Escape Room Reviews: Lunar Escape

Company: Maze Rooms
Room: Lunar Escape
Date Played: 7/2/16
Player Count: 3, which was plenty!

Success:  Success!

Premise: "You are on moon base, but the problem is, nothing works.  You know, like in movies? But there is rescue ship coming to get you!" You also need to grab a sample of a space rock on your way out the escape hatch.

Immersion: Everything we loved about The Castle's introduction was back with flying colors! However, in stark contrast to The Castle, this room is beautiful. The design and decoration is really top notch, the best I've seen. We got some costumes to wear.

Highlights: The set is fantastic. The finale is very cool, and the beginning has a couple of puzzles that are enjoyable to work though. All of the things you're not supposed to have or use, like your purse or phone, went into a plastic box that you take with you into the room. I like this approach.

Lowlights: One object was broken in a way that required the keeper to run in and fix it, which kind of breaks the spell of being stranded on the moon. At least one puzzle was solved by accident and we didn't understand why. Our keeper was too chatty on the radios, offering us hints, anti-hints ("that's not what you need to do"), or offers to skip ahead. I think we'd rather not communicate with the keeper unless we initiate it or we need, like, a safety warning. 

And Finally:   Compared to the other Maze Room we've played, this one had a very linear path. It was almost more like a guided story experience than a puzzle room. I think we physically needed three people in order to complete one part, but a bigger group is going to have a hard time finding enough things to do.

Out of 4 rooms escaped, Lunar Escape ranks #3.

How to book this room yourself: Visit http://la.mazerooms.com/quest/lunar-mission/

#2,290: Suicide Squad

Lights Out - ★★★½☆
ON'T STARTLE THE WITCH!

I think what appeals to me in a horror movie like this is that the movie magic is a little bit closer to the surface. Maybe it's creepy that the little girl is drawing and her paper disappears when she's not looking, but I have as much fun or more knowing it's just some PA leaning in and taking the paper while the camera's not looking.

I was already into this movie's deep and deliberately worrying frame compositions when suddenly, it seemed to me that this movie might have been shot in the same house as The Selling, and from then on I was searching for shots that could prove it.

Pete's Dragon - ★★★☆☆
Never saw the original, didn't really know what this was about, and it only dimly occurred to me during the trailers preceding this movie that we were about to receive a kids' movie.

It felt like a movie from at least 20 years ago, plus fancy dragon. Pete is always doing something so dangerous that it felt as though the movie could end at almost any time. There's a scene about halfway through that is innocently nerve-racking because the driver of a car just won't look at the road.

This year has been big for protagonists raised in the woods.

Hell or High Water - ★★★★☆
An unexpected late-summer gem. A highlight for the year so far, come ot think of it.

It's just refreshing to get a relatively straight-forward story that can be told with a minimum of visual effects houses' contributions. I, for one, find the practical, animatronic Jeff Bridges much more lifelike than the all-CG version.

Suicide Squad - ★½☆☆☆
I'm not so much angry as disappointed.

Everyone is reacting to this movie in much the way I felt about Guardians of the Galaxy. I mean, Guardians -is- a better movie, but that's a low bar. The movie does everything twice - introduces all the characters twice, sends them on the same mission twice. The mission feels pointless. On the one hand, apparently global destruction has been unleashed, but on the other, the scale of the movie makes it feel like a cut scene you're sitting through for the nth time, in between beating up faceless okay-to-shoot zombie goons.

The plot is weak enough that the movie would probably be better not bothering with it. We need a team that can take down Superman? Okay, but this sure isn't it. Instead of making the whole movie hinged on Waller's clumsy failure to form a super squad, open with a clear goal: Fight Enchantress. Then you can reveal later on how she got to where she is (either a blunder or a deliberate ploy to show how useful this squad could be), and we can be all conflicted about how to feel about Waller and her motives.

I'm not excited about a alternate DVD cut with more of this terrible Joker, but I guess I'd like to see the movie the director was trying to make sometime.
 

Escape Room Review: Escape From the Magic Show

Company: Real Escape Game / SCRAP
Room: Escape from the Magic Show
Date Played: 4/23/16
Player Count: 5 (2 + 3 strangers)

Success:  No, failure!

Premise: You're at a magic show, but then there's a magic bomb and you're tied to a bunch of strangers. So defuse the bomb, or you're doomed to live in the El Rey theater forever!

Immersion: Well, it was kind of a magic show, in that there was someone doing magic tricks on stage at the beginning and end of the event. And the group of strangers that we were paired with claimed that they thought they were there to attend a real magic show and that they didn't know there was a game, which is just what someone would say if it had been a real magic show. So I guess that was pretty realistic.

Highlights: The scant few physical things there were to do, like unlocking a couple of locks. 

Lowlights: Most of the puzzles had to fit on a small cocktail table and be replicated for two dozen groups, which means most of them were like doing an activity workbook for kids. The event cost more than going to a regular escape room. The random strangers we met were kind of a drag. Plus they blew up our bomb, so now we have to live in the El Rey forever.

And Finally:   We were pretty excited about the idea of one of this company's other games, The Time Travel Lab, until we actually played this one, which was pretty disappointing. I've heard they're doing Escape the Bank Vault in Long Beach later this year, but I think we'll skip it.

Out of 3 escape rooms played, Escape From the Magic Show is a distant #3. 

How to book this room yourself: You probably can't. This was a limited engagement event. It's for the best. But you could visit http://realescapegame.com for permanent games and upcoming special events.

#2,286: Star Trek Beyond

The Purge - ★★★☆☆
There are two kinds of movie I used to skip in the theater: big broad blockbuster comedies and a lot of horror stuff. Except, when I end up watching them later, it turns out that I like the horror stuff. Sometimes just to admire the economy of it.

Plus, the premise of this one makes me laugh.

The Infiltrator - ★★★☆☆
Felt to me like a throwback to the kind of movie made in the time this movie takes place. Like a 70s movie about the 70s, made last year. I thought it was pretty tense, just waiting for the shoe to drop. Cranston has a streak going of doing movies with unusual structure. I wonder if he insists on it.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier - ★★☆☆☆
I was oddly eager to see what is supposedly the worst movie in the series. It didn't seem all that different from Beyond, really. I like how the transporter isn't made of, like, tiny complicated circuit boards and electronics. It seems to be run on gears and pipes and things you need a huge wrench to fix.

I hope they get Ricky Gervais to play Sybok in the remake.

Star Trek Beyond - ★★½☆☆
A little bit boring, but possibly the movie in the reboot series that is most like the original series. Less galaxy-spanning wild action and more talking to people in goofy makeup in small rooms. More broken technology things. More sciencey stuff that doesn't make sense in our world OR theirs. And a thing at the end that's supposed to be really awesome that is really silly.

Escape Room Reviews: The Bunker

Company: Room Escape Live
Room: The Bunker
Date Played: 11/1/15
Player Count: 4

Success:  Success! With a hint or two.

Premise: Some military guy launched a nuke and then killed himself, so go through his office and find a way to stop it!  (Not strictly an escape, you could walk out at any time, but that won’t stop the missile launch!)

Immersion: Sufficient. I mean, it doesn't make any sense that this guy would have so many padlocks in his office. How would he get anything done? On a scale of '1 - Office Park' to '10 - Actual office in a missile silo' I'd say this gets a '6 - Set of a Game Show,' which was great.

Highlights: The main prop and all the things it gets used for is a lot of fun. There are a couple of multi-step puzzles that also stood out. This room always had plenty of stuff for the four of us to be searching or doing. So much so that we had to debrief after to make sure we all knew what all had transpired. We solved the dexterity puzzle (we're learning that there's always a dexterity puzzle!) that the minder told us most people don't solve. (Apparently they use a hint instead.) 

Lowlights: Kind of a lot of the same kind of regular locks. We got hung up in the beginning on a searching failure. 

And Finally:   We had a great time in this room, and we reached the very cinematic conclusion. However, our minder didn't stop the soundtrack, so the bomb still went off while we were taking victory photos and chatting, which was a good laugh. Not every object in the room was part of the game, but it felt like everything was 'in-bounds' and explorable. Fun gadgets, clear objectives, cool set. You would need a minimum of two people to physically accomplish the tasks in this game, but our foursome kept plenty busy.

Out of 2 escape rooms played, The Bunker is #1!

How to book this room yourself: Visit http://losangeles.roomescapelive.com/reservation/index/game/bunker