hink of your general first person shooter game and you probably have images of rocket launchers, machine guns, and frag grenades floating around in your head. Well prepare to have your preconceived notions of FPS action take a 180 degree turn with Activision’s upcoming game Greg Hastings’ Tournament Paintbal (by the way, he’s one of the top professional paintballers in the business). Now before you turn and head for the hills, hear me out. While the game features a standard first person perspective, it manages to keep itself out of the realm of what you would expect from a game in that genre. Teamwork and strategy take the forefront over no-holds barred action and the result so far is one heck of an addictive experience. We recently had the chance to take part in some online gaming with some of the development team from WXP and walked away from the encounter (it was actually more of a massacre) with high hopes for this Xbox title.
The name of the game in Greg Hastings’ Tournament Paintball is realism, and so far WXP is getting that down in spades. While we only spent time with the online portion of the game, we were impressed with what we saw. When playing online you have three game modes available to you: Elimination, Capture The Flag, and Center Capture The Flag. Elimination is the most straight forward mode and has two opposing teams trying to eliminate each other as quickly as possible. But don’t be expecting any of those crazy health bars to save your butt once the action heats up. After one hit, you’re out and need to wait for the next round to begin. Needless to say, the one hit kill feature makes some matches incredibly short, with some of ours even clocking in at less than 30 seconds. Capture The Flag is what you would expect it to be and two opposing teams try to steal the other’s flag from their base and return it to theirs. The only catch is, once again, that one hit kills take you out of the action. Sufficed to say, you usually end up trying to eliminate the entire opposing team before you try to nab their flag. If you don’t, you’ll end up eliminated pretty quickly. Center Capture The Flag is a take-off of CTF except in this mode both teams are trying to grab a solitary flag located in the center of the ring and take it back to their base on their team’s respective side of the level. If you drop a flag, by getting hit by an opponent, a teammate can run and pick it up, although you’ll usually be in direct line of fire by doing so.
To accompany the online game modes you’ll have access to 179 different maps to play in. While most are pretty small in comparison to what you’ll find in other FPS games, each one is strategically set up to specifically work with paintball. As such, you’ll find that most maps are filled with cover objects, such as walls, barriers, rocks, cars, and even ditches. Cover is perhaps the most essential aspect of paintball so quickly learning each level will really give you the upper hand once a match begins. Maps take place both indoors and outdoors, so you’ll get a nice change of scenery with each one. Also, there are some pretty crazy levels, like the Tokyo, Japan map which is filled with bright neon lights and cover objects as well as Ultimate Madness, a claustrophobic arena where quick combat is the order of the day.The only drawback so far is that the three modes are a bit light in terms of longevity and it would be neat to see some more original offerings included in the mix.
While the game adheres to a standard FPS control scheme (left analog stick is mapped to move, right analog stick is mapped to aiming) the rest of the controls are pretty simple. You can switch your paintball gun from one hand to another, which is key considering that you can lean out from cover. It makes more sense, when leaning out from the left side of an object, to carry the weapon in your left hand so you have a better shot at your target. Attempting the same move while carrying the gun in your right hand results in your aim being obscured by your cover and ultimately requires you to move out from behind it; making you a sitting duck. Leaning around cover is easy since the move is mapped to the left trigger. The direction of your lean corresponds to whatever hand you’re holding your gun in; you’ll lean left if you’re holding the gun in your left hand, you’ll lean right if you hold the gun in your right hand. You can also crouch and go prone for those times when you’re trying to lay down precise fire, but most of the time you’ll find yourself making heavy use of strafing since most opponents end up being quite mobile in the somewhat small maps.
For those of you with less than honest skills, you can also cheat. When you get hit by a paintball and are about to be eliminated an on-screen meter will appear that features a pendulum like arm. If you manage to stop the pendulum in the designated green area of the meter (by pressing the A button) you will succeed in wiping the paint from your outfit and evade elimination. The catch is, however, if you miss the mark on the meter you’re still out and if an opponent is within viewing range of when you try to cheat, your entire team will forfeit the match.
The coolest feature that I noticed in the game was the system of outfitting your character. You can create a virtual avatar from a selection of pre-made character models and then deck them out in the best paintball gear available. But, there’s a catch. Each player has a weight limit and each piece of equipment that you equip makes your load heavier. You’ll need to balance out your gear to make sure that you have the most appropriate items possible but also make sure that you don’t overload your character with weight and end up slowing them down. It is important to note that there are no paint grenades, so fans of things that go boom may be a bit disappointed.
So far Greg Hastings’ Tournament Paintball is shaping up to be one of the most unique FPS titles around. While it’s definitely going to cater to a very specific market, it pulls off the paintball experience with enough gusto to even entice the curious gamer who perhaps has never lifted a paintball gun in their life. Our online session ran at a nice clip and outside of some very minimal lag everything seemed to operate just as advertised. We still have to sit down with the single player offerings but in terms of multiplayer, the game has the trigger happy folks here in the office looking forward to more and the game’s November 17th release.