Battle your buddies on two of Call of Duty’s most famous maps: Firing Range and Nuketown.
Whether it is Call of Duty, Halo, Counter-Strike, or one of the other countless first-person shooter franchises that have provided hours and hours of fun, there can be few avid gamers who have not dreamt of running around their favorite maps from their most cherished video games in real life.
For many, these maps are as familiar as our own backyards. We come to know every nook and cranny, every hiding place, every source of cover.
Whilst impressive virtual reality games and interactive experiences of all kinds have materialized over the last few years, there can be nothing as authentic as a gaming experience that calls upon all five senses. Those hardcore Call of Duty fans in our state can rejoice because now not one but two of the most popular maps from the most successful first-person shooter franchise ever have been recreated right here in Illinois.
Last month, Pekin Paintball Park near Peoria, Illinois, announced the arrival of its real-life “Firing Range” Call of Duty course. The small-medium-sized multiplayer map has been a staple of the Call of Duty franchise since 2010 when it was featured in Call of Duty: Black Ops and then more recently remastered for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.
Based on a United States island military base training course, the map features two main buildings, a small tower in the middle of the map, abandoned jeeps, and multiple distracting targets all of which have been recreated by Pekin Paintball Park to accurately replicate all the intricacies of the beloved Black Ops map.
The arrival of Pekin Paintball Park’s Firing Range course is not the first real-life recreation of a Call of Duty map made specifically for paintball, airsoft, and other competitive team shooting sports. It joins another map by the name of Nuketown that already existed a little closer to Chicago in Santa’s Village Amusement Park in East Dundee.
Located under 40 minutes outside of downtown Chicago, Paintball Explosion has been offering Call of Duty fans a movie quality paintball course representing the beloved 2010 Nuketown map for almost a decade.
Based on the now-infamous 1950s American pop-up towns that were used as nuclear testing facilities, Call of Duty: Black Ops’s eerie Nuketown has been likewise replicated with incredible accuracy from its authentic school buses to its white picket fences. The paintball course even features the creepy mannequins scattered throughout the Call of Duty map.
Watch a video of Paintball Explosion’s Nuketown grand opening here.You can find out more about playing paintball and other games at these two centers by visiting pekinpaintballpark.com for the Firing Range map and pbbomb.com for the Nuketown map.
[Featured image from pekinpaintballpark.com]