The Student News Site of Neshaminy High School

The Playwickian

The Student News Site of Neshaminy High School

The Playwickian

The Student News Site of Neshaminy High School

The Playwickian

Ultrazone unveils new Helios Pro sytsem

By Brendan McGoldrick
Entertainment Editor

At the end of this previous summer, Ultrazone laser tag arena implemented the long-awaited Helios Pro system, replacing the previous Infusion system, which had been in place for many years.

The new system, which involves a new set of packs and improved software behind-the-scenes, isn’t a massive, groundbreaking improvement, but it lends enough to make a different feeling while playing.

Featuring a small touch screen on the top of the gun, it is now possible to check status such as game length remaining, power-ups active, and time to respawn after being shot. While not completely changing the game, being able to check these statistics on the fly helps to keep the flow of the game up.

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Along with the handy-dandy touch screen, the new gun also has a much larger sensor to be shot at. While not being particularly nice while being on the receiving end of a shot to the gun, the larger sensor does wonders in balancing out those who rain down fire from up top, forcing them to pick-and-choose when to fire to avoid being shot from below.

Another problem that has been remedied, although it’s one that usually only shows up in high-level play is that the time it takes to respawn after being deactivated is now even across all of the packs. When two players deactivate each other at the same time, (a common occurrence once the timing is memorized) it was expected that both packs would go back up at the same time, something that didn’t happen with the aging Infusion packs, with certain packs respawning earlier or later than others, giving the later pack an advantage in a 1-on-1 situation.

While all of these improvements are nice, they come at the “cost” of a much larger laser that’s somewhat more unwieldy to hold than the previous Infusion gun. It’s not uncomfortable, but it’s now difficult or impossible to be able to smoothly switch hands with the gun to maneuverer it around corners opposite to the way you’re holding the gun, which is pretty inconvenient. For the average laser tag player, though, this isn’t much of an issue to play through.

The new Helios system at Ultrazone is a fun improvement over the previous system that changes up the way the game is played mildly and brings a few outright improvements over Infusion, but it isn’t quite enough to pull in those who didn’t have any interest in the game before.

Ultrazone is located closely to Neshaminy High School, and can be found in the shopping center right behind the Neshaminy mall, with ~15 minute games for $7.50 per person.

One of our writers spoke with the Ultrazone Assistant Manager, Kuron Couch for his thoughts on Helios Pro.

Q: Do you think that there’s enough new with Helios to bring in people who didn’t care about Zone before?

A: No. If you werent interested before in laser tag, there isnt much to attract you if there isnt any interests

Q: Do you think that the packs and guns are signifigantly more accurate than they were before?

A: No. They are exactly the same

Q: What would you say is the biggest improvement over infusion?

A: The pack timing

Q: Do you personally like Helios over Infusion as far as playing with it?

A: Yes

Q: Any particular reason?

A: Pretty much everything besides the lasers

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Ultrazone unveils new Helios Pro sytsem