Armageddon

I love the smell of Napalm in the Morning. At least that’s what I was thinking as I proceeded up the right flank in a commando style crawl. Not thinking, that at any time I could be utterly unloaded upon by a fellow rival and an UZI style upgraded gun.

By ‘Maverick’

Yawn, it was 6:29 am on a Sunday morning and I was feeling pretty good about sleeping in for a few more hours. That’s when the clock ticked over to 6:30 and my Kurt Angled theme song decided it was time to get up. What you ask could possibly wake me up so early on a Sunday Morning? Paintball!!

So what is paintball? An easy way to think of it would be to think of a boot camp obstacle course where you have to get from A to B before your opponent. Only this course, you get to shoot the living daylights out of your opponent whilst doing so.

The Location was Heartbreak Ridge in Blacktown. Driving into the car park, we were greeted by a soon to be announced referee sporting a mo hawk with one side colored blonde. The outlook was not so bright. I don’t know I guess I just hoped we would be lead into battle by some guy wearing a fringe hat and chewing on a cigar. I play to much Call of Duty. There was anticipation in the air, we line up with our receipt proving our purchase and were moved into a line to be given our jump suits for the day. About $65 later as I decided to share a pack with ‘Goose’ I was geared up with 600 bullets and given a mask to put on. Here is a tip, the best part about the day is being able to shoot your friends on the other team, and unfortunately you are one of about 30 people on your team and look exactly like each of them. I would suggest distinguishing your friends from other players by some kind of brightly colored headband or perhaps a colorful scarf so you can pick your targets better.

At this point we have been put into teams and are heading out onto the battlefield for our first round. I shoot my gun at a target simply to see if my gun works. I suggest not wasting bullets people, not only are they fairly limited for a long day, let me put it into perspective for those people who decided to unload 30 bullets into that poor defenseless teddy bear. The standard pack costs $70 for 400 rounds equating to 18 cents per bullet. So congrats go out to the tool that wasted $5.25 in 2 seconds shooting a stuffed animal.

The whistle is blown and the adrenaline kicks in. I sprint to the first barricade that I see and decide to stay put for a little while. Watching a few fellow teammates get mowed down I think I made the right choice. How manly I felt when the girl next to me made a break for it only to be shot down and I smile as she limps of the field. I decided to run back to our home base and check out the surroundings, bored at the thought of sitting there I decided a Commando moment was in store. Noticing all my Teammates had gone up the left I decided it was only natural to go right. In my defining moment of the day I went from barricade to barricade destroying all aptly named “American Forces” that were blindly shooting the opposite way at my team mates, all for the “Communist Regime”. At one point I ran straight past the enemy who didn’t even see me, it wasn’t until a minute later when I put my head down I noticed he was but 5 meters from me in clear view, oblivious to my existence. Three bullets later he was calling out “Hit”. The whistle blew and we were announced winners thanks to my efforts in taking out the enemy behind their lines. As you might be able to tell, I was enjoying myself immensely. I will have you know, that was the first and only game of eight we managed to win. Hooray for Democracy, god bless America!!!

All in all, the variety of games we played was quite enjoyable. Each ones having its own pros and cons. I was left with many bruises at the end of the Free for All after being the target of direct Machine Gun fire. The best way to describe the pain would be a big nipple cripple. It’s all in good fun; the battle scars are part of the experience and let you tell the story for weeks to come. Lunch time rolled around and I scoffed down an Entire “Complimentary” Pizza. Not only did I pay over $100 for the day making the point of a free Pizza to be that of a moot one, the notion of providing 95 free Pizzas is probably not good for business profit. So im going to go out on a limb and say that was a little white lie on their behalf. Compliments of the players who left early to the referees is probably what he meant, as I swear I saw him having a piece of Pizza not 5 minutes later.

Besides that tiny little blemish, which to be honest was me looking for something to fault the day. It was a very enjoyable. Although we were there on perhaps a great day weather wise. I was boiling hot and it wasn’t even hot, I don’t think I would have liked it in +30 degree weather. Enjoyment factor was high, replay ability for sure, all be it rather far apart. I give this place a 3.5 out of 5