Adventure Force Rogue Review

As much press as Dart Zone may get for their Adventure Force entries, they’re not the only company pumping out great blasters. When it comes to regular Age 8+ blasters, Buzz Bee Toys can do just as well, and the Adventure Force Rogue is proof of that. It’s a solid, semi-auto blaster that may not hit as hard, but makes things up in style, fun, and the inclusion of a 30-dart drum, all at a great price.

Keeping It Simple

The Adventure Force Rogue doesn’t break any new ground, let’s be perfectly clear. It’s an electric blaster, driven by 4 AA batteries, with semiautomatic firing action. You depress the rev trigger to spin up the flywheels, then pull the main trigger to push a dart into them, and the wheels spit the dart out. If you’ve used a mag-fed electric blaster at all within the last ten years, then you’re familiar with the process.

Even so, the Rogue has a lot going for it. The styling is unmistakably Buzz Bee meets Space Age, which makes for a nice contrast to other blasters out there. The handle is large, making it a blaster that all ages can use (and I love Buzz Bee moving towards usable grips in recent years). There are added scope and barrel attachments for the play value for smaller kids. Most importantly, though, the Rogue comes with a 30-dart drum, and the darts to fill it.

We’ve seen versions of this drum in the past, coming out with blasters such as the Agitator, Tracker, and the Rebel Mech (or their Adventure Force counterparts, depending on the market), with the drum being in either blue or grey. This time, the drum is clear, which makes for a neat look. Granted, everyone can tell how many darts you have left. But it’s still a large drum that feeds the included darts reliably.

Speaking of included darts, the Rogue comes with Buzz Bee’s Accublast darts, which (as the name implies) are more accurate than Buzz Bee’s previous mass-produced darts like the Long Distance darts. I’m glad we’ve seen the last of THOSE darts, especially on Walmart shelves where other Adventure Force products had good darts that came with them.

Performance And Gameplay

The AF Rogue is a reliable little blaster that works. Granted, 4AA batteries means a slower spin-up time for the flywheel motors, but you can still get (slower-firing) shots off if you need to. The blaster averages 81fps, and if you need the rate of fire instead of top speed, three darts per second is perfectly reasonable.

The extra capacity of the thirty dart drum helps a lot when it comes to staying in the game without reloading.

Internals

I’m behind on modding this blaster. The circuitry is simple, with plain low-current contact switches at the rev trigger and the jam door (the latter is a safety switch). The flywheel cage, as it turns out, is a sideways mounted version of the cage from the Adventure Force Rebel Mech. I have a prototype cage drawn up in CAD…but my 3d printer bit the dust, thus the problems with testing as of late. I’ll have to get back to you on that.

Good Blaster?

For the price, the Rogue is a great blaster. It doesn’t tread new ground, but it also doesn’t have to. It’s just a blaster that works, and gives you a large dart drum for longer game time.