As you may have seen earlier in the week, Husky Hog and I both got to experience paintball of the virtual and realistic (and painful) kind. 

When I received the invitation for the NPPL Championship Paintball 2009 preview event, I was really cynical about the idea. Why would I want to play a paintball videogame when there are games like Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4? However, after experiencing what real paintball feels like and then playing the game, it made me realize the appeal of the game. Hit the jump to check out my impressions of NPPL Championship Paintball 2009.

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The preview night started off with us playing real paintball with members of Team Dynasty helping us learn the ropes. It was my first time playing the game, but I quickly learned my way around thanks to Team Dynasty’s coaching. Team Dynasty worked very closely with Activision to ensure that players experience a genuine paintball game. So you know you’ll be getting a legit experience, especially since they’re currently the number-one paintball team in the country.

For those of you that have been living under a rock for the past few decades, paintball is a game where two odd-man teams have to take each other out with paintball guns. Paintball has become extremely popular over the years, with the game being turned into an international sport.

Players will get to play as members from official teams and take teams through the game’s career mode. You’ll be able to customize the stats for players, pick their gear from a selection of over 110 pieces of licensed products, and customize every aspect of the paintball gun. Everything about the Markers (the paintball guns) will be upgradeable. The Call of Duty 4 weapon modeling tech is even used to create realistic Markers.

The game is an FPS but doesn’t have the same feel of traditional FPS games. Players can switch which side they’re holding their gun on the fly and can run, dive, slide, lean and do everything players can do in real life.

Paintball is a team sport and the multiplayer features are where the game really shines. The game will support up to 14 players online (with bot support for all of you who have no friends) and it’s extremely important to communicate with your teammates. Prior to the start of a match, you can look at the Breakout Planner to discuss your team’s plan of attack. The Breakout Planner is an overhead view of the map you’ll be playing on, similar to the play screens from Madden games. Communication really is key; otherwise, your entire team might be thinking the same thing and just go straight to one cover spot, which will make everyone an easy target.

People can cheat when they’re hit to avoid getting taken out of the game. When a player gets hit, a circular gauge pops up on the screen with a fast-moving tilting bar. The top and bottom of the gauge are red while the very left and right center of the circle are green. You have to stop the bar right on the green; if you do it right, your character will just wipe the paint off of himself and keep going. It’s pretty hard to nail this right, as the bar is moving pretty fast. If you are taken out, though, you’ll have to wait until the next round to play. But you can float around the map and move anywhere you want. Plus, you can still talk to your teammates, so you can basically be a spy and tell your teammates what the enemy is doing.

NPPL CP 09 also has a custom field maker, where players can create any type of field they wish to make. Fields can be taken online to share with other NPPL players.

NPPL CP 09 will really appeal to people that already play paintball in real life. The game is pretty solid and I would recommend it to anyone, but I think people who play the real game will really appreciate and enjoy NPPL 09 a lot more.

NPPL Championship Paintball 09 is published by Activision, and will be out on November 18 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PS2, and Wii (with Wii Zapper support).