Dan Harkless
Last modified: February 16, 2010
See my Halloween Haunt 2006: Dark Realm - Laser Rage page for my main commentary on this maze.
Unfortunately I had even more trouble than last year holding both my camera and the gun simultaneously in such a way that I could use both of them effectively. Sorry that the gun is therefore protruding into the shot more than last year. I think maybe the guns last year didn't require you to hold that button on the front to enable the trigger? I don't recall wanting three or four arms quite as badly last time.
I did verify while speaking with an attendant (not pictured here) that my gun wasn't supposed to just stop firing like it did last year -- that was apparently a malfunction, not due to getting hit too many times or taking too long. Speaking of the gun, it was kind of amazing how many people this year didn't bother to read the signs at the beginning of the maze and asked me what my gun was for (while I was in the midst of shooting things with it).
The maze itself was about the same this year. The monsters were nicer about not repeatedly and mercilessly disabling my gun with their shots, which made for a more enjoyable experience -- only that security dude at the end did that. I also figured out that you can't shoot the targets while they're showing an "X", which they don't tell you. I don't know what the point of that is -- pretty lame. They seem to have changed the sound effects -- for instance, when hitting that little creature that moves left and right after the first tunnel, he used to make a cute irritated growl sound, whereas this time I just got a generic "slot machine win"-type noise for everything (which admittedly makes it easier to tell when you've made a successful hit). One thing I was glad to see this year was the return of the "mobile cage" from the pre-Laser-Rage version of Dark Realm.
My opinion of this maze was unchanged this year -- kind of a cool idea to have interactivity with a maze's elements, but it wasn't very well implemented here. It was cool that I was able to get the headlights of that car front-end to turn on by shooting its target, but why didn't that stretched-out corpse guy start moving when I successfully shot his? I guess maybe the giant skeletal troll thing "died" when I shot it, but it was hard to tell. The Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters at Disneyland definitely handles the mechanics of this aspect a lot better.
2007 was the final year for The Dark Realm / Dark Realm - Laser Rage, but in 2008, a new laser tag maze in a different location will reportedly be making its debut, Alien Annihilation. Hopefully it'll do a better job with the concept than Laser Rage did.
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Dan Harkless
Last modified: February 16, 2010
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