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Please Note: The score and comments only apply to the single player portion of the game.

 Life is cheap in The Club. So cheap, if fact, that the shadowy organisers seem to be able to afford an endless supply of short-lived goons to temporarily block your path. After a while you stop thinking of them as opponents and begin to recognise them as the developer intended- a quick fix of points to add to your tally. It’s all a bit depressing really; Manhunt may be getting the tabloid coverage, but for “callousness of tone” The Club surely deserves a mention.

Bizarre Games are very keen to describe The Club as a racing game with guns, but I’m not sure their analogy stacks up. In practice the experience is more akin to a lightgun game with free character control- think Time Crisis where ducking is replaced buy legging it. Point accumulation is your reason for blithely gunning down the unfortunates placed in your way, with bonuses awarded for accuracy, style and building up combos (by killing within regular intervals). Variety is provided by challenges including reaching the end of a course in a set time, running laps around a level or surviving for a set period, but in practice the central premise is the same; shoot as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, preferably in the head after doing a forward roll.

Stylistically The Club is a non-event; level design, settings and characters are buttock-clenchingly uninventive. When character selection revolves around who you dislike the look of least you know something has gone awry. Level and opponent design is similarly tedious, with identikit goons (really, who wears sunglasses and a vest to a gunfight?) and that old shooter favourite, the ‘gritty urban environment’ making an unwelcome return (surely now up there with the Lava Level as a gaming cliché). As mentioned in a number of reviews, the style and aesthetic quickly detract from the central game, and the fact that such a daft idea is presented so seriously seems like a poor choice on the part of the designer.

Despite claims of originality, the gameplay quickly starts to feel equally tired. Whether the high score mentality appeals to you or not, each level feels like a retread of other games and the few new ideas are lost in a barrage of seen-it-so-many-times mediocrity (say hello Mr. Exploding Barrel). The fact that your character can stroll merrily through a barrage of bullets whilst goons fold after a gentle tap of the trigger is faintly ridiculous, especially given the po-faced nature of the game generally.

There isn’t much more to be said really. Fans of high scores and multiplayer gamers will no doubt get the most out of The Club, but as a single player experience it isn’t likely to remain in favour beyond an initial playthrough (about 5 hours if you pace yourself). I hate to criticise an attempt at originality in the shooter genre, but The Club constantly feels like a mish-mash of promising ideas forced together for release; from the Mortal-Kombat inspired contestant roster and guttural “Fight!” before each level, through the racing-style championship grid progression, via every unoriginal third person shooter of the last 10 years. Whilst never doing anything particularly badly, these gaming elements never feel coherent, and certainly don’t combine to form the gaming classic that Sega are clearly hoping for. Add a point if you’re going to take it online or if you harbour an obsession with beating your own high score; I won’t and I don’t, so I’m off to play something else.

Score: 6/10

(Xbox360 Version Reviewed. Also Out On PS3 and PC) 

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