☆ Review: XField Paintball 3 "Unfinished Business" ☆

Often when I’m given a code for a video game to review I begin by researching the title before I download and play anything, especially if it is something I’ve never heard of.

XField Paintball 3 was a bit of a mouthful for sure and I had to pause and wonder if I had ever played a paintball video game before that wasn’t that one mode in Goldeneye 007, but pulling up the website I saw something that looked quite sleek and had a trailer featuring music that got me really pumped to shoot at people and probably be eliminated a lot.

With those tunes stuck in my head, I read more on the Authentic Multiplayer Paintball Game, as it was being touted, and about the realism that came from all of their authentic licenses based off of actual leagues, organisations, and equipment makers. I had played some paintball a bit when I was much younger, but this promised to be a brand new experience for me.

Look out for that clever foreshadowing up above…

XField Paintball Studios created this game—in case someone couldn’t tell by their name—and the 3 is there because XFP1 and XFP2 were released as mobile titles that I have never heard of, much less played, though the PR e-mail tells me they were successful. They are a French company who claim to be the world’s leader in authentic paintball games, but I don’t think there is much competition and who knows where the bar really is, but this new full release came out May 30th on Steam for $29.99 and has garnered mostly negative reviews on the platform, with most of the positive reviews still having some criticisms, but let me tell you about my experience!

I was never able to get into an actual match…

That’s right, after two days of trying, multiple attempts and resets, as well as a looking for a workaround online, I was never actually able to play a single match. Thusly, I cannot actually give a full review or really say too much about the game. I know that I am not the only one who had this problem, and plenty of people who have actually gotten it to work are still bashing the game for other small issues that aren’t gameplay related.

Here is what I can say.

The start menu gets some more decent music but only two actual options. There are other selections there, but they are all greyed out and not selectable, which is quite odd for something that is presenting itself as a finished title. It seems like something is really wrong here though, with a limited amount of things to change and no way to alter certain options. The description says that the matches are supposed to be up to 5v5 for teams, but I was stuck on 2v2 without a way to change that.

I also attempted to enable my controller, which was an option, but there is no way to confirm it and the game would never recognise either of the two devices I tried. People will say I should be using a mouse and keyboard anyway, but those controls are sluggish and feel kind of wobbly when trying to use cover and moving from the various stances is cumbersome, actions that certainly would have gotten me shot—if there were anyone to play against.

I was able to walk around each of the few maps, which are all based on real paintball fields and locations. The idea is cool, but these maps have nothing of interest on them past an initial glance and will all blur together eventually. I couldn’t get into the equipment, but from what I’ve seen makes that all seem the same as well. The only kind of interesting thing is the realistic paintball physics, like how the ball arcs and fall a bit when shot.

Summary
It is obvious that some work was put into the game, but no matter how much passion is involved in a project, it means nothing if people can’t experience it. I can’t recommend this game to anyone and feel like there needs to be a bit of ‘buyer beware’ here, but maybe with some fixing XFP3 could be what it keeps trying to say it is, but at the current price, there is no reason to risk that. I’m interested to see if it ever does receive the fixes it needs, and how this near month long bad run so far will affect the company’s reputation. For now, though the only ones really hurting are digital paintball fans.

RATING: MELTED

Ratings Explained

ICE COOL (Great Game Recommended)

MELTING (Just Falls Short Of Greatness)

MELTED (Not A Recommended Purchase)

Game Link: Steam

Dev Link: XFIELD Paintball

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