Last weekend MUB Board put on another fantastic event. They sponsored the laser tag company Respawn Tactical Laser Tag, and provided students with a laser tag experience unlike anything else.
This wasn’t your average, run-of-the-mill laser tag, with a heavy body vest and a laser gun straight from the ’80s. Respawn laser tag equipped you with metal laser rifles, with the weight and the trigger that felt like a real gun.
You placed a Velcro strap on your head, and attached sensors to your temples and the back of your head. The sensors were the only place where someone could shoot you.
It forced you to keep your head low, and to be cautious about where you stuck your head out.
The arena was stacked high with large cardboard boxes, in order to simulate a real combat experience. There were plenty of places to find cover, but to secure a point, or advance to an objective, you had to risk running out in the open, and potentially getting shot by an opponent.
I had the opportunity to try out a couple of their game modes last weekend, and it was certainly a new laser tag experience for me.
One of the game modes we got to try out was Team Deathmatch, which is where two teams, red team and blue team, fight to eliminate everyone on the opposite team.
There are no respawns, so each person on each team gets one life, and if they took three shots to any of their sensors, they were out of the game. Fighting, ducking under cover, and trying to get the perfect position was an exhilarating and exhausting experience.
The other game type we got to play was king of the hill, where the guys at Respawn rigged a large plastic box with two buttons, a countdown timer, and LED lights to show which team was in control. I had never seen anything like it before.
Someone from either side had to hold down their team’s button for around three seconds, out in the open, while taking fire from the enemy team. The part that was even harder once you had control of the cube was to fend off the enemy team from recapturing it.
Tactical Laser Tag is something everyone should experience at least once. It’s fun to coordinate with your friends, try out new methods of attack, and to laugh it off when your plan fails horribly, or to cheer as it somehow actually works.
Be sure to check out what the MUB Board has in store for us next on their events page on involvement link, www. involvement.mtu.edu/organization/ memorial-union-board/events.
If you’re interested in gathering some friends and playing tactical laser tag, check out Respawn’s website, at respawnlasertag.com.
