Escape Room Reviews: Occam's Apartment

Company: Evil Genius Escape Rooms
Room: Occam’s Apartment
Date Played: 9/18/16
Player Count: 2, just enough!
Success:  Success!

Premise: Bill Occam was dead. They said it was open-shut: textbook suicide. While you didn’t agree, you just wanted to put this nasty chapter behind you. Just clean out his apartment and move on with your life.

Immersion: At the moment you're immersed in it, it's wonderful. It's a ratty old apartment. Your friend was a bit of a paranoid, and it's not absurd to think he might have been locking up some of his secrets. The music is light and a perfect accent to the goings-on, and there are several scenes contained within that feel very cinematic and exciting.

Highlights: For two people, there's a lot to do in here.  Even though on paper the room is fairly straightforward, there's a lot of exploring to do in order to get started. It's mostly traditional locks, but not an excessive amount of them. Progress generally felt earned and satisfying.

The music is really well-used.  I noticed at least a couple of tracks that almost blend in to the background, and they weren't movie scores I recognized. 

Our host did a fantastic job, and the in-game hint system - our deceased friend's secret contact - was far and away the best example I've experienced of the GM offering hints or comments that we didn't ask for but didn't let the air out of our tires. 

Lowlights: I randomly opened a complicated puzzle by accident while exploring, and we couldn't follow up on its contents because we didn't have the other requisite items - I'm sure this is more of an 'oh no!' moment for the GM than it's any real problem for me though. 

The apartment does not have its own bathroom, and therefore: no razor.

There was a disposable item in the apartment which I kind of wish I'd kept instead of leaving behind. 

And Finally:   After several encounters with lackluster games, we were starting to feel ready to take a break from room escapes for a bit, and we only happened on this one because of their opening-week sale. It was quite the stroke of luck for us! I liked the game, the space, the hosts (and not just because one of them said he recognized me as a stand-up – I got to wondering afterward though, if saying "hey, don't I recognize you from something" is just good customer service here in LA...) 

Knowing how new the place was, I felt bad anytime I accidentally or thoughtlessly let something drop to the floor or get treated roughly.  The room contains some paper items that I'm sure they're going to have to replace regularly, but I commend the owners for going that route instead of less-immersive laminated slabs. 

Out of 11 escape rooms played, I'm really happy to call this one #1, and I'm looking forward to the planned continuations of the story in their upcoming rooms. I both want to make friends with the owners and also never make friends with them so I can enjoy their future rooms as a complete fan of their work.

How to book this room yourself: Visit http://www.evilgeniusescaperooms.com/our-rooms/

Escape Room Reviews: Great Redemption

Company: The Great Redemption
Room: The Great Redemption
Date Played: 9/17/16
Player Count: 2, which was plenty
Success:  Success!

Premise: "Great Redemption is a new fun entertainment concept based on the classic “Room Escape Game” now popular in many countries around the globe. Alex your friend framed you, You are under arrest in a police station and blamed for stealing $1-Million. There is one hour until the interrogator is coming back, get the money and all the evidence and escape from the police station!" —Great Redemption website

Immersion: Basically none. On a scale of '1 - Office Park' to '10 - Actual police station, which, admittedly, is kind of office-like' this rates a '2 - Hanging out in your friend's mostly finished basement.' At least there were bars on the cell door. Also, for no discernible reason, this is a low-light room, with one working flashlight provided.

Highlights: There were some puzzles, and some pieces of tech (by which I mean actual everyday technology, not RFID and Arduino-powered magical objects) that I've never seen used in another escape room. Black light use was pretty good! (I'm thinking of making Black Light: it's own section of the review...)  Keeper never called us on the radio.

Lowlights: The production quality.  The frankly excessive cluing. To give an imaginary example, not from the game, even though I totally could just post up the whole thing because there was no waiver of any kind (I mean, I wouldn't, I'm just saying, no waiver!), imagine if you were in a game where you broke into a bank, and you get down to the huge vault door, and someone has left a sign on the door saying 'The combination is weight of the last three U.S. Presidents' and also someone has left a booklet with all of the weights of U.S. Presidents on the floor, and the last three are highlighted. And also every other lock in the bank has a sign nearby. It takes perfectly good Aha! puzzles (the ones where you make a cognitive leap, however great or small) and turns them into process puzzles (the ones where you have to turn a crank 3 times until it's done.)

And Finally:   I left this one feeling pretty conflicted. I feel like I'm rooting for them, but I can't tell if the muddled design and poor execution are clues that this room is a kind of cash-grab knock off of a proper room, or the above elements plus the novel fun parts just demonstrate a lack of ability or resources.  I wonder, as I often do about movies, who the intended audience of this room might be. Who is this room for? It's not a good fit for a first-timer, who will be put off by the general chintziness of the whole thing and never come back to see a top-notch room. It's not really for the experienced player either - we're less than a dozen games in and blew the leaderboard times out of the water (as did the couple in front of us. And neither of us were added to the board, which I assume is another kind of ruse).

We found this game because it was available very inexpensively on Groupon, which was welcome after last week's expensive trip to the Escape Hotel. And to be fair, it did give us a little bit of that escaping-from-a-thing fix. So while I can't really recommend it to anyone, maybe who a room like this is for is... me!

A few methods used in this room are a) in my opinion, somewhat lazy and could be replaced by something that gets the same information across in a smarter way, and b) exactly the same as those we saw in use last week at Witchcraft.

Out of 10 rooms visited, I'm ranking this one #8. 

How to book this room yourself: Visit http://www.thegreatredemption.com and enjoy the auto-playing tunes!

#2,296: The Magnificent Seven

Sully - ★★★☆☆
Before the movie, I wondered if the film would start with the crash, or end with it. I was way off!

Most of this movie looks more like someone filmed the notes for a screenplay. Scenes in the beginning gave me that same 'clearly just actors on a stage' feeling as American Sniper. But it sticks the landing (ahem) like crazy, and that's all anyone's going to remember.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier - ★★★★★
Still my favorite entry in the MCU. Maybe because it feels as though it could somehow exist as a movie without the super powers. Some of the most memorable and character-driven action scenes in the MCU to boot. All the stars.

Captain America: Civil War - ★★★★☆
I still like this movie, but it feels like the actual Avengers 2. Which is a terrific movie to make, but a tiny shame that it comes at the expense of another movie that feels like The Winter Soldier. Although this movie is full of the Winter Soldier - don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Also minus a point for that security camera thing. Just feels a little bit shoddy.

The Magnificent Seven - ★★½☆☆
I mean, nobody's going to a movie called The Mediocre Seven.

Come for the surprisingly long gun battles, stay for the Chris Pratt saying a joke at the ends of scenes he's not really in!  ...actually, this may be his best movie to date, for what that's worth.

Escape Room Reviews: Witchcraft / Room 1313

Company: Escape Hotel Hollywood
Room: Witchcraft
Date Played: 9/11/16
Player Count: 4, just barely!
Success:  Our most severe loss ever.

Premise: I think it’s that the townsfolk assume anyone who stays in hotel room 1313 is a witch, so they show up every ninety minutes or so and burn the occupants alive.

Immersion: I don’t know. It was pretty dark in there, so I guess that’s accurate to being indoors in the 1600s? A lot of the knick-knacks still had price tags on. I think we were expecting a game about witchcraft to feature magical objects pretty heavily, but this room had a ton of regular physical locks.

Highlights: The lobby procedure is the most involved and fancy of any company I’ve visited, and the passports are neat. 

Lowlights: First off, the low light. A ton of this room hinges on not being able to spot things easily because it's not your turn with the 'good' candle.

One piece of tech seemed to not be working. Calling for a hint either allowed the Keeper to bypass it for us, or it coincidentally suddenly started working again at that time. 

Our team suffered a massive failure of communication on this room for some reason. There's a huge red herring that completely snookered 3/4ths of our group, and left me feeling like I was playing alone as I collected a massive amount of other clues. Where I screwed up was in trying to get other members of the team to do the grunt work on one of the  puzzles for me (which made sense to me because it used an item they were familiar with and I had not examined) and instead nobody ever worked on it. 

Does the room have a rock with weird symbols painted on it that the GM later says isn't relevant to the game hidden anywhere: Yes, and it's really out of the way. I bet a lot of people don't find it. 

And Finally:   I think a lot about what it actually means when a company lists the difficulty of a room on their website. Difficult for who? The internet gives me the impression that most players in an escape room are playing their first room. Are the ratings different for "enthusiasts"? Where does ten rooms put me on the bell curve of player experience?  This room was rated ★★★★★ for difficulty on the Escape Hotel website, and maybe it earned that rating by wielding conventions against its players. Setting patterns and then breaking them in a kind of meta-puzzle. Or maybe it's just an overpriced escape room.  I think it will be a long time before I fill my passport with stamps for the other rooms. 

Out of 9 rooms played, I'm ranking this one #8. 

How to book this room yourself: Visit http://www.escapehotelhollywood.com/tracks/6/witchcraft

Escape Room Reviews: Mystery of the Red Dragon

Company: Amazing Escape Room Los Angeles
Room: Mystery of the Red Dragon
Date Played: 9/4/16
Player Count: 2, plus another group of 5!
Success:  Success! With unwanted hints.

Premise: As INTERPOL agents, it is our duty to steal a priceless statue from an art thief!

Immersion: The vibe was somewhat like a carnival or kids game show. This room is not plausibly the home or hideout of an old thief. 

Highlights: The room is packed with stuff to do. There’s a nice blend of conceptual and mechanical puzzles, and tons of physical locks. There’s a system that made me feel a little bit like we were earning points as we progressed, which was unusual but fun. 

The hint system was text delivered via monitors on the walls, which is accompanied by a noise taken from an educational film strip. I really liked this method of communication.

The video we were shown that outlined the rules was well produced. 

Lowlights: The booking website is not as clear as at some other games around town, and we would never have signed up for this game if we knew there was already a group of 5 playing. They were a sharp bunch, and totally prepared to steamroll any pair of gooves that they got stuck with. Maybe on a different day I could have sat back a little more and enjoyed watching how other people solve a room, but instead I felt like I had to battle to participate. There were things in this game which I don’t know where they came from, I don’t know how they were used, and I don’t know what using them did. It made my map* a little bit confusing. 

Our Keeper was like Clippy, offering unwanted advice. I think a perfect GM might provide unsolicited clues in the nick of time to keep the momentum going, but it’s really deflating to get a cluetelling you to focus on, say, a particular lock, while you’re in the act of walking your key across the room to that very lock.

Maybe worst blacklight use we've encountered?  (I'm going to call this not-a-spoiler. Maybe if a room didn't have a black light and I told you, then I'd be spoiling a fun surprise.)

There are buttons for opening doors that you are supposed to use that look exactly like the buttons on the emergency exit doors that end the game if you use them. This is bad design.

And Finally: Joining the other team was educational, at least. I think I scratch my puzzle-solving itch by grokking the solutions more than by physically turning the keys in the locks, but I found myself racing to be the one to turn the keys here just so that I could be the first to see what was inside a locked cabinet or drawer. Our group was so spread out (even in the small space) that the people who were calling out their discoveries weren’t hearing each other, and sometimes we got stuck on needing an object that another player had put in their pocket 5 minutes ago. 

I would rather understand everything in a room than set the record time. We didn't technically finish The Lab, but it was a more satisfying experience because I know what was going on. I bet there are some games out there for larger groups where this play style just doesn’t work.  

I have a lot of lowlights for this game, so I feel like I should emphasize that reviews are about my own experience. I think the best way for a reviewer to be valuable to a consumer is through a body of work and related experiences. There are film critics I never agree with, and their reviews are just as valuable as if we were peas in a pod, once I know that about them.  I think I would have really enjoyed this room if we'd played it as just a couple, or in our usual team of 4.  Such as it is, out of 8 rooms played, I'm rating this one #7.

How to book this room yourself: Visit https://amazingescaperoom.com/la-northridge/mystery-of-the-red-dragon/

*Obviously, I go home and draw a complete map of every escape room I play, with annotations for the objects, locations of the collectibles, notes about the flow of play and solutions. Obviously.