Can Aussie Ninja answer my question; who is Greg Hastings?
Publisher: Activision
Tue, 28 February 2006
by: Australian Ninja
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I've played paintball one time only in my life. I crawled on my belly slowly through some leaves on the ground and hid behind a tree. I then shot one of my friends in the back. He was totally unaware I was near him. The memory of those events makes me want to say, "Hells yeah, fool!"
Boy, in real life those paintballs really sting.
With some intrigue did I load up the ever noisy whirring device known as my Xbox to peruse this latest "Paintball with attitude" video game. I admit that I had no prior knowledge of the man Greg Hastings, nor of the people that make up his posse of bawdy bawdy rowdy rowdy paintball weirdo's. In fact, it was entirely by accident that during my time with this game I discovered it was a sequel. I became aware of that only because I saw both the first game and its sequel on the same shelf in a department store.
The presentation of Greg Hastings Paintball MAX'D [from here on simply referred to as "MAX'D"] instantly reminded me of the Tony Hawk and Matt Hoffman games. Mostly because of the "attitude" and licensed music.
MAX'D is a first person paintball shooter game, with the emphasis on team play and small environments. Think of it as a FPS multiplayer death match sports game. Played in small arenas with paint, instead of Beretta's or Rail guns.
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The main objective in each environment is to work with your team and attempt to take out the opposing team. You can also issue orders to your team in the one player game. However, the full potential for MAX'D is not realised with only one player.
Clearly the gameplay is designed for multiplayer skirmishes, with its extensive online and offline modes. Offline the game can be played in four player split screen mode and going online provides the option to support more players. The usual modes of play are available. If you've ever played any modern FPS with multiplayer, then you will get the idea. Capture the flag, or kill everyone, or the many deviations of those basic concepts.
A few control features are worthy of note. A head first dive / slide is used often to hide or dodge. Crouching is essential and works in much the same way as that of the Call of Duty game series. Where other games are about big, non-stop action, MAX'D is about slow strategy and patience. To that effect, it is very much like real life paintball. Run around like Die Hard and you will get shot first almost every time. Taking cover, looking around and then sprinting to the next cover point is paramount. Check your back, order your team-mate forward and charge in behind; that is what worked for me. Ah, those human shields, I mean team-mates sure do come in handy.
The single player game is of a substantial length but very repetitive. Each encounter sees you and your team face off against an opposing team. Generally, there are four members on each side. When you get shot, you can "cheat" to continue playing sometimes. Otherwise your character is out and you spawn / possess one of your other team members that are already in play. The round ends when all of one team's participants have been eliminated.
A training mission greets you the first time you begin the single player game. This mission serves to introduce the player to the controls and unique gameplay features. The tutorial is easy to follow and, in my opinion, second only to Nintendo's first party game tutorials in terms of quality.
The controls, while complex, are implemented well and quickly become second nature. Except diving for no particular reason. Diving headfirst and sliding really did strike me as odd. I mean why do it? The mystery remained until I watched the video clip from the game's demo. The clip shows real people playing "sport" paintball and sliding, sometimes in mud. Now it made sense, when you have mud or wet conditions why not do you best AFL inspired dive? But in dry autumn paintball conditions - it made no bloody sense at all.
Your weapon of choice - the paintball gun - is bigger than big; it's gargantuan on the screen. It takes up almost one-third of the viewing area. You can switch to the left or right side of the screen at your leisure. So you can block your view on the left, or block your view on the right - the power is yours! But, seriously, I adapted to it okay. The looking from side to side [without moving] was a nice touch, done using the right analogue stick. It sounds the same as other FPS's, but really is a slight innovation on the camera movement that works well in the context of paintball, where you have a big bulky helmet on.
It's a mystery to me why MAX'D has such bland textures and simple polygon models. I don't mean simple as in "aesthetically functional and beautiful" [like Tobal 2]. No, more like simple because we couldn't be arsed putting anything better in. It is especially odd seeing the Xbox, as far as this generation of consoles, has the most potential for nice textures and smooth polygon models.
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You would expect a game that is bare bones graphically to make up for it in other areas. But, other than the multitude of multiplayer options and variations, there is very little else going on.
The music in MAX'D is mostly comprised of hip-hop and rock-metal. While I have no complaints about it, I certainly would like to see some more originality in sports games with licensed music. Overall the music gels with the game rather well and adds a bit of spice to a slow paced game. I think there was one good Cypress Hill song in the mix, but don't quote me on it.
While not everyone will agree, I believe that Paintball as a video game is a really cool idea. The execution of that idea, however, is a little flat. The strengths of MAX'D lie in the arena of multiplayer gaming. As a game overall it is slow paced and bland to look at. This alone may put people off. However, there has been considerable effort put into the games play mechanics and control options. The music is nice and I like to see games having a go at being original. Even when they don't turn out the best, the developers might at least open a can of ideas for themselves and others with. They use it as a starting poin to experiment with and tweak the concepts into something special.
So, where do I stand on Greg Hastings Paintball? Personally I found it a little slow for my taste, being an action junkie. Objectively though, I recognise the strong potential of this game's intentions. Many multiplayer games are built on their gameplay strengths and not flash-o-rama graphics, just look at Chu Chu Rocket - it looked and played pretty much the same on Dreamcast as it did on Game Boy. If you can look past the dull graphics in MAX'D then you may find some good times playing with friends online or offline. Try before you buy. I hope that, if another sequel arises, the gameplay is refined just that bit more.
by: Australian Ninja
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