Mission: Paintball Trainer

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Mission Paintball: Trainer was made in 2005 by Tiger Electronics as a plug and play device. It was distributed by Hasbro. This system was released between Mission: Paintball and Mission Paintball Powered up which I both reviewed in earlier videos.

The gun looks like a paintball pistol and has no sights. Personally I think it isn't very ergonomic for huge hands. The placement and kind of trigger is just not very suitable for the locations of the handle and thumb rest. However the gun is of a solid build quality. There is a second trigger, which allows the player to duck inside the game. Here is the pause button. This is the on/off switch. Similar as with the Tiger handhelds the unit has a difficult to press reset switch, which would be used if the device had major problems. The gun is powered by four AA cells. It connects to the TV via two RCA connectors using composite video.

The game looks and plays very similar to the previous Mission: Paintball title which I reviewed in episode 64. However Mission Paintball: Trainer is not a level pack and as far as I can tell consists solely of new assets. As before the player has to monitor the amount of remaining pressure and ammunition, as running out of either of these will take away a life. Per level there are two continues, which allow the player to carry on immediately. In contrast to the previous game there is no shop anymore to buy upgrades for the marker. Instead permanent upgrades can be picked up while playing the game. These upgrades, along with refills for ammunition and pressure are revealed upon shooting certain objects. The game allows for different user accounts and saves the progress and high scores.

The game consists of four levels and two bonus levels. In the first level the player just shoots training targets. From the second level on there are real opponents which shoot back. In the third level several rivers are crossed. In the last level the player protects a fort. The level can be navigated by shooting the red arrow in the corner of the screen. The bonus levels are very similar to level one and let the player shoot training targets.

At the end of every level a score screen is displayed. The final scores are saved into a table. Of the three Mission: Paintball games this is my least favorite entry. Overall I felt it was too short and too easy. However I think it is important to stress out that this game was targeted towards a younger audience than the other two games. It seems the designers had trouble fitting the plug and play system into the smaller gun shell, as Mission: Paintball Trainer has the most video noise amongst the Mission: Paintball games.

I like the packaging. It clearly shows who the target audience is, while remaining interesting and informative.