Tallinn, Jul 2017
The name’s Bond. James Bond.
You’re given a mission brief by a video which was possibly the highlight of the game, appealing to my sense of humour.
Once into the room, you find out the mission had been compromised and you have 60 minutes to solve your way out. Whilst the room is relatively well themed, it’s fairly unoriginal decor. The puzzle structure is made clear but somewhat breaks the theme.
The puzzles follow logically through several different paths, with some nice elements of lateral thinking between puzzles, and an appropriate need to search hard to find clues.
Some of the puzzles were repetitive to others, whilst others seemed completely off theme. In addition, one of the puzzles was doable but looked like it wasn’t working properly, whilst another was far too sensitive.
That said it was a fun if unspectacular way to spend an hour, with a competent operator and a couple of original elements. 
Mission 007 is a game that looks thoroughly plain, with plain walls and the standard tiled ceiling of any converted office space. The puzzles were quite a bit stronger than the room’s appearance though, with several fun and imaginative ideas enlivening otherwise more pedestrian fare (including one that would be unlikely to get health and safety approval in the UK…). Suitably for the theme, there was plenty of use of electronic and electrical gadgets, some modern and some less so.
The variety of the puzzle ideas was the game’s strongest point, undermined somewhat by sometimes weak implementation, with too many ambiguity issues. The inventiveness and use of gadgets mostly just led to another lazy series of numbers for another passcode, where the messages being revealed could have taken the spy theme much further.
Actually, I tell a lie: the game’s strongest point was the two initial video briefings, which were both unintentionally hilarious in the way they co-opted certain well known stars. 
