Hanging out amid a flurry of tiny, colorful spheres used to be a pastime reserved for marble-wielding scamps named Alfalfa, Stymie, and Spank-Wheat. Defect from that rascally gang and get a real shooter in hand with today's Groupon: for $29, you get entry with all-day play plus equipment rental, 200 paintballs (for about 2.5 hours of play), and unlimited air (up to a $70.50 total value) at one of two Giant Paintball parks: Hollywood Sports Park in Bellflower or California Paintball Park in Castaic.

Giant Paintball's fields are designed with novice mercenary-colorists in mind, including the cinematic Hollywood Sports Park in Bellflower and the 37-acre California Paintball Park in Castaic. California Paintball Park offers seven playing fields, including a speedball field, bunkers, three acres of trenches, and a field designed for urban warfare. Hollywood Sports Park's six scenario fields are all actual movie sets from blockbusters such as Starship Troopers, Saving Private Ryan, and Godzilla, and they are completely lit by stadium-style lights for night play. A variety of actors, producers, and directors are known to frequent the park, so this might be your best chance to sell the screenplay you've been working on entitled Bobby Flay: The Museum Curator.

If 15 or more of your pals have Groupons, either location will open the park for your group on an off day so you can have a birthday party, retirement party, or fireworks party. If you choose the large-group route, each person will have to pay an additional $10 referee fee.

Reviews

Six Yahoo! Locals give the Hollywood Sports location an average rating of 3.5 stars. Paintball aficionados on PBReview.com say the refs could be better at the Hollywood Sports and California Paintball Park locations:

• The staff are some of the friendliest i have ever met and they are always there to give out usefull advice. – Schancky, California Paintball Park, PBReview.com
• the fields are awesome [sic], dont [sic]remember the names but all the fields are killer, from the futuristic looking maze and warships to the rundown buildings and all the props like the rusted cars and bus – punkroxxorzyour, Yahoo! Local
• It was my first time playing there and the staff was extremely helpful. – Jose Carlos, Yahoo! Local