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World Championship Paintball Review for PlayStation 2 (PS2)

World Championship Paintball Review for PlayStation 2 (PS2)

World Championship Paintball Offers an Alternative to More Violent Shooters, Though A Lot Less Excitement

With only two paintball titles available for the PS2, World Championship Paintball is inevitably going to get compared to its predecessor – Greg Hasting’s Tournament Paintball Max’d. Knowing this, it’s a wonder why developer/publisher THQ didn’t try harder to compete in either the graphics, audio or gear departments. What they did, however, was develop a budget first-person shooter paintball game with a humble asking price in the hopes to cash in on a poorly-made product.

World Championship Paintball screenshot

The cover even tries to resemble Activision’s Max’d title with a real shooter wearing detailed, brand-name gear and a logo that I believe says Stockham (I’m not too up on my paintball brand-names). By slapping such a misleading cover on the game, playing WCP only leads to disappointment when you realize it features no real paintball gear, players, teams or courses. Everything about it is pretty well fictional – which is fine, but you wouldn’t guess so based on the cover. All of the shooters look pretty much the same and wear generic multi-colored uniforms and protective equipment. Unless you’re a real paintball enthusiast, you may not care about the lack of brand-names, but it would be nice to see a wide variety of guns specifically modeled after real designs. You can upgrade your player with new uniforms and gear, but all of the designs are pretty cheesy.

On the upside, World Championship Paintball prides itself in having 20 different courses to play on. Some of them are decent and have sort of an American Gladiators feel, but bad graphics really ruin the fun. Also, they can be customized with moveable obstacles, targets, and cover, including tombstones, cans, bricks, and bunkers. There is a castle mode where the objective for you and your team is to conquer it by taking out its occupants. Unfortunately, there is only one of these levels.

World Championship Paintball screenshot

The graphics are a serious blow to this game. Everything is extremely angular and unsmooth, from the character design to the environments. Movements can be glitchy at times as well, with your opponents suddenly disappearing into thin air and re-appearing. The movement of the players is pretty laughable, actually. The gunners run much the way a jogger would with the gun in one hand, yet the opposing team is able to hit you as they’re dashing. I don’t know if you’ve ever shot a paintball gun before, but it requires two hands to make an accurate shot from a distance. Your player can jump, but you can’t actually jump over anything, even low obstacles. Then, I ask, what is the point of jumping? It can help you get away from opponents and try to dodge paintballs, but not really. You can command your team to do four different strategies while attacking opponents – camp, flank, cluster or bunker; unfortunately I find often times no one reacts to your play-calling. The A.I. is pretty weak, even in your opponents. You will often see your opponents making the exact same motions or running together with no real strategy, making pegging them with paintballs pretty simple.

World Championship Paintball screenshot

This game is definitely geared towards online multiplayer, with leader-board and voice chat support. With focus on its online play, it unfortunately features no offline multiplayer settings. Offline you can only play two-player, which again shows the sloppiness of World Championship Paintball. Also, because this game is so crappy, you may have a hard time finding enough people who want to play at any given hour.

World Championship Paintball screenshot

While many people are turned off by the idea of a first-person shooter paintball game when they could just play an FPS with real guns and bullets instead, World Championship Paintball has a certain lighthearted atmosphere about it that real shooting games don’t have. This may also be a good alternative for children or for parents who don’t want their kids playing violent shooting games. Paintballs don’t kill – though they can leave some nasty welts.

There is something about this game that just feels completely outdated. This is extremely disappointing for a PS2 game, and I think perhaps it was simply rushed. Perhaps a PS3 version is in the works, which would explain why it was rushed, but for consumers who can’t afford a PS3 right now, THQ could at least concentrate on releasing quality PS2 games.

It seems the best part about this game is possibly the price. For a very humble $19.99 asking price (you can’t even get two meals at Quizno’s for that!) you pretty much get what you pay for. Depending on your budget, it may actually be worth the gamble.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 1.9 Graphics
Angular Graphics Look Outdated and Far Below Expectations of THQ or the PS2. 2.0 Control
Glitchy Player Movement and Disappointing AI. 2.5 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
Boring, Repetitive Music and Voice Work. 2.0 Play Value
May Provide An Alternative For More Violent FPS, But It Gets Boring Fast. 2.0 Overall Rating – Poor
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

  • Compete to win in an extensive series of international paintball competitions.
  • Prove your superiority in 6 different styles of match play including Tournament, 1 Hit 1 Kill, Castle Siege, and more.
  • Select from over 20 indoor and outdoor playing fields or use the Playfield builder to create an infinite variety.
  • Immerse yourself in realistic paintball action with a full range of movements: run, jump, crouch, lean, crawl and dive.
  • Equip your team with 160+ pieces of gear, including markers, barrels, loaders, goggles, shoes, gloves, and more.

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