The Club (video game)

The Club is a third-person shooter video game developed by Bizarre Creations and published by Sega. The story of the game centres on The Club, an underground blood sport controlled by a wealthy elite who place their bets on who will survive the gladiatorial-style combat.[1]

The Club
British cover art
Developer(s)Bizarre Creations
Publisher(s)Sega
Composer(s)Richard Jacques
Chris Chudley
Jesper Kyd
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows
PlayStation 3
Xbox 360
Release
  • AU: February 7, 2008
  • EU: February 8, 2008
  • NA: February 19, 2008
Genre(s)Third-person shooter
Mode(s)Single-player, multiplayer

Plot

The player chooses from a roster of characters who are forced to compete in The Club, a modern form of gladiatorial combat. There are 8 characters to choose from: Renwick, Dragov, Nemo, Seager, Adjo, Kuro, Finn, and Killen.

Gameplay

The Club is played from a third-person perspective. The player must make their way through a level as quickly as possible, or defend one location and survive attacks from respawning enemies for a set amount of time. Gameplay is centred on a score mechanic where each kill acts as a bonus multiplier. Various kill methods, such as ricochets, head shots, and long range shots earn extra points. After each kill, the player has several seconds to get another kill before the bonus multiplier starts to reduce. This interval also reduces the higher the multiplier gets. Icons are scattered throughout each level, offering bonuses. Weapons, ammunition and health are present but the player is not rewarded for picking them up. The Club incorporates elements from racing video games, including time attack events.

Multiplayer

The game includes eight multiplayer modes, with online leaderboards to compare scores. Online games can feature up to seven opponents on-line, or four-player local split screen.

Development

The lead designer of the game was Matt Cavanagh who described the title as "a racing game with guns." At first the game was literally a shooting gallery with limited AI. After 6 months of development a new prototype was created with an emphasis on scoring rather than narrative. The gameplay was designed before any setting and back story was created. Many publishers declined to take on the title before Sega chose to back it.[2]

The title was released globally on February 8, 2008. The demo was added to the PlayStation Network in the EU region on 27 December 2007, Xbox Live on the 23 January 2008, and on the North American PlayStation Network on the January 24, 2008. Composer Richard Jacques wrote the score for the single player levels, Chris Chudley from Audioantics wrote the score for the multiplayer levels, while Jesper Kyd scored the main theme.

Reception
Reception
Aggregate scores
AggregatorScore
GameRankings77.13%[3]
Metacritic76%[4]
Review scores
PublicationScore
Eurogamer8/10
G4[5]
Game Informer8.8/10
GamePro
GameSpot7/10[6]
GameTrailers7.3/10[7]
IGN6.9/10
OXM (US)8/10[8]
VideoGamer.com9/10

The Club received positive reviews. Eurogamer's Tom Bramwell complimented it as "a shooter that turns tired genre conventions around with a bullet to the shoulder", but stated that it would be "divisive" due to the game's run and gun mentality, which went against the contemporary trend towards tactical shooters. Bramwell pointed out that The Club "does for the third-person shooter what no one else has even bothered trying to do: moving it closer to the 2D shoot-'em-ups of old in a manner that appeals anew."[9]

Andrew Reiner, writing for Game Informer, mentioned Bizarre Creations' background and its influence on The Club. " The speed-first mentality of the racing genre is cleverly infused into the framework of a run-and-gun shooter...And to truly capture the racing atmosphere, some of the levels have players running laps in specific environments...It may sound odd, but the racing shooter formula works amazingly well." Reiner called The Club "a nice change of pace, and hopefully the beginning of a new genre."[10]

GamePro reviewer Cameron Lewis wrote "What might be most impressive about The Club is that despite the many disparate elements that it cherry-picks from genres as diverse as racing, skateboarding, and first-person shooters, the whole never bears the disjointed feel of a Frankenstein creation."[11]

IGN reviewer Alec Meer stated that the scoring system "will prove an immediate turn-off for some." and went on to blame the "fairly dismal" graphics for putting potential players off, saying "It's about how it plays, not how it looks. But if it looked better, more people would want to play it." He praised the gameplay as "it does the job it sets out to do very well." but said the game only had "specialist appeal."[12]

VideoGamer.com's Tom Orry praised The Club as "a game packed full of style, brimming with replay value and demanding of the most skilful players around. This is an arcade shooter like you've never seen before...The Club is one of the finest examples of bringing the essence of arcade gaming to modern consoles."[13]

Edge called The Club "a heavily structured and well-considered score-attack game.", granting it 7/10.[14]

gollark: Idea for an instruction set: x86-64 MOV, but no other instructions.
gollark: I guess so. ARM SoCs for phones already have the high/low-powered cores dichotomy.
gollark: I think what would be pretty good is having CPUs with a few high-single-thread-perf cores, like we have now, some lower-powered cores, and a lot of parallel processing ones (like GPUs).
gollark: ARM is improving *really* fast.
gollark: I mean, RISC-V is kind of good but I think more complex instructions might actually be a good idea, to keep the CPU execution bits happy and fed with stuff to do.

References
  1. A. Fitch, Tyler, and Gord, "The Club: Stick with the guest pass," Electronic Gaming Monthly 226 (March 2008): 83.
  2. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-14-the-club-retrospective
  3. "The Club for Xbox 360". GameRankings. 2008-02-19. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
  4. "The Club for Xbox 360 Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
  5. Little_Goten (2013-03-18). "The Club for Xbox 360". G4tv. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
  6. "Xbox 360, Xbox 360 Games - GameSpot". Uk.gamespot.com. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
  7. "The Club Review". GameTrailers. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
  8. "Review: The Club - Total Xbox.com". Oxm.co.uk. 2008-02-03. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
  9. Bramwell, Tom (2008-02-05). "The Club Review • Page 1 •". Eurogamer.net. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
  10. "Game Informer Online". Web.archive.org. Archived from the original on February 28, 2008. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
  11. Lewis, Cameron (2010-02-12). "The Club Review from GamePro". Web.archive.org. Archived from the original on February 12, 2010. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
  12. "The Club UK Review - IGN". Uk.xbox360.ign.com. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
  13. Orry, Tom (2008-02-06). "The Club Review for Xbox 360". VideoGamer.com. Retrieved 2014-05-19.
  14. Feb 2008, p.88
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