The Club review

So, The Club has come to my console and to be honest, I’m not what to make of it. Throughout my gaming life I’ve learned one thing – dodge bullets or take cover when fired upon to survive. No questions. Gears of War and Uncharted reinforced this further. In fact, if you didn’t pop out from behind a plank to shoot your opponents you’d go down in a hail of gunfire.

The Club turns this idea completely on its head and turns a shooting game into a racing game at the same time. Just as well as the developers are Bizarre Creations, the people behind MSR and the Project Gotham games. The premise is simple but does take some getting used to. Just make your way to the exit as quickly as possible whilst shooting everyone shooting at you and trying to look as cool as possible. Imagine you’re Neo in the lobby of the Matrix and you’ll get the idea – although The Club isn’t quite as spectacular as that famous filmic scene of destruction.

So what is The Club? Well, it’s a bit like Fight Club in that, as one of eight characters, you volunteer to be shot at so you can complete the courses and win a big stash of cash. I feel sorry for all the henchmen you’re shooting though, are they being paid to do this? Do they have families?

You can run and gun as any of eight characters with some extras to unlock, and they’re your usual suspects you’d find in a beat ‘em up. You have big lumbering Russians, fast ninja-types, dreadlocked dudes and cool slick spies all ready to get the highest score by keeping a rolling combo going. As you shoot accurately you build your combo and multiply your points. Go too long without a kill or shooting bonus items and your combo ‘bleeds out’ gradually until it resets to zero. Link everything together by shooting, rollind and diving round the levels and you’ll have a score you’ll be proud to post on the online leaderboards.

There are also other single player modes including Run the Gauntlet where you must reach the exit before the clock runs down, and Siege and Survivor levels where you must stay in a pre-defined area marked out by chalk lines and traffic cones and try to stay alive as long as you can as enemies pour into the mix. This is the best way to get combos which are the main aim of the game.

After you play the initial four hours to play the game, for high score junkies, this is where the game really begins where you may wish to challenge your mates to get faster times and better combos.

For me, once I play through a game I rarely return to it, so if you consider yourself to be someone who completes a game and moves on, maybe this one will be a a little too short to you.

Still, it’s a cool new take on the third-person shooter idea and for that it must be praised, it’s just not for me. Still, I can see its worth so it gets a better than good 6 out of 10.

The Club

The Club screenshots

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