Adventox: Mission X (London)

The weakest game at this venue

Intelligence tells us that terrorists have managed to set up a missile in a central London location. We are currently unaware of the location and have been given a number of potential sites but don’t have the required resources to check all of them. Not to cause public fear, we have selected several high profile members of the public to help us. If you find anything suspicious, please investigate the matter further! If you need help let us know. Time is running. Good luck, team!

We’d just successfully completed, Haunted – The Curse of Dr Stevens, and Alcatraz so we were feeling sufficiently warmed-up for Mission X. We made use of the seating area and free water cooler and tried to recharge ready for our mission.

This venue is a bit odd in that all the GMs are stationed just behind reception so you can see the rooms they were monitoring and hear the clues/instructions they were giving to teams already in the rooms. It would be much better if there was a bit more formal separation between the areas as it is very hard to not hear what they are saying.

We were taken into the same small briefing room that we were now becoming quite familiar with, and given the usual health and safety and room briefing.

We were then led down the corridor to our room, waited for the green light, and then we were let loose to try and save London.

PUZZLES

This was a very linear room and at times some of our team were standing around with nothing to do while the rest of the team worked on puzzles.

There was a fair amount of searching to find items but I wouldn’t say it was a massively search heavy room. Some of the puzzles felt a bit lazy and one puzzle in particular was very weak and cost us a lot of time.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

The room design was ok, it was nothing special and was certainly showing its age. There was one part which in most rooms would be hidden or at least disguised so that it came as a surprise but from the moment you entered it was very obvious where you were going to go.

Perhaps we had been spoiled with Haunted as that room was newer and much more impressively decorated, but Mission X just felt old and tired.

It seems to be an unwritten rule of good escape rooms that items are used once and only once. We had wrongly assumed that was the case here so one puzzle took us much longer than it should have.

I love a good ending to a room, and in a room where there is a very large rocket in the middle of it you’d think they could do something fun with the end, but no. This room ended with a fizzle and, I’d like to say it was anticlimactic, but actually that fizzle kind of fitted with the room.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Your time was shown on a screen in the room and clues were delivered via a walkie-talkie that you were given before you entered the room.

Early on in the game clues were delivered promptly when requested but later on we found that they were slow, very slow. When the clues finally did arrive we had to repeat a lot of what we had already done which shows we weren’t really being watched. At one point we were considering going back to reception just to get the attention of a GM.

On finishing the room we were ‘greeted’ by a different GM to the one that initially took us into the room, we can only assume a shift change took place during our room which is why we didn’t have a responsive GM. Understandable that shift changes happen but it seems like poor planning not to time this with when rooms are being reset.

ANYTHING ELSE

Out of the three rooms at Adventox this is by far the weakest. Feeling tired and dated it could do with a bit of a revamp. Couple that with weak puzzles and it’s not a room we’ll be recommending unless you’re really desperate for that escape room fix.

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 4 players – saved the world in 48:52

Address: West12 Shopping Centre, Shepherds Bush Green, London W12 8PP

Website: https://www.adventox.com