Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

The Club is a game that has been lurking in the shadows for about a year now, with no really huge press on the title. But Tuesday, that gates were opened as Bizarre Creations released a demo for The Club on the 360. Seeing as I have been interested in the concept of the game, I decided to download the demo and take the game on a little test drive.

If you have not heard about the game, The Club is kind of a third-person shooter meets a racing game. It is a strange concept, but not all that strange when you realize the game is being released by Bizarre Creations, makers of the highly successful Project Gotham Racing series. You have several characters that have been picked for their skills in different fields, and are brought together to participate in The Club. The Club is a series of events that have you running through an environment, in laps, while killing people using style to build up combos and your point total.

While the concept sounds a bit strange, it plays out pretty well once you actually get into the game. In the demo, you are given access to one character and one track. The challege is to complete three laps, while never letting your clock run out before the finish line. If the clock runs out, you blow up. You also have to get a certain amount of points before the end of the race. If you don’t make it, you blow up.

The game has four levels of difficulty, that you select at the beginning of each race. The point level needed before the finish as well as AI skill is the primary difference between difficulty levels. Once the race starts, the controls will either be your best friend or your worst enemy. I felt the controls were okay, but some of the tricks you can do before killing someone were hard to pull off. Also, the game is suppose to be a race, but a footrace is a lot different than a car race and it seems like the mechanics could use a bit of tightening before release, or at least in a post-release patch.

That being said, the game looks good. The intro movie has good production values, and the characters have a fair amount of detail. The game never slows down or has any frame rate drops which is good when the gameplay is focused on fast movement and shooting. Sound was also really good with hard edged rock and guns blazing in the background as you move through the course.

So, there you have it, the game looks good, and can be great with a few more tweaks. It would help if Bizarre would also add a multiplayer component if it can sort out the difficulty of bandwidth. The game is coming out Feb.19th, 2008 for the PC, 360 and PS3. And of note to PC players, the game will support Live for Windows, but will not have offline multiplayer.