Clubhouse Games

"So close to shooting the moon"

Every hand-held deserves a simple game. Something you can pick up and play without a foreword, prologue and epilogue. The kind of game you could pick up on a train and be playing before you'd zipped your bag back up. Clubhouse Games is one such game.
I'm understating it here.. Clubhouse is forty-two of these simple pick-up-and-play games, each more than enough to occupy you for a fair while. The sheer volume of available games means that however much you play there's always something in there that will appeal to you. The pure variety of the games range from the simple such as Balance (where you have to add a block on your turn without the pile falling) to the more challenging such as President (which I'm not going to try to explain in parentheses) and Hearts. There are also a wide variety board-based games including Ludo, Chess and Turncoat (Reversi, but a rose by any other name..) and plenty more. More than enough to keep you occupied. More than enough to miss your platform on the train after someone drops the Queen of Spades on you. No wonder you got distracted. Pain does that.

So we've established the fact that there are a LOT of games to play but that hardly matters if you spend all day dragging cards around with a cursor via the buttons. That's not pick-up and play - it's pick-up and slowly play. This alone has been enough for the near-death of card and board game collections on hand-held consoles. The key thing that makes this game shine however is exactly the same that thing that makes the DS special - the control method. A game such as this would have completely flopped on any other console, since half the play time would be spent moving the cards with the buttons. The stylus system overcomes this, the greatest failing of the genre on previous consoles. The speed of play in most games is lightning-fast thanks to being able to drag cards into play with a quick flick of the wrist.

With over forty games loaded onto the cartridge there's barely a chance you'll pick this up for the first time and know how to play every one. The designers are thoughtful, so as you'd hope there's a little “Rules” button that lives unobtrusively in the lower right-hand corner. It goes through all aspects of play for each game, and even has a table of contents so you can flick straight to what you need to get to, including the current game settings that sit at the bottom.

Nearly every game has individual settings that can be tweaked to change the play experience. For example in Hearts you can enable an option to make the Jack of Diamonds worth -10 points, possibly easing the PAIN of the Queen of Spades. In Darts you can change the number of points for an 01 game to 301 or 501, or enable the double start and/or double finish options. President is another game that has enough options that affect play to make it almost feel like a different game with each combination you use. Under each game's settings you can also select the design you want to use for play – four for each game, with three of these being unlocked for winning each game in Free Play a certain number of times.

Aside from the Free Play - which involves complex issues such as choosing a game to play - Clubhouse Games also offers two other modes – Stamp and Mission. Mission involves passing a total of thirty objectives over various games. They vary from the simple (Pass Memory in two minutes) to the insane (Win Backgammon while your opponent has pieces in your home area) and will give you an immense sense of pride when you complete each one as well as an immense feeling of pain when you beat your head into a wall for not getting that third bulls-eye needed. Each completed mission nets you a new avatar from the thirty locked ones on the player settings screen.

In contrast to Mission Mode, Stamp Mode basically involves playing each game one by one with three points required to advance to the next game. That isn't to say you have to win each game three times – you can do it by losing. You gain three points for a win, two points for a draw and one for a loss. Lose three times and you advance - now that's forgiving. Stamp Mode comes in three difficulties, with each unlocking a new feature on completion.

Well that's the single player element done with. That alone should be enough to make this game maintain a permanent position in your DS case, but there's more. Unlike so many other DS games on the market the developers made the wise and gracious choice to add WFC support. Not just local Wi-Fi like some other games add (for better or worse) but online WFC play. Even more exciting than this is the fact that they made it work. They made it work incredibly. Nearly all of them can be played online, with the few unavailable ones being the obviously single-player games such as solitaire. Like all good WFC-compatible games there are options for random and friend matches. Random matches are selected by game - for example you might choose a game of Hearts to look for opponents in. The rules for each game are set to a default, and the result of a match affects your global ranking for that particular game. Friend matches involve creating a session of up to eight – yes that's right, eight – players with the host controlling which games and rules are played as well as which players are involved in that game. When a game ends everyone is taken back to the game select menu where the host chooses another game, eliminating the need to reconnect each time. If one of the players somehow disconnects they can immediately re-enter the session thanks to a simple “Open Room” option that allows players to join the session at any time.

The thought that was put into the multiplayer aspect – especially regarding WFC – is a testament to the intelligence and forethought of the developers. As well as the ingeniousness of the Open Room Technology – an option which until this game I thought was just a pipe dream – the Friend Code system is planned out to make things simple to compile a huge session with ease. In nearly all other WFC-enabled games each player needs to have every other player's Friend Code added, but this makes it pretty tedious to arrange eight player games. Clubhouse Games fixes this by only requiring the host and player to have exchanged Friend Codes, with the only drawback being the inability to communicate with people who you don't share a Friend Code link with. Communication between friends is achieved via Pictochat – yet another feature that should be mandatory on WFC games. All of these features – WFC, eight player sessions, ORT, Pictochat – add up to a one-of-a-kind multiplayer experience. There's something about an offer to “Hizzle in the Club” that brings people to the party, and those four features combined with a plethora of games offer the potential for some unforgettable multiplayer sessions.

That isn't to say everything's perfect. Every game has its drawbacks, and the few in Clubhouse relate to some game rules – usually ones that simply aren't there. Texas Hold ‘em has no all-in. Blackjack has no split option. Both of these games allow you descend into negative cash amounts, as well as making it easy to turn a solid lead into a win by betting a dollar and folding because nobody can all-in to reach you. This rules those games out of multiplayer play unfortunately but despite the drawbacks, Clubhouse Games still makes it as one of the few well-produced multiplayer experiences available on Nintendo WFC.

Now for the final thoughts and ratings.

Games - 8/10
Some games like Ludo are too long and can be boring after a while. Blackjack and Hold ‘em are far from perfect in their betting system and features, despite the promise of those games in an environment such as this.

Single Player - 7/10
A great experience slightly hampered by the inability to save halfway through a game, making Bridge, Chinese Checkers and a few others too much of a time investment for short plays. Stamp and Mission Modes will probably never be touched after completion, but that isn't to say that Free Play isn't enough to keep this game going.

Multiplayer - 10/10
Simply everything you could want in a multiplayer game of this game. Pictochat for communicating, eight player sessions, ORT and a wonderfully-simple Friend Code system make it simple to get up and go, and keep going for a long time.

Graphics - 9/10
Simple and near-perfect. What the developers have added is perfectly-achieved but I can't help thinking they could have done a touch more graphically without impinging on the game experience.

Controls - 9/10
Games like bowling and darts have a bit of an early learning curve but it's not too steep. Every game in Clubhouse is justified by the simple effectiveness of the controls.

Longevity – 10/10
The games never end and the fun never stops. What else is there to say?

Audio - 6/10
The in-game sounds are fine but the music leaves a bit to be desired. There are two songs available and none of them are particularly bad, but with the sheer longevity of the game you'll be switching the music off sooner rather than later.

Total – 9/10 (Not an average)
Clubhouse Games is everything it should be. If you need a DS game that you can pull out at any time and get straight into then this is it. If you need a multiplayer environment that matches and perhaps even exceeds the single-player environment instead of some sort of limited, uncommunicative or non-interactive game then this is it. The development team clearly put some serious thought into what should make a great multiplayer experience and implemented it to perfection.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/14/08, Updated 01/05/09

Game Release: Clubhouse Games (US, 10/09/06)