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.

Billionaire Bullying Continues!

Billionaire Elon Musk continues his relentless campaign of bullying against billionaire Mark Zuckerberg.

Set List: Brought to you by Ric Rosario Improv Coaching!

I feel like I just can't overstate how much I think that if you have an improv team, and that team needs a coach, you would be unable to do one fluid ounce of wrong by hiring Ric Rosario to coach that team.  

He's been doing improv for a decade! He's been on house teams and main stages all over town! He's generous, he's gregarious, he's downright affable. When I'm talking to audiences here in Los Angeles, whether or not they know what or even who I'm talking about, I always tell them to remember the name: Ric Rosario. Very funny, very affordable.

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