Before I say anything else....I just do the thank yous!First of all thank you to James S. for organizing this thing and John for helping out.
A secondary thank you to James for buying all the LTTO gear so we had more than enough to go around.
A special thank you goes out to Brian from Shoot the Moon for taking the time to come out and not only tag with us, but actually take the time to video record our sugguestions.
To answer the previous post, we didn't get a chance to try out one of the zone games. Unfortunately due to multiple delays, the gaming time was much shorter then one of our normal get togethers. So there were many games and features of the LTTO gear that we did not get to experience.
As for my personal review of the gear, I was both extremely impressed...and frustrated. The frustration is normal though...as with anything that has as many features packed into it...this new gear will take some getting used to and time to learn and figure out.
I love the range on these guns, personally the gun grip fit fine into my hands...although maybe that is because I wear sports gloves when I play, so I wouldn't feel the abnormal shape that others found to be a problem. The gun was alot lighter than I had expected...so I was relatively happy with the weight and feel of the gun. The ability of having different games built into the gun and a scoring system (V2 system you've met your match) make the gun more than worth the price for the set. I'm planning on buying and sending sets of these to small time operators around the world, in many cases it is just what the doctor ordered!
Cons... I only found 4 faults with this gear (which is pretty good as I normally find alot more)
Aiming.....I couldn't seem to aim the gun worth a flying flip! I've never thought gun sights were that big of a deal as I normally shoot from the hip.....but these guns have such good range on them, I found myself constantly wishing I could aim it better as it seemed I couldn't ever land a hit on anyone......with ESS and LC gear I normally do pretty good. I will definately be moding in some kind of a site into my guns when I get them.
Although, I have to admit, this problem is nothing that a few hours of target practice wouldn't resolve...
Sounds......this is part of the aiming problem. Although the gun makes a noise when you hit someone, I couldn't tell if I was hitting someone, being shot at, alive dead or what the heck. The sounds of the guns are very soft and the hit, and being hit sounds are so similar I could never tell them apart. Alot of times the gun was making noises that I couldn't tell what it was trying to tell me.
Once again, a little bit of time and experience with the gun will most likely resolve this issue, and the sounds might even become helpful instead of distractive.
ALSO too...I have to admit, I never had the chance to try the eye hud...and I heard others say the information on the googles made it alot easier to figure out what was going on.
Sensor....I have to agree with Steve in that the sensor configuration can be frustrating....I like flanking people and finding a nice hiding spot to snipe from. That normal way of play is useless with this gear as very rarely do you get an easy shot at the sensor as 90% of the time it is blocked by something. As John said, the gear is good enough to make it worth adapting a different technique of play to get used to a limited sensor......we are just spoiled by the 360 degree ESS sensor. And I have to admit that several times I caught myself hiding my sensor on purpose - although I tried to stick to the idea of showing my sensor when shooting at someone. Just had to remember that when I was hiding, that I wasn't supposed to hide the sensor to where I couldn't get hit.
The only other problem I had was when we played the Hide N Seek game...I spent a good portion of the beggining of the game sneaking to what was a good sniper spot to where the other team seemed to be constantly regrouping at when it was their turn to hide. Problem was that when I got there the team wasn't regrouping as often.....and finally I got someone perfectly in my sites and the adrenaline of the sniper kill shot was a pumping...I pulled the trigger.......and nothing...I then realized the gun had turned off. At the time I figured that it had been so long since I had even touched a button that the gun had timed out like the LC TeamForce 250's sometimes do. Although in this case the gun turning off had wiped out my scoring and taken me out of the game...and I couldn't get back in...(being it was the last game of the day...it was fairly disappointing).
I have to be honest now though, thinking back on the situation, I had noticed that my gun had stoppd doing the beeping that it made when the teams switched sides for a lengthy bit of time...and I was at some points literally crawling on my belly under bushes...so it is very possible that I bumped a button configuration that turned the gun off....although I could swear just moments before the LCD still had info on it. Also too, everything was dripping wet...and that was the last game of the day, so it is very possible some water got into the gun.
Also too, if I had just run around shooting at point blank instead of wasting half the game trying to get a good hiding spot, I'da had a whole lot more fun!
If you want to know how much I like this gear, I've already decided to sell off all my laser challenge and old WoW gear to save up and buy 5 sets of these and save the rest of the money to by the Drones when they come out in the spring.
Hopefully if Tiger is smart enough to follow through on this gear...there will be newer released gear that eliminates alot of the problems mentioned. If they don't, then I forsee a market for kits to adapt these guns to a 360 degree tower sensor system! However, I was not impressed with the system enough to stop the FXonics project. The guys at shoot the moon left me a few areas in design that will make it worth keeping the project going.
All in all, Cathie and I had a blast and it was still well worth the 5 hour one way drive...which seems to be getting longer and longer every time we make it. I really need to start putting some energy into getting a club going here again so I don't have to drive so far just to play 4 hourse worth of tag!
