
	Platform Playstation 3 Genre Action Publisher Sega Developer Bizarre Creations ESRB M (Mature) Released Q1 2008

- Fast gameplay - Easy to just pickup and play if you only have a few minutes - Combo meter is a cool idea

- You won’t find many people playing online - Overall look is kind of bland - Very repetitive

Review: Dark Sector (360) Review: Army of Two (360) Review: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (PS3)
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The Club

Score: 7.0 / 10

The premise of The Club is simple. Characters shoot each other with a similar goal in mind: survival. People are set on a stage and are forced to fight one another so wealthy men can make bets on who is going to make it out alive. It reminds me of one of my favorite movies, Battle Royale, where multiple characters are forced to kill each other with only one survivor in the end. If you’re familiar with Battle Royale or The Running Man, then you have a good general idea of what The Club is all about. Just don’t expect to see as much of a story in The Club.

The Tournament is the main mode in the game and each stage has a certain condition including running to the exit (while trying to survive, of course), surviving under a certain time limit or a combination of the two. There’s even a condition where you actually have to run laps around a stage a certain number of times killing people on the way and collecting little clocks to extend your time. This is pretty much the whole game. It's nothing fancy, but can be quite fun for those looking for just a few minutes of quick pick-up and play type game. I would not recommend it for long sittings as it does get tedious quite fast.

When playing the game, style is very important to obtain a high ranking in the score department. If you roll before shooting somebody for example, you gain more points. If you keep quite a bit of distance between you and your opponent

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while managing to land a headshot, you will get more points than your average kill. There's a combo meter that goes up while killing people and it basically keeps your score higher, but starts to deplete if you do not manage to kill somebody within a certain amount of time. If you find some signs with a skull emblem on a wall, you can shoot those to prevent your

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combo bar from depleting for a short period of time. There are different guns that can be changed on the fly by pushing the left and right directional buttons. Weapons include the handgun, rocket launcher, etc. My favorite weapon would have to be the mini-gun. For more accurate aiming, players can zoom in by holding L2. Speed is essential in The Club and aiming is a slower method to take out your foes, but sometimes very helpful when dealing with distant opponents or enemies dumb enough to stand by explosive barrels.

Since some stages have a time limit, it is important to always be on the move and this is where sprinting comes into play. You can take shortcuts such as hopping over obstacles to save time. Even when there is no timer, there is always the slight feeling of panic and this temporarily helps keep the game exciting. Unfortunately, it does not take long for the excitement to wear off because players will find themselves doing the exact same thing over and over again. It quickly becomes repetitive which is why I mentioned earlier that it is not a good game for long sittings.

There is a split screen multiplayer option (up to 4-players) or players can battle each other online. There are various types of modes to play online such as Kill Match (standard Death-Match), Team Capture (capture the enemy’s base while defending your own at the same time); however, there aren’t enough players that actually play online to try out all the modes. Team Kill Match and Kill Match were the most popular.

Visually, the game has some nice graphics. Character models look good and the stages in particular have some nice realistic looking textures. The downfall is the game’s boring art style. It has a realistic look to it which is cool, but in the end, characters and stages look a little too plain (especially the characters) and I expected a little more from Sega and Bizarre Creations.

I can't say that I would recommend spending your money on The Club if you aren't already an action fan, but if you are just looking for a fast-paced game with lots of shooting you might want to give it a shot.

J’Tonello

(April 29, 2008)