I've played laser tag a number of times. In Syracuse area the main place that I've played is Fun Junction. It's usually filled with kids to teens on weekend nights, which can be a little awkward sometimes since I'm in my late 20's. But usually when I go, it's with a group of people so it's still fun.
Big Don's was NOTHING like what I'll consider "traditional" laser tag. Usually laser tag is in a big maze with the people running around with ramps and sometimes little holes or pillars to peak around. You wear a vest that allows for shooting zones on the shoulders, stomach, back, and gun. You run around like a maniac shooting unlimited bullets and aiming at everything that moves and the opposing team's base. When you get shot, it's a one-hit kill, and you have to wait a few seconds to respawn. I wouldn't particularly say there's all that much tactical skill. People aren't particularly afraid to get shot or run around shooting at everything and anything.
Now I will start off saying that Fun Junction in Shoppingtown Mall was my favorite laser tag before Big Don's. It has ramps, is clean, and pretty well organized. The equipment is kept up pretty well, which makes things nice. The scoring is easy to understand when you walk out of the arena with a score board on a monitor. There are a decent number of places to kind of hide and enough pillars and walls in the way that if you get shot you can find a place to get out of the way while waiting to respawn.
Although I enjoy laser tag, I actually prefer paintball. It's much more tactical; people making plans with teammates. There are obstacles and large objects to hide behind so you can shield yourself from the oncoming wrath of color bullets. The main drawbacks of paintball for me are that it's expensive and I often walk away with a few bruises. The price is higher for me than most people I know because I am awful at aiming and usually have to shoot 3 or 4 paintballs before I can figure out where the heck I'm actually shooting. I have awful aim to say the very least. And, since that takes time I usually don't have time to figure it out and shoot about 10 paintballs one after the other. Needless to say... I run out of paintballs rather quickly and need to buy extras several times through my time playing. I've seen some of the die-hard players keep a canister on their belts to reload. I am not cool enough to have one of those. :P
But, now... I don't need to get one! Big Don's Battleground is like paintball without the worry of walking away with welts! The 40,000 square foot outdoor area is set up with base, forts/sniper towers, obstacles, and obstacles to hide behind. There are bushes, giant spools, and a variety of other obstructions. I kid you not; it felt like I was playing Modern Warfare in real life. There's army netting around and sand bags to add to this atmosphere.
A quick run down of how this is set up, and amazingly could be different any time because the guns are re-programmable before EVERY game! I felt like I was in a sci-fi movie. Basically, Big Don set up his gun with the specs for the game and then puts the gun to your head (you're wearing a headband.. I'll explain in a minute). He called it cloning. It felt very futuristic to me to have some gun thing aimed at my head and become "cloned".
These guns are much heavier than a plastic traditional laser tag gun. They're metal and I believe at least 5-10 pounds. Maybe I'm just weak and way off, but they were definitely heavy duty. The guns have scopes you can turn on and off with a little red dot for aiming. You have limited ammo to shoot at once, and there's a button to reload. There's a 2 second delay while the gun is reloading. When you hit someone it tells you, "Good hit" and the hit person gets a verbal warning of a pained grunt. When you die it calls out, "Medic, medic, man down!" Also, the guns can be programmed to be different "types." So example, you can set a longer range and a longer load time to turn the gun into a sniper rifle. I'll have to try that out next time!
The way we had it set up in the first game was 3 respawns allowed. There were respawn stations at the starting points, which are basically a box with a button you press and it turns you back on. I played one-on-one with my husband. The winner was based on who killed the other 3 times overall. We were given 100 life points and each hit took away 10 life points.
There was only ONE hit zone - headshots. This is the only thing not re-programmable.They had basically headband type of things (think Rambo tying something around your forehead is the best way I can explain it).
The weird thing for me, was that it was set up so that when one person died the other person still kept the damage they had. This would make more sense to me in a scenario where more people were playing than one-on-one. I wanted more of a Mortal Kombat style, which I believe we could have requested. But I realized it when it was too late.
My husband and I were the only ones playing that night. We played 3 games one-on-one with the game set up that way. Unfortunately we did not think to ask for the ending scores before restarting a new type of mission. He thinks he won, but I wouldn't be surprised if I did thankyouverymuch. He died first, then I died twice, then he died. Actually, now that I think of it he probably did get more life points off of me overall since he died a second time later than I did, but I won't point that out. :)
Then Big Don himself came out along with one other employee. It was a slow night (a Wednesday - the first day after the school year started), so I guess they could spare it. And let me tell you. One-on-one was fun, but after the 3rd game I was ready for a change. So then we played two-on-two and it was so fun!
I've played traditional laser tag two-on-two and it was very anticlimactic. This was nothing like that experience. These guys knew what they were doing. I was crouching, crawling, and running from one obstacles to the next trying to get shots in. I played on a team with, I believe Matt... was the employees name against my husband and Big Don. They were certainly formidable opponents. I'm pretty sure they beat us the first time around. The game felt like it took much longer than a traditional laser tag game and was MUCH more of a workout.
After that we played King of the Hill. There was a contraption with a light and tube. The goal was to shoot down the tube, and the light changed to your team's color. The game ended after a team had control for 5 minutes. My team KILLED at this! As soon as we had control, we basically kept it for the entire time. We played it twice. I'm not trying to sound mean, but I felt bad for my husband and Big Don half way through the second game. It was 10 million times easier to be able to just basically sit and defend than to try to figure out a way to run up to the light and gain control. It left then vulnerable as they tried to run at it. I wanted to feel like it was staying a little fair, so I didn't stay in the same place for too long. That way I didn't feel like I was shooting fish in a barrel. I will say this was the only downfall I found. The issue in some ways too is that it seemed to be completely a clear shot to around their respawn zone from where I was crouching. I actually purposely didn't shoot them until they had moved across the field so that I didn't exactly know where they were and had to find them.
We got there around 7pm, which was basically around when dusk started setting in. By 8pm it was much darker and added to the challenge and excitement of the game. Also, in the beginning you could tell where people were shooting from. I don't remember how; perhaps it was their gun lit up. I honestly can't recall for sure. But, it was turned off later in the games and it made things much more difficult to figure out where people were shooting from. It added to the anticipation and surprise when you were getting shot a few times and had NO idea where it was coming from. This could be considered a negative since... in paintball or if shot in real life you could tell where the person was shooting from and be able to run and get cover. This was very Modern Warfare-esk for me since I usually have no friggen idea where I'm getting shot at in that game.
There were shooting noises, so you could kind of tell the general vicinity if you were listening carefully about where the shots were coming from. But, at times the noise seemed to bounce off of certain obstacles, making it very difficult.
So, overall Big Don's website says it has 10 mission style games. Including Capture the Flag, Checkpoint Domination, King of the Hill, VIP Escort, Base Defense, Team Deathmatch, Last man Standing, and Terminator.
In the future Big Don is toying with the idea of having zombie missions. One scenario would be starting off in the forts and hoards of zombies come at you and you try to keep them at bay. Another incorporates their plastic maze. You try to get through the maze with zombies hiding in different corners and parts. Overall, it sounds like an awesome idea and I would totally be interested in checking it out.
They also do tournaments. I believe every other Thursday night. The teams are of 6 people each ($25 a person) from 6:30pm-10/10:30pm. I can't make it to the next one, but am hoping to get over there for one before they're done for the season.
I would recommend on a normal day, going for the one hour. I'm not sure what it would be like if it was really busy and crazy though or how they set it up. We played continuously for the house since we were the only ones there. We played a total of 4 games overall. They definitely went for quite a bit of time. It's definitely more expensive than Fun Junction, but it's a totally different form of laser tag.
Ok, so here are the deets:
Big Don's Battleground
Address: 8408 Button Road, Cicero, NY 13039
Hours: Open 7 days a week in the summer and Thursday-Sunday in the fall
(too bad it's not closed in so that it can be played year round)
Thursdays-Friday 5pm-10:30pm
Saturday 11am-10:30pm
Sunday 12 noon-9:30pm
Cost: 1 game - $8 (15 minutes), 2 games - $14 (1/2 hour), Full Hour - $24, Two Hours - $36
Overall rating: 5 out of 5 stars
- BitOfRits
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