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:)