Wanna step up your game up in third person shooters? Master The Club and you'll be a pro at them!
The Club is very interesting and different to say the least. Its a tournament style TPS that offers a variety of offline and online modes to play in. Seeing how I played this 4 years after its release, the online MP was pretty much dead, so I can only review my offline experience. The main single player campaign, "Tournament" allows you to choose up to 8 different combantants (2 of which have to be unlocked) to participate in 8 different tournaments (maps) with 6 parts each (so 48 events in all). Its all really about maintaining your score multiplier. You not only gain more points for the amount of people you kill in a row but also in the manner in which you kill them. For example, 5 + headshots in a row will will greatly impact the amount of points you rake in. The down side to this is, of course you can lose your score multiplier due to a "bleeding effect"...meaning you have a limited amount of time to make your next kill before you lose it. The higher your kill count, the more points you rake in per kill but the faster your multiplier bleeds. You don't automatically lose all your kill bonuses if you don't make another fast enough, your multiplier count just starts to reduce by 1 per second once the bleeding starts. Also, the game releases an often time hard to see but easy to kill "bonus enemy" to kill which grants you an even more ridiculous amount of points.
The game is challenging to say the least. As stated before, you never actually battle against the other combantants in the tournaments but against The Club's own army of trigger happy mercs. The enemy A.I. isn't the brightest but that isn't where the challenge comes in. Often times the mere numbers of the enemy swarms in addition to whatever situation the event has placed you in, all while trying to beat the top competitors high score...that's where the difficulty comes in! The game offers 4 different levels of difficulty (the hardest being unlockable), and I personally played the entire game on the moderate difficulty but it could still get pretty difficult at times. Not difficult to stay alive but rather difficult to maintain my score multiplier to place 1st or even in the top 3 in an event. I settled for getting 2nd in the majority of the tournaments due to how difficult it is to place 1st. The trick to even getting in the top 3 is choosing the right competitor. Each has their own unique set of stats that are better suited for some maps over others. So unleass, you're just really good at this game, its best to switch characters between tournaments. Even though I did like this, I think that the developers could have given each character their own unique special ability (s) to better personalize the feel of each playthrough of a different competitor.
Even though each map has 6 different events to clear, there are really on 4 different even types. One were you just have to score the maximum amount of points possible before reaching the exit; another where you have survive an endless swarm of enemies for a limited amount of time while aiming to beat the high score; another where you have to find the exit in a limited amount of time while trying to get the high score; and lastly, a time attack style event where you have to run through the level in laps and collect clocks and shoot enemies to add to the time...while trying get the high score. It sounds a bit redundant but I think The Club did a pretty good job at keeping the experience fresh. The layout of the maps, enemy positioning, and the recommended strategy of using different combantants, keeps the game from going stale. Its also pretty rewarding. Shooting a certain number emblems per event or placing high enough (in events and tournaments) will unlock better guns to use and more music play. Someone could honestly use this game as "training" to better their TPS skills. It sticks you in so many common situations in the genre where (maybe besides boss battles) if you master The Club on the maximum difficulty, there shouldn't be too many third person shooters that will give you problems.
Plot wise...yeah the game is weak. At first, I kind of gave it the benefit of the doubt that it was still release fairly early in this gen's lifecycle but I've played tournament style shooters from previous generations that had better storytelling than The Club. The character endings, while moderately entertaining, they're way too brief and feel rushed. Besides the game's intro video and the very small written summary next to each combantant on the character select screen, The Club does little to nothing build a story around the characters or The Club itself. The Club is basically an underground tournament where the world's most dangerous killers come (some of their own free will and others not) and fight through various scererios. Those who survive are granted a gift of their choice if desired. Sound familiar? An interesting but unoriginal premise yet it still could have been good if more time went into its development. The visuals were actually pretty good for a game released earlier on this gen and the sound was great...music and gunfire alike. The only other problem that I had is with the aiming. The game does a good job when it comes with the precision of killing far away enemies but oddly, it becomes difficult to kill enemies at point blank range. I can't tell you the amount of times where I've been close enough to an enemy to poke them and literatly emptied a clip into them to no avail! This issue didn't happen frequently but enough for it to annoy me.
My Breakdown:
What's Good:
- Creative approach
- Challenging
- Great visuals and character models
- Nice arsenal of guns
- Realistic sounds and decent music
- Manages to keep the gameplay fresh and the length of the game was just right
- Rewarding
- Excellent replay value
What's Not-So-Good:
- Occassionally not being able to kill enemies at point blank range
- No boss scenerios
- ^ Each tournament could have made you face off against another combantant as the main event
- Each character could have been given a unique ability (s)
What's Bad:
- Poor character development
- Bad storytelling
In all, The Club is the essence of a mindless shooter which brings its own brand of challenge to the table. If you can get pass a few of its imperfections, this can become a fun and addictive good time!