Jul 082013
US American Military Defending Freedom Proud Hanging Flag Navy
- Show your support for our freedom fighters.
- Polyester flag with grommets for hanging.
- 3 ft x 5 ft.
- Imported.
Fly or display a flag that shows your support for our freedom fighters.
3 ft x 5 ft polyester flag with grommets for hanging. Imported.
List Price: $ 11.98
Price: $ 9.99
Greg Hastings’ Paintball 2
- All-New Locations: Explore a variety of terrain in 62 exciting paintball locations, inspired by some of the best paintball fields in the world!
- More Multiplayer: Challenge friends in 7 multiplayer game types with up to 20 players (8 on Wii)
- All-New Changing Conditions: Up the ante with game-altering weather settings and hazards, such as rain, fog, wind, mud, and more!
- Three New Event Branches: Players choose their path to glory in Tournament Speedball, Recball, and Tournament Woodsball, competing in 40 diverse events.
- All-New Gear: Equip your team with a wide selection of markers, goggles, uniforms, and accessories, as well as the latest special weapons such as pump guns.
Authentic Paintball Action From the #1 Name in the Sport! Paintball gaming doesn’t get more realistic than this. Create an unstoppable team of real players, load up on revolutionary new gear and guns, and brave the unpredictable elements in 62 massive fields based on real locations around the world. This is true paintball combat intensified.
List Price: $ 19.99
Price: $ 16.69
A fun game, despite some frustrations,
***Before I begin, full disclosure: I’m featured as a character in this game, as my team (the Philly Paintball Group) was one of many selected to be in this game. I’ll try to review this game as honestly as possible, however. I’m roughly 2/3 of the way through the game, so if the last 1/3 radically changes my opinion I’ll edit the review.***
Paintball is sort of like a real-life video game, but up to this point it has not translated well to the current generation of consoles. Enter Greg Hastings’ Paintball 2, the sequel to a cult hit on the original Xbox. While not one of the production quality of, say, Mass Effect 2 or Halo: Reach, the game is fundamentally sound and does a pretty good job of translating the paintball experience to a video game (as much as possible, at any rate – there really is not substitute for reality in this case).
The game features three career tracks, which can be completed concurrently and in any order: Speedball (paintball played on small fields with man-made bunkers), Woodsball (played on large fields, usually with special ojectives) and Recreational Paintball or “Recball,” which is sort of a grab bag of paintball styles.
The player starts out as a protege of Greg Hastings, the game’s namesake and arguably the best paintball player in the world, who proceeds to send them around the country to various tournaments. At the beginning of the game, the player forms a team from a limited selection of rookie players and low-end equipment, but each event unlocks more players and equipment and gives cash to purchase them. Unlike other games I’ve seen, the equipment is varied, and it makes a big difference here which qualities you pick (for example, would you sacrifice accuracy for better range, or for more shots per tank, or for a higher firing rate?).
One really nice touch about the game is that it uses reality – every single player in the game is a real-life part of a real-life team. The fields are digital reproductions of real fields, ranging from the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania to the beaches of Hawaii. You sometimes even go overseas.
As a shooter, your “missions” will always be some variant of defeating the opposing team, but GHP2 keeps it pretty fresh with about a half-dozen game types (the standard elimination and capture the flag options are included, of course) and a wide selection of maps. The speedball fields play fairly similar (for obvious reasons), but the others are varied enough to warrant different tactics.
The game does have a few issues. First and foremost, people used to playing first- or third-person shooters may find the controls awkward, as I did. Some functions usually mapped to the triggers or bumpers are instead mapped to the ABXY buttons, and vice versa, and the joystick-click functions tend to be finicky.
The game tends to be really easy at the beginning of all three tracks and then hit you – usually around the 4th or 5th event – with a severe jump in difficulty. It wouldn’t normally be so frustrating, but your teammates’ AI is directly linked to “skills” you purchase. These skills (or players that come pre-loaded with them) are prohibitively expensive (or, in the case of players, expensive AND scarce) in the early stages of the game. This makes passing these middle stages a sort of hit-or-miss, trial-and-error affair, at least until you can buy three or four skilled players. Also, the command system is pretty simplistic (“go to,” “suppress,” “defend”), but learning to use it effectively will somewhat mitigate the iffy AI.
The last Greg Hastings game had a breakout manager to plan the initial seconds of the game; I would have liked to see an evolution of that here rather than the given and limited fixed-option planner (balanced, heavy left/center/right, defensive).
The graphics aren’t top-of-the-line; they resemble the higher-end original Xbox titles, but are on the middle-low range for the 360. On the plus side, this cuts load times to next to nil, and I have yet to have a hiccup of any kind in gameplay.
Achievement-wise, the game sports the standard 1000G, with a good chunk of points for beating each of the tracks and a smattering of 20-50 point awards for a few random feats. People who like earning achievements would be well-served to check out the list before playing, as some require very specific criteria.
All in all, the game is built on a great concept, but the execution is squarely average. It’s fun to play, but you’re always aware of the game’s limits. Anyone who is a fan of paintball or is looking for a shooter not rated “M” should give this a look.
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|good for younger audiences,
I bought this game as an alternative to the Black Ops or Call of Duty games my 9 year old really wanted. Black Ops is rated Mature so there was no way he was getting that. This game, while also very realistic, is a great alternative as there’s no simulated killing just paintball hits. I was nervous he would be disappointed but he truly enjoys it.
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|Excellent Game for younger audiences or paintball lovers,
I purchased this game since I have two young boys who I wanted to play a shooter game with. This is currently the only next-gen console game which is rated E that is a first-person shooter. Most are rated M or a few rated T (which probably should be rated M, but squeaked by since they don’t have too much blood and the bots don’t swear a ton). I found the game challenging since the paintballs shoot very slowly and arc across the screen. They won’t go through cover like traditional bullets do, so you can’t just send a bunch of shots into a bush which contains an enemy and expect to actually hit them. Often times, this results in a headlong rush and rapid-fire type jousting… which is really fun.
I’ve personally played paintball and can say that this game is pretty realistic in terms of how the shots travel, at what speed and love the course selection. There’s a ton of variety and overall movement and controls were easy to pick up. My boys don’t really have the hang of moving and aiming at the same time, but I’m sure they’ll get up to speed in no time.
If you’re looking for a game to play with your younger kids or something that will entertain the kids at a youth event, this game might be an excellent choice. Many of the kids in my church group (9-10 year olds) have been playing Call of Duty Black Ops, Halo, etc (which I can’t believe!), but next time we do an event where video games are going to happen, I’m bringing this game! It’s fun, has variety and best of all is non-lethal!
A few features which I had a tough time nailing down were whether it will Co-op with two players in split screen. It Does! There are a variety of online modes as well. In split-screen mode, you don’t have to unlock equipment, so you have the full selection right away which is nice.
What I’d really like to see is a feature on modern games to turn off the blood and gore, thus allowing all of the other great features such as excellent graphics, storyline and such, but without all of the spraying blood, limbs being blown off, swearing and the like. I guess that’s just too much work for these game companies.
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