The Club

"A decent enough game"

I know how utterly stupid this is going to sound, but in all honesty, I'm not quite sure whether I hate or like this game. Don't get me wrong, there are some parts that I genuinely enjoy, and some aspects that I don't care for. It's just that at the end of the day I'm not sure if it was really all that good or bad. Sure it does deliver on its premise of just wasting foes like its going out of style, and yes I did have fun with that. But it is also repetitive as all get out. I would try to claim that The Club had more going for it than just running from point A to point B gunning down any of the dullards with guns that get in your way, but alas I'm an honest sort of person. That's not entirely true, at several points (about a fifth of the levels in the game) you have to stay in a small area and run about shooting men with guns. Even then you are running from one end of your tiny box to the other ventilating your fellow man with reckless abandon. But you know what? Repetitive as the game may be, I actually did have some fun with it.

The story for The Club (which I initially mistook for some sort of gangster GTA type game by the by) is amazingly bare-bones. Most games in this console cycle try to have some deep elaborate storyline, granted they are not the most imaginative, but they do try to have a story. The Club on the other hand has a different agenda. In the game you play as one of eight blokes (six initially) and have to compete in an array of tournaments organized by “The Club,” A syndicate of movers and shakers in the world who want to watch a bunch of people murder one another. You're also not really told much of anything about the people you control. Not that it matters, aside from the ending there's really no reason to get involved in any of the characters motivations. Besides, there are fairly standard tournament video game motivations. For instance: The Russian convict that escaped captivity only to get recruited by the Club (Dragov). There's also: the cop who got discharged from the force while trying to hunt down the Club (Renwick). The gambler who ran afoul of the mob and now needs the Club to save himself (Finn), the undercover Japanese cop posing as a Triad assassin (Kuro). The extreme sports guy who wants to kill, for fun (Seager), and the African chap who wants to redeem himself (Adjo). Primarily all you need to know is this: you're there, so go kill those people. That's all it amounts to really, which I found oddly comforting. For some reason the almost near-lack of a story actually works in this games favor. It's reminiscent of arcade shooters in that regard. Also, it has to be said that really none of the endings are good in this game.

The Club conveys dilapidated buildings, ocean liners, military bunkers, and war zones quite well. The problem with the environments is how stock they are. How many times have you run about a rundown factory of some sort while gunning down random thuggish characters? Don't get me wrong, I don't wish to sound like I am insulting the environments, they look nice and detailed, they are also nicely destructible (though not to the degree of Stranglehold). The generic enemies look nice enough, they sort of have this distinctive non-descript look to them, and they all have the same generic thug look to them as well. Which fits the overall theme, but what I think looks neat about them is the wonderful rag doll deaths they have. Yes I know rag dolls have been done before, and that they're nothing new, I just rather like them. Also I feel that it's worth mentioning that the characters you get to play as all have a distinctive look to them. I particularly like the look of Renwick, he kind of looks like Ving Rhames. The problem with the models though is the fact that none of them show any sort of damage. In some games when your character got shot his clothes would become bloody or he'd stagger around with a limp, The Getaway for instance. However in this they look just as hale and hearty as they do when the match begins. I know it's just an aesthetic quibble, but come on, if a PS2 game can show off damage why can't a “next-gen” game do the same? The only one in the game that does look slightly damaged is Finn, and even then it's just a bruise from getting beaten by some mobsters in the game's intro cinematic. Despite my gripe over the lack of imaginative level design, and the lack of damage on the characters the graphics are rather nice.

I know that this might just be a problem of preference but the soundtrack in The Club really isn't that great. I don't wish to imply despise techno there's some that‘s actually not that bad. In fact the music really isn't terrible. Whereas a lot of techno is a lot of synthesizers an annoying alarm type sounds, they went with a fast-paced drums heavy type of techno. It sounds pretty good, but then again I just sort of played one of my Guilty Gear soundtracks while playing this (metal music is good for wanton slaughter, so is punk for that matter). A gripe I have with the audio in this game is that the guns sound quite underpowered. Then again I might be wrong, and that's how those types of guns really sound, but they just sound too weak in my opinion. The explosions sound nice and explosive, but curiously I noticed there wasn't much in the way of voice acting during the gameplay. It may be I just wasn't paying close enough attention, but I don't think there was any. In a lot of shooters like this there's usually some guys yelling things like: “you're dead you *censored*” or “there he is” or something of the like. But I didn't notice anything of the sort. The voice acting that is in the game however is pretty good, not award winning stuff, but it was pretty decent overall. The Secretary of the Club has a good sounding evil type of voice. And I find it positively delightful that the voice when you begin a match has a deep over-dramatic type of voice. The sort usually reserved to fighting games, he's just so over the top that it is really quite enjoyable.

The Club can easily be describe as a game where you just go around and shoot up people while trying to rack up the biggest score you can muster. Indeed that's all you do in the game. What sets The Club apart from other games of its ilk is the combo meter. Where as in some games it just gives you some points for shooting someone this game will rate the kills style and how you went about doing it, a headshot, for instance, is worth more than just shooting someone in the chest. Also the more people you kill the higher the combo meter will climb netting you more points. It has to be said that this isn't an easy task, your combo decreases between kills, and the higher up the combo is the faster it'll fall. So you're constantly running around the level shooting people or these signs with skulls on them (Skullshots, as the game calls them), it ensures that the gameplay is always fast paced. As you go about killing you'll do this in a number of events.

The events in The Club are Sprint; where you just run about the level killing people at your leisure. Gauntlet, which is like sprint but you're on a timer. Time Attack, which is like Sprint only you run through the courses on a short timer and three times. These are nice and all but it does little to change the fact that you're running through the same levels no less than five times. The only difference is that the layout for the courses differ slightly depending which even you're playing. In addition to the Sprint, Gauntlet, and Time Attack modes there's also Siege and Survivor. Siege has you placed in a small box type of level where you have to fight off marauding foes for a set time limit. If you wander outside of the designated area you have five seconds to return to it before some explosives that were injected into your bloodstream blow up. Survivor is much the same, but the area is larger, still the same basic “stay in this area, or die” mechanic is in play. Out of the modes I rather enjoyed Survivor mode the most, I don't know why I just did. One of the problems I have with the layout of the levels for the Sprint, Gauntlet and Time Attack modes is that they are always the same. Regardless of the character or difficulty, there's the same road blocks, enemy placements, etc. Perhaps I'm just being picky, but it'd be nice if they changed it up.

Really that's one of the problems with The Club, it's just shooting over and over again. Normally I wouldn't gripe about something like that, because I enjoy that sort of game (see Stranglehold), but these guys aren't really challenging to kill in the slightest. Also you're doing the same thing over and over again, for near-on fifty levels. Also the multiplayer feels sort of tacked-on, granted it's not terrible, the given modes are just so stock that it's shocking. Sure the modes are not terrible, but it's not the multiplayer opus of the year (Turok is far better), I think the one I had the most fun with was the hunter-hunted mode. Also the Skullshot multiplayer mode was a nice diversion.

I suppose at the end of the day The Club can be described as an adequate shooter. It pushes no boundaries, and really you could do far worse in terms of shooters on the 360. Sure some modes are entertaining enough to play through but honestly after one play through there's really no need to play it any more. There's nothing to unlock aside from some bonus art, and it's not exactly the best looking stuff around anyway. I commend Bizarre for making a game other than their entertaining racing series, but the problem is the game isn't especially good, nor is it particularly bad. Like I said at the start of this review, I don't hate this game, nor do I particularly like it. As it is the game is merely just okay.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/03/08

Game Release: The Club (US, 02/19/08)