Extreme Paintbrawl

Just play real-life paintball!

Extreme Paintbrawl is a first-person shooter paintball game released for the PC in 1998. Developed and published by Head Games as part of their "Extreme" series of budget titles, the game uses a modified version of the Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition v1.5 executable.

Gameplay

In Extreme Paintbrawl, there are three game modes available to the player: Season Mode, Single Game, and Practice. Season Mode allows one to manage a team of eight recruits through an entire season. The player is able to hire and fire recruits, buy markers, and compete against other teams for the championship in compliance with a fixed schedule. There were several flaws in this mode such as the inability to swap markers between recruits. Single Game allows the player to play a single paintball match. The objective is to score by either capturing your opponent's flag or marking an opponent. Practice mode leaves the player alone on the field of his/her choice with no specific targets to shoot.

Why It Sucks

1. It was made in two weeks, showing how rushed and buggy the game is.
2. Bad graphics, using the outdated 2.5D Build engine (which by 1998 was surpassed by the fully 3D Quake and Unreal engines).
3. AI have perfect aim, while you don't.
4. Some versions of the game have the bots just run around and shoot randomly, get stuck in walls and try to shoot through them.
5. Severe lagging issues.
6. Lack of other game modes.
7. The arenas do not resemble actual paintball fields like a desert or even a school building.
8. Bizarre hit detections, sometime a chest shot will instead register as a headshot.
9. You need to shoot the opponents at a very close range to hit them. On top of that, your guns are not very accurate, similar to the awful real-life Crosman paintball markers.
10. Music is mediocre and doesn't fit the game at all.
11. Crappy controls.
12. The game is impossible to run on Windows ME and all versions of Windows NT due to the game installing and launching from Windows but being real mode DOS-based.
13. Crashes very frequently.
14. Practice mode consists only of the player wandering the map aimlessly without nothing to shoot at, thus demolishing the concept of "practice".

Reception

Extreme Paintbrawl received extremely negative reviews; criticism was directed toward its use of the obsolete Build engine, lack of game modes beyond a variation of capture the flag, maps that did not resemble actual paintball fields at all, an unfitting soundtrack, and a practice mode that only allowed players to roam through a map without any enemies or targets. The game was also plagued by bizarre AI behavior, including computer-controlled teammates getting caught near doors and walls or standing still in open areas of the map, but also being able to also exhibit perfect aim.

GameSpot gave Extreme Paintbrawl a 1.7/10, stating that the game took the first-person shooter genre too far by trying to "wed a tired game engine with the paintball phenomenon." Its AI was criticized for being "perhaps one of the worst attempts at modeling a team sport" due to its inconsistent behavior, and the game was also criticized for making it too difficult to distinguish between enemies and allies. In conclusion, Extreme PaintBrawl was considered to be "perhaps one of the worst games I've seen in years, as much out of touch with reality as it is out of step with the gaming world at large." IGN gave Extreme Paintbrawl a 0.7/10, remarking that the soundtrack was the only aspect of the entire game that could constitute being described as "extreme."

On GamesRadar's article The 50 worst games of all time, stating that "the only thing extreme about this is its extreme awfulness".

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