The Xbox Live online arena is a curious thing. Once you pay for your first subscription, your console becomes complete and how it was intended to be played. It must be hard to imagine owning a 360 without online capabilities after you have become used to the possibilities of Live, because Internet play has become so integrated with every release, be it through use of mutliplayer modes, leaderboards or team chat to name a few features. One thing for sure is that being able to take a game online brings out the fighting spirit in gamers as they frag, stealth kill, out-race and out-smart one another. The idea that proving your worth in front of thousands of players across the world is attractive and this atmosphere of competitiveness runs throughout The Club.

It may seem odd that the team who brought us some of the purest forms of racing found on home consoles (the impeccable Dreamcast release Metropolis Street Racer and the now revered Project Gotham series) have turned their talented hands to the world of third person shooters. Where the team find their comfort zone with The Club is the idea of tournaments and winning with style that helped PGR stand out from the racing pack. The ingenious 'Kudos' system that awards slick driving skills (powerslides, drafting, perfect corners) has been rebuilt from the ground up and implemented into The Club to keep track of the player's ability - so it's a shooter, but strangely it doesn't carry a narrative, no dense storyline and no missions. The only information given to the player is that The Club is an organisation of wealthy men who have created a new bloodsport for their own amusement. Each season, a number of entrants must compete in a selection of arenas in all-out gun fests, killing with style, speed and accuracy to rack up as high a score as possible. This is all the motivation you are presented with - all that matters now is that elusive high score.

So just who would be crazy enough to take part in a sport where you may get shot to pieces? Well, a few folk actually. Choosing an entrant is an important decision, because not only do each of the eight initial combatants (with four more unlockable ones) handle completely different, but they also feature very original personalities. Take extreme sport nut Seager for example - he's an all-rounder boasting a fast sprint but he doesn't take damage too well (he also has some bad-ass dreadlocks too). Then you have veteran cop Renwick, who is a bit slower off the mark but his larger frame makes him likely to survive longer. With a bit of testing you will soon discover which entrant is best suited to the way you play shooters and indeed you may find yourself mixing and matching, experimenting with different styles for different levels.

After selecting your kamikaze participant you begin The Club's latest season. A brief introduction by The Secretary (he's the snooty sounding moderator of the competition) lays out the elements by which you will be graded; this is where the game becomes interesting, because as you run and gun your way through each stage, your accuracy, range, style and speed will be tested to the utmost limit. This is not to say that newcomers to the genre will suffer, because on the easiest settings it is rare that you will die, but reaching the top three of an event may prove taxing without some proper practice. So, despite its downcast appearance and tone, The Club welcomes newcomers with a claret-soaked hug and a steady learning curve.

The first venue is Stahlwerk in Germany, an abandoned steel mill owned by The Club and the first event of the venue (there are varying amounts of separate events in each venue) is Sprint, an all-out combo fest. There is no time limit, just get to the finish line while capping as many bad guys as possible with as much flair and gun-play as you can fit in without getting yourself killed. After you kill your first enemy, a combo meter fills up and then rapidly drains; in order to keep the multiplier increasing, you have to be quick in chaining together kills in rapid succession, while throwing in the odd head shot, death roll or exploding barrel frag won't hurt your score either.

Other game modes include Gauntlet, which is the the same as Sprint but under a harsh time limit - the ultimate test of skill. Stringing together impressive kills is one thing, but doing it under these conditions makes the tension increase tenfold. Siege and Survivor are similar events that involve staying alive until the time limit runs out while defending against unlimited waves of enemies. The clincher is that you have to stay within a designated area marked with chalk lines; if you leave the area for more than five seconds then micro-explosives injected into your bloodstream will detonate! More often than not you will survive the time limit with your health bar hanging by a thread - tense stuff. Siege has more of a focus on racking up high scores, while the focus of Survivor is as you can guess - purely survival. Finally, Time Attack involves running laps around a preset course collecting time refills, shooting goons to add extra seconds to the clock and shooting time refill skull shots. The gamplay befits any other ordinary shooter, but trust The Secretary when he says that knowing where enemies appear and where hidden sections are is key to victory. You won't hit great scores on your first few plays, but similar to memorising the bends and chicanes in Project Gotham, you will need to map out each stage in your mind if you want to hit the top spot.

This need to learn would usually be an annoyance in most games, but each of the events in the game never exceeds the three-minute mark, so it is essentially a title you experience in burst play, never dragged out and always chock-full of adrenaline. Skullshots are the hardest element of the game to deal with, metal targets dotted around each stage that count as another kill when there are no enemies around to keep your combo meter stacked. For example, you kill all the enemies in one room then there is a long sprint to the next group of foes, so blast a few skullshots along the way to keep the multiplier high and you should have no problem. They are hard to find and sometimes in the heat of battle you try and find one to keep your score flowing but then completely forget where they are and you break your combo chain. It's annoying, but something that you are encouraged to learn. Adding even a few hundred more onto your greatest score will quickly become addictive, so after a while this no longer feels troublesome.

The control system is responsive and familiar for anyone who has encountered an Xbox shooter before; right trigger to fire, left trigger to zoom, B to throw a grenade, A for a rolling dive, Y to change weapon, left bumper to sprint, right button for a melee attack and so on. It's comfortably familiar yet feels shaken up in such a tense setting; sometimes it's easy to forget what button does what in the middle of the rush, so a cool head is always needed. The only gripe that players may have is the slowness of turning around, which is perhaps to discourage faffing about because time is of the essence, but it feels like old-school Resident Evil or Tomb Raider. There is no 180-degree turn function; instead you have to side step round in a circle, which can ruin a great run through a level if you aren't careful. It's a small gripe that most will ignore, but it can be easy to imagine that some may disapprove.

Sprinting also shows off some of the graphical bite of The Club; the old duck 'n' run move from Gears of War has been replicated here and looks ten times better. Remember the first time you performed a boost in Burnout? Well, this injection of adrenaline is similar - the screen vibrates and distorts as your avatar sprints for the finish line under a hail of gunfire and blood splatters. You can literally feel the sweat forming on your forehead at some points due to how intense the action can become and nothing compares to crossing the finish line with a second to spare and a 20x multiplier under your belt as your health teeters on a knife edge. Exhilarating and impressive in high-definition, the gritty locales such as prison blocks, an oil tanker and run-down Venice back alleys hold a menacing tone, as instant death could lurk around any corner. Although The Club is a sombre game, the graphics remain bright and crisp, with small touches such as heat haze and inaccessible environs that stretch far into the horizon just because they look nice, adding weight to the package. A lot of effort has gone into stylising this game and if you have ever watched the movie Fight Club then you will know exactly where Bizarre Creations are coming from.

Mention must also go to the killer soundtrack; it's got attitude and a dark heart beating beneath a body of dull synth and pumping drum loops that further adds to the frantic nature of the gameplay. Although there are a limited number of music tracks, they are all well-suited to the onscreen action and to be fair you will probably be focusing on what you are doing too much to really notice - but they are still awesome nonetheless.

The online mode feels instantly comfortable. It's odd, but because the offline mode feels like you are competing in an online tournament, you feel right at home playing on Live. Sure, your opponents are human and therefore ten times sneakier than the rent-a-goons you encounter in the main game, but with enough offline practice even the unseasoned shooter fan can become a legend. Main modes include deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, Team Skullshot and Team Fox Hunt. Team Fox Hunt is like VIP in Halo, where each team must do their best to protect their VIP and Team Skullshot is where each team must shoot all five of the opposite team's hidden targets before the other. Great fun, but some connection problems can make it hard to join a game, however it's early days yet and can only get better.

So is The Club worth a purchase? The answer is a resounding "yes" if you are a shooter fan. It's essential in a time when online leaderboards and frag counters are very much in style. Even if you are an FPS veteran, The Club will still offer a new and testing challenge that is addictive as it is daunting. Graphically slick with a confident style, coupled with some wicked Dolby Surround emphasising every shot and explosion to the point where the whole thing should feel over the top but never does, The Club is so openly testosterone-fuelled that it only makes running through each gauntlet feel that little bit cooler as you rack up kudos points both in the game and from the people you meet online. Indeed, stroking a virtual ego has never felt so self-satisfying.

Reviewed by Dave Cook for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).