Greg Hastings’ Tournament Paintball MAX’D is a cross between a first-person shooter, and a sports game, in which you participate in paintball tournaments to become the paintball champion of… the world? The school playground? I’m not entirely sure…

Developed by The Whole Experience, and published by Activision in 2005 – for XBox, PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS, and Game Boy Advance – Tournament Paintball MAX’D is a spin-off from Greg Hastings’ Tournament Paintball on the XBox.

You may be wondering who Greg Hastings actually is (I was), and it turns out that he’s a professional paintball player. Despite having never heard of him – nor that there were actual professional paintball players in existence – I was willing to give the game a chance, to see if it was any good.

At the beginning of the game you choose to play as either Greg Hastings or Keely Watson (I’m guessing that Ms. Watson is also a professional paintball player), and can either play in a tournament, or a ‘Free Play’ match. Tournaments are obviously where the glory lies, and you must first compete in – and win – the Rookie tournament, before you’re allowed to enter the Amateur or Pro tournaments.

The idea is to shoot the other paintballers, before they shoot you, over a succession of different courses. Each course has a different layout, but they’re essentially all the same – a collection of high and low structures, inside a 20×20 metre square arena – which is part of the problem. I had hoped there’d be buildings, ramps, tunnels, and other interesting structures, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

The top right shoulder button fires your gun during matches, and the ‘A’ button acts as a movement modifier. It’s important to not get these mixed-up. By holding ‘A’ and pressing left or right on the d-pad, you’ll sidestep left or right. Press ‘A’ and push down, and you’ll crouch (‘A’ and up, and you’ll stand back up). Pressing ‘A’ and the left shoulder button will make you lean out of cover, and the direction you’ll lean is dictated by which hand you’re holding your paintball gun. Pressing ‘B’ switches hands, and you’ll see the paintball gun change sides as you do this.

When you’re close to an opponent and fire at them, the game pauses and a bar appears at the top of the screen, with a needle inside it, moving left and right. If you then press a button, you’ll stop the needle, and the idea is to stop it as close to the centre of the bar as possible. If you manage to do that, then you’ll score a hit on your opponent (if you’re in a 50/50 situation), or will dodge their shot if they’re firing at you.

You only have to score one direct hit on an opponent to take them out, and of course if you’re hit by an opponent, you’ll lose the round. In some rounds, you have to shoot it out against two or three opponents, though. A match is won by winning a certain number of rounds.

While Greg Hastings’ Tournament Paintball Max’d is a somewhat interesting idea, the implementation I don’t think is very engaging. The courses are pretty much all the same; there’s no multiplayer mode, and I think an opportunity has been missed to spice-up the game with more varied environments, opponents and power-ups. I get that this is meant to be a simulation of real-life pro paintball tournaments, but it results in a pretty boring game, and it’s not one I would recommend.

More: Greg Hastings’ Tournament Paintball Max’d on Wikipedia