The State of Laser Tag: Real-Life FPS is Now a Thing

Last month I went to a new indoor laser tag place with my kids here in Greenville, SC. It was sort of fun, but I could not help wonder how is it that in the age of the smartphone and home drones, laser tag has managed to remain so stagnant. I was happy to learn I was wrong. However in this new local arena all you could do was shoot at other players with one weapon, to get one kill, for one point. It literally was like playing "tag" with “lasers”. If you get tagged there is a 5-second respawn. And that’s it; tally up scores at the end. The only variety added to the simple formula was that each player was allowed to “destroy” the base three times per game. Destroying the base counted for 10 points. The blasters didn’t even have sights, so spam-shooting was required to see where the shots landed and make corrections accordingly. This, in the summer of 2018; when kids are basically born knowing how handle gadgets and play video games. Talk about a market gap waiting to be exploited.

The following week found me researching the developments in laser tag. I’ve had 6 Nerf Laser Tag LTX blasters at home for a long time. Those have been fun but I acquired them about 5 years ago, surely there must be something new by now, I thought. For perspective, that was about the time I Ieft the Fortressat scene, as Kickstarter was becoming a dominant force in board games. With gamers throwing piles of cash at first-time game designers who knew nothing about manufacturing or supply chain logistics. Now I’m piecing together other crazy occurrences that have happened since, like Asmodee buying up all the good Ameritrash publishers, Barnes falling in love with Games Workshop all over again, and a recent rebranding of the Fortressat name. It’s a lot to take in.
 
Anyway in my research I found that last year saw the release of the Recoil laser tag system; which required the use of a smartphone and a WiFi hub, but supposedly allowed for airstrikes and hand grenades. Then I read how the glitches in the app basically killed it. At the time of this writing it is being sold deeply discounted, (never to be produced again I assume). There is a Facebook community of coders currently developing a companion app to make Recoil work as intended. They seem to be making good progress, but I’ve been let down too many times by community projects to pin my hopes on the nearly defunct Recoil system. Who knows, they may yet surprise us.
 
Then I read about the BRX tagger: Produced by Battle Company, a major player in the commercial laser tag space, but designed for the prosumer. It looked very good on paper, but there wasn't much info out there on these units. You could say these guys are a lot better product designers than they are marketers, a welcome flip to the status quo. Making things worse, the BRX units are expensive at $380 per player. Who in their right mind would buy this? Fast forward two additional weeks and I have four of them at home.

Now I’m here to tell you that if you’ve ever enjoyed playing First Person Shooters, I can pretty much guarantee you will love this product; and you are missing out if you haven’t wielded one of these rifles. The BRX comes equipped with a real reflex sight, and it feels and sounds amazing. You could mistake it for a glorified cosplay prop, but in reality it's an FPS enthusiast's wet dream.

Out of the box you can Play Team Deathmatch, Free For All, Infection and Supremacy (a.k.a Class-based Team Deathmatch). It’s just the one rifle, but it comes equipped with all sorts of weapon profiles like assault rifle, sniper rifle, SMG, shotgun, grenade launcher, heavy machine gun, energy weapons, concussion grenades (my personal fav), medkits, EMP grenades, poison, freeze rays, etc. Weapons have Rate of Fire, Damage, Clip Size, and Accuracy attributes. Each weapon really does feel different because of the crazy good sound effects provided by a booming speaker on the rifle; with the rumble-pack sweetening the illusion as you feel each shot fired. The rifle is also equipped with an accelerometer that allows for melee attacks with the butt of the rifle and hitting the rifle on the side several times to help clear a gun jam. It also has a physical cocking lever used for reloading.

The included headset not only receives hits from an opposing rifle, but can also “emit” hits. And this my friends, is the secret sauce. This is how Battle Company is able to provide such FPS staples as splash damage from grenades, a sniper shot going “through” someone and hitting the person behind, the shotgun being deadly at close range only, melee attacks, and other things not usually found in laser tag. It all works seamlessly. The range on these blasters is 550 ft in broad daylight to a couple of thousand at night. You better mount a scope on it if you are planning on using the full range.

If it all sounds too good to be true its because it almost is. Battle Company has been developing their system for something like 5 years now, and I think the only reason a small company like this was able to develop this product isolated from competition the likes of Microsoft or Google, is because "guns" are a hyper-political subject. When it comes to large companies, fear of the Twitter mob takes precedence above all other considerations. It’s the only explanation I can come up with as to why it took so damn long to bridge the gap between video games and laser tag.

I am planning on eventually writing a review on the BRX. In the mean time, I’d like to know if the Atlanta Fortressat crew would like to get together for some 2 vs. 2 action, so some of you can experience what I’m writing about; and call me out if you feel this is all just hyperbole.

There is someone in Marietta, GA that has two BRX’s, so if we contact this person, we may be able to go 3 vs. 3.

Looking forward to some games!