The Ace of Clubs

The Club is short. The Club is repetitive. The Club requires learning, planning and memorisation to succeed on its harder difficulties.

So go the most frequent criticisms that have been levelled at The Club, and they’re true enough. Yet there was a time when most shooters (of all sub-genres) followed that formula, and here’s the thing; such relics hold significantly more replay value than today’s typical story-driven shooters! That’s because their gameplay was instantly accessible, uninterrupted, perfectly refined, and testing that gameplay under pre-determined parameters was a fair and measured way of judging both your improvement and skill in relation to others. Essentially they were games first, entertainment second, and so is The Club.

That’s not to say that The Club has nothing to offer the casual gamer. 30 minutes of play here or there is a thrill for anyone, and though there are only 4 different difficulty settings (Beginner, Reckless, Insane and Real, which is only unlocked after beating the game) the variety of challenge is perfect.

So what is The Club about? It’s a secret global organisation of sick rich and powerful people who coerce victims to take part in their bloodsports - basically an excuse to shoot and kill lots of people at various elaborate venues. The plot is extremely unobtrusive. Besides 15-second throwaway endings that make Street Fighter’s post-game sequences look like literary masterpieces, the only narrative interventions are from the eerie and well-voiced Club Secretary during (skippable) introductions to each Arena or event type. It’s really all there as a basic outline and to create just a flavour of character and context, which it does at minimal expense of the player’s valuable time. This is a game that hates to keep players from the action and feels as though it resents its own mediocre loadtimes, during which multiple gameplay tips are available.

And what is that gameplay like? Well it’s a 3rd person shooter with tight and well-mapped controls.