Roundabout is that one kid in high school. You know the one, tells jokes that are pretty funny to anyone in earshot. Problem is that they know their jokes are funny and that makes them cocky and obnoxious. Enough people laugh that the kid starts saying dumb things, punching down instead of up, referencing memes, trying to sell you that their Christopher Walken impersonation is the best one.
Now let’s not misunderstand one another: Roundabout is hilarious. I chuckled my way through the game, sometimes laughing aloud at the nostalgia-tinged FMV cutscenes and the game’s bizarre, parodic cuddling of ‘70s culture. You play as Georgio Manos, a silent chauffer in 1977, whose limousine is constantly revolving. The objective of Roundabout is a strange fusion of Crazy Taxi and Operation (yes, the board game): pick up your passengers and then swing yourself around town, hitting checkpoints, until you reach their destination. Your passengers are eccentric characters with great, nonsensical dialogue, like a priest who wants to skip town and an environmentalist who wants to protect a rare species of eagle (revealed via FMV to be a common redbird) to the point that she encourages you to run over hunting advocates. Sometimes the game will change things up a bit: you’ll be picking up hallucinogens or “racing” someone, but it’s all still about going from point A to Z while avoiding obstacles. These obstacles are usually lampposts, giant rocks, houses, statues, trees and oddly parked cars.
Roundabout, unfortunately, is not so much a puzzle game as it is a trial and error game. Since the limo can only take four or five hits, death is a common occurrence, and you’ll often find yourself trying to get through the same forest about ten to fifteen times before you make the right Hail Mary maneuver and graze the rim of the next checkpoint. In those moments, I felt a slight rush and sense of achievement but was deflated when I realized I had only gotten past those obstacles through sheer luck and not skill. Roundabout wants us to laugh at our fatal mistakes even though much of the time it’s not the player making the mistake but an incompatibility between the game’s central revolving mechanic and the obstacles it throws in the player’s way. I have no issues accepting when I screw up in a game and must be fairly inconvenienced for that mistake. However, Roundabout earns my ire because it’s constantly asking me to put a square peg in a round hole and then laughing at me when I can’t.
