My First Game of Gel Blaster Nexus Laser Tag

After trying this out at their booth at IAAPA, I headed out after the show to play my first game of Gel Blaster Nexus Laser Tag with my friend and laser tag teammate, Scuba Steve.

We visited the Main Event location in Orlando where they are alternating the Gel Blaster Nexus using projectile gellets in one style of game against laser-only games of laser tag that do not involve any kind of projectile. This really helps me to properly define that this gear functions as two-in-one game equipment and to say that this now really does have a place in the laser tag discussion as well. A year ago when the product debuted at IAAPA I had difficulty categorizing it because, even though the game always had an IR signal being sent and received (the minimum definition for laser tag) simultaneously happening alongside the physical projectile, when the gellets were used it really was a hybrid. But now with two functions for the gear available as options, with or without gellets, I can more comfortably call at least the one version “laser tag”…and now, so do they! And that is the primary reason we sought it out while in Florida.

So, always ready to try something new, we showed up and were truly treated like VIPs for this experience.

We were greeted at the arena entrance by Bryce and a couple members of the Main Event team who were training on this new gear. The briefing room was set up with vests on one side, which could be paired up with any of the phasers on the other side.

I selected one of each and was shown how to pair them by tapping the side of the phaser to the red phaser sensor on the front of the vest.

Once connected we could select a team color by tagging the portal target of our preferred color choice.

The process is simple for the user, but I can see tremendous benefit to an operator in having these pieces be interchangeable. With my phaser and vest glowing blue, we were just about ready!

After watching the briefing video (hosted by Senior Vice President of Trends and New Markets, Steve Starobinsky) we entered the arena. I have to pause and say this arena is striking because it appears to be a hybrid of two highly recognizable arena designer’s styles between the inner maze walls by one and the outer perimeter walls by another. For whatever the reason this was done, it made for a very distinctive style and I like the look of this arena a lot! And as this is the 590th arena I have played (yep, counting down to my 600th arena soon) it’s cool to find design choices that can still surprise me. :)

I started the game at my base with Scuba on the opposite side of the field.

The actual base is one of the Gel Blaster portals.

Portals are scattered throughout the arena and when they are glowing a particular color they can be tagged for a power-up. When a tag hits your opponent’s vest it turns red for a moment to indicate the hit.

We had an awesome game experience, chasing and tagging each other throughout the arena. See for yourself in this video of our first game of Gel Blaster Nexus Laser Tag.

Good game Scuba! We returned to the vesting room to check our scores.

Now, we had not yet set up our Gel Blaster accounts at this point, so you will have to trust that I was playing as the Strange Lemur while Scuba was the Busy Lemur, lol. Kudos to whoever came up with those code names! However, we rectified that for the next game by signing up for the free app to track our scores and allow us to enter our actual codenames.

Note to Gel Blaster…we need a character icon choice that looks a bit more like me! :)

We decided that after having a great time playing the laser tag version that we would try it with the gellet projectiles as well. We switched colors this time. For this we needed to wear protective face masks. You can’t tell, but when they said “say cheese!” we were both smiling under our masks!

Playing with gellets is a different experience all together. I imagine this would be most appealing to gamers who enjoy airsoft and paintball, but the hit is mild enough that it works for me too.

I was able to automatically reload by tilting my phaser on its side, which you can see in this video of our first Gel Blaster game with gellets. You can also really hear the difference between this and the laser tag game.

We earned our first stats for the app.

I thoroughly enjoyed this experience! It is completely different trying it out at a trade show booth versus playing an actual game in a proper arena setting. The Gel Blaster Nexus Laser Tag game is one that I would love to play again, and with a list and map of their operating arenas right on the app, I assure you I will be seeking out more opportunities to play this during my upcoming tag travels. We had a blast…or should I say a Gel Blast!