The Club First (and Last!) Impressions

I received The Club from the fine folks at Gamefly yesterday and did a quick playthrough of the first level and tried a couple rounds of multiplayer. The prognosis? Not good.

I decided to run through the first level (or Tournament as the game's levels are broken down as) on the Insane difficulty simply to see if beating the level on the harder difficulty unlocks the achievements for lower difficulties (it does). What's odd is that Insane is hardly what I'd call difficult at all. While The Club is a different breed of shooter from say, Call of Duty 4, and is meant to be played at a furious nonstop pace, I was still able to breeze through the first Tournament with no trouble whatsoever. Granted it was only the first level, but still, I can't even imagine how easy the game must be on the normal difficulty setting.

The first tournament consisted of playing through the same level in a variety of different modes and paths where you're either trying to get to an exit in a set amount of time or you're limited to a small area where you must survive for a few minutes with an ever increasing onslaught of enemies coming after you. Again, neither mode is particularly interesting because they are both pretty easy. The difficulty in the game seems to revolve around getting high scores, which is something that rarely interests me.

I was very interested in the multiplayer however, as most reviews seemed to write-off the single player anyway and praised the online play. After two 20 minute rounds, I have no idea why. Aiming is a mess and the weaponry is impotent. You can easily blast 4 or 5 shotgun rounds into someone at point blank range and they'll still just run off like nothing happened. Headshots seem completely random and again, require multiple shots to drop an opponent. You have a melee attack but, just like the weapons, it does practically no damage.

I wanted to try out some of the alternate game modes offered, such as Hunter Hunted and Fox Hunt, but it was impossible to find a match in those gametypes or to get anyone to join if I hosted one myself.

It's also worth mentioning that during the two matches I did play, I heard more swearing and racial epithets than I have in over a hundred hours of COD4 and Halo 3. During the game there is no onscreen indicator (either during gameplay or on the score screen) that shows who is speaking at any given moment, so people feel free to say whatever hatespeech comes to mind and repeat it ad nauseum with no fear of being reported. Since you don't know who's speaking you can't even mute them.

The bottom line is that The Club is a somewhat fun single player game with lousy multiplayer. It's worth a shot, especially if you like arcade style games and enjoy replaying levels over and over for high scores. I can't recommend it for the multiplayer because even if you end up enjoying it, there are so few people playing it's simply not worth it.

Halo 3 Beta: 3 maps, 3 weeks

After announcing last week that there would be a major Halo 3 announcement this week, Bungie came through today with the only Halo 3 announcement anyone wanted to hear: the Beta begins May 16th.

Following their own Rule of Three, Bungie revealed that there will be three maps available for a period of three weeks: Valhalla, High Ground, and Snowbound which range in size from medium to large and are suitable for "all manner of game types, familiar and new" which you'll get to try for yourselves.

"There are a number of new features you’ll get to test out – including a new grenade type, a completely different class of weapon and some of the enhanced online functionality we plan to bring to the game – but it should be noted, a lot of secret features are hidden in this Beta. We’re keeping a lot of our powder dry for Fall. In May, when your firing the Spiker, sniping vehicles with the Spartan Laser and sticking fools with the Brute Spike grenade, remember that it’s just a peek-a-boo fraction of what’s to come." -bungie.net's Frankie

Sounds good to me. I was surprised to see the Beta would last only 3 weeks but it makes sense, I'm sure they don't want people getting sick of those 3 maps and 3 weeks is plenty of time to get people hooked and left jonesin' for the rumored September release.

I think this announcement also shuts down any possibility of Mass Effect coming out during this period but it also conveniently leads right into mid-June. Releasing Mass Effect immediately following the end of the Beta, perhaps even the next day, would be a smart move.

If they were REALLY smart they'd have a big advertising push for Shadowrun during the Halo 3 Beta and release that to cap it off. Shadowrun is, after all, a multiplayer sci-fi FPS and one that most people know nothing about to boot. After being left high and dry on June 6th, Halo fans might just be tempted to turn to Shadowrun for a quick fix.

Since Shadowrun is a multiplayer only game, unless it turns out to be more than just decent it's shelf life pretty much ends when Halo 3 is released anyway. Microsoft would be wise to capitalize on that and squeeze what sales they can out of the game. It'd be a perfect way to bring the Beta cycle full circle as the Crackdown promotion got a lot of people to buy that game who wouldn't have otherwise.

Halo 3 targeted for September

If IGN's sources are to be believed we could all be "Finishing the Fight" much earlier than anticipated. Owing to a crowded holiday release schedule, Microsoft and Bungie are allegedly striving to get the biggest game of this generation out before the annual flood of holiday titles begins.

While no date has been given for Halo 3 outside of "Fall 2007", November seemed to be the likeliest release month as it has traditionally been the month of the Xbox: from the launch in 2001, to the release of Gears of War last year you can almost always expect a defining release in November.

A September release could be as much political as anything. Back in 2004, Halo 2 released only 2 weeks after Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, a PS2 exclusive. This fall sees these two uber-franchises facing off again, only this time Grand Theft Auto IV is a fellow 360 title.

Halo 3 is obviously the 360's most anticipated exclusive title yet and will undoubtedly move a lot of systems off of store shelves whenever it's released. This would be a tremendous pre-emptive strike against the PlayStation 3, the biggest Fall title for which, exclusive or not, is...Grand Theft Auto IV. Releasing before GTA boosts the installed base and sets up GTA (and everything else) for even bigger sales than if Halo 3 came out afterwards.

It's a big statement to consumers: the two biggest titles of the year, one is on PS3 but BOTH are on 360. More importantly, it leaves the normally packed November time frame free for other major titles to release without having to get lost in the frenzy that will surround both titles.

Source: Halo 3 Slated for September -IGN 360