The Club™

Join the Club

Play for your life in The Club, Sega's frenetic, mature shooter on PlayStation 3.

For most people an evening out at a club might involve a bit of drinking, a bit of dancing and a taxi home at the end of the night. It probably wouldn't involve frantic firefights, massive explosions and stray grenades flying around like bread rolls in a food fight. That's exactly what happens at Sega's The Club however, where it seems that the only way home is likely to be in a body bag.

Bullet time

The Club is an underground blood sport, run by a wealthy, faceless and sadistic elite who bet on the outcome of gladiatorial-style gunfights between the world's best gunslingers. What this means for you, the player, is a third person run-and-gun shooting game that mixes in elements of the racing genre with the kind of combo meter that you'd expect to find in a Tony Hawk's Pro Skater game. Each kill you make nets you points. Not only that though, it adds to your combo meter, multiplying your point total by a factor of one. Keep making kills and your meter stays topped up, and your score will multiply. Leave too long a gap between kills however, and your combo meter will start to bleed, knocking valuable points off your all-important score.

More points are awarded for stylish kills, long range kills, headshots, kills with your last bullet and many more, and once you get into the swing of things you'll be stringing together massive combos that take you on a killing spree from one side of a level to the other, causing as much mayhem and carnage as is possible. Each level is also packed with metal signs emblazoned with a skull insignia. Hitting one of these Skullshots immediately refills your combo meter, and you'll need to find them all, as well as the hidden secret Skullshots, to maximise your score.

Each tournament has a variety of different game types, as well as the standard Sprint mode. Siege mode, for example, sees your player injected with a micro-explosive that will detonate if you step outside of a chalked-off area for more than five seconds. From this point you have to survive for the time limit while simultaneously taking out as many enemies and scoring as high a combo as possible. There are also more racing-oriented games that require you to complete laps of a level while racking up the points, as well as time attack and survivor modes and once you have completed a tournament you are free to replay any of the events in an attempt to beat your previous best score.

The tournaments all take place in different environments, ranging from prison cells to a steel mill, a war zone, an English country mansion, and even a disused ocean liner. Each level looks gorgeous, with multiple paths for  you to take, and the key to success in The Club lies in discovering the best routes to take to maximise your combo meter and get your score as high as possible.

The usual suspects

There are eight playable characters to choose from, with each character having their own strengths and weaknesses in the categories of speed, strength and stamina. The roster is a colourful one, and all the characters have their own distinct personality, weapons preferences and playing feel. The motley crew includes Dragov, an escaped prisoner from Russia, Renwick, a former New York police officer, Finn, an American gambler with life-threatening debts, Seager, an extreme sports junkie from Canada, Kuro, a Japanese double agent posing as a Triad assassin, Killen, an Australian legend in The Club, Adjo, a Nigerian man with a mysterious and violent past, and Nemo, a masked psychopath from England. The character you pick will determine your style of play, and becoming proficient with a particular character will help a great deal in becoming a Club winner.

Multiplayer options are plentiful, with full split-screen and online play in deathmatch and team modes, along with the ability to play the Siege mode online, with one team constantly assaulting the other until one luckless player is left alive to try and hold back the advancing hordes. There are also online leaderboards of the world's best scores for you to challenge, giving you another incentive to go back and replay the earlier levels for even bigger scores.

The Club is a fast-paced, highly addictive shooter that will have you coming back time and time again to try and beat your best scores. The online modes, unlockable characters and customisable Gunplay playlists of favourite levels and weapons all add longevity to an already brilliant single player experience. Make no mistake, this is one club you'll definitely want to be a member of.