Paintball Heroes

And so we come to part three in our 'Crap First-Person Shooters That Didn't Make It To E3' special review feature. Or at least it could have been, had we done one, and we certainly had the material. It makes you wonder why all these atrocious FPSs are being produced at the moment, and whether any ot them are actually being played by anyone other than exasperated game journos. Why, when you're a small developer making a minor-league budget game, choose probably the most technologically sophisticated and fiercely competitive genre in PC gaming? Make a puzzle game for goodness sake. The only possible answer lies in the old adage, 'there's a sucker born every minute', because games like Paintball Heroes really are just cynical cash-ins riding on the success of others. And frankly we don't like it.

What is also infuriating is that the shortcomings of these games tend to be the same every time, as any area of the development process requiring more than a smattering of talent, original thought or time is inevitably ditched in the rush to get them on the shelves. So it shouldn't come as a surprise to hear that Paintball Heroes is a tad deficient in the AI department, that the graphics are somewhat less than dazzling, the level design not exactly inspired and the whole package erring on the side of utterly abysmal. In this case a special mention is reserved for the controls, which don't exactly make great strides towards the dream of the invisible interface. Apart from being sluggish and awkward, there is a massive oversight in the lack of a reverse mouse option, making the game unplayable for a good proportion of gamers. And it seems unfair not to mention that it crashed four of our machines before we got it running.

Now, as for what the game's actually about... oops, out of space. Oh well, figure it out from the title if you're still interested.