The Legal Way to Hurt Your Friends

While doing one of my many searches for laptops I've noticed that I tend to check out the gaming PCs. Primarily because they tend to have better graphics cards and faster RAM, which is needed when one does "ultimate photoshopping" such as I do. I'm not a huge gamer per se, but I do enjoy my fair share of RPGs and first person shooters. Okay, so I tend to gravitate towards RPGs, but that typically because I am a very violent girl who loves melee combat.

I guess I feel a little more, violent when I can hack and slash my way through a game. But no matter how many times or ways I can rip a zombie with a sharp blade, I feel some sense of emptiness. Like I'm missing out on the tactile bit of killing mercilessly.

There's no legal or sane way I could play out these games in real life, which is why first person shooters have a more realistic feel to me. However, I can't really play them anymore without pining for real results. This is because of the one single day I played paintball. One day changed my entire perspective on the feeling you get when shooting a gun-like object.

I'm a weenie, I'll admit. I've never gone hunting (don't really want to kill defenseless animals) and the closest I've gotten to launching one projectile from an object was those few years spent attempting to shoot a bow and arrow (and failing miserably). But when I got my hands on that standard issue paintball gun, a little tingle went through my body. I was holding a legal weapon-like object, and I'd get to shoot it at a person!

Hooray! Violent tendencies finally have an outlet!

Once we were set loose on the field I did my best first person shooter impression. I hit behind stuff, I peeked over stumps and around trees, I looked all 360 degrees before moving to a new spot. I shot with precision (well...the type of precision one gets after playing Laser Tag a few times)and didn't waste pellets. The best thing though?

I actually hit someone! More than once!

Alright, once I might have accidentally hit my dad...but he wasn't on my team anyway. He's a person and still counts as a "kill".

I've played laser tag many times and I get the same feeling when playing video games. I don't ever feel like I did damage or hit a person. With paintball though, there's no doubt that I get a great feeling that I did some damage.

The day went swimmingly until my group (all 7 of us amateurs) played against two paintball veterans. And completely kicked our asses.

Ever since that painful encounter (I came home with a few "war wounds", as did everyone from my group) I've wanted to go back. Play again. But this time with better equipment.

Like most everything nowadays, the best prices can be found online.There is a great online paintball store to check out, Ultimate Paintball.

I honestly had no idea how expensive paintball actually is, but y'know, you get what you pay for. Ultimate Paintball sells everything from individual guns to helmets and combined packages. They have some fairly good discounts too, although it looks like if I really want to have the ultimate paintball gun set I'll have to shell out about $2,000.

One day when I'm rich I'll buy a bunch of paintball guns online from Ultimate Paintball and myself and the hubby will act out choice scenes from Hot Fuzz.

We'll never need first person shooter games again.