The Club
Preview
So you want to shoot me? Well join The Club
by Keaton Arksey
previewed on PC
The first rule of the Club is that if you forget cookies, you’ll be shot... At least, that’s what I think the first rule is.
A bizarre club
Bizarre Creations, developer of the Project Gotham Racing series and the mega-popular Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved has branched off into different genres. One of the games they are working on is a Third Person Shooter called The Club.
The Club is an organization that recruits people to become something akin to modern-day gladiators. They compete in a death match type environment where the law is kill or be killed. The Club is run by the high rollers of society; movie stars, billionaires, politicians, dictators, businessmen and drug dealers. These people are all linked together by their lust for blood.
Mixing and blending
It has long been a popular choice of developers to mix existing genres into one, but The Club pushes this beyond anything we have ever seen. The game takes elements of beat-'em-ups, racing games and shooters and throws them in a blender. What comes out is something truly unique and sure to bring out the competitive side in many gamers.
As a result, it is incredibly hard to define how The Club plays. Playing the game feels a tad arcade-like; Shoot fast, run hard and don’t bother hiding behind cover, it will get you nowhere. In some ways the game is similar to the Devil May Cry series. It has the same viewpoint and it rewards the player for stringing together multiple kills. A multiplier appears and goes up depending on the enemy type and shooting distance. As the multiplier goes up, the time you are given between kills is lowered and you will have to dispatch enemies ever quicker if you are aiming for a top score.
Strength of character
Upon starting the game, you are given the choice of 8 characters, all with different backgrounds such as Dragov, an escaped Russian prisoner, or Seager, an extreme sports junkie who just so happens to hail from Canada. They all have different stats in the areas such as speed, strength and stamina. These stats drastically change how the game is played. Do you sacrifice strength to possibly run through the level faster? Or should you go with fire power and blow through the competition?
While the screenshots might not show it, the game features a diverse amount of locations to fight in. All levels share the theme of abandonment, with The Club coming in and taking things over. Areas include a prison, a cruise liner, a war torn city, and an abandoned steel plant. While on the topic of variety, the game features a vast variety of guns with different types of Pistols, Sub-Machine guns, Sniper Rifles, and Rocket Propelled Grenades. Don’t worry about who you are going to shoot though, as enemy types include Pistol guy, Sniper guy, and Rifle guy (original names, aren’t they?).
Heart rate
The single player mode, aptly named Tournament mode, revolves around your chosen character traveling the globe and completing challenges. Depending on the difficulty, the challenges and their requirements get tougher. A Gunplay mode is included, where you can take weapons and levels you have unlocked through the Tournament mode and make a playlist of levels that you can save and play again and again trying to improve your score.
But what happens if you don’t like shooting nameless, faceless computer controlled bots? The fun starts when you go online and compete against your friends. If you win you can meet them at the water cooler the next day and laugh in their face. If you lose, you may want to avoid the cooler and try again that evening. The Club has got your back offering a plethora of game modes. Kill Match (Deathmatch), Team Kill Match (Team Deathmatch), Score Match (uses the combo system from the single player campaigns in a quest to reach your point quota) and a mysterious mode called Hunter Hunted. Each can be played with up to 16 people online.
The graphics in the game look great, with character designs being creative and animations such as jumping over rails and barreling through doors. With a variety of characters all from different backgrounds, an intriguing mix of shooter and racing game mechanics and a gruesome online multiplayer, The Club seems set to increase your heart rate when it launches in the first quarter of next year.
