The Club (Xbox 360) Review

Posted by Jordan Williams on 03.04.2008

What do you get when you take a racing game and a shooting game and smash them together? A really big surprise. Welcome to The Club.



With its seemingly simple name and lack of real hype until it was ready to hit stores, The Club didn't really garner much attention. But now that the game is out tons of gamers are seemingly surprised at how well it is doing. I am personally surprised at how well such an off-beat and experimental concept worked out. The Club took a chance and scored pretty damn good on its first try.

The Club is about a sort of "kill or be killed" manhunt game that's funded by all of this rich big wigs. They take people, inject nano-explosives into them and take them to various levels where they compete in a bullet blazing blood sport. The objective is to be the last one alive, and also being the one who kills the most. The winner gets the standard big brief case of money and the wonderful gift of life.

Your cast of characters in this bloodbath is not the usual mix of cliché character archetypes you are used to seeing in the game, although there are some present, especially a character that looks, acts, and is seemingly the spitting image of Ving Rhames in Dawn of the Dead (remake). On a sad note though, the story and characters end here as for most of the game they serve no one reason than to just be the avatars of your destruction.

But even then, The Club succeeds more than it fails and does so in a winning fashion, and it's a rare treat for an entirely new game to do that on its first time out.

Graphics

While The Club doesn’t push the Xbox 360's hardware to the limit, it's not slouch in this department. Every character is amazingly detailed right down to the dead squids hanging off of the big Russian Dragov's pants. The levels you run around in are greatly detailed and have a vast amount of exploration for them despite the fact that you'll be barreling through them at breakneck speeds. Even the cannon fodder henchmen you plug have a bit of detail to them. You rarely see the same exact model twice in the same area although they all pull from the same bin of clothes and parts.



The frame rate, online or off, never takes a significant dive despite all of the bodies, bullets, and explosions going on in the single player campaign. Actually, the only time I ever did see any slow down when I played it was during a particularly large game on Xbox Live, other than that there was nothing out of the ordinary.

All of the character models animate very well, especially the rag doll physics that send your opponents into sometimes hilarious death throws, although your character themselves might look a bit stiff at times, it's more so the camera's doing than the animations. Speaking of which, the camera stays nicely fit over your shoulder in a third person view at all times (unless you are using a ranged weapon) and zooms in appropriately for a nice shot. All in all the graphics on The Club aren't going to win any big awards; they are all you should expect from this generation and nothing less. No faults to be found here.

Gameplay

And this is where the game sets itself apart from the pack. This game was developed by the same team behind the Gotham City Racing series, which would seem sort of odd considering that this is a shooting game. You'd be dead wrong. Despite how it may seem or how you play it, this game is a racing game at its heart.

You choose your character and head into one of The Club's various arenas and war zones. From there you will compete against the other characters in a series of time trials, survivals, and other blood sports. At the end the scores are tallied up on a leader board and the highest score receives the highest point value, as if you came in first place. The gameplay itself is built around speed. You NEVER stop moving. You're always running, gunning, rolling, and dodging. The game doesn’t give you a chance to catch your breath.

But simply being able to get through the level fast isn't what's going to keep you on top; The Club has a very interesting combo system that rewards you for how you kill your enemies and how many you kill in succession. Sure, a headshot might get you a decent little bonus, but you could also combat roll into the room, pop off a headshot with your last bullet to get a Headshot/Death Roll/Last Bullet combo to make your points skyrocket. It also rewards you for taking risks, blindly shoot around a corner and one of for bullets might kill a mark, earning you a Rico-Slay (get it?). Or taking the time (and getting shot a few times) to nab the guy with the riot shield through his little eye-window will net you a Penetrator bonus. These coupled with something linking 10, 20, or even 30 kills together will send your points through the roof.

The characters, despite how thin on story they are, actually come into play a bit too. All of them have a set of stats that set them apart from the other. For instance Kuro, a Japanese secret agent, is one of the fastest runners in the game but he also sacrifices strength, which means he can't take as many shots as Adjo, an African giant that moves slow as molasses but can eat up full magazines of ammo and barely be at 50%.



It takes a bit to get used to, no doubt your first couple of tournaments you are going to be puttering around in 5th place in the standings due to the seemingly unbeatable CPU scoring AI, but after an hour or so you'll be hanging with the best of them. To keep you from getting bored the game throws a lot of modes at you. For instance in Time Trial you will run laps through an area (literally) killing everyone in sight to increase your time and your score, but in a mode like Siege you'll be confined to a small area while waves upon waves of enemies descend on you and you have to somehow survive until time runs out while still killing them to get a high score. It's moments like rolling out of the way of an oncoming RPG and shooting the launcher in the head from across the map that give you a nice little adrenaline rush.

You'll think it's awkward as hell at first, this whole third person shooter with racing elements. But once you get the hang of it you'll marvel at how well this experiment that could've gone either way worked out.

Sound

If there's a place that you can fault the game it, it'll be its sound department. The music in the game is largely forgettable and gets drowned out by all of the mayhem happening on screen, the characters you play as have no real voice acting outside of the occasional grunt or groan. The enemies frequently yelled obscenities and commands to their comrades, but you'll be mowing them down too fast to notice. Even the guns sound a bit underpowered for all of the work they put into them. The only real standout is the voice of "The Secretary", the overseer of the game. He'll introduce every new level to you in an eerie-yet-posh voice. Sadly, that's all there really is to it when it comes to the ears of this game. Although this is a PERFECT game to play your custom Xbox Live play list too.

Lasting Appeal

Replay value gushing out of every orifice. The replayability of this game also takes from it's racing roots in a sense that you will be damn near compelled to go back and try to top your high score on a previous level or tournament. Just like you never settle for the Silver Cup in GCR, you'll rarely ever want to settle for the Silver Bullet in The Club. Add that with a very competitive online leader board and some pretty skillful achievements and you'll be playing the single player well after you've beaten it.



And then there's online play which offers the same modes you'd expect it to. I would've LOVED to see some sort of Co-Op Tournament where you and a buddy mow-down enemy bots in a level, but sadly it's nowhere to be seen. For what it's worth, the online play online is pretty straightforward and fun for the most part. Although as with any shooter there's a tendency for cheapness...especially due to the game not using random spawn points. I can't tell you the amount of times I got killed in a match only to respawn about 10 feet away from the person who killed me.

Be it with online or with single player, you'll play this one quite a bit before you finally hang it up for good.

Fun Factor

Really, I shouldn't even have to explain this one. The game is built for the twitch gamer. You run around, you shoot things, you marvel at how awesome it is. You are going to have one fun time with this game, especially online with a decent team or even system linking it together. If you do NOT have fun with this game then it obviously isn't made for you. It can be a bit difficult at times, but just like a good racing game, it's meant to test your skills and The Club will push you to the limit on that in a fun way.

The 411

If you would've told me that I would've ended up liking a game that blended the First/Third Person shooter genre with that of a Grand Prix racer I would've laughed at you. But The Club has done just that and so far is one of the better games to come out this year, especially during such a slow first quarter. The Club takes a brand new approach its first time out of the gate and scores big, which is good for a complete new game but GREAT for a game in such an oversaturated genre. Welcome to The Club, you WILL enjoy your stay.

Graphics	8.5	The character models and locations look great, but it's nothing award worthy
Gameplay	9.5	An experiment you have to play to understand, shooting mixed with racing works very well.
Sound	6.5	Nothing to really speak of, but it's a great game to use the custom soundtrack to.
Lasting Appeal	9.5	You will lose sleep thinking of ways to someone beat your best scores on certain levels.
Fun Factor	10.0	Twitch gamers rejoice, this game is for you.
Overall	8.8   [ Very Good ]