Paintball has recently been added to the growing list of extreme sports. Its popularity is blowing up across the country, as it replaced snowboarding as the fastest growing sport. It is a game that can be enjoyed be everyone and played in so many different variations that it's no wonder the sport of paintball would beckon its own video game. Activision has recognized the market for the new sport and answered by releasing Greg Hastings' Tournament Paintball, a first-person shooter. This is not your regular FPS; you won't be opening doors and clearing out enemies. What you get instead is a fast, fun, and heart-pounding simulation of the paintball world.

Tourney style

The Snackbar crew has recently taken up the sport of paintball, and with our welts and bruises we have come to love every second of it. Greg Hastings' Tournament Paintball brings you into the game, sans our boy Pretz diving from bunker to bunker (which is damned fun to watch in its own right). Your games consist of multiple rounds, with each round not lasting very long at all. The tournaments are designed as elimination matches or capture the flag matches. Each game is regulated by points-eliminating opponents gives your team points, and capturing the flag, or even taking brief possession of it, gives you points. After the matches are played, the points are tallied and a winner is awarded. After each tournament, you can recruit new members, go shopping, or distribute attribute points to make your character faster, a better shooter, a faster loader, and the likes. The recruits play their position well; sadly though, you cannot give them orders, but the AI makes for fair gameplay. You are the team captain, and you want to win. Winning means big money, and big money means better gear.

It's the pro shop of your dreams.

What do you do with all that money? You go shopping; you can buy everything you have always wanted. You outfit your character from head to toe, and each item has its own properties that give you either an advantage or disadvantage. You can get more pods to carry (for all the refills that you will be doing), but that will slow you as it weighs you down a bit. Get better goggles that offer a better peripheral vision or a better viewing area. Look the part with new pants, jerseys, and gloves. Or go the rich kid look and deck out in all Dye gear. Most of the big-name sponsors are in the game, and their gear is all present and accounted for.

Your marker is your life. A simple rule of thumb: you play better if you feel more confident. Confidence is 25 + balls as second with a monster paint spitter hooked up to nitrogen with a hopper feeding you all the ammo you need. The more money you earn, the better markers you can get, from the lowly entry-level markers to the Mercedes Benz of markers from the good people at Dye. The difference is felt immediately. As you climb the rankings and get better guns, you will shoot like a champ, and shoot fast.

Run, dive, snap

The FPS mechanics of this game are pretty standard. Like most tactical FPS games, you can lean out from behind cover. In paintball, it's called a "snap." Snapping from behind bunkers is a vital key to winning in a tournament, and GHTP has created a snapping method. You have one button that snaps you depending on which hand you carry your gun on. You will have to switch gun hands to snap in different directions, and the use of another button dictates whether you snap vertically or horizontally. It takes a little practice and repetition, and I am not sure why they did not utilize the already familiar D-pad lean method-but it works well.

Of course, you can sprint, dive, and low crawl-just about anything to keep you behind cover and to get an angle on the opponent. Your D-pad allows you to look around, which you should do constantly. Unlike most FPS games, sometimes the enemy is hard to see, and there is no zoom at all. It was strange at first, because when you do see the opponent, he is behind cover with as little of him poking out as possible while he snaps. Just like in real life, mastering bunkering, mastering cover, and mastering your snaps are essential to staying in the game.

The gameplay also allows for a bit of cheating: when you are hit, you get a meter that pops up and allows you to "wipe clean." If you have good timing, you can get away with a hit; if not, you might be penalized a few players, so keep it clean out there.

Good, good game

This is a solid game. GHTP looks beautiful, as the courses and lighting detail are a reminder of why Xbox is the king of graphics. The sound of paint splatter, team chatter, and a punk rock soundtrack are an added bonus, especially for those with pimp sound systems. The courses are laid out to give both teams ample cover and to allow the teams to get the angles and utilize strategy. While it's not very deep, it's a solid game, and if you are a paintball enthusiast, then it's a must have. The lack of sliding and a co-op, though, might push some people off; but at the same time, being able to play on Xbox Live is an added plus for those of you who like to beat up on real people and not AI bots. Greg Hastings' Tournament Paintball is a winner, and an FPS on a console I actually like…*gasp*…I know.

Dec 8, 2004 | 2 comments
Mike Carabajal