Some game designers really know how to set themselves a mammoth task. Bringing Sega's latest console-based, mildly controversial designer blood-sport to the micro screen is almost too improbable to consider, but Rockpool Games has successfully extracted the game's essence and refined it into an enjoyable scrolling shoot-'em-up.
Obviously no one expects a full-on, 3D murder-and-mayhem-a-thon as we saw on the home consoles, but the question of how The Club, in all its savage glory, could be translated was enough to put me off before I'd even begun.
Yet this conversion is the kind of affable surprise that makes reviewing mobile games such a treat, and it does remarkable justice to the original premise. Initially, there seems to be little in common with the inspirational material, but after only a few minutes The Club reveals itself as a highly playable and accessible shooter.
Control of the main character is, somewhat unexpectedly, taken away from the player. The top-down view shows our sporting human-hunter walking around the 15 levels automatically, with only a slight variance in walking speed allowed. This effectively means you're then free to concentrate on the core fundamentals of the game – such as shooting people and blowing stuff up.
Which, after all, is what The Club is all about. An elite cadre of the world's richest and most jaded philanthropists delight in watching a horde of sociopaths battle to the death for their amusement. Essentially a game of every-man-for himself paintballing – only using real bullets instead of paint – 'The Club' is a contest you enter in search of fame and ill-repute.
The 15 levels take you through all manner of brutal environments to pit your guns against the warring elite, and this mobile version recreates the fundamental scenario quite successfully.
The '4' and '6' keys rotate your aim around the moving character, which is denoted by varying sizes of arcs depending on the current weapon. A machine gun, for instance, has a much narrower firing range and requires greater accuracy, while a shotgun enjoys a much wider blast radius. As soon as the aiming arc sweeps over a viable target (be it exploding barrel, box or human opponent), the player fires automatically.
While this level of automation might initially appear to remove all but the most basic options from the player, it works surprisingly well and ensures a hectic, action-packed game can be easily and immediately accessed by the handset's limited controls.
Therefore, The Club is apparently free to feature a far greater number of onscreen opponents than most any other mobile games of this genre, and expands the title's scope exponentially. Equally impressive is the significant variation in antagonists, which help to keep the gameplay red hot.
By taking such a bold move with the control system, Rockpool risked the chance of disconnecting the gamer with the onscreen events, but the gamble paid off. While it would've been nice to make a few more in-game decisions and to jump off the system's rails once in a while, the overall dynamism is quite addictive.
The Club also preserves its appeal by retaining the darkly comedic, tongue-in-cheek approach to murder and violence that the console version revelled in, so there's little concern about younger players joining the ranks.
Excellent sound effects and music support the clear and concise graphics very nicely, and although The Club will be a relatively short-lived love affair for most pocket gamers, it ticks all the genre's boxes in a most impressive manner.
The Club
The dark humour of the original premise helps lift this 'on-rails' shoot-'em-up into exciting, hyper-violent, addictive new territory
Spanner Spencer
Yes. Spanner's his real name, and he's already heard that joke you just thought of. Although Spanner's not very good, he's quite fast, and that seems to be enough to keep him in a regular supply of free games and away from the depressing world of real work.