The Club Preview
Shooters, shooters, shooters. We get an awful lot of shooters on the Xbox 360, a flood of them in fact. Apparently you Americans love your guns. Whatever the case, there’s a lot of shooters and more on the way. Of course, many of them will get swept under the rug of mediocrity, barely registering a blip on gamers’ radars. Even blood thirsty maniacs will grow tired of the same ol’ drudgery game-in and game-out.
The Club doesn’t appear to be a half-assed me-too third person shooter, so it has at least that going for it. It strays from the narrative driven level-by-level structure that is common place these days, and it wants you to notice this. In an unusual twist, it’s grabbing for attention not by doing something brand-spanking new, but making what was old new again.
Bizarre Creations, best known for the Project Gotham Racing series, is responsible for this interest piquing hybrid of arcade mentality and contemporary sensibilities. One might wonder what the heck Bizarre is doing making a shooter – after the final product ships we may be thinking the same thing still. But it appears as though they might be on to something.
The Club, from what I can gather, is a death-sport for the fire-arms inclined. A bunch of questionable characters are invited – forcibly so, it would seem – to run through courses blowing away random thugs in an effort to score the most points. This is where the game departs from any basis in reality and steers directly towards gaming; it’s about context, not bullet-proof logic.
There are eight characters, each with their own back-story and unique strengths and weaknesses in speed, strength, and stamina. There are an equal amount of maps through which the player can wreak havoc. Then there are multiple challenges and play modes for each map thus extending longevity and providing, one would hope, some measure of variety. Only two modes are present in the demo: Time Attack and Speed Run.
Time Attack sets up a course within the maps that is repeated three times over. Survive, score lots of points, complete the laps, and then race to the finish. Along the way you’ll have to pick up time extenders; if the time runs out, it’s game over. Speed Run has no time limit, but the faster you get through the map, the better. But speed isn’t necessarily the defining pressuring factor, so much as a piece of the puzzle. Getting as many kills as stylistically, as quickly, and thoroughly as possible to rack up the highest point score is paramount.
The very simple premise of shooting enemies to score points is thankfully fleshed out with a surprising amount of depth. Score multipliers, fancy maneuvers, carefully hidden targets, secret areas, accuracy, shot placement and more, reward players with greater point gains and leave spacious amounts of gameplay to grow into.
Score multipliers stack up with each consecutive kill without letting the multiplier timer run out. A forward roll followed with a head shot will garner you many more points than winging someone in the leg. Running from enemy to enemy will decrease the amount of time between multipliers and total time to completion. Once completed, various other statistics like accuracy and remaining health are tallied up thus increasing the score the better you performed.
On top of this, map variety and structure should afford the game some mild exploration elements. Judging from the Prison Cells map included in the demo, there appears to be some measure of multiple paths and hidden nooks and crannies giving the player his fair share of options with regard to how he wants to tackle things. The maps also encourage the player to know them inside and out in order to improve scores and times.
So far, things are looking up for The Club as repeated play reveals all of the aforementioned nuances of gameplay gel well together and do indeed push the player along to do better; it proves to be at least a mildly addictive formula. It probably won’t come as a surprise that the game feels like a marriage between a racing game and traditional shooter, what with all the running and mastering the “corners”, so to speak, by taking out your enemies and simply needing to know the in-and-outs of the course.
There is, however, significant cause for concern in a few significant areas. For one, the demo lacks the kind of punch you’d hope from a shooter. I expected a lot better from The Club, since it is so solely focused on nothing but shooting. Right now none of the weapons feel even remotely powerful and are oddly mute as far as guns go. Another concern is with the graphics which, while great looking in stills, are somewhat bland and prone to blurriness in motion. If fact, the enemy design practically bleeds into the scenery making them somewhat difficult to identify. And lastly, the AI is completely disinteresting.
The Club is a game that will likely appeal greatly to those with a strong competitive streak. With full Xbox Live multiplayer in the final build, and given the amount of overly aggressive tools I run into on Xbox Live, The Club might end up being a big hit. With some polish in the fundamental gunplay elements, The Club could certainly be worth your time and money. At the very least, it should offer a refreshingly different take on the third person shooter.
The Club is scheduled to release February 19, 2008.
peachey @ January 25, 2008