The Club review (PlayStation 3)

Xbox Live Arcade, definitely the Wii’s Virtual Console and to some extent the PlayStation Network have all got onboard the nostalgia train. While ‘choo-choo’ing along we can be sure to spot some classic gameplay moments that remind us how games used to put a focus on beating the scores of your friends rather than rushing to the final cinematic and shelving the game. I definitely didn’t finish as many games in my youth as I do now, and not just because I’m reviewing most of them at present. The games were simply designed differently.

For a game with no (worthy) story, it takes quite a while to sit through the introduction and get to the title screen. Apparently, each of the eight competitors is recruited through general blackmail and forcefulness to compete in a series of eight tournaments to prove their worth, each taking place in a different environment. Rather than directly hunting each other down, a seemingly endless string of generic gun toting goons litter the levels and you must simply get through each challenge earning more points than your enemies have in their runs.

Throwing a tennis ball against a wall

In standard Single Player, you’ll be to running through the eight tournaments with a choice of six characters to begin with. Complete the first four and you’ll unlock a further character, with the final one unlocked if you finish the other four tournaments with any character. You’re treated to a short ending, that means to tie up why each competitor was there, and even reveal the ‘dirty secret’ of who Nemo really is. As you can imagine, with such a focus away from story and plot it’s hardly a moment to relish, and as such the game allows you to unlock all of the endings by simply playing the final tournament with each different character on the easiest difficulty mode.

Each environment has been designed brilliantly however, with an Ocean Liner looking the part as much as the Manor House or Warzone. Visuals aside, the layout of each map has obviously had a lot of focus with multiple entry and exit routes to almost every area being blocked off in different levels to provide a different route through essentially the same place.

Events have plot?

There are five types of event in The Club’s standard tournaments starting with Sprint, which is as simple as it comes; Run through the predetermined path, earning as many points as possible. Siege follows, giving you an area to defend from an onslaught of opponents and a time limit to attempt to survive for. Apparently, you’ve been injected with micro explosives that will detonate if you leave your marked area (traffic cones and chalk markings) for over five seconds). Survivor gives you another open area, but generally a larger one that you’ll be able to run through a little more, but with the same survive for a time and don’t leave your area or micro explosives implanted into your body will do to you what 15 guys wielding large weapons apparently cannot.

Time Attack is a little like Sprint, giving you a path to follow, and a 30 second timer ticking away to perform laps within. Extra time can be gained by killing enemies and picking up clock tokens in your route, which will prevent the micro explosive pumping through your veins ending your tournament early, and causing you to have to use one of your five attempts to do better. Finally, Run The Gauntlet gives you a longer time period, and a Sprint style path through the majority of the level to get through. Can you guess what happens if you don’t make it in time? Apparently, micro expl…

The classic combo

Unlike many shooters, in The Club it matters how you beat each level, with points actually mattering and combos being the most important way of raising your score. Obviously killing enemies will earn you points, but depending on how you do it, you’ll earn different amounts. Shooting someone from a larger distance is considered a better kill, and if you get a headshot or even use the last bullet from your magazine you’ll get substantially higher scores. Once you’ve killed your first goon (where do they find them all?) your combo meter starts ticking away and you’ll have to kill again before it ends or risk losing your combo. Your points are dutifully multiplied by your combo, so having killed 20+ people in a row will wrack up your score like a fat person’s restaurant bill.

Scattered throughout each event are up to 10 skullshots that serve to extend your combo when shot, and secret skullshots that do little during the level, but can unlock further options in other modes, and achievements in the Xbox 360 version. Once you’ve played these events in the Tournament mode, they unlock in Single Event, allowing you to replay each one to your heart’s content and perfect your scores; finding out where those half naked high scoring bonus enemies appear from.

Custom Gunplay

Very much like Single Event, Gunplay suggests a lot more customisation than you really have. It’s basically a way of setting up your own tournaments with the levels you want in them. You can also select which weapon you’ll start each event with, and it all ends up with a ‘Par’ score for you and your friends to have to beat.

The four different difficulty modes pump up the scores and the overall challenge. Don’t expect to die at all in Casual difficulty, where the general standard is 30-60,000 points for you to have to beat (it’s easy to get 10 times that when starting out). Unfortunately, the difficulty curve is quite unforgiving, which will suit the kind of audience that this game is aimed at, and not encourage more casual gamers to stray beyond the easiest setting. We’re talking challenges that were 30,000 suddenly becoming 700,000 in the next difficulty up, and while the enemies give you more points, they also seem to have stronger weapons so dying becomes an issue too.

Meatyplayer

There are a plenty of modes to play with in Multiplayer from teams hunting down each others’ skullshots, to hunting a specific target to the standard score and kills matches you’ll be used to already. Each can be played in any of the levels (some modes allow for two layouts in some levels), and even offline the game happily supports 4 way split-screen, although if you’re going online you’ll be the only one on your machine.

When you add a couple of your friends into the mix the game shines far more than the repetitive score hunting styles of single player modes, which feels retro in a derogatory fashion. The Club, which had been a chore for me to play through suddenly became alive when competing against real people and saves this game from a much poorer score in my eyes.

Brave Warhawk of a concept

The entire game of The Club feels like a bonus mode of a missing game. It reminded me of Resident Evil 4’s ‘Mercenaries’ mode from the beginning, which plays fine for a quick blast but holds no real desire to replay for me. Ignoring the multiplayer modes, The Club takes a look back at the high score beating point hungry games of old and twists a modern decent looking shooter into attracting some of those hardcore gamers back. Indeed many will take pleasure in rising to the top of the leaderboards (the closest I’ve got is 10th) but you’ll know yourself if you’re one of those players, or whether, like me, you don’t have the time or incentive any more to play through the same level multiple times to edge a few extra thousand out of a few minute run.

Modern games have lost much of the one-upmanship of such classics as Pacman, but in many ways this is reflected in the growth of finishable games, not just for storylines and production values, but because the modern gamer has more games to play through, and less time to do it. The game would definitely benefit from the Xbox 360’s achievement system, again incentivising reaching a certain score or finding all of the secret skullshots, but it runs smoothly and beautifully on the PS3 throughout. I really disliked the single player aspect, but the multiplayer saved the game in my eyes. That said, just because I didn’t like it doesn’t mean that the game won’t give a lot of players plenty of life, if you can be bothered with the (excellent) points system.

By the way, Nemo is The Club’s Secretary’s son. If the game is for you, you won’t care about the story.