The guys at Bizarre Creations are masters of gaming innovation. When the first Project Gotham Racing game was released upon the world, it was an amazing change in the world of racing sims. Instead of going the route of Sony with their IP of Gran Turismo, which is all substance over style, they made a game that was all killer no filler. Races were short, and involved score rather than time, and all the while were gorgeous!

This review, however, has nothing to do with Project Gotham Racing, moreover the innovative nature of the company. The same magic that was brought about with Geometry Wars has now been weaved into the shooter genre and has made me a very happy nerd. Hit the jump to see the how and why I love this game.

Much like the Twisted Metal series, the game revolves around a competition where each character has his own reasons to be in The Club, whether they be voluntary participants like Seager (an extreme sports nut) and Nemo (a psychotic sociopath who enjoys killing), or compulsory members who have personal stakes in the competition such as Finn (who has life threatening gambling debt) and Killen (who has his daughter’s life on the line). Beyond the cut-scene you are treated to at the end of the game for whatever player you choose, there really is no story, which adds to that ‘all killer’ aspect of the game.

The premise behind the game is for you to fight your way through each level and try to get the maximum score you possibly can by having stylized kills, head shots, finding hidden skull shots (tiles that have a skulls on them hidden throughout the level), killing with your last bullet, or simply making a long shot. Each time you make a kill, there is a score displayed above the head of your victim. Along with getting your score raised, your score multiplier is increased by one and the key to winning at The Club is to manage and keep the bonus multiplier above the double digits. The main problem with this is the higher up your multiplier goes, the quicker it falls, each multiplier has its own time limit that gets progressively shorter the higher the number is. While this gameplay might be annoying to some, to me it smacks of old-school video games where score and skill are king.

Each stage of The Club is centered around a grand-prix style points aggregation (think Super Mario Kart). When you get the top score you are awarded the maximum number of points which carries onto the next round, and so on and so forth until you either the winner or the loser of the tournament and the next venue is unlocked. Each venue has a difficulty setting which ultimately sets how hard your opponents will come after you and how difficult it will be to reach the score needed to claim victory. I had to play on the easiest setting for most of the game due to how quickly the game kicked my ass.

The gameplay is fairly solid, and it has to be. When you play a FPS or a TPS the controls can be forgiven since you have the entire game to get used to it. With The Club, you get maybe 2 to 3 minutes per stage to accomplish your goals of the highest score. While the control scheme took some getting used to, ultimately it was rewarding. I can only imagine how much better it would be on the PC with the mouse/keyboard controls.

Each venue that you participate in has five different events all of which are self explanatory; Sprint, Siege, Survivor, Time Attack, and Run the Gauntlet. My favorite of the events is the Time Attack just for the fact that not only do you have to run through a circuit in the level (read that as laps) multiple times, but you also have to make sure you don’t run out of time AND you still have to get the high score to win.

Another gameplay element that the game allows is the Gunplay Mode, which allows you to create your own settings for levels already played and lets you arrange them in ‘playlist’. For example, if you want to play on the Stahwerks level in the Run The Gauntlet mode with easy difficulty and have your starting weapon to be a minigun, you can set it up to be so. That’s right, minigun, this game has a minigun…friggin’ awesome!

Moving onto the graphics, I have to say that I am loving being alive in the High Definition era. Games like these are meant to attack all of the senses much like how Call of Duty 4recently has. All 8 character models are exquisitely designed and rendered, though much like the human race, not varied enough to add any additional wow factor to the game. The stages in the game are amazingly detailed much like anything that Bizarre Creations puts out, my only complaint is that they all tend to be the ‘deserted’ or ‘a bit too grimey and grey’ stereotypical levels. Stereotype or not, they still look fabulous.

Sound is the standard fare for any action/shooter game, but I really enjoyed the realistic sounds of the automatic rifles, shotguns, and pistols. Being the gun nut that I am, I can honestly say that Bizarre is only the second company (EA being the first with Black) to satisfy my lust for gun porn. The music isn’t memorable beyond the introductory movie (which doubles as the game’s installing screen on the PS3 version) so if you’re a PC or 360 user, work on having that custom playlist ready.

Each of the game’s 8 characters have stats that influence their how they handle. Characters with a higher speed help you run through the level when dashing but usually have a lower stamina and characters with high stamina (read that as bullet sponge ability) are typically slower. The characters are varied enough, yet there isn’t too much difference between those two archetypes.

On the other hand, the weapons in the game are greatly varied. There are pistols, uzis, semi-auto sniper rifles, double barrel shotguns, automatic shotguns, sub-machine guns, assault rifles, grenades, miniguns, and the ubiquitous rocket launcher. Each character starts off with a different weapon in single player, while in multiplayer everyone starts with the same nerfed pistol and makes a mad dash to their preferred weapon.

While I’m on the topic of multiplayer, there are 7 game modes that you can play against 7 online opponents or 3 if you’re doing split-screen. The online game modes are as follows:

Score Match - Just like the single player game’s mechanic of combo-ing and racking up kills, except with idiotic AI enemies you get to frag the other players in the hopes of having the high score.

Kill Match - Your typical first to the set number of kills match.

Hunted Killer - The person who gets the first kill becomes the ‘Hunted’ and then gets points for each second where he doesn’t get killed. The person who kills the hunted then becomes the new ‘Hunted’.

Team Capture - This is similar to the Domination game type in Unreal Tournament. Capture objectives by standing at the enemy’s base for 30 seconds or by the longest capture time.

Team Skull Shot - The skull shots, prevalent throughout the game, are now the objectives for you and the enemy team to snipe and or protect, first team to get all 5 wins.

Team Siege - Just like it sounds, both teams are assigned a role. The attackers have unlimited spawns, the defenders have only one life, and the objective is for the attackers to take out the defenders as fast as possible. Once done, the teams switch places and attempt to do the same. The team with the fastest time wins.

Team Kill Match - A deathmatch between teams where the score aggregates for the whole team. The first to the set kill limit is the winner.Multiplayer is fun but will not win awards. For the three matches I played I had a good time, but thought that I would rather be playing Call of Duty 4 or Halo 3on my Xbox.

The multiplayer has fairly small maps and an abundance of weapons to pick up and can get quite frantic, but like any multiplayer game played over the internet, lag can kill the fun quickly. I had one match where I rocketed a guy in the face and the kill counted, but the guy continued to minigun me to death. Hopefully this is one feature that Bizarre will work on remedying.

Overall, I give it a 4/5.

To me, The Club is a fairly average game in a lot of areas, but truly shines where it counts for any true gamer, the gameplay. Like any game that I’ve bought from Bizarre Creations, I’ve been addicted to the scoring aspect that they seem to own the market on. For those of you unsure to whether or not you’ll enjoy this game, give it a rent. For me, this game hearkened back to the glory days of Quake III: Arena. If you’re so inclined, give it a shot! (pardon the pun)

Categories: New Releases, PC, PlayStation 3, Reviews, Screenshots, Sega, Shooter, Xbox 360