Foam From Above: Light Strike

First up, your basic Striker. It’s a pistol, with four buttons on top and the power switch. Volume, shield, team select, and four weapon settings: Laser, stealth, pulse, and sonic. It’s missing the “Rail Strike” the Assault model has, but you don’t have to hit a reload button. Thematically, it’s as if the blaster “overheats” and needs to cool down. The Striker also has a flip-up sight which is a nice touch, a jack for headphones. It feels really good in-hand, the handles are a good size and fit both kids and adults (my 9 year old nephew had no trouble using it).

Next, there’s the Assault Striker, a rifle unit. In addition to to the same buttons the Striker has (but integrated into the body of the tagger, as opposed to the four buttons on top) It has the same weapon settings as the pistol, with the addition of the “Rail Strike” setting. There’s also an additional “fingerprint scanner” that players must use to activate the blaster before it can be fired and a semi-auto (three round burst) mode, and single shot mode. The bread and butter of the Assault model is it’s modular capability. You buy an attachment like the rapid fire system, refractor cannon, scope, or enemy scanner and it changes the functionality of the striker. So IN ADDITION to the settings it came with you now can expand your repertoire and play style depending on what attachments you’re using. Attachments, that ACTUALLY do something! And good range, reliability, and utility right out of the box.

The strikers themselves overall have a nice weight, easy trigger action and just holding the trigger sends out a constant stream of shots. And just because Wowwee makes “Paper Jamz” that doesn’t mean these strikers are paper. It’s a robust plastic! The strikers also come with an additional target that changes color based on your team selection, both for practice and if you want to add a layer of challenge to your traditional gametypes.

The strikers have their target on the front of the blaster. This positioning leaves it easy to take some liberties, through testing we found hiding the blaster behind your back makes it easy to hide the sensor. With the targeting vest this isn’t possible, as the sensors are out in the open, and maybe going prone is the only way to block the sensor after this. Also, with more than 2 players putting the blaster behind one’s back won’t work with proper tactics. One other thing is that when you play with just the blasters, a player can switch teams at any time. It would be easy to switch teams without the vest, either on accident or if you were trying to cheat. Also, respawning is done by just turning the striker on and off, so less scrupulous individuals might exploit this as well.

Now nevermind the strikers already get pretty much 50’ out of the box, but you’re also getting a multitude of different strikers in each unit, balanced out in power vs. rate of fire vs. reload time. Throw in the attachments, the vests, the added factors of the ITS (Intelligent Targeting System) and you’ve got the makings for some pretty intense games in an immersive experience not really shown by anything else out there yet. You heal, respawn, set timers, sentries, medic stations, and there are some serious pieces here for a grand game time puzzle. The trick is just getting through that initial investment of all the pieces being sold separately, plus batteries. Have no fear though, the attachments don’t require batteries. Just the strikers, ITS, vests, and targets. Each piece adds to the gameplay - vests make players able to heal each other, and the ITS has a number of different functions. If you’re willing to make the investment you really wouldn’t regret it, there is definitely some serious potential for you and your friends depending on what you devise. Light Strike provides the items, but the replayability and variety is definitely on the part of the play

A pretty serious oversight though has to be on the visibility of the lights on the strikers outdoors. IN bright light, it's near impossible to read any of the light displays on the strikers. In the video below, you might be able to see what I'm talking to about. Bright sunlight just washes out the colors under the frosted plastic sections of the strikers.

Light Strike - Here's a go