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Posted By AngryJoe about 2 years, 4 months ago
Ubisoft’s Battle Tag Review, 
Angry Joe and friends review Ubisoft’s Battle Tag, the next generation of laser tag that had people scratching their heads at E3 2010. Poor show reception aside, does it take laser tag to the next level and deliver on its promises?
Remember, the Battle Tag is still under a test market, so not all the kinks have been rolled out. However, that is not a excuse for the clueless support line.
I have a set of this, and the guns are only supposed to shoot 230 ft. The 1000 ft range is supposed to be the radio link to the UbiConnect.
What an evidence of Ubisoft’s shortcomings to design a seemingly “easy” product that does not have a major design flaw.
They send Joe their product to review, then they fuck up to deliver support?
(Seriously, i give props to Joe not getting louder when the support guy tells him to swap the defective gun instead of giving him true support on the technical issue…)
This support-guy doesn’t even react when Joe tells him he’s an internet reviewer with his own website…
Ubisoft, where’d you get your staffs educated on PR-related matters?
To sum it up:
1st: Ubisofts sends out a laser-tag game that’s retail-priced 129,99$ and that breaks the first time it’s used outdoors in an urban environment on a sunny day with no rain or snow or thunderstorms.
2nd: Then Joe calls the support, who advises him to swap the defective gun with the retailer who sold it. Support-guy goes “We’ll get back to you if you mind giving me your e-mail.”, Joe stays calm, although he’s disappointed over a product that doesn’t even survive some mere hours(!) of testing.
3rd: Joe goes “Ok, i can’t rate this, the device broke down. So i can’t finish this tests. No rating.”
Ubisoft, you failed epicly, in many respects.
First, you fail to deliver what your product ad promises.
Then you pull a reviewer’s leg although knowing this will hurt your PR.
If your product is so bad you can’t even trust its reliability you shouldn’t send reviewer’s copies out, because those will damage your image more than a bad review at all.
If your support line staff can’t differentiate between “Joe Normal” and a person that actually does (in a way) contribute to your company’s success and who has a considerable fanbase, you shouldn’t have “at least” send the support line number along with the reviewer’s copy.
(This is a sarcastic remark… Just in case you didn’t realize.)
This whole farce makes me go facepalm, i actually wonder how a company can get this big and still being able to botch so hard.
*headshakingly*
Joe, don’t be too disappointed, it’s not your fault you couldn’t get that thing to work.
Your disappointment is understable and i give you props for staying this calm in the face of so much bullshit.
Best regards
Hey you don’t need to quote whole video….that is why it is up so ppl can see it. What is that all about??
Technical problems like this always frustrate the hell out of me… I hope you get it fixed Joe, I want to know if this was just a coincidence and I want to know your final thoughts, because I’m really interested in buying one of these.
I like the concept but clearly there are some teething problems with the new tech
wouldnt a laser knife be a lightsaber
I think these things were designed to be used with a laptop out doors. Sorry to hear the laptop just isn’t working right now, although what if you were to plug the laptop into an external AC outlet? Would that allow you to test it?
Wow, that really sucks. But atleast you didn’t actually buy it. That’d be a pain in the ass.
Kinda wanna hear what Other Joe said.
*tries desperately to resist how badly she wants all three of these hot guys to start making out with each other*
Might be a bug in the gun’s software, otherwise it seems a bit too sketchy performance wise for me, I also hate it when an interface locks up due to bugs or glitches, (why some of my WoW characters are stuck because my graphics card crashes in the area they are in, so i feel your pain of uncooperative software/hardware)
You were giving a free copy from Ubisoft? Sweet, that means you come a long way in the buisness. Nice to see more people from the site getting higher reconition like this.
This is how you show off a new product?
A dancing troupe of Classic Star Trek captains, spazzing out amidst a bored audience, berated by a sarcastic host.
Still better than the VGAs, though.
Do you think that maybe Joe having that gun in his pants pocket might have damaged the sensor when he was quick drawing it out. Rubbing up against it might not be a good thing but pulling it out really fast would most likely damage it worse.
It laser tag… those pistols should be resilient. not damaged by panty rubbing…. a fail anyway or simply a shoot of really bad luck
Man, I feel frustrated for you. I hate when technology just doesn’t work for unknown reasons, thats why I play airsoft. At least it was free.
I can’t remember the brand name (maybe it was photon), but I remember this laser tag kit being pretty popular somewhere around the mid 90s and included a “robot” target that rolled around on the floor and could shoot back. I wonder if Ubisoft has something similar for an expansion pack, or if they’ll think outside the box and give us something new.
Of course, that’s as long as the product actually works. I’d also wait for the price to come down.
Sorry but if I spent 130 dollars on a product it better last at least a year. Just because you didn’t buy it joe shouldn’t mean you go light on the thing.
I got the nerf Lazer tag gun set for my nephew a year or so ago, And I tell you it worked great for a long time. The only problem now is one side of the reload switch is too stiff so you have to use the other side to reload fast. Which is wonderful because this gun was left outside for at least 3 days and rained on. When we got to it it was full of ants we put it in the sun on a table for half a day and it works fine. This set was 60$ BTW. Sorry if a new Lazer tag system for twice as much can’t beat such a story I don’t want it.
i played lazer tag in a arcade with black light paint and i destroyed my friends birthday party at it. the hit sensor was in the gun. i also played in a inflatable bouncy room, that was crazed. that one had vests. belt vests would be sweet. waiting for the gun to start reminds me of shooting a gun with a wick or something, ram rod musket.
im a hunter and i love animals. help conserve the wilderness.
my favorite ubi game was rainbow six 3 raven sheild. liked far cry as well. still have both, play them often. free agent! vigilante! yell in to the darkness!
BRING BACK THE 64 CONTROLLER!
Inveracity – savagely beaten
I’m spade and I LIKE BLOWING THINGS UP! DABU!
The fact that you can not reboot the system without the ammo pack seems like a serious design flaw.
The step they got stuck at only runs once for adding the gun to the system. My guess is that it’s supposed to keep you from registering a broken gun.
I’m having flashbacks to my days playing Photon.
Wait, airsoft “rifle”?
I usually dislike overly long reviews (seems to be a happening more and more with these video reviews: letting the camera run and never editing it down) but this one just about right.
Looks like it’d be a whole lot of fun, if it worked right.
And wow, that E3 thing… yeesh…
As someone who’s been on the other end of those phone calls, customer service / tech support really should be called “running interference”. Your main job is to act as a verbal gate to keep you the person on the outside from getting to anyone with some real power/accountability.
The sad thing is that they /have/ to do this because “tier 1″ actually fixes 90% of the problems that come to it. Seriously. When I worked tech support 90% of problems were fixed by rebooting, restarting people’s routers, and not doing stupid shit like putting your router in the attic and wondering why you can’t access it from your basement. While going through a billion of obnoxious steps is a pain, it’s usually the only way to properly troubleshoot the problem and ensure you and the person on the phone are on the same page.
Doesn’t make it suck any less though. And it especially doesn’t help when there is a real problem that the company doesn’t want to let on to, because the steps also serve as a way to snowball the consumer. It’s much easier to have someone else talk to the consumer and not give them all the facts than it is to have the facts and lie about it.
(Last note: To everyone telling him to try airsoft, didn’t you watch the video? He’s got an airsoft pistol and he says he plays paintball. I think he’s set. )
If this was something from the store and not a review item, the advice to return it to the store would be right. The problem is most likely mechanical (loose connection on the RFID board) and he needs a replacement. No matter how hard you try, a bad piece will get through every now and then.
That last phone call was Hilarious!
I remember once I had to ring tech support for my internet 3 times before anything happened…
Did NOT expect a Battle Tag review but I guess the E3 part (which I skipped… I can’t handle shame that much I kinda feel bad when it’s too shameful) kinda raised curiosity.
Seriously though, if these worked, they’d be pretty cool. I mean how long has it been since someone tried releasing some big thing to get you out of your house. The fact that it’s using this weird (sensors? magnetic? I don’t know) system to sync ammo is kinda lame though, prone to failures. It should be like a freaking PS3, USB! If you need your PC to play a full, actual game with scores… just make it USB, you’ll be next to your PC anyway.
Nice job on the Tech Support part though, but you do know that if you’re at that part… it’s already over. Feel your pain man, getting something interesting for once and it shits on you on day 2.
They are not “synching ammo”. That box is supposed to be the same as finding an ammo pack in an FPS game. The scores and stuff go wirelessly to the “UbiConnect”, which plugs into the USB port.
The step they are stuck at is the one where it checks to make sure you have a working gun, and registering the gun’s ID on the computer. Since it’s broken, the gun won’t register. You need two registered guns to start the software.
Dude I talk to that same support guy when my Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood copy glitched out! He said the same crap when I talked to him, do this and that to fix the dumb game and then replace it. Standard answers SUCK!
I don’t if you’ve been given a replacement or not or how long you’ve had it but maybe something in the gun is loose. When you were moving it around it made that noise on it’s own so it could just be that it got jarred the wrong way or something.
It’s a shame, it looked fun and if you could get it working on your laptop I bet it would have been awesome to play outside but then again… 130$ for that?! Are they insane? you can play real laser tag in a roller rink in my town for a fifth of that and get up to ten players. Ubisoft is loosing their edge, there have issues with some of their recent stuff.
Thats kinda disapointing. It looked like fun and guns had good size in them. Those things are defenetly not build for kids.
wow, really? over 120 bucks for that?
This brings me back to the old days, but instead of lasertag we used airsoft guns with masks.
Good ol days…..even if my friend got his tooth blown off by my shotgun.
This would seem so freaking fun to play with in the forest by my house. I have a laptop, and if it has a 3 football field range then I can imagine tons upon tons of fun with this, unless I see a Mouse like Jacob and I have to stare at it or something. Lol at the very last note of the review
Tech. Support: Ok, can I have your E-mail address?
Angry Joe:……..Angryjoe@AngryJoeShow.com
Sorry to hear that you didn’t get to give this game a full review that it should have had. The fact that the gun just stopped working wow just wow. I remember playing Lazer Tag when it came out the first time. Even going and paying about 20 bucks a day to play in 2 indoor levels of just running around and shooting the other team. Those guns almost never failed but the packs were not on the light side. I wish this had really met the expectations that I held for it. I was oh this is clever about time they did something with it. To hear the frustration in your voice really took to heart how much you really wanted to give this game a full review.
140 bucks for it. I wouldn’t pay that much for it anyways not for 2 guns and 2 packs and a cd rom. I was expecting a price around 80 to 90 not 140. You can get a toy that’s like lazer tag, for 39.99 for 2 players.
Ah, calling customer support is allways “fun”.
Angryjoe was VERY angry, and disappointed, and completely understandable
Wow, that E3 demo was…odd. The crowd’s reaction (or lack thereof) said it all.
I hope they get you a replacement unit so you can finish the review. I’m also curious about how it’ll work in a large, outdoor environment.
Aw, disappointing. I wouldn’t mind playing something like this if it was reliable. Was hoping to see it in action more. Alas.
hahahah i wish i would have been there when you told him your email….. i laughed soo much xD
aw man. that blows so much =(
i was really looking forward for this to cause i love laser tag and was so happy that i might be able to play it again. but i see i shouldn’t invest my money in something thats gonna give me all that bs.
I would say, stick with paintball and airsoft. They are more fun than laser tag. And they feel more real than battle tag.
aw man you looked really sad cause it didn’t work
I found my photon set in the attic a few weeks ago, It’s nigh on the same technology from 25 years ago!!!
I lol’d so hard @ the final call xD
I’ve never played laser tag, I have played paintball with friends and I guess paintball is more intense because you see the balls flying at you and they can hurt when you are hit in the right spot.
With laser tag you can run and gun all you want because you won’t feel anything hitting you.
I also want to try out airsoft but for some reason it is banned in the Netherlands so we will have to go to Belgium or Germany for that.
That’s probably because most airsoft guns imitate actual guns. I’ve played both airsoft and paintball, and the airsoft pellets hurt less (at least, that’s the case with spring-loading models. Don’t know about AEGs, though).
Ooooooooookaayyy…… I’ve never been at E3 2010, and seeing the clip really made me scratching my head and saying to myself “I’ve seen a lot of circus acts – but this one tops them all”. Hey Joe, did you know anything that if the host was paid to act so clueless and lost on from of the crowd or something? Because I can imagine that’s how people get paid do these silly marketing presentations. Seriously…….
Ah Tech Support. Going through 20 different machines justs to get in contact with one human being, and the best help he can give you is”Maybe you should return it”. Ya I thought you called tech support to avoid having to return it.
Well, it’s clear why this thing has only received a limited release.
I don’t think the guy on the phone was being rude. He just really didn’t know what to tell you.
Although, calling technical support on the phone for 30 minutes only to be told to take it back to the store would probably piss me the F off.
Anyway, your friends were really funny to observe in this video, especially with how often they tried to throw you off or say stuff to ruin it. I laughed multiple times at them and your reactions. Hope to see more of them.
Try airsoft its more expensive than laser tag but way more cheaper than paintball and its more realistic than both of these. Just check the videos on youtube
Sry for my english
Joe, I do hope you get a replacement/fix for the broken gun so you could finish testing it out. One question I do have (which I could easily find out I suppose) after hearing it’s only in Texas + California atm.. is when it’s suppose to be fully released?
Regardless, while tech support usually sucks (sorry, but a decent number of automated systems take forever to get though and really aren’t that efficient…), I would love to see a follow up with a couple of your comments in regards to the process. From the clips I saw, I’d put it at industry standard (or poor in layman terms).
Joe’s Techbusters: proving what stuff does and sometimes breaking it in the process.
Ahh if only we could have seen the guy’s face when you told him the email.
What was that guy’s reaction when you said ‘angryjoe@angryjoeshow.com’?
Damn shame you can’t get the other gun to work.
I guess Ubisoft is learning that there’s no such thing as a day one patch for a physical product.
Oops.
Omg, I knew this crap would happen. That E3 demo was a precedent. Sorry Joe, that really stinks. Thank God u didn’t have to pay for it!
At 2:24, what’s with that monitor saying “[Some name] you seeing this too or am I having a seizure?” I’ve never seen the video but I hope that the Interruption was actually planned, or they need to work on their marketing WAY more then I thought.
BTW, did you ever go to Texas Paintball in Jonestown before? It was pretty beast.
Decent idea? Yes.
However, I think i’ll just stick with the 3 layer Laser Tag Center by my house for my Laser Tag needs. 8 players? Pssh, for 5 bucks I can do an epic 10 vs 10 battle. No thanks Ubisoft…
It’s too bad that it’s not working for you, Joe. I actually own the Laser Challenge set and really enjoyed that back when my brother and friends used to play it. I just wish that this new one you were testing would actually work. Hope you can get a better copy of the hardware.
Angry Joe, you’re face while talking to customer support was priceless XD
whats with the circular saw. was that in the vid or am I hearing things
It’s really a shame that the gun just stopped working for no adequate reason. I used to love laser tag as well, although I would definitely not spend that kind of money on something like this.
Still, the video was definitely entertaining and it’s nice to see some of your friends. I hope you get a copy of the game that doesn’t fail on you soon.
Looks fun But if its breaking one day into the game it needs serious fixing. In want this to work because lazer tag is fun and there is a place near here but it costs 7 bucks a game and the game area is smaller than my house.
Man, this was actually looking like a cool product. Also whats up with the snobbish tech support guy? Hopefully he watches this to see how rude he sounded. I hope you get your replacement Joe, can’t wait to hear the final verdict. I wouldn’t blame you though if you just trashed it all together.
Bummer. The guns look cool but the price tag is very steep if the product is made out of flimsy plastic. I can’t even remember what brand of laser tag I owned when I was a kid, but it sure makes for good nostalgia. The vest seem kinda tight, was there a way to adjust them?
Yes, the vests can be adjusted. I am about 250 lbs and they could be adjusted to someone larger than me.
Oh man, I laughed so hard at the solo laser tag. Too bad about the defunct gun.
I owned Laser Challenge set. Two Pistol two machine guns the bomb it was nice.
I like the look of the gun. I’m not sure how wide of a person the vest things will fit. Overall It does look nice. The system looks very good as well.
I would like to say that I own a 2nd laser tag company gun that was called Lazer Tag Team Ops made by Tiger. I sort of tested these and the target for the game is on the gun them self’s. It works very nicely and I picked them up at a Goodwill for very cheap. Looking online on Amazon, they are NOT cheap in the least online. Much more expensive than even Ubisoft’s guns. I don’t know if that means their that good of a product or it really costs that much or it’s just jerks on Amazon. All you need is two working guns and that’s about it for that game.
I hope that Ubisoft little Lazer tag product works well. I have no random ideas on why it broke but I hope it’s just a fluke.
Man, Jacob was hilarious! Great review, Joe.
Awesome Video, but man you looked BUMMED towards the end, that sucks that it stopped working.
Back in the mid to late ’90s there was a place called Laserport in Beaverton, Oregon. I used to love going there. They had an indoor maze lit with dim colored lights and black lights. It was loads of fun sneaking up on people and blasting them. Stuff like Battle Tag makes me pine for that.
Thanks for the review, even if you couldn’t complete it. It’s a shame it crapped out after only one day. Hopefully Ubisoft will be able to use your unit to figure out what’s wrong and fix it in the near future. I like the freedom aspect a home system would bring, but they definitely need to work out the bugs before I’d invest hundreds of dollars into something like that.
mhhh…edit thingy doesn’t work… :/
I ALWAYS wanted to go to one of those places with laser-tag when I was a kid..
I think the problem with this thing’s advertising is that they seem to be targeting to an older audience than they should (from what I saw at E3, which by the way was awkward enough to get imprinted in my brain, there was no need for you to refresh that buried memory, thank you very much)
The are targeting a good age for this:
http://www.outdoorlasertag.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=71&Itemid=191
There’s a lot of money in that market.
“Can I get your e-mail address?”
“…”
“Angryjoe@Angryjoeshow.com”
I have to admit I chuckled at that. xD
I hope they fix this in the future, but for the reviewers, they should send the working and the fully functioning products.
wow. 130 for 2 units? and you managed to break it doing nothing after 1 day. that item is about as cool as walking around outside using your virtual boy.
Looks amazing, too bad it’s fucking broken!
Last time I checked, laser tag died off in the 90s.
Man what a let down… i remember playing those like a kid, too bad the whole thing just stop working in the middle of the review
Hope Ubisoft sends ya a new replacement or at least a whole new product soon but this (in my opinion) still will affect the final verdict…
BTW Joe what kind of camera you have now, is it the Panasonic TM700??? because i want to by that one for continuing doing my film making projects but now on full HD 1080p.
It sure is! I love it.