IGN:
Until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t thought about laser tag in over a decade. My childhood experiences with the hobby were just okay, and were quickly forgotten after the discovery of more visceral pastimes like airsoft and paintball. So when I was shown the cheesy promotional material and asked if I wanted to leave the office on a busy Wednesday morning to play “AR Laser Tag,” I was more than a little skeptical. But what followed was two hours of absolute bliss, Recoil has completely redefined my concept of what laser tag can be.
Rather than try to simulate combat, Recoil plays a like a real-life FPS video game. A health bar, ammo pickups, radar, and everything else you’d expect to see on an FPS HUD or score screen is instead displayed on your phone and mounted to the side of each laser gun. The recoil app syncs up with a wifi hub included in the game that transmits data between players’ apps, like hit registration for example. In spite of all of that displayed information, I probably spent less than one percent of my time with the game looking at my phone. This is first and foremost a game of laser tag, and as such the majority of my time was spent sprinting, ducking, and aiming down the fluorescent sights of my laser rifle. Which leads me to the best part of Recoil: the guns.
Each laser rifle or pistol possesses a plethora of intuitive features that make shooting and playing an absolute joy. Haptic feedback lets you feel the recoil of each shot, while audio queues from the app let you know if you’ve hit or killed an enemy. Each weapon possesses a standard long-range IR transmitter, as well as a short-range IR cone – which means that struggling to hit an opponent’s IR receiver at close range is a thing of the past. The guns also feature handy knickknacks like push-to-talk and reload buttons.
All of these features work in unison to provide a tangible and consistent basic shooting experience, and the game layers on the complexity from there. For instance, the team deathmatch games I played featured airstrike pickups that allowed me to call down a digital air strike on any enemy player. Rather than “kill” the enemy flat out, the airstrike warns the player on their app, allowing them to run away from the impact zone in an effort for survival.
In spite of a few bugs encountered during my time with Recoil, I had an absolute blast. It scratched an itch that up until now had been reserved for airsoft or paintball. It’s nowhere near as passive an experience as Pokemon GO, but certainly has a lower barrier for entry than something like competitive paintball. The Recoil starter set – which includes two laser pistols, the mobile wifi router, and everything else you need to play – will set you back about $129.99. The standalone weapons, meanwhile, cost $49.99 for the pistol and $79.99 for the larger and generally better rifle.
Click link for imbedded video :
http://m.ign.com/articles/2017/07/07/laser-tag-redefined
Until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t thought about laser tag in over a decade. My childhood experiences with the hobby were just okay, and were quickly forgotten after the discovery of more visceral pastimes like airsoft and paintball. So when I was shown the cheesy promotional material and asked if I wanted to leave the office on a busy Wednesday morning to play “AR Laser Tag,” I was more than a little skeptical. But what followed was two hours of absolute bliss, Recoil has completely redefined my concept of what laser tag can be.
Rather than try to simulate combat, Recoil plays a like a real-life FPS video game. A health bar, ammo pickups, radar, and everything else you’d expect to see on an FPS HUD or score screen is instead displayed on your phone and mounted to the side of each laser gun. The recoil app syncs up with a wifi hub included in the game that transmits data between players’ apps, like hit registration for example. In spite of all of that displayed information, I probably spent less than one percent of my time with the game looking at my phone. This is first and foremost a game of laser tag, and as such the majority of my time was spent sprinting, ducking, and aiming down the fluorescent sights of my laser rifle. Which leads me to the best part of Recoil: the guns.
Each laser rifle or pistol possesses a plethora of intuitive features that make shooting and playing an absolute joy. Haptic feedback lets you feel the recoil of each shot, while audio queues from the app let you know if you’ve hit or killed an enemy. Each weapon possesses a standard long-range IR transmitter, as well as a short-range IR cone – which means that struggling to hit an opponent’s IR receiver at close range is a thing of the past. The guns also feature handy knickknacks like push-to-talk and reload buttons.
All of these features work in unison to provide a tangible and consistent basic shooting experience, and the game layers on the complexity from there. For instance, the team deathmatch games I played featured airstrike pickups that allowed me to call down a digital air strike on any enemy player. Rather than “kill” the enemy flat out, the airstrike warns the player on their app, allowing them to run away from the impact zone in an effort for survival.
In spite of a few bugs encountered during my time with Recoil, I had an absolute blast. It scratched an itch that up until now had been reserved for airsoft or paintball. It’s nowhere near as passive an experience as Pokemon GO, but certainly has a lower barrier for entry than something like competitive paintball. The Recoil starter set – which includes two laser pistols, the mobile wifi router, and everything else you need to play – will set you back about $129.99. The standalone weapons, meanwhile, cost $49.99 for the pistol and $79.99 for the larger and generally better rifle.
Click link for imbedded video :
http://m.ign.com/articles/2017/07/07/laser-tag-redefined
