fun for a short while but lacks any lasting replay value, though to some may be worth it when the price drops to $20
If there's one thing that SEGA did right back in the mid 90s was making great arcade games. Though this game was developed by Bizarre Creations, it does remind me of how the SEGA games were in the mid 90s; short and sweet. Though, this was also a big drawback when SEGA tried porting all their arcade games to their consoles, because while arcades usually detered you from playing games simply because you'd waste money, the console ports would eventually bore you since their gameplay wasn't as extensive as games designed to be played at home. The Club is just that, seemingly fun but lacks any lasting replay value. Though, as a $20-some title, it's not that bad.
For those that don't know, The Club is a 3rd person shooter in which the character is put in a number of scenerios in which the main objective is to score whore. Killing an enemy increases your point multiplier and not killing an enemy in a given time depletes the score multiplier. Each stage of the tournament mode puts you in a number of environment with several stages per environment. Besides the survival mode, in which your character is confined to a certain area while you try to run out the clock while bad guys try to kill you, all the other modes are variants on navigating a maze to a goal. Besides tournament mode, other single stage modes exist and a stage playlist can also be created, which allows players to customize which weapons they want to take into each stage. These modes are just minor things to extend the replay value by no substantial time. There does happen to be a great deal of variety with guns, but unfortunately the gameplay is not allow for the player to second guess what they're carrying at any given time to make gun swapping essential at all; I myself basically used whatever gun I started out with in any stage until that ran out of ammo and switched to a sidearm if that ever happend. Though, unlocked guns are useful when you can customize your stage playlists, because (again) it's at that point you can chose which weapons to start a stage with.
An online multiplayer is also provided and by design it wouldn't be that bad... except for the fact that nobody else plays the online multiplayer. Part of the reason for this (I assume) is that nobody wanted to buy this game at its original $60 price. Had this game launched at $20 then maybe more people would have picked this up at release, tried the online multiplayer more, and may still be playing 'til this day.
X360 achievement whores may get an easy 200 or 300 points out of this, but the rest are nearly impossible to get as one needs to earn them over the XBL multiplayer, and like I said before nobody plays the online multiplayer. Only the biggest achievement whores would attempt to get the perfect 1000 points, probably by going to the game forums and getting a group to meet up while they take turns doing melee deaths on each other for achievements, and working together to meet each others' achievement conditions, including seemingly the hardest achievement which is earning 10,001 multiplayer kills (which could take forever). Though, don't worry about the achievements like scoring on the top 5000 on the leadership boards, as not enough people have cared enough to do so and in no time I accidently did so without really trying.
Lastly, I must say this game has even less story than any Street Fighter video game. There's a basic obvious story which I guess you could figure out on your own where a number of guys belong to some big snuff, human hunting club in which they risk their own life for the thrill of killing for points... and that's about it. You can pick from a group of 8 characters (2 to be unlocked), but it doesn't effect the game in the least (though each player is supposed to have a different set of stats).
Basically, The Club is like an $10 XBLA that couldn't meet the 250MB threshhold for being allowed on the XBLA store, so instead they put it on disc and increased the price significantly. Had this been a downloadable game it would have probably had more success. I attribute the biggest fault to this game on marketing, not design, and the fact that SEGA limited its potential patrons for this game on the price alone really effected the multiplayer feature which could have extended the life of this game a lot futher.
And for the last superficial details, I must add that the game looks and plays great. There's no bugs that I noticed that'd ruin anything. The graphics and level design are really good. The game's framerate is consistantly fast and never dips. The action is fast paced and keeps you on your toes. And it's really fun until it gets old, that's the only drawback... but soon it'll be a cheap bargain bin game, and when it seems cheap enough to be a comparably priced to a rental I'd suggest just getting it, because it'll at least be fun for a little while.