Club flub

by ERIK LEIJON

On paper, The Club (PS3, X360, PC/Sega, Bizarre) has all the makings of a terrific shooter bathed in blood. Developed by Project Gotham Racing’s Bizarre Creations, The Club was intended to be the Burnout of action-shooters. Instead of expecting players to finish every level simply to advance the storyline, the game dishes out points for killing enemies in timed succession. The storyline, which the game completely ignores save for a few voice-overs from a Vincent Price wannabe, centres around the mysterious Club—an organization that pits psychopaths against each other in a fight to the death for their own amusement. You play as one of the eight unfortunate (although seemingly willing) participants.

Since players are encouraged to kill at a quick and constant pace, every stage is a short burst of action requiring lightning quick reflexes and keen observational skills. Sadly, after a few simplistic missions it becomes evident Bizarre couldn’t put all the ambitious pieces together, resulting in a club about as fearsome as your local Kiwanis chapter.

The Club is conceptually bold, featuring a unique combo scoring system and kill metre. If you kill an enemy or shoot a skull target, the multiplier on your metre increases by one. In the few seconds that follow, you have to kill another character or hit another target to increase the metre by another point. The purpose is to get the kill multiplier into the double-digits for massive high-scores. The levels are linear and lacking in variation but I suppose the point is to remember where the enemies and bonuses are so players can hone their skills through repeated plays.

The Club can be addictive—but with questionable execution, no amount of custom editors or multiplayer modes could hide the game’s glaring weaknesses. The main problem is there just isn’t enough a player can do to string combos together beyond two methods: shooting a person or shooting a target. There are extra bonuses for headshots, bullet ricochets and theatrical evasions, but the only way to keep the combo metre full is to run quickly and shoot every moving target without flair.

The need to learn the expert skills is largely invalidated because you’re too busy searching frantically for more bad guys to kill. Other games that pioneered stringing actions together as a main gameplay device (the aforementioned Burnout 3 and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater) succeeded because of the seemingly endless variety in the environments and tools at one’s disposal. Here, the different characters and weapons play exactly the same.

The single-player tournament mode and its bare bones presentation does little to immerse gamers in the world of The Club. The tournament repeats each map six or seven times in a row, with only minor changes for each mission. For instance, some missions will give you a time limit, or some will not allow you to leave a particular space outlined by chalk.

Once you complete the first map, you’ve seen all the game has to offer in terms of gameplay. The collision detection when up close is problematic as well, forcing you to run up and do melee attacks as opposed to backing up and blowing a hole through your enemy’s chest.

The game might be worth a rental for those obsessed with getting high scores. Even if you fall into that category, though, The Club doesn’t have the immaculately designed levels or the variation required for a game that demands perfection from its audience.

Calm waters

Endless Ocean (Wii/Nintendo, Arika) is an underwater exploration title that would be more educational if a) the descriptions of the various marine life were more than just a few uninformative sentences, largely describing the fictitious waters they live in, and b) the graphics weren’t so horrifically jagged and rough looking.

On the plus side, Kiwi popera singer Hayley Westenra’s vocal stylings coupled with ocean sounds really mellows you out after messing up a x20 multiplier in The Club.