The Club - is it a racer masquerading as a third person shooter, or a third person shooter with an identity crisis? Well, according to Bizarre Creations, The Club is actually a new take on an old genre, a hark back to the kind of gameplay we all used to know and love back in the Nineties, except all wrapped up in shiny new HD packaging. And I'm inclined to agree with them.

Bizarre Creations are the team behind the Project Gotham Racing series and the link between the two games may well be self evident; the balance between skill and style, speed and accuracy is certainly clear to see in both games. So yes, on the surface, the two seem intrinsically linked. You should however take into account the fact that PGR was never your average racing game; in fact, beyond racing, or shooting things, the one thing these two games have in common is their link to a long past style of gaming, namely that of self-improvement.

This concept of self-improvement seems to be an ongoing ideology of Bizarre Creations and has been a staple of all of their games; none more so than in the case of the brilliantly old-school Geometry Wars; arguably the game that The Club has most in common with. This is because you replay Geometry Wars to get better and better at it and this is also the case with The Club. Forget collecting, unlocking and experience - The Club is all about putting some extra digits onto that top score and climbing that leaderboard; and for that, the game will be loved by some and loathed equally by others. This truly is old-school gaming through and through; Geometry Wars in a 3D space with a rather uninteresting and extremely inconsequential storyline tacked on to help it appeal beyond the obvious niche of high score chasers.

Speaking of inconsequential stories, let's just get that out of the way first. The Club is built upon the premise of a shadowy Club that's run by a collection of extremely wealthy but somewhat deranged characters who have nothing better to do than pit a horde of largely generic characters against an army of very, very generic characters in a kill all competition to earn money; think Smash TV or The Running Man but without the commercial aspect and cheesy presenters. The Club is an altogether grittier affair and the majority of the characters are unsurprisingly forced into this little competition, with a few others there just for the fun of it. This may all sound kind of interesting, but really it's just an excuse to have a collection of characters, each with slight variations to their abilities i.e. slow but strong or fast but with less stamina etc. At the end of the day though none of this matters, because The Club is all about the gameplay.

In this respect, The Club is pretty much spot on. Although there are slight variations to the gameplay, with five defined modes in all, each pretty much adds up to the same thing: shoot everyone, do it fast and try to rub some stank on it in the process. While this may sound a touch repetitive, and for some it will be, for many others the repetitive nature of the gameplay will be exactly what keeps them coming back. This is what Bizarre and SEGA have been pinning their hopes on - and for the most part is exactly what they have achieved. The different event types and various locations spice things up a bit too - Sprint sees you heading for the finish with no time limit, just a focus on high combos and stylish kills, while Gauntlet is the same but subjects you to a tough time limit. Siege and Survivor meanwhile trap you in a designated area, pitting you against endless waves of enemies until the time runs out. In Siege the focus is more on stylish kills, while Survivor is purely about staying alive until the end. Finally, Time Attack sees you running laps around a course, collecting time refills as you kill to add further precious seconds to the clock while racking up that high scoring combo.

The Club has to be one of the most moreish games since, well Geometry Wars actually. That 'one more go' style of gaming has been crafted and nurtured into every aspect of The Club's gameplay almost flawlessly. As in Geometry Wars, high scores and thus the gameplay as a whole, is about stringing together combos and keeping them going. Much like the Kudos system from PGR, the risk/reward system of The Club will have players hitting the restart button over and over again in an attempt to achieve that perfect run. Beyond the obvious nature of speed (each kill adds to your combo meter, but this quickly empties unless you kill again within a couple of seconds) and accuracy (the more head shots the better) you'll find the need to execute rolls and a collection of context-sensitive actions similar to Stranglehold, while the sprint mechanic has been ripped straight out of Gears of War. These options add to the possibility of throwing faster, longer and more extravagant combos together, as do the hidden skull targets scattered around the levels that give your combo a much needed time bonus when shot.

At the end of the day, The Club is all about knowing the levels and then practicing, practicing and then practicing some more! So, whether you like this game will largely be down to what kind of gamer you are. If you are the kind to spend several hundred hours searching through every aspect of Final Fantasy before swiftly moving onto the latest Dragon Quest title, then you probably won't be the biggest fan of the The Club's old-school sensibilities. If however you have fond memories of simpler games with a simpler premise or are one of the many to discover addiction to score attack gaming thanks to Geometry Wars or the many other retro slices of gaming currently doing the rounds on both the PlayStation Network and the Xbox Live Arcade then The Club might well be the game for you.

The Club's actual gameplay is nigh on perfect - that may sound like quite a bold statement, but Bizarre really know how to do addictive, perfectly structured gameplay. The problem is, they clearly don't know quite how to dress it all up! If anything, this is the biggest shock of all and certainly comes as an almost crushing disappointment. After all, the Club is brought to us by the makers of the eye-bleedingly beautiful PGR and the beautifully kinetic Geometry Wars. Not only that, but SEGA, kings of perfectly exaggerated arcade visuals, are the publishers for this title. With that in mind, one has to ask how The Club turned out so drab and boringly understated.

Don't get me wrong - on a technical level The Club is a triumph. The characters are intricately detailed and the backgrounds have been well-realised with a combination of high res textures, impressive lighting and carefully thought out level design. Sadly, what the game completely lacks is any kind of character; it's all just so painfully generic, from the cardboard cut out gangsters to the beige/grey colour palette of all eight locations. The Club is a surprisingly undefined game when it comes to the visuals - in fact, take away the unique style of gameplay and this really could be any one of a number of generic shooters already out on the shelves. Thanks to its ridiculous premise and quick-fire gameplay, The Club is left screaming for a quick arcade style makeover from, oh I don't know, SEGA maybe. Really, Bizarre had the perfect publisher on board for this kind of game but have sadly decided to completely ignore the huge potential in using their unique abilities in the visuals department. It is for this reason, more than any other, that I like rather than love The Club.

Beyond the generic characters and drab backgrounds, The Club also suffers from understated death animations, a surprising lack of blood and some extremely disappointing audio issues. Although once again more than passable on a technical level, it seems that Bizarre dropped the ball when it came to bringing this game to life. Much like the beautiful light show that accompanies Geometry Wars' intense action, so The Club needs a lot more going on to really get that interplay between gameplay and visual flair just right. To put it simply, The Club lacks imagination and, more importantly, it lacks a sense of humour. The audio suffers from similar problems; it's passable but lacking character and immediacy. Enemy chatter is boring, repetitive and generic, while the sounds of the guns are disappointingly muffled. Once again, these minor issues could have been easily amended, thus making The Club an infinitely more appealing package.

Although the single player aspect of the game will be where you spend much of your time, simply battling against yourself and those mocking Leaderboards time and again, there is also a multiplayer option that may well be worth a look. Although largely throwaway, there is the option to race against other players in a similar vein to Colin McRae: DiRT, where you are pitted against invisible opponents with an update of their score and time as you play through the same level to bring a certain immediacy to the score-chasing gameplay. Of course, if you want everyone onscreen then you can play a more traditional deathmatch mode if you want to slow things down a bit. Again, these may well be throwaway, but they are certainly welcome additions and are distractingly pleasant for as long as they last.

Although the style, or lack thereof, has seriously hampered The Club, it's still a brilliantly addictive title and one that will hopefully prove popular enough to turn this not so little experiment into a long running franchise. Believe me, if any game is screaming out for a sequel, it's The Club. Much like the Burnout series coming into its own with Burnout 3: Takedown, so The Club has every possibility of transforming into something very, very special indeed. For the time being though, it's a case of falling just short of true greatness, despite coming very, very close. With a few refinements to the gameplay and some pretty major changes in the audio visual department, future releases of The Club could turn out to be that perfect balance of style, flair and skill that Bizarre clearly hold in such high regard.

Reviewed by Liam Pritchard for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).