InPlay Now Playing in Des Moines

InPlay is a new style arcade/restaurant/bar combo.  Juice, our nightlife focused fork of The Des Moines Register gave reviews that made this place sound spectacular.  It was ok, but we were slightly dissapointed with the quantity and quality of the games.  Sure, they are decades beyond Loco Joe’s games from the 1990’s.  But from the rave reviews I was expecting some revolutionary stuff that’s out of this world.  I don’t know if this is all the gaming industry can do these days or if they didn’t have the budget to buy the very newest and best.  Don’t get me wrong though, the games were impressive compared to anywhere else in the metro.  They had a lot of empty floor space, I hope they intend to add more games with time.

Everything was free this week to promote their grand opening of the new Des Moines location.

 Eric got really close to the high score many times, this time wasn’t one of them.  He had many tries that got him to just under 900.  We wondered if one of the InPlay employees practices every day so he can keep the high score.

 InPlay’s open spaces.  Pssst… add more new games here.  How about the “virtual reality” games that you hyped in the misleading advertisements?  That sucky game with the periscope is anything but virtual reality.  Even Loco-Joe’s has that reject of a game, and they don’t have anything produced since the year 2000.  Don’t lie in your marketing campaign, we hold grudges when you disappoint us.

Since all games at In Play were free this week for the grand opening, it was impossible to get on the popular games.  People just pressed the credit button to continue time after time, oblivious to the fact that people were waiting endlessly just to try anything.

 Since this boxing game couldn’t be hijacked like everything else, we spent most of our time here.

 I met this guy, he went crazy on this dance-dance spin off game.

 He wants to get into break dancing.  I think he’s got a shot.