When I first saw screenshots on the newest Indie game to hit the Xbox Marketplace I thought to myself “You know, this looks like it could be a fun little game to play”. The idea of a paintball game using your avatars as your character anything totally new, afterall, the same guys over at Strange Studios made one back in 2012 called simply called Paintball Wars. Fast forward almost 2 years and they released a sequel simply titled Paintball Wars 2. So how does this one stack up? Let’s get right into it.
First thing you will notice as soon as the game starts up is the loading screen. Instead of just using using a normal Loading in the lower corner of the screen, they opted to instead have the main menu background and have a paintball gun turning 360 gdegrees in the middle of the screen. I think it’s a nice little touch to be different, plus it only takes about 5 seconds to load up to the actual main menu. So props to them for that. The game has 3 modes, single player, online play, and system link. Since my account doesn’t have gold on it, I can only do Single Player at this time. So everything covered will mostly consist of content in that mode.
First small thing I noticed is there are only 2 choices for maps, Large and Small. This bugs me since I don’t understand why you wouldn’t have a medium size map included. This part alone will drive someone with OCD crazy. Each game lasts 5 minutes long and you gain experience points with will allow you to level up and gain some extra guns, skins, perks, etc. For every kill you get 50 points and for every taunt you receive 25 points. The taunts are mostly just your generic taunts and are a little cheesy. Although I can see how this could be kinda funny if you did this online against some of your friends. The graphics at first glance reminded me of that disney game Toontown. It has that cartoony feel, but you can tell that it was polished up. If you don’t know what Toontown looks like, imagine Paperboy on Nintendo 64, only with some polishing up on the graphics part. Plus the maps take place on a street with houses, so you can see why I would make that comparison.
The gameplay is alright, but it has it’s flaws. For starters, the game only has 9 weapons to choose from. I feel like they could’ve had a little more choices, but it’s not a big deal on my end. My problem was the aiming. You have the option to play in either 1st person or 3rd person. If you play in 1st person and try to aim, you will notice that the paintball never fires perfectly in the line of sight. It comes out slightly to the left of the barrell. Once you unlock a scope, it’s not as bad, but you do notice it from time to time.
By biggest complaint was no difficulty mode, you don’t have the option to select easy, medium, or hard. Instead, the game starts out really easy as the NPC’s basically just stood there and would occasionally fire at you. That was until I reached level 10, then I found out there is. As you level up, the difficulty rises, but instead of gradually it hits you pretty hard. I went from being able to take 6 hits until death to two. I got hit once at medium range and it took away 80% of my health. Another one came from behind and it took 50% of my health. This is actually my biggest complaint playing this game.
Now I realize that it may sound like I’m bashing this game to pieces, but it’s actually not that bad. Is it a masterpiece? No, but it’s far from a disaster. I really do feel like if you got some of your friends to download this game and play it with you online, you would really enjoy this game. Plus the game only costs $1 on the Xbox Marketplace, so you really don’t have a reason to not give this game a chance. If you play single player, you’ll have a bit of fun for a couple hours at most, but online play you could probably have loads more fun. Those who know me personally know that I don’t really give a grade, I just say whether I recommend this game or not. So do I recommend it? For a price tag of $1 it will bring you enjoyment as something to pass the time. For that reason I will recommend this game to everyone looking for a game simply for that reason, or if you just want to play something a little different and support your small indie games. For this reason, I’m going to make a small exception and give this game a rating…
7/10
