Set List: Opinion Polling

Well, there's good news and bad news.  The show is doing extremely well (not sure how that ISIS flag got in there), but Jason, he's not so popular at all, (especially not since the March Incident!) according to this image that looks just like something someone might find in google image search.  

As for that last slide, well, the important thing to remember here is that these are online polls. We did not have the budget for the highest-quality polling services, and I don't even get a discount with the Quinnipiac polling institute.

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/

Please enjoy the following joke:

I'm kind of caught up on movies right now, but it's Monday, so here's a thing.  We were talking about Norm the other day, and I got to watching Norm after that, and his whole set here is pretty good, as are a lot of his talk show appearances, but check out Norm telling a David Letterman joke in his final set on that program. Man!

Set List: The Big Board

Will Hines and Rick Wood are leading the pack right now, but they have each appeared on the program twice.  Jason, of course, has appeared on the show eleven times, but he only gets one prompt each week. 

I don't remember the audience booing Brandie so much, but the numbers don't lie.  Maybe it was one audience member booing quietly!

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!