Escape Room Reviews: The Budapest Express

Company: Escapology (Las Vegas)
Room: The Budapest Express
Date Played: 7/12/17
Player Count: 2, but 3 or 4 might be best
Success:  Failure!  We successfully cracked the case, but failed to pull the emergency brake before the train reached its destination.

Premise:
1) You’re on a train. 
2) There’s been a murder. 
3) There’s a famous detective on board.
4) But she’s asleep.
Therefore? 
:. It’s all up to you to catch the killer before the train reaches the station!

Immersion: Pretty great! The train cars look terrific. There's a gimmick of using a monitor as a window, which is fun. The puzzles, and the murder investigation, hold true to the actual state of the train cars as you find them, which is excellent.

Highlights: At the risk of repeating myself, what was really great about this room was the production design, and the fact that the facts of the case were actually represented in the room. When it comes time to collect the facts (as any detective story must), you can either work out the truth from the detective's notebook, or have simply observed the train around you, and both are equally valid.

Lowlights: I would like to file an OSHA complaint against the train company. Not only is there a huge lock on the EMERGENCY BRAKE, but it just so happens to have been set in a way that involves the intimate details of a murder of one of their passengers! This is either the world's biggest coincidence, or the train company's got some serious explaining to do!  Also, we had trouble with one puzzle because of our accent differs from the puzzle designer, and our GM / clue master had no idea what was going on in our room, which wasted a little time. 

And Finally:  I think a piece of the puzzle of what I would consider the ideal room escape puzzle flow is to build towards a climactic final puzzle, which should probably be followed up by a gimme on your way out. This room follows up their Big Puzzle with... a bigger puzzle! I'm not going to make a value judgement on that, but it was too much for our duo, which was consisted of me and my dad, who'd gamely let himself be dragged along to see what this room escape business was all about. We could've used another one or two experienced puzzlers, but on the other hand, with only two of us he had to get in there and open some locks. Out of 28 games, I'm ranking this one #14. 

How to book this room yourself: Visit https://www.escapology.com/en/las-vegas-nv/escape-games/

#2,378: Fate of the Furious

Prometheus - ★★★★☆
I think I liked this more than the average bear the first time around, and I'm sticking to that. Even though the plot of every Alien is more or less the same, it's the best looking of the bunch and broadening the scope makes for some fun and interesting ideas that it's a shame nobody is going to explore.

Tickling Giants - ★★☆☆☆
Bassam Youssef's story is fascinating, but this doc doesn't do it justice. I understand the story just kept on going, probably past the point the filmmakers thought they'd be done, and probably continues today, but as a movie it could have used more structure.

Spider-Man: Homecoming - ★★★★★
What a relief. I couldn't believe it when we reached a point in history where Hollywood was actually making new Spider-Man and Star Wars movies, and I didn't want them to. Now, it seems almost as unbelievable that we've come all the way around and they're good.

I can quibble with things– less Stark tech in the suit please– but this movie gets so much right. I thought it was great that it uses fans' extra knowledge against them, and I wonder if the moment that was a big surprise to me would have seemed more obvious to a movie fan who isn't also a spider-fan.

The Fate of the Furious - ★½☆☆☆
I thought this would be fun to watch, but I was wrong about that. About the fun, I mean. I found myself alternating between being impressed at how efficient the story telling was and dismayed at how laborious the storytelling was. I'm not even sure how this movie rates on the Dom-has-super-powers scale of the previous films. It just seems unmoored from reality.

Escape Room Reviews: Escape From Corporation X

Company: Amazing Escape Room
Room: Escape from Corporation X
Date Played: 7/4/17
Player Count: 2. 4 would've been better.
Success:  Failure!

Premise: From their website, "You thought volunteering to be part of an experimental program with the mysterious X Corporation would be a fun idea."

Immersion: None to speak of, really.  This is a puzzle room, first and foremost. Expect puzzle stations and clues glued to walls. The room isn't decorated to simulate or resemble anything in particular.

Highlights: The puzzles we found intuitive were more fun than the puzzles where we got stuck. The customer service was really quite good (especially compared to our previous visit) – after we ran out of time, the employee who came to get us not only walked us through what we had left to do, but let us actually do the remaining steps. I don't know if I've seen that before. (Maybe because, ahem, we usually escape...)

Lowlights: One classic failed Spot Hidden. One somewhat deceptive fake-out lock. Not winning.

And Finally:  Our previous experience with Amazing Escape was the Mystery of the Red Dragon, one of the lock-ingest lock-fests that ever locked a lock. So after a run of rooms built on high technology, we selected Amazing specifically because we wanted to put some keys in some locks. And that's simply not what Escape from Corporation X is about. We were a little disappointed in this room, because b) we lost, and a) it wasn't what we expected, but neither of those are necessarily their fault. What is their fault is that the production design is a little bit bland, and no one puzzle really stood out as a set piece. In the time since we've played it's already become difficult to refer back to this one as a distinct and memorable game. Please remember that my completely unreasonable numbered list of escape experiences is subjective when I tell you that out of 27 rooms, I'm ranking this one at number 21. 

How to book this room yourself: Visit https://amazingescaperoom.com/la-northridge/escape-corporation-x/

#2,375: Cars 3

Alien: Resurrection - ★☆☆☆☆
Ah, now here's a lousy Alien movie! It's kind of fun to see a prototype of the Firefly crew. This whole movie feels like a bootleg copy of an unaired pilot, which is kind of cool to see because it wasn't intended or fully completed for public viewing, except apparently this was released to movie theaters.

Finding Dory - ★★½☆☆
Kind of a Pixar weekend for me. Finding Dory is basically fine (even if the moral seems kind of weird), but I wish some kind of curse, or maybe a hex, had been placed on, let's say John Lasseter, and for fear of being consumed by powerful magic, his company never produced any sequels to their films.

And really, what IS the message of this movie? Disabilities are just in your head? You can overcome them by wishing hard enough? 

Baby Driver - ★★★½☆
I don't know man, I liked it. I thought the beginning was kind of corny, and it's a shame the girl didn't have much to do except be the girl, but there's no doubt it's the movie it wants to be. It's an old movie made with new technology.

Cars 3 - ★★★☆☆
This is a much better, and maybe more human, story of empowerment and achievement for women than Wonder Woman.

#2,371: Wonder Woman

Alien³ - ★★★☆☆
For years, we called one of our friends "35" because that's how tall he guessed a hundred foot flagpole was. But it was also kind of a reference to '85' in this movie, which had just come out, I think. My point is Alien³(: Director's Cut) was much less bad than I was led to believe. It's a big left turn from the previous entry, but as far as James Cameron followups go, it's way less damaging to the series mythology than Terminator 3.

Plus, three movies in, we had a good time playing 'guess thesynthetic,' which isn't much of a game in the Terminator franchise.

The Big Sick - ★★★½☆
I thought it was an interesting choice for this movie to be set in the past, but not in the year the actual events took place. Like, Kumail is an Uber driver, and his car has the old Uber logo, so you know it's not NOW, but also Uber wouldn't exist until a few years after they got married.

The supporting cast is great, but Kumail kind of makes the same face for 'touched, deep sadness' as he does for 'flirty and aroused' as he does for 'indignant and frustrated.'

Water & Power: A California Heist - ★★½☆☆
Attended a free screening and learned about just how badly California is being screwed over in the name of ubiquitous pistachios. Like a lot of message docs, it wanders a little bit somewhere in the third quarter, but it's still impressive how impassioned the movie is, given how detached the director seemed to be.

Wonder Woman - ★★★☆☆
It feels like it would be very unpopular to not gush over this, but I thought it was kind of average.

I mean, obviously, we're all grateful they didn't do that "I am no man" thing again, and like any good superhero movie there were some terrific moments, but as a story it's pretty unsatisfying. Like Circle, this is a movie where the main character is just correct about everything from the get go, and so she doesn't learn or grow in any appreciable way. I think the story would have been a lot more powerful if there were no Ares, just... men, and the world turns out to be more complicated than it seemed.

However, if we can't have that ending because all DC movies must end in a fantastic show of light and noise, it would have been really nice if Wonder Woman had triumphed through the application of some skill or lesson or something that we'd seen at any point earlier in the movie, instead of random magic. When all the shrapnel takes off in her direction, I was engaged in the action. I didn't know exactly how she would weather the attack– had we seen evidence that her skin was Superman-tough? But if the solution is just going to be 'she uses brand new powers we didn't know about,' why even bother creating the danger?

Certainly, it seems like there was some other ending originally planned, because I can't believe that moment where Diana forgets her sword and has to be like 'oh, uh, wait here a moment, okay?' to the baddie while she goes back for it was anything but a patch, hilarious though it may be.

More generally, it seems like Marvel has had such a lead on DC that DC should be able to easily spot things that happened in a similar Marvel movie ten years ago and then not do those things. Why does Steve Trevor have to have the Steve Rogers ending to the war movie? For that matter, why is Steve Trevor so useless? I guess it's neat that, unlike Diana, he remembered something he saw earlier in the movie when he wants to give her a boost, but honestly? The four foot of height he gives makes that much difference to her 60-foot vertical? (Which probably should have smushed them when she leapt?) I'd like to see Chris Pine become the Sean Bean of his generation, as long as his characters' deaths in each movie always stem from their own clumsiness and ineptitude.

I'm not sure that the idea that all of the men are ineffectual to highlight Wonder Woman's strength really tracks through the whole movie. Maybe if Dr. Poison (!) had been the villain. Or even if she'd been Ares.

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to the Etta Candy and Sameer spin off movies.