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Bremrbattle 4 Review of game and gear
Posted by Sinistrahd on July 11, 2004, 1:59 am 24.113.110.34
Well, I just got done with my first full fledged afternoon of gaming with Tiger Electronics’ new system, Lazer Tag Team Ops. I was really amazed at how much fun this event was. Things started off badly, with a rash of lateness all around and some no-show players delaying the start of the game a bit (That’ll teach me to show up early, as that’s the first time I’ve done that) Things worsened as the sky turned an awful gray, and thunder bomed in the distance. We finally decided to head into the woods for the game at around 1 something PM, and as we reached our “Dead Zone” (an area in which players wait out games after being tagged out) the rain started. At first it was a drizzle, but quick thinking on Dave’s part (David Roman, Webmaster of 1SLT led to a tarp being strung up between some trees just as the rain picked up. We spent a good 20 minutes under the Tarp sheltering the gear from the rain, as we did not yet know how water resistant it was.
When the rain died back to a drizzlish level, we set up our initial teams, and started out with the basic no scores kept version of Lazer Tag, only we formed teams. The action heated up once everyone was familiar with the basic functions of the gun, and that game lasted around 20 or so minutes. We then tried out a hosted game, which I set up on my tagger. My first attempt at programming people into my game ended early though, as I was trying to set them up one at a time, as the instructions dictate is the right way. I then said, “To heck with it,” and had everyone stand in a circle around me, then hosted them all simultaneously. This ended up being much quicker than bringing people in 1 at a time. Perhaps once all the players are familiar with the joining procedure, the 1 at a time method will work, but with beginners, the circle seems best. The hosted game went very well, and the time limit served a purpose I had not even thought of. When time ran out, the players who didn’t know that the other team was all out came back, so we didn’t have to go searching for them. That is a great boon when you are playing on several acres of heavily wooded land!
After the first game, we played several more hosted games, with the addition of two more players from the SEATTLE LASER TAG CLUB In these games we switched off friendly fire, so we could only actually tag our opponents. I am very happy we decided on this, as I fired about 4 clips of ammo into one of my teammates thinking he wasn’t on my team. After that, both of the newcomers stayed on my team so that we didn’t have 1 guy in camo on each team. It definitely helped us later when we started back into Friendly Fire enabled games. Our next arrivals were none other than Brian Farley and a couple of his relatives. Brian Farley, for those who don’t know, is the Software Engineer who wrote the code for Lazer Tag Team Ops. He flew up from California to visit relatives, and made sure that the trip coincided with our game so that he could get into the games and meet all of us.
Brian took over the hosting function for the rest of our games, and showed us the great fun of 2 Kings mode. This is a time limited game where you have to protect the king of each team (much like Chess.) If your king dies, and everyone else on your team is unharmed, and the opposing team’s King is not found and defeated, your team loses. This means that instead of just watching out for chances to surprise your opponents, you have to dedicate some of your manpower to escorting your King to a defensible location. During this game, I learned to effectively use the shield function of the guns. I rounded the corner as one of the opponents was closing on our King, but was being attacked from behind. However, due to the layout of the land, he was virtually unhittable, so I engaged my shields, rushed past him to block him from approaching the King, then waited for him to empty his clip on me. I then began firing on him, and in his distracted state, he failed to see my teammates approaching to finish him off. That was the closest anyone got to our King, and we then hunted down the rest of the opposing team, finding and defeating their King with only a minute left in the game.
After that, we went back and played a normal teams game, and after that was over (my team lost horribly, with John (Lazerbait) using his scope to snipe almost all of us to our deaths…) we decided that for our last team we would play a hunt and seek game. piece of advice: Don’t play Hunt/Seek at the end of the gaming day, it requires way too much energy. I was panting like a man dying about 7 minutes in, and the game was programmed for 20 minutes. For those that don’t know, a Hunt/Seek game is where one team starts out as the Hunters, and the other team as the Hunted. You can tell which one you are by looking at the screen on your gun. The Hunters are supposed to attack the Hunted, and the Hunted are supposed to hide to avoid being hit. If a Hunted tags a Hunter, it increases the Hunter’s tags by one (which is good for the Hunter) Sounds like a boring game? That is because I neglected to mention that the teams switch roles every sixty seconds. You might spend 45 seconds closing on a Hunted, then fire at them, and all of a sudden your gun goes BEEP,BEEP,BEEP, and then you are the Hunted! The strategy that seems to work best for this game is to Hunt for 40 of your 60 seconds, and then to find a good hiding spot. I didn’t do that several of the times, as I got too caught up in the chase, so all of a sudden I was being chased… Let me say that it is a lot easier on the legs and lungs to be hiding for 60 seconds than running blindly through heavy overgrowth in an attempt to shake your pursuers.
After we finished our Hunt/Seek game, we headed back to the cars with all our gear and trash, packed up and went to BADDABOOM BADDABING Pizzeria, formerly known as Spyro’s. They have really good pizza there, and I recommend them to anyone in the area. I got a chance to give my input straight to Tiger on the Pros and Cons of their gear, via a video that Brian took of each of us one at a time. Below I will list these Pros and Cons.
PROs
•Rugged Construction •HUD info very helpful in-game •Variety of programmed games •Mega-Tag function is great •IFF is a Godsend when playing with people you’ve never met •Friendly Fire On/Off setting is great to allow beginners in games without them tagging their team out •Programmable # of Tags, Reloads, and seconds of Shield allows games custom tailored to the area and time limit
CONs
•Rugged Construction •HUD info very helpful in-game •Variety of programmed games •Mega-Tag function is great •IFF is a Godsend when playing with people you’ve never met •Friendly Fire On/Off setting is great to allow beginners in games without them tagging their team out •Programmable # of Tags, Reloads, and seconds of Shield allows games custom tailored to the area and time limit
I may have a lot of Cons listed, but keep in mind that there are lots of nice things about this gear that don’t go well into print, the intangibles, such as the amount of fun I have using it, and just the feel of it compared to other systems. Overall, I give this gear a grade of B-. If Tiger’s follow up products fix some of those cons, they may just get an A.
