Guns are bad, let me get that one out right now. But I for one won’t say no to playing with pretend guns; especially the ones you get in laser tag.
In case you don’t know, laser tag is a tag game where you play with guns that fire infrared beams (like those old video game guns). Infrared sensitive targets are worn by players which need to be hit to earn points (you need it to hit the other players, it doesn’t count if you hit yourself).
You can find out more about it if you look it up on the internet. In fact, here’s the Wikipedia article where I got info about what laser tag is.
Now, on with the blog.
I got the chance to go to a laser tag centre with some friends a while back and I thought it was a lot of fun. Let me describe my experience.
Before we started the match, two workers told us the basics; how to fire, what to aim for, the fact that we couldn’t fire for 5 seconds once you were shot, how many points you would get if you shot a player in a particular place, the fact that they were watching from cameras (to make sure no one was cheating) and that each match lasted 15 mins.
After that, we were put into two teams of five each and taken to another room where were given special vests and our laser guns. The vests were covered in sensors, to detect when a gun from the enemy team shot us. After that, the other team went into the play area and five minutes later, we followed them. We were given 3 mins to prepare ourselves; after that the room went almost completely dark, fog filled up the place, music started playing and the game began.
Our strategy before going in had been to stick together back to back in a circle so we could cover our backs and each other. That strategy went right out the window after the first 30 seconds. We were being gunned down and sticking together made us easy targets, eventually we split up either for a better chance at shooting or out of fear of getting shot again. After that I just ran around all over the place, shooting at anything and everything that moved (The workers had given us the option of friendly fire against team mates, we had opted out, good thing too).
It got exciting! To me, it really was like playing a video game in real life. We even had points, we only got to see them after the match was over though. After the match, we saw the points and to our surprise we had won, which I didn’t expect. Later we played again, against another team and this time we lost but I didn’t care, it was still fun.
And it’s because it was so much fun that I’m recommending it as a stress buster. It has a lot of elements to help combat stress; exercise, distractions (plenty of those) and music. It’s also a place to have fun with friends and maybe even make new ones.
If you have the time, money, and can get to laser tag centre, then you should try out this game. Just give it try, you might end up liking it, you never know.
Alternative Yoga 