Show Some Love For The Club

As if you needed another reason to lock and load, The Club debuts on the Xbox 360 with a bang!

Just when you think there's no way to make men shooting guns at each other feel new again, Bizarre Creations conjures up The Club, a sick new blend of elements that makes your trigger finger twitch uncontrollably.

Cruel Cabal

If you're looking for a riveting story, skill progression, or a final confrontation with a larger-than-life villain from The Club, you're pretty much out of luck. What little narrative there is resembles that of a fighting game. Basically, it goes down like this: A wealthy group of powerful figures grew bored with what passes for modern bloodsport, and turned their influence toward nurturing an underground club that replaces knuckles and judges with live rounds and grenades. Eight balanced fighters, each with varying attributes, are plucked from their everyday lives and thrust into the most dangerous game any will ever play. Participation is compulsory, and breaking what few rules there are will cause the micro-explosives circulating in their blood to detonate.

A touch of back-story and a short ending video for each are as close as you get to digging into the psyches of intriguing characters like Detective Renwick and the mysterious Nemo. In most other games, such a lack of context might make the attached gameplay feel at least vaguely hollow; The Club, however, is most decidedly not like most games.

Death Race

If you stripped Marcus Fenix of his armor, force-fed him enough amphetamines to kill an Angus bull, and told him to quit hiding all the time, you'd be able to approximate the blistering experience that The Club offers its protagonists. Each of the detailed and somewhat deformable environments are split into six courses, and there are seventeen weapons at scattered about for your use; everything from shotguns and pistols to assault rifles and a rocket launcher are present and it all helps make the levels feel like a high-octane shooting gallery where timed reloads and ricocheting bullets are the law of the land.

The overall experience also begins to mimic a racing game in that sheer speed is absolutely mandatory for survival, whether you're taking laps on a predetermined route, or tearing toward the heavily guarded finish line. The reason for this is the scoring system that drives every encounter. Rather than simply chalking up frags, every kill is rated based on shot placement, distance, fancy footwork, and more. That figure gets multiplied by your current combination count, which you add to by racking up kills before your killbar meter bleeds out.

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