For every serious, gritty game out on the market today, you equally have something more than a little tongue-in-cheek; every Gears of War has its Grand Theft Auto, so you may say. This is pretty true with the whole shooter genre, with every mud-and-tears World War 2 effort having a Serious Sam or and Unreal Tournament providing the comic, rather surreal alternative to what otherwise would be a pretty harrowing, morose corner of the gaming world. Think of them as your Boris Johnsons in comparison to your Gordon Browns, or your Titus Brambles in comparison to your Jamie ‘Iron Man’ Carraghers if you prefer.

Hence we have The Club, which is Bizzare Creations’ (Project Gotham series) latest offering for fans of arcade, over-the-top third-person shooting. With a plot that on a premise is vaguely familiar to the shock-filled cack-fest that was Hostel mixed with Running Man, the game sees ten characters of mixed backgrounds - playing to the machinations of wealthy millionaires - placed into certain areas and given the task of racking up scores by wasting as many cannon-fodder enemies as they can. It’s tremendously silly, full of whacky off-centre characters and levels and, surprisingly, pretty handy too.

The main mode of the game – Tournament – sees the player choosing one of the game’s characters and taking him through a number of events which each contribute points to an overall championship. Although these events have the same central theme – i.e. shooting as many people as you can as quickly as you can before they shoot you back – there are certain differences in them, giving the game a reasonable sense of variety.

What doesn’t change, of course, is the method by which you accrue your score. Each level, whatever type it may be, presents the player with a series of enemies as they run through their surroundings. Shooting these folks is only a tiny percentage of what needs to be done, however, as The Club is all about stringing together kills for massive combination bonuses. Running around and flailing your gun wildly at any person in your vicinity thus becomes a rather redundant tactic, with precision and timing the key to the big scores.

This would have been made rather tricky had Bizarre todged up the accuracy and sensitivity of your aiming, but thankfully despite taking a bit of getting used to it quickly becomes rather natural to aim your crosshairs on-target pretty rapidly. This becomes rather crucial during hectic moments of play, with each kill filling an ever-decreasing chain bar in the top right of the screen. Each kill will boost the bar to a new multiplier level, but at the same time this leads to it decreasing at quicker rates, meaning you have to ramp up the action if you want the top scores. Likewise, there’s a conundrum to be had between taking your time and lining up the higher-scoring headshots or just running through picking the enemies off in double-quick time. It’s a deceptively easy premise which will take time and practice to get the most from.

Luckily, the game offers you a bit of a tactical boost to save a bit of the frustration this could cause, giving you a number of skull signs placed throughout the level which can be shot to raise your multiplier and refill your kill bar. These prove to be a godsend and are rather well placed too, with them seeming to occur most often in quieter places of levels which are a risk to get to, but ultimately rewarding when it comes to extending your chain that little bit longer.

As you can assume, all this takes a few plays of each level to properly click. Learning the surroundings and enemy placement is the key to eventually topping the score charts, and in a way the game is quite similar to a top-down shoot-‘em-up in the way it sews its seeds. The Tournament mode has a number of different settings, each with a number of different areas being open to the player, and getting used to each with a good few attempts is crucial. As such, early goings with The Club can get a little frustrating if you try anything other than the easiest difficulty level as the scores the AI are racking up seem utterly unreachable, but with time and practice you do find yourself notching up better and better totals.

As mentioned earlier, Bizarre have thrown in a couple of different event types in an attempt to add a little variety to what is otherwise a pretty samey experience. The ‘classic’ mode goes by the name of Sprint and sees you having to progress along a set route through a level chaining your kills, and it’s this mode that feels most rewarding as repeat plays ingrain tactics into your brain and see you improving. Run the Gauntlet mode takes this and pumps a little adrenaline in by adding a time limit, with your character exploding if you fail to make the map’s exit point in a certain time limit.

Similarly, Siege and Survivor modes are rather similar. The former sees you placed in an area that you must defend against wave after wave of enemy attacks, whilst the latter pops you in a set position and has you taking pot shots at enemies in a number of locations in a mode rather akin to a more disturbing version of one of those firing ranges you find in funfairs. The most unique mode of all is Time Attack, which places the player at a start line and requires him to pick up time extension bonuses whilst totting up his kill chains across a number of laps around a circuit. It’s bloody good fun, too, being somewhat of a mixture of Sonic R and Grand Theft Auto all rolled up into one little package.

That, in a way, sums up the core charm of The Club – the way it borrows a little from a few other sources and yet mashes it together to create something that feels reasonably unique. It might not have much variety with a couple of the game types being fairly similar to each other, but if it’s a case of the game being a one-trick pony then as least its one trick is a damn good one. Going back over the events in Tournament or singularly in the Single Event mode gets insanely addictive, giving the game a potentially vast lifespan, and the Gunplay mode (described in the manual as the ideal ‘back from the pub’ mode, no less!) allows you to create your own event playlists from those unlocked by playing through the tournaments.

This can only be aided by an excellent online mode, which has plenty on offer for you to get your teeth into. There are a couple of free-for all modes that see you battling for high scores, kill totals and a particularly fun effort called ‘Hunter/Hunted’ that has the player who last scored a frag being designated as a target for others to hunt down, with the player who spends the most time on the run by the end of the match being declared the winner.

As with many shooters, though, online team games are where the fun’s really to be had. The best modes here from personal experience were Team Capture and Team Fox Hunt, both of which throw the ol’ ‘protect or attack’ quandary at two teams of four and let them decide on their own tactics. The former mode sees each team having to guide it’s fox (a designated player) toward the opposition’s base in order to score, but at the same time having to decide how many players should remain on the defensive at their own headquarters. The latter mode is reasonably similar but with the twist that the fox is now the target rather than a base, so you always have a moving target to both protect and aim for. As with single player goings-on this is ridiculously moreish, and it’s easy to see it becoming a very popular online title. Oh, and for those splitscreen sticklers, yes – the game offers a 4-way splitscreen multiplayer mode too.

It all slots together nicely, aided no-end by some really rather lovely visuals. It’s gritty and grimey, sure, but the game looks fantastic and runs smoothly, whilst each of the characters and levels you can play as and through are, despite the complete lack of a developing story save for a brief period during the intro, memorable and unique. Aurally the game isn’t too special, granted, but then again you don’t really spend much time considering that in the middle of frantic run-and-gun sessions.

In consideration, The Club is an ideal accompaniment title for an adventure or RPG title. Whilst not really having that much depth and variety, the addictive nature of the whole thing means it will serve as a brilliant game to release a little frustration for a couple of hours, or as something to fill an evening if you have nothing to do. It might have a slightly tough leaning curve to begin with, but once into the swing of things it proves awfully hard to put down and equally – and possibly most tellingly – will have you still coming back once you do. Deep, complex and serious it certainly ain’t, but The Club settles down into it’s own niche and does what it sets out to do very well indeed.