Over the weekend I was able to visit the Lazer Runner in Circus Circus in Las Vegas. This is only my second time playing this system, and I have never played it competitively. I was rather dismayed to start by paying $6 for a 5 minute game. But all their attractions are this price and if you get an all day pass for $23 you can play as many games as you want.
I enjoy the system. The vests fit nicely and this is coming from a guy that weighs 275 lbs. The unit I had seemed to be in good working order, and during the game I had no issues with tagging other players. I did not particularly like the arena. There were not too many obstacles and so to move from one section to the next usually means you get tagged. It was a little too dark, and my eye sight is a little too bad to fully appreciate the theme they had going on.
Lazer Runner has the option of running a continuous game and setting each player with their own time limit. So we joined a game already in progress. This is a very good setup for a place like Circus Circus where there is a continuous flow of people coming to play. Though I really wish it was more than 5 minutes on the game time...
Now for the bad. The customer service was HORRIBLE! The only brief on how to play was a video loop in the waiting area, which could be fine except there were only 2 people in front of us at the moment and so we only saw about 30 seconds of it. I suppose we could have stopped and just watched, but the employee never asked if we knew how to play, just told us to come with her. (My friend had never played laser tag before).
We were under a constant rush to get in the game. I was trying to help adjust my friends vest and the girl just kept saying "Come on, lets go". And after the game, the girl was annoyed that I didn't immediately find the exit.
I was very disappointed that there were no scorecards. I know that the system can print half-sheets, and you can print the scorecards by choosing a player unit, I would have even paid up to $1 for a printout, just to have a souvenir.
I enjoyed the game, and got to introduce my friend to the game of Laser Tag. Which was inevitable I suppose because he married a girl that used to play competitively, and we were in Vegas for a wedding of two people that used to play on my team...