Note: The images in this article are from the Xbox 360 version of the game.
NPPL Championship Paintball 2009 is a first-person shooter set in today’s paintball tournaments. As a longtime paintballer (I started with the Nel-Spot 007 and oil-based paint in the early 1980s) and former tournament player, I had high expectations for this game. Unfortunately, they were not met. Although actual paintball equipment and even real players were modeled with seeming accuracy, the gameplay was flat and dull.
Like real tournaments, there is little variety between the paintball fields in this game. However, the standard obstacles and bunkers are used repeatedly over fields that look identical as well as unnaturally flat and tidy. I felt like I was playing on brand new Astroturf! The graphics are also pretty unimpressive when it comes to the character models, which are bland and not very detailed. Even in the woodsball scenarios, there is little cover and variety. Really, the graphics look more like they’re for the PlayStation or PSP than the PS2.
With graphics that poor you might think it at least runs fast, but it doesn’t. The game seems to bog down during heavy fighting, leading me to believe that each individual paintball is being modeled and dragging down the framerate. Since it’s only a single-player game (I’d have to say that was one of the worst design flaws in the game), none of the other “players” have any lag, which often strikes at the most inopportune times.
There’s not much good to say about the sound either. Lame and generic music mixes with repetitive comments and identical paintball “thwacks.” In a real tournament paintball game, players communicate with each other and coordinate their efforts. Granted, that’s pretty hard with an AI that won’t listen (and is dumb as a rock to begin with). It does offer in-game voice chat though, if you can find someone to play with.
Playing the game in career mode can be fun, but it gets tedious quickly. Sure, the fields are “authentic,” but the gameplay is so repetitive it’s nearly identical. It would almost be more fun watching bots play the game and sitting on the sidelines. Pregame planning is available but doesn’t seem to have much impact on the AI. And with the lack of initiative on their part, it’s almost always up to you to run the field and grab the flag. Shooting the remaining opposing players from behind on the way back is always a nice perk, though.
The last point I want to bring up in this deservedly brief review is that cheating (“wiping,” in paintball parlance) was not only allowed, but almost made into its own minigame. By getting good at cheating, it became possible to “wipe” your way through the opposition. Merely encouraging this kind of behavior is bad enough, but to put more effort into the wiping strategy than into the AI development was another critical flaw. Way to spoil the game.
Overall, I would not recommend this game to either real paintball players (even trapped indoors in the winter) or hardcore gamers looking for a realistic paintball experience. There are just too many good first-person shooters out there to waste time on this. Paintball is a game, replicating the “playing army” of our childhood. This game fails to capture the spirit of the game, while many other games allow “playing army” in a more fulfilling, challenging and enjoyable way.
NPPL Championship Paintball 2009 is also available for the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii. Hopefully with better graphics!
