Paintball makes a splat
This game is basically a long tournament string that you conquer to claim ultimate victory in the Paintball universe. This game does take a long time to load, although the hints from Pros that you can read during the load screens can be interesting (although not ultimately helpful to you in the game).
At the beginning of the game you select a player and team that you will use during your tournament career. This player will have certain attribute points that decide how well he/she will respond to your commands during gameplay. These skill points are very important and bare heavily on your performance. If you win a tournament string, you are rewarded with cash and more skill points. The cash is provided to allow you to upgrade pieces of your gear with authentic improvements. During my play time, I did not feel any improvement in the performance of my gear due to the upgrades that I purchased. Apparently they are mostly for looks. The skill points however are a different story. You are rewarded with skill points for completing a good tournament string and you can spend these on various attributes of your character. These improvements do noticeable improve your character's responsiveness during gameplay.
At the beginning of each tournament you are provided with a customizable breakout map. In this map you are supposed to be able to create a team strategy. It seemed cool at first until I realized that I could just run up the side and steal the flag without getting shot. The AI on this game are not very smart.
Another thing that I found distressing was that there is no way to adjust the brightness in the game. My television has a fairly low maximum brightness setting and I usually tweak the brightness and contrast in my games before I play. I was unable to do this in NPPL Championship Paintball 2009 and everything was very dark and saturated as a result. The graphics overall felt like they were last gen.
This game can be entertaining for a short period of time, and the multiplayer experience is the best aspect of the game. Replacing the foolish AI bots with people does up the challenge quite a bit. However, I foresee that many people will not be playing this online for long and it will soon probably be hard to find a game online. For a hardcore fan that just has to have a paintball game, this may curb the hunger. For most people, this is definitely a rental.