In celebration of my friend Heather’s 27th birthday, she decided she wanted to do a 12-year-old boy activity and made me, Brena and our whole group of friends join her in the timeless classic of laser tag. We all made our way to Tac Ops in Princeton, New Jersey, a tactical laser tag arena that strives to make you feel like you are playing Call of Duty in real life. (Full disclosure, I have never played Call of Duty, so there was a learning curve.)

We all registered ourselves with “call signs” (I was sw1fti34lyfe), were given slings to put over our shoulders, very realistic-looking guns to strap to them, and light-up headbands to identify each other and serve as targets for the lasers. We were split into two teams, and incidentally, all the couples were split up, so it was lover vs. lover. I was on the yellow team, while she (and the birthday girl) were on red.

I have no frame of reference against which to compare this laser tag experience, but it was fully immersive, with the arena containing walls, doorways, objects to hide and duck behind, and other decorations to make it look like an abandoned rooftop, office building and construction site, depending on which section of the map you were on.

They took us through a variety of different games, from the expected just trying to shoot as many people as you can without getting shot yourself to more complicated scenarios, such as capture the flag, and one where players had to grab a “weapon” (press a button on various boxes on the walls) before they could shoot other players.

As people who know me may have expected, I was far from the champion of laser tag. I really tried my best, but between my struggles aiming the gun and understanding the basic rules of the game (I found out at the very end that while I thought a lit-up headband denoted a player you could shoot at, it actually meant they had already been shot and were going back to their base to “respawn”… oops), I was no match for most of the rest of the friend group.

My team not only lost, but I’m pretty sure I may have had the least kills of the entire group, which was disappointing, but I had a lot more fun than I was expecting. Hopefully now that I understand the rules and what to expect a bit better, I’ll be more successful if I ever end up in the laser tag arena again.

— Hannah Gruen, advertising & events coordinator