeleton bought off of Amazon.com with surprising entertainment value.
In Roundabout, you control a constantly rotating limousine. You play as Georgio Manos, the world’s first revolving limousine driver. Your limousine is constantly rotating at all times, which forms the core of the game’s gameplay – you know how to get from point A to point B, but your constant revolution makes your life a lot more difficult. Early on it is fairly simple, navigating your way around stationary obstacles, but as the game progresses, things get increasingly more difficult, with moving obstacles, barrels which cause you to bounce in the opposite direction after striking them, platforming (done while spinning all the while), and the odd unique gameplay challenge to make things harder.
The core of the game are the “rides”. At the start of each ride, Georgio picks up a passenger, each of whom has a little bit of dialogue to start things off – a reason for going from point A to point B. There’s also a narrator, who chimes in, and both the narrator and the passengers are pretty chatty – every mission contains numerous lines of dialogue, as well as at least two FMV videos, one at the start and one at the end – with some rides having additional FM Vs interspersed in the middle.
The passengers are deliberately terribly acted – every character acts in a very cheesy way. The videos are shot to look like something made in the 1970s, and the game itself is set in the 1970s, with references to Jimmy Carter and Disco present throughout the game, and a 70s aesthetic to the entire world.
But while the characters are campy as heck, they have a certain degree of Narm Charm to them – the acting in this is one of those “So Bad It’s Good” sort of things, and deliberately so, and it more or less works. It is impossible to take the game seriously, and the game knows it, and so plays it to the hilt, with “serious” events being comically ridiculous due to context, acting, and the very low budget of the game.
The game itself outside of the FM Vs looks reasonable – it is not the highest quality of graphics, but the cars have an iconic quality to them, and while there’s nothing particularly special about the graphics in the game, they’re very serviceable and look decent enough.
While you can play through the game and just beat it, the game is not very hard in and of itself – the game is very generous with checkpoints, and it is impossible to fail at a ride.
All in all, this game is remarkably fun for how low budget it is.