The premise is simple, various mercs, criminals, and other assortments of gun-crazed maniacs receive an invitation from a stranger to compete in a tournament that is a free-for-all killing spree, where the goal is to survive. The Club is played in the third person perspective and you are given a choice of playing as one of the eight characters, each one crazier than the other, who all want to be number one with a bullet.
The single player mode takes place in various different locations across the globe, which ranges from an abandoned fall out shelter, cargo ship, prison, and of course a warehouse. Each area of the tournament is divided into six different events that must be completed, and at the end a combined point total is added up to see if you make it into the top three spot, where you will be awarded a trophy bullet.
Events range from a Sprint run, where you have to race through a location and make it to the exit blowing away everyone in sight before they get you. The Siege pits you in a area where you are blocked off and must defend your ground before the timer runs out, but if you step out of bounds for more than five seconds the explosive planted inside of your body will blow you to shreds. A Time Attack mode requires that you make your way through various laps of a location, shooting your way through before time runs out. And the Run the Gauntlet event has you moving through a single run in a large maze-like location with guns blazing, you guessed it....before time runs out.
What makes this different from just being another Unreal Tournament or standard deathmatch, is that killing everything moving is not the main aspect of the game; it’s how you do it, how long you can keep it going, and how many points you can rack up. In the end, this game is all about the amount of points you can collect by the time the match is over.
If you can pull off constant headshots, get multiple kills by triggering explosions, or take out gunman in the far distance, you can rack up major points. When you take down opponents you’ll see score marks with tags like Crack Shot, Death Roll, Last Bullet and Gate Crasher. The more of these combos you can pull off, the more points will be added to your card.
In each arena there are also hidden skull icon signs hidden all around, requiring you to shoot them all to increase your score. For the time attack modes there are also clock icons hidden, which when shot will increase your timer. When you’re moving from zone to zone and taking on enemies, if you go too long between your next kill, your combo meter will time down and you’ll lose major points. Especially in the larger maps, it’s important that you don’t leave too many gaps between kills to keep the combos growing.
Yes, in today’s shooting arena The Club may come off as very simple, but that’s the charm here. This game is not trying to compete with the likes of Gears of War or COD4, and instead just focuses on keeping the player coming back to replay arenas to acquire more combos and gain more point to make it to the number one ranking, which is not an easy task. Just like a Tony Hawk game, The Club is all about how many trick shots you can perform with style.
Once you’ve beaten the solo mode to death, which will actually take more of an effort than you may think, it’s time to step over to multiplayer where you can show off your kill skills in the way The Club is all about, against real gun toting maniacs just like you. You can play in various solo and team-based online games. Games include, a Score Match (a basic deathmatch), and Hunter/Hunted that plays like tag where you kill a target and you then become the target and try to stay alive as long as possible to build your score. On the team-based end there’s Team Skullshot where your side has to find and shoot all of the enemy skullshots before they get yours, and Team Fox Hunt in which you must hunt down the enemy team’s fox while doing all it takes to protect yours.
The Club, though not innovative, is extremely fun and offers some of the highest replay value your going to find. It’s easy to pick up and play and offers the same experience on both the Xbox 360 and PS3 (but the achievements perk on the Xbox may tip the scale slightly to that side for most). The Club is a roller coaster ride that while not perfect, is a game that the shooter crowd will really enjoy.
Things are always in motion, so there are constant sounds ranging from gunshots, explosions, background dialogue, and timers all pumping out of your speakers at once. This is one of those games where you go into the option menus and raise the sound effects to level ten so that it stands out. My only complaint is that for a game based on heavy gunplay, the gun effects sound very generic and it would have added to the excitement if each gun you used had it’s own unique sound to keep you wired.
Even though there are only eight battle arenas, The Club is very addictive and the quest for being the number one guy on the leaderboard will keep you constantly playing. Besides the solo play and online modes, there’s the Single Event that allows you to get your trigger finger satisfied by playing a quick game on a random arena. The Gunplay mode gives you the option to set up a playlist where you can arrange the order of your favorite arenas to play them any way you like. If this game becomes a major hit, there’s no doubt that there will be a variety of downloadable content available to add to replay, such as new characters, maps, and guns, guns, guns.
