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Summer FPS - Lazer Tag and Super Soaker
hapycamper writes "If you want to play your very own 'real life' version of a first-person shooter, two choices include a water fight using Super Soakers or the more technical Lazer Tag brand. GamerDad Unplugged has written up an overview of both systems. In testing, the high end Super Soakers don't seem to be worth the cost unless water capacity is your main requirement. Meanwhile, home Lazer Tag equipment performs well, but can be problematic in indoor settings."
Bah! Super Soakers all the way. That guy was just using a limited selection of Soakers. http://www.wcnews.com/chrisreid/supersoakers.html
Super Soakers? Lazer Tag? Bah humbug!
In my day we simulated first person shooters with LAWN DARTS and you could only respawn after the bandages came off!
Seems like I read about a hack that combined a laser with a super soaker. The beam of the laser was somehow aimed to follow the stream of water, so when you shot the water it gleamed with color. Be hard to see in anything but low light, but could be cool.
Anyway, I never had much luck with my Lazer Tag sets. The targets never seemed to trigger unless you were extremely close and both gun and target were stationary. I had more fun with Photon, Lazer Tag's pudgier cousin. You could play that with just the guns, as they too could register hits. Lazer Tag definitely had more style. I even learned how to twirl those weird guns on my finger.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
Uh... paintball...airsoft?
Seven or eight years ago, My brother, our two friends across the street, and I would often play 2vs2 laser tag, and it was always great fun. Besides, I would consider Super Soakers much too ample a training tool for more sinful, solitary activites...
Or if you have some balls you can play paintball. How did they leave that one out?
-Woad
Don't forget about Airsoft. While too violent for children, it's perfect for people who think paintball is too messy or want something more realistic. A basic pistol can be had for $100 and will preform nicely at less than 20 meters. Get the biodegradable pellets for outdoor fun; indoor cleanup can still be a pain.
Oh, and be careful where you play. Breaking out a realistic-looking pistol around the office can really break some of your more "fragile" coworkers.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Isn't that more like a FPS?
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Laser tag seems to have a higher cost of adoption and despite there being a built in scoring system, I've heard that sometimes its not so easy to get a direct hit.
For SuperSoakers, however, you can easily tell when someone has been shot. By the damp and dripping areas of their t-shirts. Unfortunately, there is still difficulty in determining a winner in a team-match.
One idea for a solution is this: after a concluding a team-match a team could strip their t-shirts, hand them to the other team, and wring the loose water into buckets. Whichever team has the least, amount of water wins. And by having the other team wring them out, they have an incentive to wring every last drop. But you would want the other team to watch so that they aren't adding extra water.
Of course if you wanted to make things really complicated you could do SuperSoaker Counterstrike and have a bunch of referees keep track of which body parts get hit and how often, but that's overkill methinks. Oh and if you are as worried about eyes as the Gamerdads are just use sunglasses.
If anyone is interested in seeing pictures of friends of mine and I playing what we called Super Soaker Wars, take a look here. This is back in the summer of 2001, and was quite a bit of fun. In order to make the game more interesting we generally played in a friend's rather large back yard with CTF-style games. The flag was a cylume lightstick positioned beneath a tiki torch. If you got wet, you were out.
There was (understandably) a lot of honor system involved, but it was all in good fun so it worked out rather well.
Paintball is wimpy since they moved to water-based paint.
When I played regularly (early 1980s), the balls used oil-based paint.
What was really fun was when a first-timer would show up dressed in decent clothing.
Once, some idiot wore an expensive suede jacket to a game.
When advised that the paint was oil-based, and would be nearly impossible to remove, he replied, "Well, I don't plan on getting hit.".
Guess who got hit the most that afternoon?
That said, although Paintball is wimpier than it used to be, it's still more fun than shooting someone with squirtguns or light.
I wish that they'd bring back the oil-based paint, though.
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I remember playing this so long ago, lots of fun. Kind of. The only problem playing it now would be that I'm so used to multiple weapons (thanks UT2004), that just one would suck. And I have a feeling people would complain if I brought a rocket launcher in.
If you want paintball to be less whimpy, as you put it, try puting the balls in the freezer before you play. We did that once, never again.
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Get protector glasses, the kind chemists use. They're meant to deflect acids and shrapnell from exploding test tubes. Should be enough to stop BB gun projectiles.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Get protector glasses, the kind chemists use. They're meant to deflect acids and shrapnell from exploding test tubes. Should be enough to stop BB gun projectiles.
So that will protect your eyes (and maybe your nose, depending upon the brand)... But what about your mouth, ears, neck, and genitals? BB guns are dangerous and can be fatal.
There's nothing tough about shooting people or getting shot by BB/pellet guns; it's stupid. If you're that hard-off for a good gunfighting experience, just get a paintball gun. You can get cheap Stingray (or whatever they're called now) ones at Wal-mart for like fifty bucks. If those aren't your thing, then look into Airsoft guns.
-Grym
-Grym
Paintballs are a lot more dangerous than a lot of BB guns.
I had one of these. Most powerful Super Soaker made :D Thing weighed a ton though...
let me get this straight... they compare lazer tag and super soaker and it's lazer tag that doesn't work well indoors?
I used to work in a Tuxedo Rental store when I was a teenager. All of the merchandise had those UPC style barcodes that allowed us to track when a customer returned them and such. We had the hand-held wireless readers that let you scan a bit away from the desk. They would beep whenever you scanned. At night when the mall closed we'd strap on some rental vests inside-out and play laser tag with the readers. It was great fun and didn't get us in trouble because nine times out of ten the stupid wireless scanner never actually connected to the charger set anyways and you had to have the application open to get the scan processed, otherwise it was ignored.
My regional manager (tag was the store manager's idea) could never figure out why our batteries were constantly dying in the readers though.
I know it's perhaps best just to buy one of the cheep plastic ones, But is their a way to build your own better Super Soaker? I have a feeling someone's done it, and I bet the people of Slashdot know someone who's done it. Now is it worth it, is the question. Tony
In New Jersey (that was a Union state BTW) we used BB guns, one pump only for multipump models, had to aim for the stomach, had to wear sunglasses. Only one of the numerous things that make me wonder how my friends and I survived childhood in one piece.
Laser Challenge v2 is one of the best systems ever put out. They have some newer stuff and some older stuff but I'd recommend going for v2 (or v3/"radar" in a pinch). :)
If you can find it, it goes for about $15 CDN for a vest (with front and back sensors) and pistol. You can also get a sniper rifle and a "shotgun" for $15 each. We've fitted our sniper rifle with a cheap hunter's scope from Canadian Tire and it works great.
The v3s are nice because they can be set for team play but IIRC you can't get a back sensor for them. Friendly fire is more realistic anyway.
Each piece of equipment takes 3 AAs and lasts forever. It's really durable, and teaching new players how to use it takes about three minutes.
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Paintballs are a lot more dangerous than a lot of BB guns.
Sure, if you were to eat 20 of either, I'd go for BB's. If I had to be shot, I'll take the paintball gun, thanks.
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Sigh... If only. Modding would be so much more fun.
Did you get hit somewhere you shouldn't have?
I believe you are mistaken. I *think* the CPS 2000 was the most powerful Super Soaker ever made. It was modified to become the 2500 with a differnt, less-coherent nozzle after some injuries (retinal detachment? i forget.) caused by the 2000. I believe there was also a wussified version of the 2000 released as a stopgap before the 3000 and its less-coherent water stream.
I had a friend in college with one-- it was truly impressive. Of course, it was empty after like two shots because of the size of the stream of water it produced.
Depends on the BB/pellet gun. Some mid- to upper-range air rifles can send the projectile at near-sonic speeds. For example, this one can propel a BB at 750 ft/s, roughly 230 m/s, and it's just a multi-pump (no CO2 cartridge involved). There are reasons why there are local ordinances against discharging pneumatic guns near residences, even in rural/"red" states.
:) In college, we had a backstop involving old newspapers & magzines in a cardboard box, in front of a bedsheet hung from the ceiling. We tended to keep with the "kiddie" line of guns, but even then the ricochets stung a bit made us thankful we wore glasses.
BB guns are best against empty Mountain Dew cans, especially indoors.
" Paintballing is a lot more fun than laser tag in my opinion... "
But it involves a considerable start-up fee, not to mention the money for upkeep (like ammunition) and all but require dedicated acreage to play on. The two games listed in the article are cheap up front, require no upkeep beyond batteries and/or running water, and can be played in somebody's yard without violating anybody's local ordinances.
That's just stupid. A BB won't leave nearly the bruise that a paintball will.