Napalm Riot

Say something for the record, tell the people what you feel: "Fuck the record, and fuck the people!"

Recently I've seen a fair bit of discussion around on which one is better than the other and so on - it's only fitting that in a gaming community there's bound to be some players here, and I'm glad. Inevitably, though, there's always going to be the age-old discussion of which is better: Airsoft or Paintball?

I'll begin by admitting it, I'm an Airsoft player. I'm not naive enough to make a decision through inexperience, I've tried both! They both have their pros and cons which I'll detail later. Unfortunately this isn't always true for parties taking sides in the argument.

Many people's experience of Airsoft is generally tainted: hold on, though, exactly the same can be said for Paintball and I'm coming to that. A perfect example of this is my own experience with the sport. When I first started playing, me and my friends always used to play at the site local to us, Fireball Squadron -- bearing in mind I'd already been Paintball before this and the idea of running around with replicas sounded appealing enough for me to try. I'll be honest, compared to what I've experienced from the sport now, it was a shit day. But at the time I thought it was amazing.

Then I experienced MilSim, which is a branch of Airsoft aimed at accurately representing a real combat scenario. I understand this is not everyone's cup of tea; ammunition is limited to what a real soldier could carry, weapons are limited also (So if you wanted to be a support gunner, you'd better hope you have an RPK or an M249; an M4 with a box mag won't do!). In this aspect it may even over take Paintball on expense, but the experience of coordinating your entire team to move behind enemy lines and set up an ambush is amazing. Last weekend I played a sniper, and was attached to a recon unit who had orders to infiltrate the left flank of an enemy field base, and make a precision kill on their commander to cut off their regen point.

This is my main reason for taking sides, I like the difference between roles in Airsoft, rather than having a semi or an automatic paintball gun and leaving it at that.

Paintballers, feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think this sort of thing exists in Paintball. From the games I've played, it seems much more suited to people who like quick, action-packed games. Although once you are hit you are out for good (Not true in Airsoft, you can regen + have field medics), I believe this adds another element of pressure to the sport. Paintballs also fucking hurt! I am sure this largely varies through region to region and whether you are part of a team, but from my experience, Paintball was very much a solo experience and there wasn't much team play involved - if this is so, then it has largely tainted my personal view of paintball - although I would be willing to eat my words if proven otherwise. Again, though, the scenarios were very fast paced and slightly more enjoyable from that perspective - I guess there wasn't too much strategy involved.

There is, however, one final point I'd like to add before I draw up a conclusion: I am tired of the arguing! Especially with how fragile things are in the UK at the moment (hello, VCR bill!) , we need to stick together and just enjoy what we enjoy, rather than segregating ourselves (The same is true even within Airsoft itself, MilSim vs non-MilSim!).

Both Airsoft and Paintball are completely different styles of play, and at the end of the day, I suppose it depends on how realistic you like things and how much time you want to put into it.

And let's not even talk about Quasar.

I enjoy these things individually, however, it wasn't a good idea to combine them all into one day. As action-packed as it was, I'm knackered.

Must sleep.