Escape Room Reviews: The Mystery of Senator Payne

Company: 60 Out
Room: The Mystery of Senator Payne
Date Played: 8/27/16
Player Count: 2, which was probably a little low.
Success:  Success! w/ hints

Premise: There's just 1 hour after the Senator's staff leaves the office and before he returns from his golf game, during which you need to break into his office and steal a copy of a bill he's sponsoring.

Immersion: The office... looks like an office! Except of course that the Senator has no computer or office supplies of any kind (of course, if he had, maybe I'd be carping about all the red herrings). Naturally, the further we got, the less plausible I found it to to believe that the Senator actually has time for any of the stuff we discovered.

Highlights: This is a very high tech room, and despite the constant presence of our friendly Keeper, apparently completely automated. These guys are great with magic objects. 

The puzzles here have a lot of variety in their methods, but mostly follow the form of the player needing to gain insight on to use objects together. In that way, this is probably room most like a point-and-click adventure game that we've played.

Lowlights: Our search skills were lacking on the day we played this one. For that reason and the ticket price, it would have been good to bring a couple of others along - showing up with two people means overpaying per person, but we'd heard good things about the company and were excited to try them out.  

The introductory video was not up to par with the video we just saw over at Exit Game. 

You'd think a US senator could afford to replace his old, beat-up paper goods once in a while. 

And Finally:  Our Keeper was very free with communicating with us during the game over the room's PA system. It never felt irritating like other games where the walkie talkie keeps wanting to give you hints. It was more like we were interacting with the narrator. It felt like he was a part of our team. (When he gave us our time at the end, he said it wasn't a terrible score for "a group of three.")

Regular locks provide clear goals. A room built on magic objects (that is, some combination of sensors, rfid tags, arduinos, you know, magic) puts everything in front of you as well, but you don't know it. The downside of this, I think, is that it creates a lopsided impression of the overall game.  You forget about the puzzles you breezed through, and mainly remember the sticking points that ate up the majority of your time. I guess maybe that's always true, but perhaps I feel it more in these situations?

Even though I found the second half of this game to be less enjoyable than the first half, I still thought the company seems really promising.  I'm looking forward to coming back to try their casino heist!  Out of 7 rooms played, I'm ranking this one #4.

How to book this room yourself: Visit https://www.60out.com/rooms/myster-of-senator-payne-escape-room

#2,294: Don't Think Twice

Mechanic: Resurrection - ★★☆☆☆
• I mean, it's dumb, but of course it is.
• Really worrying green screenery in the opening scene.
• Poster correctly identifies the best part of the movie.
• Probably a better Hitman movie than Hitman.

The Sicilian - ★★☆☆☆
Is there another term for 'In Media Res' for when you actually start at the end of things? Or for when nothing really happens in a movie, perhaps to make a point? Or for when a movie's kind of boring?

Some guy in the lobby after was talking up how much he wanted to go watch the hour-longer director's cut, so I understand that others may have experienced the film differently.

Kubo and the Two Strings - ★★★☆☆
Pretty enough to keep you from thinking too closely about the plot. After all, it seems unfair to blame the Macguffin for being useless, but that's why the character doesn't usually get ahold of it so quick.

Don’t Think Twice - ★★★☆☆
I'm glad I saw this, but also a little hung up on what it's got to say. Is the message that teams are an acceptable as a support system? Use groups as a launchpad to your own success? And keep your head down and keep grinding away unless it's your own turn?

As a comic, I thought it was interesting that nothing in this movie seemed in any way aspirational. I don't want to be on that team. They had the vibe of good friends that real life improv teams occasionally project, but folded in on themselves in a way that was unusual to me. To their credit, their improv came from a place of deep confidence and control — a lot of the improv I see feels more driven by fear.

I wondered if the tech shown on screen was meant to indicate the year or the financial situation the characters are living in.

Birbiglia's character is one of those guys that the comedy scene will run out of town on a flurry of facebook posts in a few years.

Escape Room Reviews: The Lab

One Saturday night with nothing much going on, with our usual room escape partners on vacation, we looked online, saw there was an escape room that nobody had booked any tickets for starting in an hour, and raced across town to a terrific adventure as a duo!

Company: Exit Game
Room: The Lab
Date Played: 8/20/16
Player Count: 2

Success:  Failure, but only barely. No hints.

Premise: I can't really say. I know it was vaguely Area 51 themed, but I'm not 100% sure who we were supposed to be or what exactly we were officially trying to do. Get in the room and then escape from it, I guess!

Immersion: Just enough to be fun. This was by far the biggest space we've been in, and the game took full advantage of it. Probably none of the objects in the room would really make sense in a military installation, but this game is immersive in the way a game of Laser Tag is immersive. Speaking of which, our flashlights were mounted on rubber handguns. We took two each!

Highlights: The space. It's really satisfying to get to move around as the game progresses instead of rotating to face the next wall of a small room. The watchword for the whole experience was "satisfying." There's a really well-designed part that punishes players if they choose to act like jerks or rewards them if they don't.  Since I considered the jerk behavior and then decided against it, this made me very happy.

The hint system was a button at the beginning of the game. Since this was a kind of spread-out area, the one time we were ready to press the button, it required us to backtrack through the space and we stumbled over the clue we were missing. No more need for a hint!

In my last review, The Will took top prize for best game intro.  A week later, this one is taking the prize for best explanation of the rules.  We were shown a video with some decent production value, decent jokes, and a good explanation of what's what.  

Lowlights: We got to the final puzzle but didn't actually escape. Either we missed the clue for the finale, or it's significantly more abstract than every single thing that came before it. When someone came to get us at the end, it seemed that either they weren't our GM, or if they were, they weren't really watching us.  

And Finally:   Of the escape room companies we've visited, Exit Game seemed the most like a real business. Our host, Remy, was far and away the most professional host we've encountered so far. There's a large lobby for some reason, even though there doesn't seem to be anything to do there, and there's a photo station that automatically emails you your photo after you take it. My earlier comparison to a Laser Tag... game? arena? parlor? Place you play laser tag, is probably apt here. It doesn't feel like a startup or someone's hobby.

This room says it can take 10 or 12 players at once. That seems like a crazy amount. We breezed through most of it with only 2 of us.  With 3 or 4, I'm sure we would have had enough extra eyes and hands to escape. With 12... by the time everyone travels from one area to another, whoever's in the lead would already be done and on to the next space. We didn't get out, but it felt like we saw everything, and my overall feelings toward this one are very positive. Since we're sort of new to escape rooms, it's great every time we enter one that's unlike anything we've seen before.

I recently discovered bestlaescaperooms.com, and I'm delighted to see this is their least favorite room at this location, because it was great fun. I'm looking forward to bringing more people and checking out The AI and the Sorcery School. Out of 6 rooms played, I'm ranking this one #2. 

How to book this room yourself: Visit http://www.theexitgame.com/m2-ch6g

Escape Rooms Ranked

Okay, the idea of ranking the escape rooms we visit is going to become unmanageable very quickly, but this is the post that will be continually updated with the scoreboard.

This scoreboard is the list of escape rooms I've played, from most favorite to least. As it grows, it gets reshuffled based on the wind.

This is a completely subjective list that shows what game I would most like to play as of the last time I revised it . It's what I would want, if I were searching the internet for reviews.   

Click on the names to read the reviews and find out what I liked, didn't like, or learned about myself at each game. 

1. Evil Genius: Occam's Apartment
2. Escape Chronicles: Smuggler's Tunnels
3. Evil Genius: Norcross Art Gallery
4. Room Escape Live: The Bunker
5. Escape Chronicles: Testing Facility
6. Quicksand Escape (San Diego): The Diner
7. Red Lantern Escape Rooms: Midnight on the Bayou
8. 60 Out: Grandma's Master Plan
9. Escape the Laboratory
10. 60 Out: The Wizard's Workshop
11. Exit Game: The Lab
12. 60 Out: The Zen Room
13. Quest Rooms: Da Vinci's Challenge
14. 60 Out: The Hangover
15. Escapedom: The Lair
16. Mortuary Mystery
17. 60 Out: Dracula
18. Maze Rooms: The Castle
19. 60 Out: Ghost Ship
20. Escape Era San Diego: Déja Vu
21. Maze Rooms: One-Way Ticket
22. MagIQ: The Pirates Cove
23. Escapology (Las Vegas): The Budapest Express
24. 60 Out: Titanic
25. Xterious Escape (Las Vegas): Bugsy's Nightmare
26. Enigma Escape: The Crime Scene
27. Exit Game: The AI
28. Escape Hunt Experience Cleveland: Murder in the Old Manor House
29. Trapped Cleveland: Labyrinth
30. Escape Room Cleveland: Black & White
31. 60 Out: Senator Payne
32. Amazing Escape: Mystery of the Red Dragon
33. Enigma Escape: The Will
34. 60 Out: Alice in Wonderland
35. Great Redemption: Great Redemption
36. Hidden Passage: The Pharaoh's Curse
37. Maze Rooms: Prison
38. Amazing Escape: Escape From Corporation X
39. Perplexity Games (Cleveland): The Clockwork Caper
40. Maze Rooms: Lunar Escape
41. Cryptic Escape: Stuck in Time
42. Exit Game: The Villain's Lair
43. Escape Hotel: Witchcraft
44. SCRAP: Escape From the Magic Show

Unless otherwise noted, all of the games on this list are located in the broadly-defined Los Angeles area.

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Home Games:

This section is for boxed games you can play at home, and maybe eventually VR or video games that are like room escapes.

1. Escape Room in a Box
2. The Librarian's Almanaq
3. The Mystery of Stargazer's Manor

A

B

C

D

F

Escape Room Reviews: The Will

Company: Enigma Escape Rooms
Room: The Will
Date Played: 8/6/16
Player Count: 4, which was plenty.

Success:  Success! Some hints.

Premise: Your dear uncle has shuffled off this mortal coil. You must find his will in his study before you’re shuffled off as well, by his lethal traps!

Immersion: As an office, it looked a lot like an office.  New best introduction by a host: She went over the rules, and then remembered that she had a letter addressed to us which set the scene.

Highlights: Instead of being all locks, this room had a lot of ‘magic objects,’ or devices that know when they’ve been used correctly and advance the game. One puzzle would have left me feeling and looking silly except that it turned out I was doing the right thing, which was fairly satisfying.

Lowlights: We were warned so thoroughly at the beginning about what was and wasn’t okay to touch that we missed out on something important at the beginning until the GM intervened on the radio. I think I’m starting to come down on the use of walkie-talkies - it seems like in the rooms where we have them, the GMs are too eager to use them.  I couldn’t tell if one of the puzzles was actually tech driven or if it was just activated by the GM watching and talking to us. 

And Finally: As we progress, my regular group of four is finding that we have certain roles we fall into.  One guy focuses on the dexterity puzzles (something this room didn’t feature heavily), one of us is the communications officer, handling real radios and fake phones alike. My specialty might be stepping back to see a bigger picture and then saying ‘Oh, I see it.’ and doing the unlikely or silly seeming thing. In this room, that paid off in a big way, but earlier on it also led us astray and wasted a lot of time while I ignored a big obvious thing. 

Also, I think I noticed that this room has been revised, with a certain puzzle toned down, even though the clues to the original version (I suspect) are still ‘in play,’ even though they serve no actual purpose.   

Unlike some of our previous rooms, I think any two of us would have been sufficient to solve The Will.  There is another room that continues the story, in which you solve your uncle's murder. I'm looking forward to playing it one day. Out of the 5 rooms we've played, I'm ranking this one #3. 

How to book this room yourself: Visit http://www.enigmaescaperooms.com/room/info/3