The Club

Overall, The Club represents a flawed, but generally enjoyable slice of hardcore gaming. The fast-paced shooting mechanics and old school ideas make for some really intense, exciting, and just plain fun moments, but the squiffy controls and lack of true online score competition prevent The Club from reaching its true potential.

If you get into The Club, you'll find an arcade shooter with a twist that can be played obsessively in search of high scores. I didn't find the hook all that appealing and felt left with a glorified shooting gallery. The idea is sound. There just isn't much to be excited about in the final product.

The game’s still fun online, but it also starts feeling dated, with weapon and spawn camping ripped straight from 1993. The Club, on a whole, would have been a triple-A game back at the dawn of the PlayStation and N64 era. In 2008 its charms are still apparent and addictive but a little too familiar.

A divisive curio then. The endless pursuit of perfection will appeal to some; others will gripe about the lack of purpose. Were this a £10 game that cropped up on Steam, we'd probably go briefly nuts for it, but The Club's full-price membership fee is too much for the few facilities inside.

As a whole, The Club's single-player content just about works as an old-fashioned shooter that isn't shy about its old-school roots, but it suffers from a lack of variation in its level, weapon, and character design. It's still good enough to keep you coming back to try to beat that last high score in a manner that may not be familiar to anyone under the age of about 25, and for that the game deserves praise despite its multiplayer shortcomings.

The Club is a fresh take on the shooter. It has a core concept that is truly engaging; it just feels as if it needs to be fleshed out a bit more. The single player Tournament mode is an absolute blast that will keep you occupied for a few hours. Unfortunately, the multiplayer features, though varied, are poorly executed. That means there isn't a whole lot of replay-ability in the title. After the first few days with the game, you'll soon grow tired of it.