Bizarre Creations continues to ascend up the short list of hot developers because of its consistent string of excellent games. The original Geometry Wars transformed into the now timeless classic, Geometry Wars Evolved, one of the best Xbox Live Arcade games on the planet. Project Gotham Racing 3 released with the Xbox 360 system in November 2005, hooking gamers with its mix of realism, great car handling, and addictive online play. Project Gotham Racing 4 will follow it up this fall, and now, working with SEGA, Bizarre is prepped to release The Club, a third-person shooter based on skill, timing and fun.
The Club looks to grab gamers with a fast-paced arcade approach to shooters. Designed from a third-person perspective and using quick mechanics and fluid gameplay design, Bizarre hopes to reel gamers in with the Club's broad appeal and then keep them coming back with its addictive pace, progression scheme and perhaps a few beers after a night at the pub. The Club debuted at E3 2006 behind closed doors at a very early stage. This interview was actually push back a few weeks because Bizarre wanted to show off the latest look at the game with fresh screenshots.
We spoke with Bizarre Creations' Nick Davies, design manager, and Matt Cavanagh, lead designer, about The Club to get a better feel and look at the shooter.
Visually, The Club looks light years ahead of its E3 debut.IGN: What are the origins of the game, The Club? What games inspired it and at what point did you, the designers, say, "Hey, I really want to play this kind of third-person shooter?"
Nick Davies: The Club came about from an original idea about making a game that was essentially about measuring your skill with a gun, and we first started playing around with the idea of shooting targets, learning patterns and constantly improving your skills through practice.
Fun though it was, shooting paper targets wasn't the most commercial of ideas, but it did let us experiment with the idea of having a fast-paced game that rewarded players with skill, and it felt very much like a sport. So over time that whole competitive concept developed into what is now The Club. It was very much a gameplay-led development, the setting and the story evolved afterwards.
Act quickly, make smart moves, or die.IGN: The Club sounds like an interesting idea: Players sprint through a level in a timed fashion shooting down enemies for multipliers, high scores, and opening up new levels. It seems, however that the game is dependent, to a certain extent, on knowing the maps well. Once you know the maps well, is there less skill required? Are they linear levels? Or do the maps offer different paths through them?
Nick Davies: The game isn't just dependent on knowing the maps well. That's akin to saying once you know a racing track well then it's somehow less skillful to get around it in a good time.
IGN: Fair enough.
Being good at The Club is a combination of how good you are with a gun, how good your reactions are, your knowledge of the environment and a whole host of other factors that measure how good a player you are…
Every time you replay a level of any game then prior knowledge is always an advantage to you, you pretty much know what's going to happen and you can use your experience to do better than the time before. That we are calling it out as something you can use to your advantage isn't to the detriment of the game, it's just being honest.
Again it's very much like a racing game, knowing the track is obviously an advantage but it doesn't turn you instantly into a Michael Schumacher overnight.
Matt Cavanagh: The layout of the levels varies from one game mode to another. Some are more free form, others linear. It depends on what the game mode needs from the level.
Later, chump.IGN: It seems that unless the AI randomly spawns in new places, the maps could potentially be really easy. How do you get around that potential AI problem if that's the case?
Nick Davies: Not many games spawn enemies randomly; players just don't play them enough times over and over to notice.
Our AI have their own behavior pattern so they will react differently dependent on how you react and how the situation is unfolding, and due to the way we create enemies they will also look differently each time you play so there's a lot of variation to be had.
And believe me, when you ramp up the difficulty and you're going for a big score it's anything but easy!
Matt Cavanagh: Remember when you used to play DOOM? You'd play it over and over and learn the placement of them. You'd side step around a corner, and you'd know where the enemy was going to be. It was a good feeling. In The Club, knowing the position of the enemies is like knowing the corners in a racing game. What matters is how you take those enemies down, in the same way you still need to take those corners in a racer.
IGN: Since throwing yourself into the action -- and into enemy fire -- at all times seems to be the key, is this game strictly based on trial and error gameplay?
Nick Davies: It's based on skill and definitely not on trial and error. You might throw yourself into a situation but you know that there are consequences of that, so you'll deal with each situation accordingly.
Face off!IGN: Unlike first-person shooters, developers of third-person perspective games want the player to see the character they are playing; like Lara Croft in Tomb Raider or Marcus Fenix in Gears of War. Why choose a third-person perspective instead of a first-person perspective?
Nick Davies: I think you've answered the question in part. We have eight very cool characters to play in the game, each with a very different look and feel and we want to show them off as best we can, and that's from a third-person point of view.
We also have a series of moves (rolls, vaults, dashes) that players can use to perform more skillful kills, and deal with situations in different ways, and thus get more points for it. Third person is the best way to get that across to the player.
IGN: With what kinds of guns will Bizarre equip gamers? Will players unlock bigger and badder guns as they progress? Will you give us an example of how this progression might work and some cool weapons?
Nick Davies: We have quite a varied list of guns in the game, though we aren't naming specifics at the moment. They are all contemporary, as is the whole feel of the game. The further you progress in the game, the better you are, then the more access you will have to these weapons, but then you'll also encounter more bad guys carrying bigger guns too.
Due to the way the scoring system works, it's not always the bigger weapons that will give you the bigger score. Using the right tool for the job is more important.
IGN: When I first saw the E3 demo of The Club, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I have genuine respect for Bizarre Creations because of your work on Geometry Wars Evolved and Project Gotham Racing 3. On the other hand, the E3 demo didn't really "wow" me. Perhaps it's because the game initially seems very much like a coin-op experience -- it might be fun for a short period of time but it might also lack depth. Did the E3 demo show off the essence of The Club best?
Nick Davies: Well, you didn't play the game at E3, and we only showed about two minutes of gameplay so I'm not sure how you were planning to get a sense of its depth from the demo we gave.
There is a lot more to the game than you saw at E3, we had no player characters in the game, one basic environment, very little effects and basic audio, what we did have was our scoring system and the pace of the game.
We made it quite clear at E3 that we weren't showing off anything graphical, but purely that we wanted to tell people that we were working on a shooter and it was about a pacey scoring experience and that's what you saw. The game as it stands now is a million miles away from that in terms of aesthetics, audio, and the amount of variety that you'll see, but the gameplay concept remains the same.
The depth of the game is in its re-playability, you'll want to go back and play it again because it was damn good fun the first time you played and just as much fun the tenth time. That's not to say it's a short game, and you'll have great fun playing it once and seeing all of the different characters and environments.
Matt Cavanagh: It's changed a hell-of-a-lot since E3. Depth of gameplay comes from re-playing levels, improving your high scores and profile statistics and discovering the intricacies of the scoring mechanisms in the game. It's the perfect "back from the pub" experience.
Not quite Boom Boom Rocket...IGN: I see. There is a real need for "back from the pub" games, I agree. What's the single-player game like? How does it open up and progress? Is it just like a training practice for the multiplayer? Or is it a genuine single-player campaign in its own right with a story, surprises, et al?
Nick Davies: It's definitely a single-player structure on its own and not training for multiplayer. You're looking at around 50 levels split across around eight very different environments and a variety of different game modes that make you play the game differently, so there's a lot of new content for the player to see as they progress through it.
Every character has their own story, their own motivations and their own conclusions to that story. We have a fantastic scriptwriter, Gordon Rennie, on board who helped us shape The Club world and its characters. Gordon has worked on games like Killzone and Rogue Trooper, and writes for 2000AD, so he's got loads of experience and ideas.
IGN: How does the multiplayer game differ from the single-player game? What types of online game modes will gamers experience?
Nick Davies: Online will be a mix of the expected and some more specific game modes that relate directly to the way that The Club works, so that includes modes based on the scoring system. Beyond that we're keeping online features to ourselves at the moment.
Matt Cavanagh: We have features in the multiplayer game which we think will set it apart from other on-line shooters out there. Additionally, even if you play the game single player, you are competing with scores from people all over the world.
IGN: Can you give us some examples of the game's Xbox 360 Achievements?
Nick Davies: It's a bit early to be giving away what the Achievements are, to be honest, but there are a few devilish ones. You may need to be good at spelling to get one, and we were looking at one this week that might have required a little bit of gardening skills, so they'll be pretty interesting.
IGN: Did you create a brand new tech engine for The Club? Or is this a culmination of other engines pieced together?
Nick Davies: We are creating a shared technology base across the entire company that we can use across all of our future games no matter the genre or size. This is a huge investment for the company and an incredibly important game for us, so we wouldn't just piece together bits of another engine for a game of this size.
The Club and PGR4 will be the first games to utilize that technology base, and hopefully you'll be seeing a lot more in the future!
IGN: Thank you for your time. We appreciate it.
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