The Club (Xbox 360) review on HonestGamers

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Review by Felix Arabia
March 01, 2008

I spent much of last evening writing an incredibly enthusiastic and jumpy review for The Club. After judging my own work, I decided that such a piece was hardly kosher considering the relative disorganization my message conveyed. That piece now lies crumbled in my computer’s wastebasket where it belongs. It’s not what I was saying that made me sigh in frustration, but rather it was how I was saying it. Despite all the edits I’ve been making, I feel that there is one little line that I have to keep.

The Club will punch you in the gut and you’ll like it.

Though this review covers the Xbox 360 version, The Club feels and plays like a Dreamcast game. As a SEGA fan, that excites me immensely because even though the DC is long gone, I can take pride in knowing that this is what it would feel like to play a current-gen SEGA console game. Of course, it’s also quite important to note that The Club, which was really developed by Bizarre Creations, feels like an arcade game, too. It’s fast and frantic, bearing little resemblance to the slower-paced third-person action games we’ve learned to enjoy over the past year. Here we have one superficially told story packaged with a hellishly delightful dosage of exciting action. Allow me to explain.

Playing as one of eight murderous characters, you vicariously experience a life of underground gladiatorial gunplay. Your employer, the eponymous Club, casts you as a grisly warrior against loads of vile fighters so you can dazzle the world’s rich and famous with your acrobatic fighting skills. Points determine success, and there certainly are a varied number of ways to pad your score. The most common methods involve accuracy, speed, and style. While you may get a couple thousand points for popping a bad guy in the head with your machine gun, you’ll get even more if you jump over a railing, roll past an incoming rocket, and then sink your last bullet into the guy’s skull . . . as he’s moving.

Risk gains reward, and you’re constantly encouraged to unleash your most brutal (yet beautiful) kills upon the nameless thugs who await their deaths. At the same time, though, you have to be cognizant of your combo bar. It increases every time you down a goon or blast a skull target, and it must be high if you have any hopes of winning the Club’s violent tournaments. It can decrease quickly, though, if you fail to shoot any villains quickly enough, which will certainly ruin your success unless you are able to stop the bleeding. While this may sound irritating, it’s not as bad as you may think. The Club can be a challenging game, but it rarely ever feels unfair. If you fail to reach a high score, you’ll still feel determined to retry since the action is such a joy to experience.

And you’re going to being replaying events a lot in The Club, so you may as well get used to it. The game boasts forty-eight individual levels for you to blast through. Not all of them play the same, though. Some require you to navigate your soldier through a gauntlet of thugs with the sole intent on finding an exit. Others force you to race against time, and then some constrain your area to roam as you’re afforded only a small spot to defend from numerous enemies who yearn to overrun your position. Coupled with the fact that there are eight different realms, each different in design and motif, the game stays refreshing despite its overall simplistic formula.

While The Club may grow tiresome for gamers who are expecting more substance to their games, anyone looking for some challenging arcade gameplay should feel satisfied with all that this package has to offer. Besides portraying a cutthroat tournament shrouded in violence, you can also expect to have a great time either partaking in the multiplayer carnage or by honing your skills in single events.

There is a lot to unlock, too, ranging from different difficulties to new characters to new gameplay goodies. Each of the eight playable characters even has a separate ending. They’re not particularly mesmerizing, but they certainly add some extra character. And they look good, too.

The Club is great if you’re looking for a good challenge via simple gunplay. It excels in this department, and you’d be wise to check it out if you even remotely liked the Dreamcast. Whether you like arcade-like game mechanics or furious shooting action, there is plenty to keep you coming back for more.

Rating
9	Outstanding The majority of games simply aren't this good. It stands aside from the crowd and you'd be crazy to miss it.
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Game Profile & Content

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Staff Score (Avg): 9.0 User Score (Avg): N/A Press Score (Avg): N/A
Reviews: 1 Guides: 0 Cheats: 0 Ratings: 0	High Scores: 0 Screenshots: 8 Videos: 0

Title: The Club
Genre: Third-Person Shooter (Contemporary)
Publisher: SEGA
Developer: Bizarre Creations
Release Date: February 19, 2008
ESRB: M
Platforms: PC, PS3, X360

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