Laser Tag

Last night I played a game of laser tag.

It was excellent.

This wasn't my normal crowd, but I knew three of them already (and two others a little bit), and the rest were all quite friendly. There were nine of "us" altogether. I say "us" because we came as a group and all know Virginia, the organizer of our little excursion. There were others in the game as well.

We played three rounds. In the first round, our opponents were seven RMC (that's Royal Military College) students, and a father and his little boy. We won this round. The little boy and the father likely lost that game for them. The kid would follow you around, waiting for his vest to charge back up and then shoot at you. I would've gone easy on a kid, but he wouldn't quit after we told him to stop, either. So, if he followed me, I just nailed him whenever his vest came back up and told him to play fair. Maybe I was a bit harsh.

Anyway, the kid and his father were finished after that round, and then we were allowed to run and crouch and do those things that make the guy that much more intense. This time, two of our nine were "defected" to the other side (that would be blue). We lost this one as well, but, hey, we were outnumbered, right?

The third game was really intense. The RMC players improved their tactics significantly that game. I also had a harder time locating and maintaining cover.

The arena is a square. In one corner (let's say southwest, but that's just arbitrary) is the door into the space. In the southeast corner is red base. In the northwest corner is blue base. In (roughly) the northest corner is a glow-in-the-dark skeleton. Above the skeleton is a chest-sensor; if you hit the sensor, a flashing light will go off for a determined but unknown (to me) period of time, after which there will be an explosion (a sound effect on your suit) and anyone whose sensors are hit by the flashing light is stunned, and whoever hit the sensor gets all the points. This is friendly-fire-able, so you have to be careful and ensure your teammates take cover.

There were some exciting moments. At one point in the game, we were under serious seige at red base (if you're red team and hit blue base, you get points; if you're blue team and hit red base, you get points; it behooves one to protect the base). Most of our team was taking cover in the immediate vicinity of our base, and were having difficulty getting out without taking fire. We managed to break the line, however, and I then immediately ran out and captured blue base, as the whole blue team had been busy keeping us pinned down.

At another point, I had a nice sniping location. I was against a corner, and the layout of the floor meant that no one could get behind me without crossing in front of me first; also, there was only about a 144 degree angle to my front and right. My cover was pretty good, with the sole disadvantage that anyone could pop around the corner I was against and end up right on top of me. I could see them at the same moment that they'd see me and my gun would be in their face, but it would be an unpleasant surprise. Anyway, the benefit to the location was that I had a clear but narrow view to almost to the north wall of the room; any blues who hadn't crossed to the red side of the base, therefore, had to pass through my sight. As it turned out, two reds were trying to manouever around three or four blues, but were not doing so well. I used my location to back them up from a distance. Each time the blues broke cover to advance or move to new cover, they passed unwittingly through this corridor (it wasn't a real defined corrider, of course, but an accident of the angles), and I gunned each and every one of them down. Then two other blues came around the corner on my face, and I my little party was over.

The third game was most intense, though. There was an actual line going on here for a while. We were staggered roughly from the north to the south, trying to hold cover and advance against the other side. If the ground was dirt, we'd have had trenches before too long. I discovered this trying to get out of blue territory, actually. Usually blue base wasn't so insanely beset by blue players (they were heavy on offense and so I could usually trust that, if there was combat in the centre of the floor, I could slip around and get blue base once or twice before elimation); this time, they were on top of me before I got one hit in on the base. So I tried to find cover and move out of hostile territory while I had eight-seconds stun, but there was no cover to be had and eight seconds was not getting me far enough from them. I swear I got hit three times before I got decent cover. The reason, of course, turned out to be that I was on the wrong side of that freaking line I described, and my teammates already had all the good cover along it. I was flopping around in the open, trying to get a moment of safety while my vest activated again. It is not good when two blues have a bead on you and your vest is going to activate in a second.

Taking cover against the skeleton-bomb was also lots of fun; hollering at your teammates to get cover now was even more fun.

That's all.