Late last year, Activision acquired one of the best racing game developers in Bizarre Creations. The team released four quality games over the two Xbox systems and obviously wanted to try something new. While The Club is a different idea from the developers, there are definite influences from the venerable racing series and it makes The Club all the more better. It has its problems, but if you can look past these, you just might find The Club to be one of the freshest games in quite some time.

Although rather cliché, the game does have a storyline. You are part of a secretive organization - known only by a select few around the world - that bring the world’s best assassins together to take each other on in a blood sport. This may sound like a fighting game but that couldn't be further from the truth. Another element to the story line is the nationalistic style with characters representing their own countries, including one from the land down under.

The best way to describe the gameplay in The Club is as an Olympics with guns. A number of events are present in the game with the assassins trying to win gold, silver and bronze bullets. Each environment contains either six or seven events, with points distributed on placements. This is where The Club seems somewhat fresh. It is a game which truly focuses on the action and speed of the game rather than trying to do something overly innovative. The Club is purely arcade and makes no qualms about it.

The events take place in a number of environments and have multiple difficulties, much like that of Project Gotham Racing. As you take down enemies, a combination multiplier builds up with your character being hit, reducing that to zero (Kudos anyone?). As mentioned before, the game puts a huge focus on action with most events either being ‘survive for a period of time’, ‘get through a level in a short amount of time’ or ‘find the exit’. The frenetic pace, especially in the higher difficulty levels, it what makes The Club what it is.

However, this is not a game that will take much time to complete. In fact most people should be able to complete it on one difficulty within a few gaming sessions. However the replay value comes from the high score and combo's on offer as the game offers worldwide leaderboards over PSN. With that said, on the highest difficulty, this game offers quite a challenge but it comes more from the time limits and score requirements rather than AI smarts.

The fights themselves take place over a number of environments with one unlocked initially. As you progress further you unlock environments like a warzone, a prison, and even Venice to fight in, each with their own challenges. The levels themselves are quite large but the small segments used for each mission are pretty small. Furthermore, The Club is basically the definition of a linear game, with arrows telling you where to go and no areas with multiple pathways. Again, the focus is purely on the action.

Bringing home the arcade element even further is the other game mode available, Gunplay. In Gunplay you can splice a number of missions from different environments to build your own play list. So once you have completed the game, you can play the best missions one after the other and try to beat your own score. It is a shame you can't share playlists over PSN because it could have really taken the scoreboards to the next level.

While The Club is somewhat of a fresh idea, it will grab you for thirty minutes to an hour before you realize you really are doing the same thing over and over again. It is here you will reach a crossroad - you will either decide the game is too repetitive and stop, or continue and appreciate the game for what it is. Another bug bear which seems to have crept in since the demo is the controls. The demo controls were very solid, but the final version controls were frustrating to say the least.

One area where the game does do well is the graphics. Despite the intense firefights and impressive visuals, the game maintains a solid frame rate throughout. It probably helps that a lot of the game takes place indoors and in corridors but even so we can't complain about the graphics. On the other hand, the soundtrack and voice acting is poor. We would have expected a rock style soundtrack with thumping beats, but instead we get a lackluster soundtrack which really does not suit the game and the voice acting leaves a lot to be desired.

The Club is not a game that is going to win Game of the Year awards, nor is it a game that we are going to score highly. However it is a game that reminded us of how a basic game can be a lot of fun and developers who take basic ideas, and put them in a next generation engine, can succeed in a small way. It’s not a must buy, but at least download the demo or rent it to refresh yourself in some fresh, arcade style gaming.