The Club is a 3rd person shooter where you play as one of eight thugs that have been drafted by nefarious forces to fight in a set of modern day gladiatorial gunfights. The more people you kill and the more stylishly and quickly you do it, the more points you get. And the game is all about points which are secondary, of course, only to overall survival; you can't win if you're dead. Despite being a modern shooter, something about how The Club plays brings me back to the days of Contra, an absolutely punishing game, where to have any real chance of winning, you had to memorize every single aspect of each level.

While I find the (admittedly shallow) concept of The Club kind of interesting, and the overall gameplay to be fun in limited doses, I'm not sure I can recommend it to anyone but the most hardcore of OCD afflicted gamers.

Why OCD, you ask? Well, as I said, The Club is all about the points. You get points by killing people quickly and in succession without pause. You also get points for doing trick moves, like a roll or a quick 180, before you kill someone. You also get points for blowing up multiple enemies at a time, for getting headshots, or for using your last bullet to kill someone. As you kill people, your Combo meter increases. As you don't kill people, it lowers. You can pause the "combo bleeding" by shooting special signs called "skullshots" which are placed through out each level.

Someone with an average level of skill can certainly make their way through most of the levels on the default difficulty ("Reckless") with a minimum of retries. If you get lucky and crank up your combo by killing a hallway full of enemies you might even win an event or two. But you won't win the tournament. The only way to win the tournament is learn the levels. Learn the placement and timing of enemy appearances. Learn the placement of skullshots, weapons, ammo and health packs. You're going to need to learn the whole path from start to finish.

"Start, turn left. Shoot guy. Turn right. Roll. Shoot other guy. Run for 3 seconds. Turn left. Headshot guy on catwalk. 180 turn. Shoot guy running up behind you. Turn left. Hit Skullshot. Throw grenade. Run for 5 seconds. Turn right. Pick up health pack. 180 turn. Shoot that guy. Run..."

And so on. Seriously, if you want to come out of a level with a million or two points, that's what you're going to have to do. You're obviously not going to formalize it as much, you'll probably let muscle memory do much of the work. Even so, muscle memory is slow to learn, so you'll have to play the same levels over and over again to get those high scores. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm just saying, it's a thing. You'll have to judge whether that's good or bad for yourself.

For me, it's great in limited doses, but then quickly goes downhill as I succumb to adrenaline poisoning. The Club, by it's very nature, requires you to be on top of your game continuously. If you pause to take a breath for even 5 seconds, there goes your score, and most likely, your life. As I get older, I find that I'm just not the adrenaline junkie that I once was. Sure, I love running around and shooting people for 20 minutes or so, but after that, I have to go do something else before I get sick.

One of the reasons I find the The Club so draining is because of how well done it is. It's an incredibly visceral game. The discordant theme music says right away that this is not going to be a happy time. The guttural "Fight!" before each match is reminiscent of Mortal Kombat. The environments are run down and claustrophobic. Even when you're outside in the open, the continuous barrage of bullets gives you a claustrophobic sense of oppression.

The main thing you have to realize about The Club is that there's no story. There's no meaningful progression. It just is. The game is about points. The only reason to play it more than once is to see if you can get more points, because after the first game, you've seen everything there is to see. You shoot. They die. You get points. End of story. If this intrigues you at all, I recommend that you download the demo and play the demo level about six times. If you're still having fun after the sixth go-round, then you're probably going to enjoy the full game.