Paintball isn’t the sort of sport we see often in the mainstream media. Nevertheless, there is one title in the world of video gaming, which brings international paintball straight into the homes of the everyday gamer. I’m talking about Greg Hastings’ Tournament Paintball II Max’D, with 29 tournaments and 213 field layouts. A custom field creator, custom soundtracks, match creator, the ability to buy gear and apparel for your “custom” character, and much more. Well, there’s not really much more than that, but there’s enough to keep a steady pace of mediocre interest.
Like the first GHTP, the control scheme of the sequel follows a very similar layout. The layout in fact is no harder to grasp than Halo’s, or Battlefront’s, control schemes. The ‘R’ trigger fires the paint gun, while the ‘L’ trigger leans or bobs your character, depending on your position. You can crouch, crawl, walk or briefly sprint using the ‘Y’ button. You can also dive, but only forward. There’s also independent looking with the digital pad, so you can quickly look in different directions without aiming the gun in that direction. WXP also added something the fans felt they needed, Team commands. You can now direct your teammates back and forth, here and there, as you please. Now usually team commands are the sort of thing that gamers should welcome with open arms, but here, there’s a learning curve that requires some figuring out.
Duck!
At the start of the career mode there’s a tutorial that takes you through the control setup and how to play. Often though, it seemed as if my teammates were just standing around while my character shouted directions at them. It seems that WXP may have recognized this meticulous process of planning on the player’s part, and included a Rainbow Six type teammate router. So before each match in career mode, players can choose where and how they want their teammates to respond, using an overhead map of the current field. This aspect of controlling your AI teammates is fine, but it’s when they’re in the game that becomes a bit frustrating with their extra slow responses. Still, team commands aren’t entirely necessary, given the very smart and situation-responsive AI. That goes for both teammates and the opponents; their smarts are truly top notch.
In fact, GHTP2 has one of the most stable and human-like AIs featured in a shooter game. There are many different paintball teams in the game, and each team plays different from the next one over. Therefore, GHTP2 gives players a good mix of opponents and challenges.
Nice clothing and gear selection
In-between tournaments, players have the option of buying and changing their gear. Jerseys, pants, gloves, helmets (there’s one that looks an awful lot like Master Chief’s helmet), shoes, and many licensed paintball accessories. Such as barrels for better accuracy, carrying cases and paint tubes for your ammo reserves, different “markers” (or the paint gun chassis) and air compressors. Most of the items have a big variety (you earn more items by buying more items), except the gloves. For some reason the glove selection is small. Apart from that the whole apparel editing is very cool; it just would have been nice if you could purchase different items specifically for certain teammates. Considering that the career mode can be played with the new 1 through 4 player split-screen (co-op), only 1 player can choose and edit the profile character. Everyone else has to choose from the characters earned throughout the career mode, with pre-selected paint-gun settings and skills.
Pages
