Light Strike: A Breakdown

NOTE: My camera seems to have gone missing, so there's no pictures in here. I'll go back and add them when I can...

I picked up a pair of Light Strike rifles this week on clearance, the orange one(G.A.R.-023) and the yellow one(S.R.-143). Though it may be on it's way out, now, I would like to go through this gear feature-by-feature, in an attempt to set the record straight, as I've heard a lot of conflicting stuff about this gear.

Light Strike was designed and built by WowWee Group Limited, who also made the PaperJamz line of paper/plastic guitars. These laser tag units quite obviously follow the same paper/plastic design.

To give a bit of my background, and to show what bias I might have, I have been playing with Hasbro/STM's LTTO line for... 6 or 7 years now, I think. I love most of the many features the LTTO line offers, and that gear has set my standard for both outdoor range and features.

//Put picture of both rifles and sensors here

Impressions of the Light Strike rifles (before batteries)

• This stuff is built well. While obviously plastic-looking, they are quite solid-feeling, with very little flex or give anywhere.

• The accessory slot covers look to be well-designed, and don't feel like they're going to snap off or get stuck.

• The battery cover is a bit difficult, as if you don't make sure it's straight, it is entirely possible to tighten down one screw and not be able to screw in the other one.

Ergonomics

• Orange rifle: While obviously designed for smaller hands than mine, this rifle is quite comfortable. It also has a nice weight to it. Though not exactly "heavy", it not really light, either. I haven't actually been running around with this, but having fiddled with it for a few hours, I didn't notice anything particularly uncomfortable about the design.

• Yellow rifle: After only a few minutes of playing with this one, the bumps on the back of the grip were digging into my hand. I didn't spend much time with this rifle, as the grip hurt enough that I wouldn't want to use it for more than a few minutes. //Put picture of yellow handle here

Now, before I get much farther, I should note that there are three different pistols and three different rifles in the Light Strike lineup, one pistol and one rifle of each of three colors(red, orange and yellow). Most of my experience with this gear is with the orange rifle, but so far as I can tell, all the functionality is the same between the three varieties of rifle, just the button layout and sounds are different.

Buttons and switches

As I said before, there's three rifles in the lineup, each with it's own sounds and button layouts. The actual buttons are the same, they're just in different spots. Each rifle has a power switch, a trigger, a reload button, and six "touch-sensitive" buttons that control various functions.

//Picture of touch panel on both

As you can see, there is a "shield" button, a "weapon select" button, a "single/rapid" button, a "volume" button, a "team" button, and "fingerprint"/"I.D. Scanner" button. I'll go through these one by one.

Shield

The shields on these units is quite a bit different, compared to what I'm used to from the LTTO line. These shields, you press the button once, and for the next 15 seconds or so, you take half damage from enemy fire. After those 15 seconds are up, your shields turn off and take about 3 minutes to regenerate before you can use them again. You cannot turn your shields off early, but you can still shoot while your shields are on, so this isn't really a problem, unless you think you might need your shields again fairly soon.

While this is quite a bit different from what I'm used to, I do like the way it works. You're not completely immune, but you're not helpless, either.

Weapon Select

One of my favorite features of this line, is the fact that each tagger functions as not one, but five different weapons. Pressing this button will cycle you through five different weapons, each one having unique sounds, refire rate, damage amounts, ammo usage, and some of them do not allow switching between "semi-auto" and "single fire" modes(Which is covered in the "Single/Rapid" button section).

The five weapons are Laser Strike, Stealth Strike, Pulse Strike, Rail Strike, and Sonic Strike. I don't have any numbers for any of these, as the manual is very on details. I will take quotes from the manuals to describe these.

Laser Strike is your default weapon. It doesn't have much firepower but it blasts super fast.
Stealth Strike is similar to laser strike but its muffled blasts let you sneak up on enemies.
Pulse Strike packs more punch. It's best in semi-auto mode but uses ammo faster and has a longer delay between blasts.
Rail Strike has a ton of firepower but goes through ammo fast and has a longer delay between blasts.
Sonic Strike is the biggest weapon in your arsenal but goes through ammo quickly and has the longest delay between blasts.

All of these weapons share the same ammo bin, so you can't use up the ammo on one and then switch to another to keep shooting. I think the idea here is that all of these are energy weapons, and you're using the same battery until it runs out. Not a bad way of doing it, really.

Single/Rapid

This button is...strange, to say the least. If the weapon you have select allows it(The Rail Strike and Sonic Strike don't), this button lets you switch between "Semi-Auto" and "Single Fire" firing modes. Only these names really don't make sense. "Single Fire" is more akin to full-automatic, in that if you hold the trigger down, it will keep firing until it runs out of ammo. "Semi-Auto" is a three-round burst, followed by a delay, and this pattern repeats for as long as you hold the button down until you run out of ammo.

Ignoring this odd terminology, the button itself seems rather pointless. Your ammo bins are large enough that you can keep up full-auto("Single Fire") for about 5-6 seconds with the Laser Strike/Stealth Strike, and reloading takes about 2 seconds. I can't think of any situation where you would really need/want to slow down your firing with the "Semi-Auto"/three round burst mode.

I'm going to chalk this one up as part of the gimmick side of these.

Volume

This cycles the volume level of your tagger through three levels. Not a whole lot more to say, really. You can't turn the sound all the way off with this button, but there is also a headphone jack on the rear end of the gun which will turn off the audio to the speakers. I like the ability to use headphones with the tagger, though I question the fact that they mention doing this in the manual to "use your tagger in stealth mode"...

I can't say that LTTO doesn't fall into the same trap, though. Though the LTTO manual doesn't outright suggest using the ability to turn off the volume to hide, you can turn the sound off by holding one of the buttons. I will admit that I myself have used this to my advantage in some games, though it is typically frowned upon if/when it comes to light.

Team

//Picture of front panels with various team colors

There are four teams available in the Light Strike gear, Blue, Red, Yellow, and Green. Holding this button down for a few seconds at any point in the game will move you to the next team in the cycle, changing the color of the front several light panels to the color of your team.

No, there's no limitation on this. If I remember correctly, it was even noticed in the commercials for Light Strike that at least one player switched sides mid-game to be on the winning team in the end... While I like the method of identifying teams with the color panels, there REALLY needs to be limitations on when you can change sides. This is one place where I'm of the opinion that either everybody should be able to shoot everybody, or the teams are pre-set and once the game starts, cannot be changed.

While this could be set in place by the group that's playing's rules, I have dealt with many people who care much more about winning than they do about playing fair to trust this method of changing teams.

"Fingerprint"/"I.D. Scanner"

The thing I love about this button is that you never have to train it whose fingerprints are allowed and whose aren't. When you first turn the unit on, it will make a little powering-up noise, and then sit there cycling all the lights through various colors. If you press any button besides volume or the "Fingerprint scanner", it beeps at you and tells you "Fingerprint required". Once you press this button, your tagger is ready to go. Once your tagger is armed, you never use this button until you turn the tagger off and on again. This is entirely a gimmick button, and serves no other purpose.

Trigger, reload, power switch

There's not much to say about these, so I'll just combine them into one section.

The trigger is rather nice. You pull it back part of the way, and there is a nice resistance just before the button actually engages. The orange rifle has a much weaker resistance before that final click than the yellow rifle, but it's still there.

The reload button is a long button on the button of the tagger. The one on the yellow rifle has a bad habit of the rear-most end getting stuck pushed down due to the shape of the button and the case around it, but the orange rifle's button works well.

The power switch is on the top of the tagger. The orange rifle has it recessed at an angle in a dip in the case, and the yellow one has it sticking straight out the top of it. The orange one seems like it would be somewhat difficult to flip accidentally, and the yellow one seems stiff enough that I don't think you're likely to flip it if you did bump it.

Transmitters/Receivers

A very important part of a laser tag unit is how well it can send and receive tag signals from other taggers.

Light Strike is rather disappointing in the receiving aspect. It has only a single sensor built into the gun, and it's in the very tip of the barrel, facing forwards. Try as I might, I could not get them to take a hit from the side or rear.

As for transmitting, I don't have a particularly accurate measurement, but I would guess that I was starting to have problems hitting the other tagger at about 150 feet away, as the sun was setting behind the tagger I was shooting at.

This is not a particularly bad range, but having come from the LTTO gear which gets 300-400 feet in broad daylight, it's not a particularly good range, either.

Lights

//Picture of lit-up taggers, blue team

There are a lot of lights on these taggers. While each variety of tagger has it's own arrangement of them, they each have nine lights.

Three of them are treated as the "barrel" of the weapon, lighting up in the color of your team when idle, flashing when you shoot, and lighting up in the color of them that shot you when you get hit. These ones are blue in the picture, but as I said, change to show which team you are on.

Three of them are used to show how much ammo you have left, with a solid bar being 1/3 of a magazine/clip, and a flashing bar being somewhere between 0/3 and 1/3. These ones are always green.

The last three show your health, in the same manner as the ammo ones do. These ones are always red. When you run out of health, it plays a sound, you can no longer shoot, and your tagger starts flashing in a rainbow of colors. It's really easy to get back into the game, though. Hold the shield button down and pull the trigger, and you're back in the game. It plays a sound when you do this, but it's rather quiet. Nowhere near loud enough to let other players hear that you respawned. Both Laser Challenge and LTTO make it quite obvious when you respawn, with a very loud sound, and a 10-second audible countdown, respectively.

Sounds

There are also a lot of sounds on these taggers. There are three taggers. Each one has a different voice for it's spoken things, such as weapon names, the fact that it "recognized" your "fingerprint", when you turn your shield on, when it runs out, and when it regenerates, and the names of the two firing modes.

The actual weapon sounds are the same across the taggers, though I didn't realize it at first. The yellow rifle seems to have better audio quality, as the bass in the Rail Strike shot sound is much more noticeable. Whether intentional or not, these slight variations in sound quality did make me think for a while that each variety had unique sounds for everything. It would be neat if they did.

Accessories

The only accessories I have for these taggers is the "SOUND FX TARGET" that each rifle came with, which does nothing more than light up with the color of the team it was shot with and play a hit sound. Other than target practice, the only way I can think of to use these would be to buy a few extras for each player(They were $10 each, I think, before they went on sale? I might be wrong on that, I didn't really keep track of them.), and rig up a harness on each player. If an enemy managed to light up all of a player's targets in their color, you either join their team or are tagged out of the game. This would rely entirely on the honor system, however.

There are many other accessories for this line of taggers, but I don't think I'll be putting any more money into these, so you will have to look elsewhere for how those change the system.

I do know that there was another sensor setup that was a vest that you "paired" with your tagger, which turned off the sensor in your tagger and the vest took over the health-tracking. This might handle taking hits from the side/rear better, but there's a major problem with this: it was sold separately for $40. $50 for the rifle and another $40 for a sensor vest to be able to take hits from any direction other than straight ahead? And then you realize that you need a second pair for a second player... This system would get expensive fast.

Summary

Usable range: ~150 feet
Cheatability: Medium-High
Would I buy more: No.

Things I like, in no particular order:

1. The lights. Nice and obvious which team you're on, and it lights up which team you were just shot by. It tells you what you need to know, without being too explicit about it.
   
2. The fact that there's three varieties of rifle/pistol. While they're functionally the same, the bit of variety they add to the choice of taggers is rather nice. And you get your choice of grip styles, too.
3. The design of the orange rifle. I like the feel of the orange rifle. If I ever gut these for putting other taggers into, I'd do it with the orange rifle, not the yellow one.
4. The fact that it is expandable. Though I didn't put any money into the accessories, I like the fact that it does have the capability for it.
5. The "multiple weapons in one" idea. This is something I've been thinking about how to accomplish in my "dream laser tag" system that I've been writing down ideas for for a year or two now, and they pulled it off rather nicely.
   

Things I didn't like, in no particular order:

1. How easy it is to switch teams mid-game. I have dealt with many people trying to cheat their way out of losing fairly, and this system makes it entirely too easy for them to do it and not get caught.
2. The design of the yellow rifle. The grip is quite uncomfortable, even for short periods, to me. There are odd protrusions on it that dig into your hand that make holding the weight of the tagger hurt.
3. There only being one sensor on the front of the tagger. I come from a system that has a sensor dome on the tagger that allows almost 360-degree coverage. Only being able to take hits from the front just doesn't cut it for me.
4. The firing modes. The names don't make any sense, and there's no reason to switch between them anyways.
5. The "fingerprint" scanner. The only other thing you can do when you first turn the tagger on is change the volume. Why not just throw people straight into the game? It's not going to change much of anything except reduce your cost a little bit.
6. The layouts of the touch-sensitive buttons. I don't mind that they're different between varieties of taggers. I do mind that they're all impossible to use without looking at them. The firing mode button on the orange rifle is just above the trigger, but you can't quite bend your thumb up far enough to touch it.

Final comments:
With a few refinements, I really think WowWee could have a much better contender for the laser tag market. A better sensor setup in the tagger itself, the elimination of a few mostly useless buttons, and a better layout for the buttons, and I would have no problems seeing this as a viable step between the advanced features of the LTTO line and the bare-bones system that is Laser Challenge.

The sensor setup is the major one, to me. It shouldn't have cost more than a dollar or so to add a pair of sensors, one on either side, and it would be more than good enough as a step up from Laser Challenge.