Sega Nerds

The Club demo impressions (Xbox 360)

by Graham on January 8th, 2008

The Club demo was released about 9am GMT this morning, and your two faithful British writers, have been busy trying out the demo, and have written up our demo impressions, just for you. 

Just to note, these impressions are of the demo only, and our opinion of the full game could differ greatly.

Ryan’s impressions:

I went into the demo for The Club with pretty low expectations, As much as I like and trust the guys at Bizarre Creations I wasn’t really ‘feeling’ The Club. The game sounded good on paper, but from trailer, it didn’t look all that impressive to me. But I really wanted this game to be good.

Now that I have finished the demo my mind has changed… slightly. The best thing about the club is that it’s a refreshing take on the third person shooting genre, dodging bullets and staying alive takes a back seat in the club. Where in a normal third person shooter staying alive is pretty much the aim of the game. The Club is much more of an arcade-like experience.

Your main focus is killing enemies at the right time so you can keep your combos going strong. If you’re too slow, and don’t kill enough people in time, you’ll start losing combos and you’ll get less points for each kill. Often you’ll want to restart the level again but the levels are short and restarting isn’t annoying, in fact you will choose to restart, if you know what’s good for you.

The aim of the game is getting the best score possible and that can only be done by keeping your combos chained for as long as possible. You can also raise the points you get from bad guys by pulling off stylish kills such as multi kills, last bullet in the clip kills, head shots and more while of course trying to stay alive, all this is very fun and you’ll end up going back to replay it multiple times to get your score a little higher, I imagine against your mates it would be a blast!

The main problem I have with the game is the style. to me the gritty looking generic western style just doesn’t suit the game play at all, I think they have used the wrong art direction completely. Picture the same game mechanics with a more cartoon-ish look and feel, maybe cell shaded graphics in a bright environment with humorous enemies and over the top level designs.

I also found the characters movements were a bit too sluggish, for example when moving the cross hair around the screen the speed is far to slow for my liking. There is a good chance this changes when you pick one of the other faster characters in the game, which are locked for the demo version but I still feel the game could have been better in this respect. I can’t help imagining how much more awesome it would have been with a Dante style character from Devil May Crywith the same arcadey game mechanics but with Dante’s crazy moves like running along the walls, back flipping over enemies and whipping out a sword for a melee attack when the enemies get to close. Now that would have been a game I’d be all over!

In the end, the idea behind the game is top-notch and a great break from the norm, in fact it’s a fun game to play and I admit I went back and replayed the single level open in the demo, a good number of times to try and improve my score, however just look at the game and you couldn’t tell that it’s so original. It looks bland and ugly and the art direction doesn’t do the game any justice.

The game play can be pretty sluggish at times but it doesn’t ruin the game, how ever again I feel they took the characters in the wrong direction. I’m looking forward to trying out the final game with my mates and seeing who can score the highest points. (P.S It’s me).

Impression left: Interested.

~Ryan~

G’s impressions: 

I think I should start off by saying that The Club is, personally, one of my least anticipated titles from Sega.  I liked the idea behind the game, but after seeing some screens and gameplay footage, I was turned off.

I don’t quite know what it was, but the gameplay looked as though very little skill was involved, combined with some flimsey sounds and questionable visuals.  However, most of the videos shown were early footage, so I can’t really judge the game from them.

But, in a surprising turn of events, after playing Link’s Crossbow Trainingon the Wii, my excitement for The Club grew!  For those that don’t know, Link’s Crossbow has several missions which play very similar to The Club- you run along (freely) in a 3rd person view, shooting enemies and bonuses, trying to rack up a decent combo tally to reach the highest possible score.  The idea and gameplay is very similar to The Club, sans the ‘cool factor.’ After playing this, I realised that The Club could have some great potential.

I’ll skip the story and stuff, not that the demo gives much away, but hopefully, by now, many of you would know roughly what the game is about.  Right let’s get down to it.

Visually, there is nothing wrong per-se with the game.  The game has pretty solid graphics and some good detail, but…. something is missing.  I really do agree with what Ryan mentions above, about how a more cartoony approach to the art direction would have better suited this game.

Control wise, I found the game to be fine.  The controls may feel a little sluggish to some, especially seeing as the idea is to try and rack up kills as quickly as possible.  But for those that feel this, there is always the option adjust looking and aiming speeds in the Options menu.  Also there is a quick turn button, to help ensure you get those baddies in your sights quicker.  So I don’t see why so many people are complaining about this.

Now going on my initial worries about the game, I can happily say the demo has quashed many of them, but not all.  The demo is fun.  I ended up playing through the score challenge about 10-15 times all the 3 different difficulties the demo offers, and I also played a bit on the time attack mode.

It is fun trying to learn the levels and where the bonus and hidden targets are, for extra points.  The time attack mode was basically like a racing game, where you run through a level, doing laps, and picking up time bonuses (like checkpoints in a race), and your kills now extend you time too.  The timed runs were fun, but not really as fun as the scoring mode, because the races need less skill.

The biggest problem I can see with the game, is just how long can the fun really last?  The levels are short and sweet, but there is only a few of them, I can see the game getting boring rather quickly in single player.  Once a player has done as well as they can on a level, they could start to find it frustrating (that they can’t get a perfect score), and the fun could wear off.  I certainly got a small taste of this frustration with the demo - as I got a high score, and for some reason could not match it or beat it afterwards, even though I played through the level the same.

One other thing I didn’t understand, and found a little annoying, was the weapon pick ups.  On several runs of the level I would pick up an extra machine gun.  A few times I would pick up a shotgun, and then only twice I picked up a rocket launcher!  The problem is that I seemed to pick these weapons up in roughly the same area of the level, normally without noticing, yet they are different.  The problem there is that these weapons can completelychange the outcome of your score at the end of the level.  Making the gameplay, potentially, uneven.

The other issue I have is that the game does not quite feel as groundbreaking as Sega or Bizarre Creations made out.  I guess the idea behind the game is fairly new, but the gameplay feels pretty old, in my opinion.

Well, as I said, the game is better than I had expected.  While the game may not be as groundbreaking as many would have hoped, the demo shows some great promise and has made me want to play the full game - which is exactly what a demo should do.

Impression left: Want.

~G~

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POSTED IN: Europe, G, Microsoft Xbox 360, News, Ryan, XBLA