The number 2,983,112 might not mean anything to you, but to us it’s very important right now. For this number is, at the time of writing, Play’s highest score on any level in The Club. So far. But no doubt it won’t be long before it falls. The 3 million mark is but a hair’s-breadth away, and we won’t stop there either. We think 5 million is attainable. They say it can’t be done, but we know it can; we can see it in our mind’s eye – every target, every shot, every turn, every dash, every roll. It’s just a matter of getting everything right in one perfect run.

If you don’t really understand what we’re going on about, and can’t comprehend the importance of 2,983,112, you’re probably not going to like The Club. Where the last decade or so has seen a shift towards games that deliver stories, drama and action for their own sakes, The Club is driven by an older, but no less relevant, set of priorities. It’s gaming for gaming’s sake, where you’re playing to play well, not just to play through. As such it has barely no story, a setting that doesn’t really make any sense, and pretty minimal production values. The intro movies might – in a very vague, roundabout sort of way – tell you that you’ve been recruited against your will to compete in an illegal, underground blood sport by a secret, elite criminal organisation, and the only way to escape is to win… but they ain’t fooling anyone. The Club is about shooting things for points. Nothing more, nothing less. If you want drama, cinematics and an engaging narrative, look elsewhere.

However, if you want Project Gotham Racing, but with shooting instead of racing (‘Project Gotham Shooting’, if you will) then this is very much ‘The Club’ for you. If you’re a resolute Sony loyalist then you may have seen nothing more of PGR than the image of PGR 3 Sony once accidentally used to promote a Gran Turismo HD trailer. In which case, you might not know that the unique spin it provides on the racing-game formula is that it’s not just about racing as fast as possible, but also as stylishly as possible. Various moves such as powerslides, big air, drafting, clean sections and such, can be strung together into combos, which earn you points or, as they’re known in PGR, Kudos. It’s a bit of a weird system to employ in a racing game, seeing as lap records provide an arguably more accurate measure of skill anyway but, as The Club proves, this kind of system fits extremely well into a shooter.
There are four event types in The Club. Each has different completion requirements, but the scoring system remains the same across them all, so we’d better explain how that works. Each kill earns you two things. First, a number of points. Exactly how many depends on how far from the target you are (the further the better), but it also takes into account what kind of enemy you killed and whether or not your kill was fancy in some way (head shots, ricochets, combining your kill with rolls, kicking doors open and so on). That number of points is then multiplied by whatever your current multiplier happens to be, which brings us onto the second thing that each kill earns you: +1 to your multiplier. So the more kills you get, the higher your multiplier goes and the more points you get for each kill. The clever bit is that the higher your combo goes, the less time you’re allowed to get another kill before it starts ‘bleeding’, which is Club-speak for dropping rapidly back down to zero. No matter how well you play, it’s always piling pressure on you to play better, and there’s always room for improvement. Not only does this simple but effective dynamic make for an extremely well-balanced and fair-scoring system, it also has considerable impact on the way you have to play the game, adding a great deal of depth to what would otherwise be a pretty straightforward run- ‘n’-gun affair.

Shooters in which the only real aim is to stay alive to the end often end up being more about evasion and self-preservation than shooting, but not so The Club. Caution is penalised, with a confident, trigger-happy action-hero approach, combined with careful planning and strategy, always reaping the best results.

Whenever a run through of one of The Club’s 49 ultra-compact levels goes exactly as planned you’ll feel like a super-cool, double-hard bastard, and have the new high score to prove it, but of course, more often than not something goes wrong. Usually it’s your own fault, but sometimes the controls, which don’t always allow for the kind of precision and slickness that the game demands, are to blame. This, with its sparse presentation, does dampen The Club’s spirits a little, and will put off those looking for something more polished. But we’d urge everyone to give it a shot as there’s an excellent game lurking just beneath The Club’s slightly rough exterior.

Gavin Mackenzie