Hands on with Gotham City Imposters Beta

The latest PSN/XBLA game to be developed by Monolith (F.E.A.R.), Gotham City Impostors is a wacky spin on the Batman we all know, an first person online shooter with weird characters, gadgets and game modes it comes off as a fun intriguing game, with funny moments and a tonne of things to unlock. I give my impressions of the beta and a run through of things you will find in the game below.

When I checked my email the other week and found I had been accepted into the Gotham City Imposters beta I have to say, I was pretty excited. I love Batman and I wasn’t quite sure on the idea but it looked fun and I was really interested in giving it a go.

For the beta I played it on the X-box 360. After entering the annoying 25 digits, redeeming my code and starting the 1.7GB install I went and grabbed a drink while waiting for it to finish. Around 20 minutes later the download had finished and I started up the game.

The opening scene involved a bunch of poorly dressed Batman imposters fighting a bunch of joker dressed clowns. There were a couple of funny moments and the atmosphere comes across as a fun wacky game then more of a serious shooter such as BF3 or COD.

Right when I jumped into the game, the beta offers 2 online game modes and 'Initiation' which is basically the tutorial. Putting you in the shoes of a new recruit for the Batman imposters. In this mode you don’t fight anyone, but it gives you a good chance to learn the controls either by shooting targets or trying out the different gadgets available.

The other 2 game modes are ‘Fumigation’ and ‘Psych Warfare’. Fumigation reminded me of Domination in Call of Duty but with a twist, the teams (either the Batz or Jokerz) capture ‘Gasblasters’ which release gas in the air. The more the team releases the more they power up and can reach ‘Critical Mass’ which lets you launch a massive attack on the other team. This then results in bats swarming down that kill the clowns or poison that will kill the bat imposters depending on which team is winning. Psych Warfare is reminiscent of Capture the Flag or Demolition, also with its own twist. Your team has to capture a battery to power up a brain washing machine. Once the machine charges up it then demoralizes the opposing team, making them unable to use weapons or gadgets for a short time.

The game has sharp easy controls and fun gameplay mechanics, there is a good focus on creativity and the amount of customization you can do is overwhelming. Monolith have really put an effort into this game and it shows. The gadgets are one of the main aspects of the game and there are quite a few to choose from. This is what I found makes Gotham City Imposters different to other shooters out there. There’s a glider you can open near a vent or trampoline which allows you to glide around for a short while shooting or even dive bombing an enemy. The well known grapple is of course here too, which is pretty self-explanatory and is quite fun once you get the hang of it.

The one thing that lets me down is that it takes a really long time to get a game, though I am guessing this is just because it is a beta. Sitting in a room waiting to get a match for up to 10 minutes got frustrating. A game won't start until the match was completely full which would also add to the annoyance.

The layout is very cod like, having challenges, custom classes in which you can add mods, camo etc. Gotham City Imposters even has their own variant of the title/emblem layout called ‘Calling Card’. It goes even further though and allows you to make in depth changes to costumes and more. Which adds to the enjoyment greatly.

Gotham City Imposters should be around $15.00 and is available on the the PSN/XBLA marketplace from February 7 in North America, February 8 in other countries.