Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Tag!

With a LAZER, that is. Friday night, Jordy and a couple of friends from work met at local Planet Xtreme to play Lazer Tag. Davis and Joanna were able to join us, and even Carlos made a rare appearance.

Planet Xtreme is packed with video games. One of the least expensive is T-Mek, a tank game battling AI or other local opponents. It's an old game, but easy to learn and play, and since the player keeps playing until he loses, I usually get at least four or five games per token. I stopped winning so much when Davis joined the fray, though.

When we finally made it into the Lazer Tag arena, we expected to be divided into teams, but it was not to be so. It was everyone for himself. I stalked through the maze, shooting "down" opponents left and right. Getting down on the floor is against the rules- rightly so, it's dangerous in the poorly lit maze- but most people stand very tall. Dropping your height by bending your knees deeply gives you a stable platform and makes you harder to see (and hit).
About halfway through the first game, I bumped into Davis, and he didn't seem to want to go away. After a few back-and-forth kills, I had a light bulb moment.
"Hey, why don't we team up?" So, until we eventually lost each other again, we did.

"Two is mo' better than one." The little saying we were taught in Basic learning to be good little infantry is "Two is one, and one is none."

I suppose no-one will be surprised to learn I held the high score at the end of the game. Davis was second.

We went back to playing other games until we were called again. This time, we had agreed we wanted teams, and told the other, larger group in the arms room we'd take them on. One of them wanted to get mouthy, and offered to bet us $50.

I'm not a betting man. So I didn't.

But, oh my god, we murdered them. As we broke down the ramp, I yelled quick instruction for every person to stay with at least one other teammate, and we went to town. When we ended the game, the workers/fanboys there told us the other team would have to do nothing but shoot the little bonus targets for 10 minutes straight to catch our score, and offered to take us on.

It was a fun night, but the cost was high. All the ninja walking I did in three games means it hurts to move my upper legs, and I have blisters on my hands from T-Mek. Totally worth
it, though.

2 comments:

HollyB said...

J, you should go back to that place and play for $. That's how you could pay for grad school. Just keep moving from venue to venue. Cause you KNOW you'll get a rep as a Lazer Tag SHARK.
Or you could give lessons in lazer tag. $50/a half hour. the suburban putzes would eat it up like candy!
Just a thought.

J.R.Shirley said...

Well, some of the people who had obviously played a while (one guy had
gloves: how gay is THAT!) had
some tricks they used, like blading the body and keeping behind walls.

Personally, I just tried for quick and accurate shooting, and movement.


HallowE09