Friday, July 15, 2011

Light Strike: GAR-023 + more initial thoughts

The GAR 023. Brown + Orange..
We had a bit more of a play with the Light Strike assault blasters in the office today, adding a new 'GAR-023' Assault Striker to the mix (the 3rd design along with the yellow SR-143 and the red DCR-012). This one is probably going to be the favourite for most players- it has that Stampede look about it, it's quite comfortable to hold and the reload switch is in the most acessible intuitive position compared to the other two. It is a kind of cherry/brown coloured plastic with orange accents which isn't exactly pretty, but of course the nature of how the blasters are made makes repaints a lil fiddly. More after the jump.

The GAR-023 uses a female voice to respond to all of the commands. She's also the easiest to understand:)

One thing about the Light Strike line I noticed, is people..don't really understand what it is. I watched a lil kid just pick it up and tell his dad 'I want this' but after a few minutes of staring at the box, neither Dad, Mum or the lil boy actually understood it was a part of a laser tag system. The Mum just thought it was a VERY expensive light and sound toy until I felt the need to interupt and let them know what it was. (The Dad thought it was a cool idea; the little kid lost interest and went back to the Beyblade counter stand!)

We've still been toggling between all of the different inbuilt weapons to try and work out what actually is going on. Having a single shot and semi auto fire functionality is sorta un-neccesary when if you're pumping that trigger over and over; it's basically the same:)  Some of the weapons don't work in semi auto mode due to the delay in reloading.

Each weapon sounds different and needs to be reloaded seperately. They have names like "laser strike" which is the default, "stealth strike" which is the same but muffled and sounds like its been silenced, "pulse strike" says it packs more of a punch but we haven't quite worked out what this means- and it uses up ammo faster, "Rail strike" says it "has a ton of firepower but goes through ammo fast and has a longer delay between blasts" and "Sonic strike" which is basically a big cannon.

While the vibration of the rapid fire and shot gun attachments are cool for tactile feedback, they're just that.. vibrations. it's not exactly a recoil, the way the Phoenix LTX uses the back and forth "hammer" function. In turn it's not really a realistic not satisfying feel to use the weapon.

The scope is cool in that it adds a new weapon to the blaster mix (an "optical cannon"), increases the blaster's range apparently (we've yet to really test this out) and gives it a red dot lit sight that is genuinely accurate. No magnification of course.

Still pretty happy with the accuracy and range- we're getting it around one side of the floor to the other so that is hitting around 25 metres or so.
Peeling back the layers.. what's behind the stickers..
Jury's still out about the touch sensitive panels under the printed plastic- we took to it with a lil knife to see what was under them..

That's it for now. Still fun for the office, if not really.. loud:)

4 comments:

  1. They actually look like capacitive pads... Cant wait to see more Mr Pocket.

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  2. Thanks for these reviews - really helpful. I'm very keen to hear more about the maximum ranges - with and without the scope attachment (and quite how that can affect the range anyway...). Knowing a bit about the beam spread at various ranges with the different inbuilt weapons would also be good.

    How hard was it to peel off those decals / stickers? I'm already thinking of ways to make the taggers look a bit less 'toy-like' by removing or painting them, and adding some bits and pieces to the sides to make them less flat...

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  3. well i do have one comment and a little argument to these guns, they seem to lack the actual feel that the phoenix ltx's have, BUT we do have to give them credit for actually integrating vibration rather then leaving it out to be just another attachment later. like the ltto line of taggers this is there first try at a decent laser tag system, so i would like to just say that if they integrated a range of at least 250 feet. They would have the ltto line pretty beat already, as for game modes or game types or hosting, from what you have showed us all it looks like it would lack in that scene. but then agen i still haven't seen the price of these guns so i cant really make a full judgement til i see the whole thing in my hands.

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  4. I picked up a Light Refractor launch system at Walmart for under $4.00 and wired it successfully up to one of the Light Strike pistols (yellow). I then took the diffuser off of the front of the Refractor and replaced it with a cheap magnifying glass lens from the dollar store. The pistol easily takes out opponents 100+ feet away. I also noticed that the IR LED circuit board is already fitted to hold an extra IR LED. The board has three in it and there is one vacant slot. I might take one of the IR LEDs out of a target and mount it into this open postion. One bad-ass gun.

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