Greg Hastings Tournament Paintball MAX'D
Yeah, we thought the title SUK'D too. But don't judge a game by it's title.
Published: October 16, 2006
Issuing orders to teammates is as simple as either pointing to a spot on the course and clicking in the right analog stick to have them look in that direction, point at them and click again to have them move up, or just hold down the stick to have them converge and fire on a particular spot. All of these things are key later in the game because pinning down enemies with your heavy shooters while you flank other players becomes increasingly important.
Should you come under fire and it doesn't hit somewhere as obvious as your marker or your face mask, the game gives you the option to cheat by tapping the X Button when a swinging indicator dips into the green. If you flub the attempt, you'll at the very least be ejected from the game, but it could get as bad as eliminating multiple players or having your whole team forfeit if you're caught wiping the paint. Keep in mind, too, that you'll often be playing the cheat mini-game while trying to avoid taking more hits, because a couple consecutive ones will make it very plain that you're out.
Tourneys are broken down into a series of bracketed matches. The farther along you move, the more money for the store you'll earn and the more leaderboard credits you'll snag. The idea, then, is to move up the ranks while buying new gloves, jerseys, helmets, markers, CO2 tanks, barrels and so on. What starts out as a bunch of guys with pea shooters eventually becomes a pack of strategically organized razor-sharp marksmen with pre-defined roles and pre-planned routes. There really is nothing quite like unleashing a flurry of paint as fast as your fingers can rock back and forth on the R1 and R2 buttons.
I know I sort of skirted past talking about the online play because, well, I sucked at it (and, for that matter, most of the single-player stuff too), but it really is a pretty basic offering that matches most of the same game types found in the offline Career Mode. There is one notable exception, however: custom maps. The game ships with a simple but welcome course editor that lets you place, rotate, mirror and flip a good three dozen objects as you see fit, and then take those maps online. Sure, it's basically the same blow-up bunkers and snakes and wooden slats that developer WXP designed, but hey, at least you get to make 'em.
No matter who makes the courses, they all share one thing in common: they're painfully similar. This isn't really a knock against the game itself, since we're talking about tournament-style setups here, but with the dozens upon dozens of tournaments in the game -- some of which switch maps halfway through a match -- it all just sort of blends together. The framerate is solid for the most part, too, but seeing a bunch of bland texture work and basic lighting with mixed skyboxes to try to indicate that the world is somehow changed only makes it more obvious that while the game runs smoothly, it looks rather blah.
The audio shares this problem. Hearing two players basically say the same line twice in a row as they take you out sort of cheapens things, and you'll hear the same blend of hip-hop and nu metal tracks recycled quite a bit. Luckily, the rest of the audio is very, very good; the pick-pick-pick taps of markers firing projectiles as first slowly starts to give way to more rapid, trilling whistles of multiple paintballs leaving chambers in a single second. The thunk of paint hitting bunkers and bits of cover, and the shouts from your teammates to indicate movement all do a fantastic job of making things feel immersive.
And maybe that's why I dug the game so much. Growing up in Seattle, paintball in one of the many, many wooded areas littering Washington State -- both in actual courses and just in general -- was one of those things that I really cherish. It was a great bonding experience with friends, and though we never really got to play with anything more than a simple Autococker and cheap paint, it was still a blast.
Later, I got the chance to see how far things had come in terms of how quickly things fired, and it just helped heighten the sense of danger while playing. It also confirmed that I would be horrible in real combat, but one of the best things about MAX'D is just that it does sufficiently replicate those same feelings of danger and one-screw-up-and-you're-out games that the real thing does. It may be a little light on variety, but the core fundamentals are certainly there.
If nothing, this makes the game at least a solid rental. If you've played paintball in the past -- particularly in a tournament situation -- you may find even more to love here than most. As a guy who at least wishes he could play the game for real, the $40 required to do it virtually is just cheap enough to make this a viable alternative.
