The Triangle

Issue date: 2/22/08 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Media Credit: MCT Campus With Bizarre Creations and Sega working together to provide improved scoring evaluation and five new challenge types 'The Club' introduces a differnet first person shooter gaming experience never seen before.

The video game world has a simple layout that it follows: A good game with a new concept is released. Then, companies copy that idea and release slews of clone software that feature not a fresh new experience, but a watered-down, worse piece of work that only agitates the gamer who gleefully threw out 60 dollars for the purchase.

"The Club," a project that was put together by both Sega and Bizarre Creations (of Project Gotham Racing fame), had press releases that stated it was going to be a highly innovative and incredibly fresh spin on the now tired action-shooter genre. This was going to be the new game that many other developers would soullessly mimic in future years and after some personal time with this new adrenaline-spewing frag-fest, I can testify that press releases are not always loaded with complete crap.

Developer Bizarre Creations has generated their fair share of addictive and stylistic action with the entire Project Gotham Racing series and Geometry Wars, and it has never been more obvious that they have that combination down to an art than with "The Club."

While all of the elements from your traditional shooter are here - destroying hordes of baddies, picking up new guns, and just causing general chaos - the game presents the usual activities in such a light that it all feels unique.

The game features a solo campaign and off/online multiplayer. The single-player campaign is called "Tournament" and is made up of 49 levels. However, these are not "levels" as you would generally perceive. Each level takes at the most, five minutes to complete.

Throughout the tournament, the player will be put to the test of five different challenge types: "Sprint," which has the player racing to the exit, "Siege," which has the player defending a fixed position from waves of enemies, "Time Attack," which has the player race the clock as they try to survive, "Survivor," which has you in an encased area, trying to outlive the timer and "Run The Gauntlet," which has you racing from point A to point B, under time constraints while dealing with enemy fire.

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