I’ll circle back to my time in Las Vegas to give a full review of the Laser Tag Convention and Amusement Expo, but for now let’s skip ahead to what I did after leaving Las Vegas. I made a last minute decision to drive to California to spend a day seeking out a few unique laser tag experiences.
I know a few players in the Los Angeles area, so I reached out to my California friends and Noah was available to join me, suggesting we pay a visit to MB2 Raceway in Sylmar, CA.
This was a chance to play some early morning Delta Strike Evolution Pro. As we showed up right as they were opening, this was going to be a 1v1 and a good warm-up for the day.
Having a great sparring partner makes the game more fun, even with only a couple of players. I thoroughly enjoyed a chance to play against Noah, who has a ton of skill with various laser tag systems, as we traversed the dark corners of this single level arena while tagging around the walls and the tires.
That was fun! While returning the packs to the vesting room, the staff member who had briefed us gave us another useful piece of information…that they actually have a second location with laser tag not too far away. So, next we set off for MB2 Entertainment in Santa Clarita, CA.
Here we got to mix it up a bit as this site was also operating Delta Strike, but we walked in to find the newer Genesis packs in the vesting room.
Suit up!
This was a completely different experience, and not just because we got to join a proper game with a group. Noah had never played using Genesis before, but I had, and we were both a bit surprised by some parts of the game.
We entered the arena, which was a single level with some perimeter ramps providing access to a few raised areas for height. It had a brightly mural walls that accented a city theme incorporated into the arena build.
I got a kick out of the little jokes, for example the schoolhouse where several targets had been placed was called the School of Hard Knocks. I smile when I see clever things like that worked into an arena design.
This game felt a little different to me in that I am guessing there may have been some settings adjusted. Noah and I both noticed that the IR range for the phasers seemed much shorter than typical and I was also surprised that they had :15 seconds of downtime when a player was tagged. Shane later suggested that they may have been running Delta Tag, a shields game, but if so we did not realize. So the game was enjoyable, but it simply had a completely different feel from our earlier experience at their sister site.
I always think it’s interesting to compare and contrast related sites. We had two totally different games at two very different locations even though they were both MB2 arenas. That’s actually what I prefer to see. Rather than have a cookie cutter experience that is the same in both places, each arena was unique in its own way, giving players the choice of what kind of game experience they prefer. And kicking off the day with not one, but two arenas I had not had on my radar before arriving in California was a pretty good way to begin a day full of laser tagging our was around the arenas in the outskirts of Los Angeles.
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Contact: Tivia@tiviachickloveslasertag.com
Websites: www.tiviachickloveslasertag.com and www.photonforever.com
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