XBOX-HQ.COM - Greg Hastings' Tournament Paintball

No blood, but plenty of splatter in this surprisingly good FPS.Paintball isn't a game I've been dying to see brought to Xbox, but I'm glad Activision brought Greg Hastings' Tournament Paintball to the big 'box. Though not robust with gameplay options (there are only three game types), Paintball does have some impressive statistics: 19 tournaments, 20 locations, 179 field layouts, 145 pieces of licensed gear, 39 real life players (14 of them pros), 14-player head-to-head System Link and Xbox Live play.

Paintball is a natural fit as a first-person shooter and Tournament Paintball offers simple, smart controls that fit in perfectly with the enclosed environments. Paintball puts an emphasis on using cover and there's plenty of it available. Just about every command is geared towards maximizing coverage. You can snap left or right, switch gun hands (to lean the opposite way), snap up to look over objects, crouch, crawl, and dive.

Your opponent will be using the same tactics, but that's part of the fun. With teammates online, you can plan flanks, flush out enemies, and work together to eliminate all who oppose you. Fortunately, despite some of the murkier environments, it's actually fairly easy to spot opponents in hiding. Often times games make it far too tough to spot opponents, even when looking right at them, but there's a clear distinction between environments and the bright colors your opponent wears with pride.

A paintball has some weight to it and this is accurately depicted, with long shots having a slight trajectory. It takes a bit of getting used to in order to learn aiming, because distance definitely requires you to raise your reticule a bit above the target. This helps create a very believable feel to paintball, though at times the environments feel a bit too claustrophobic.

Perhaps the most enjoyable element is the ability to cheat. Cheaters never prosper, but in Paintball they do alright. When you are tagged by an opponent, a meter appears at the top of the HUD. Stop the meter in the green and you can get away with a wipe or the claim that you were hit on a bounce, allowing you to stay in the game. But miss time the meter and you'll be called out, or worse, be caught for cheating and earn a penalty. The better you're tagged, the faster the pendulum on the meter swings, making it tougher to get a clean cheat in.

Should you be tagged out in single-player, you are transported into the next player on your team, which is jarring and sometimes leads to instant hits, which really can suck. It would have been better to allow people to choose when to jump into an AI teammate, so they could first get a bearing on where they're jumping to. In multiplayer, you enter spectator mode, with full camera control to look over the entire field.

Tournament Paintball is separated into two sections: Single-player and multiplayer. The single-player campaign has you making your way up the rankings by winning tournaments, improving your character, and purchasing new equipment. Your four stats have four levels, which can be upgraded by earning experience points in the tournaments. You won't be fighting alone, though, as you can select real life players and pros to join your team. These folks can't be upgraded and can't get new equipment like you can, which make them a bit useless as you get deeper into the single-player (you'll have to dump them for better players at some point).

The single-player has no story to it, and is instead a series of tournaments with player improvement the big reward. That would be fine by me, but for whatever reason, you can't import your single-player character into the multiplayer. That's just stupid and a big mistake that makes the single-player much less enticing for anyone who wants to also play on Xbox Live.

Online you can select any character you want, pick any equipment you want, and dress how you like. It doesn't matter where you are in single-player or what your skill level might be. On Xbox Live, you can play 7-on-7 battles with no lag if you have a decent connection. There are, however, only three game types and two of them are variants of Capture the Flag. It would have been nice to have some better variety, but at least online you can work with teammates to strategize against your opponent.

Tournament Paintball runs nicely online and offline, with some decent water effects, and good textures. There is a lot of tearing, however, which is actually prevalent enough to be distracting, but in general not a bad-looking game at all. The audio is serviceable, but not spectacular. Hearing opponents moving and the directional wizzing of paintballs makes Surround Sound a must here. The music is okay, with a few good songs and a lot of mediocre fare, but there is a custom soundtrack option, thankfully. Closing Comments
Greg Hastings' Tournament Paintball is a unique brand of first-person shooter and sports game. It's more enjoyable, in some ways, than other online sports titles, with solid controls and addictive gameplay. I really wish there was a way to communicate with AI teammates in the single-player, as you can't strategize at all or give commands, you're just forced to accept their AI patterns, which makes for a slightly less dynamic game. Throw in some simple Ghost Recon 2 flank and suppression commands and the single-player would be a real blast. As is, Tournament Paintball is a nice diversion that's quite a lot of fun, if lacking in game types, and single-player sensibility.Source: IGN