Fields of Battle – Paintball without the Pain

Fields of Battle is a FPS with a slight twist, rather then being a simulation of modern warfare of a historic battlefield it’s a simulation of everyone’s favourite ‘knee deep in mud’ pass time activity – Paintball.

Paintball has always enjoyed immense popularity, combining pseudo battle tactics, teamwork and adrenaline fuelled suicide runs, it provides a great fun filled team building experience. Not to mention there’s a real incentive not to get hit, not only because it usually ends your game but it can really (really) hurt.
Traditionally a very hands-on activity there is some question as to whether Paintball adapts well to a small screen gaming experience. Enter Fields of Battle on iOS.

A great Paintball experience

Allowing you to play against real people on real paintball fields, Fields of Battle provides a pretty intense gaming experience, tight & varied gaming arenas and plenty of human players emulates the feel of a paintball field very well.

The in game graphics are a little way from cutting edge with relatively basic texturing and limited detail, but this keeps the frame rate high and motion very smooth to allow unrestricted accurate aiming.
Mobile games sometimes struggle to provide a connected experience but the control system of the game is designed around the hardware of the iPhone with touch screen input used to control your movement and tilt detection to control your view. This can be customised to your personal preference, personally I tend to turn gyroscopic movement off but still use tilt to look and shoot around obstacles.

Extra pressure is added to the game by it’s business model.
The game is free to download and provides a limited number of paintballs and coins. Each event costs coins to enter, as does restocking your stock of ammo, so as you use your initial batch of coins you will need to top up to be able to enter new games.
Extra coins are earned by performing well in events and a great game can keep you in credit for a while, of course extra coins can always be purchased through In-App purchases but you need to be aware that the more shots you take the more it may cost you more in the Long run. You can try and minimise the cost by watching out for special free paintball events where the paintballs you use don’t get removed from your personal stock.

The Fields of Battle Virtual Market

As Fields of Battle uses real arenas and you are playing against real players you tend to find that real Paintball tactics work as they would in real life. Clever use of cover certainly gives you an edge over more naive players and ‘run and blast’ players easily become cannon fodder allowing you to rise up in the player rankings.

There are different variations of paintball, from the rapid rush of speed ball, to strategic village assaults, Fields of Battle pretty much simulates most types of the game, and different rejoining rules are applied, so make sure you understand the rules of each battle before joining.
Running mindlessly through a gun fight in a ‘one hit and you are out’ game will have negative impact on your team, and you need to remember that your teammates are real people who have some level of finance invested in the experience.

Fields of Gold will appeal to fans of both Paintball and CoD styles games, and whilst it may be a little rough around the visual edges it delivers one heck of a fun experience, albeit one that requires a little responsibility to be a good team mate.

Note – If you’ve got Android then it’s available for you too. Just check out the Google Play store. The iOS version is here.