Psycho 60 – Hostage (Review)

Location: Kernersville, NC

Players:  2-8

Price: $25 per person Fri-Sun, $20 Mon-Thurs

Time to Escape: 60 minutes

It’s worse than I thought.

Theme:

You are bank employees who have been taken hostage during a bank robbery and forced into the manager’s office with bombs strapped to your legs. The bombs are set to go off in an hour, and you’ll be disappointed when they don’t, really.

First Impressions:

After the Infected Lab, I was not expecting much, and was still greatly disappointed. I’m not a huge fan of writing bad reviews, but trust me, this one deserves it.

High Points:

Eventually, you are allowed to leave. I’m not trying to be facetious here, I discussed the room at length with my team later, and we could not come up with one thing we liked about this room, it’s that bad.

Low Points:

There are more problems in this room than I initially thought possible. Puzzles ran the gamut of unintuitive, illogical, and off theme, most were a combination of all of these. We were made to strap chain “bombs” to our legs at the beginning of the game, which were uncomfortable and unnecessary. I took mine off immediately, but others on my team who did not reported varying levels of discomfort and pain. Outside knowledge is required at two points of the game, a definite no no, and the hints given to overcome these poor puzzles were confusing and delivered condescendingly. The connective tissue of the room is completely absent, and there is no flow to gameplay whatsoever. When doing the after game walkthrough, it was revealed that many of the puzzles relied on guess and check, which is an unsatisfying time sink. One guess and check puzzle, we were assured each item appeared only once, but this was patently wrong once we took a closer look. There were random puzzles boxes about, with tenuous clues as to how they should be opened. Cluing is extremely vague, in a misguided effort to be “difficult.” Don’t get me wrong, I like a difficult room, as two of my favorite rooms of all time was a failure and one in which we escaped with :27 to go! The difference between those rooms and this one was that those were fair, and solvable without hints. This was just a disaster overall, and the worst part is, I have no idea how this could be fixed.

Verdict:

This was the first room I have ever been in which after 20 minutes in, I did not care if we escaped. It is touted as “difficult,” but in truth, it’s just an exercise in frustration. I recommend you stay very far away from this one. Beginners will not get a good introduction to escape rooms, and enthusiasts will balk at this poor imitation of an escape experience. However if you want to check it out, you can do so here.

1/10 (Rubbish)

Full Disclosure: Psycho60 provided media discounted tickets for our team.