Gotham City Impostors Hands-On
By:
Wesley Ruscher
|
December 12, 2011, 9:59 am

When Gotham City Impostors was first announced, I sort of laughed at its less than authentic Batman aesthetics. A bunch of wannabe superheroes and villains dressed in cheap, poorly constructed Halloween costumes gave me horrible flashbacks of the old Batman television series. With the caped crusader becoming sort of a big thing in gaming, would there be room for a light hearted, first-person shooter set in the famous comic universe? And better yet would gamers even care? Well, I recently got some hands-on time with Gotham City Impostors, at a press event a few weeks back, and after taking a closer look at the frantic, team-based game, fans of shooters and the dark night might just be want to pay attention to early next year.

Developed by Monolith Productions -- best known for the first two F.E.A.R games -- Gotham City Impostors builds off the solid foundation of the studio’s previous FPS multiplayer endeavors. As a strictly downloadable title though, the question of overall quality should unquestionably come to mind. Games like Halo and Call of Duty are built behind the deep pockets of large production budgets, but as we have seen in the past, that always doesn't guarantee a well polished and balanced experience (I'm looking at you Brink). To Monolith's credit, the game looks very promising -- considering the brevity in which I was exposed to it. Time may have been against me, but even a quick look under Gotham City Impostors' hood convinced me this game is deep game with tons of variety.

My preview with Gotham City Impostors began with the game’s Challenge Mode. A great place to both introduce and hone a player's skill with the gadgets and different abilities the game offers.  As one would guess, the challenges are set up to test a player's proficiencies in a certain skill and, from at least what I played, are all races against the clock. During my time with this mode, I made my way through three challenges: the grapple gun, gilder, and skate challenges. They trained and sharpened my skills as well as tested my OCD like tendencies, as I was compelled to try to earn gold medals on all my runs. Fortunately, they were never frustrating and offered a fun distracting challenge for single-player sessions.
 


After getting acquainted with the game’s controls (which mirror the Call of Duty setup), I was able to move on to the more team-centric game modes: a basic team deathmatch and Gotham City Impostors' take on capture the flag, called Psyche Warfare. Team deathmatch is exactly what one would come to expect in any competitive shooter. Six versus six combat, where it's either kill or be killed. What makes this mode stand out, from the myriad shooters that infest the gaming landscape, is its take on class-based warfare. For players familiar with Team Fortress or Brink, the game offers players typical classes like medic, scout, and sniper. Where Gotham City Impostors sets itself apart though, is in the way it allows players to customize their character, thus removing any real traditional class from them. Players can give any body type in the game, small, medium, or large, any combination of skills and weapons. Want to have the body of a tank, but pack medic traits, a sniping rifle, and a grappling gun? No problem, as long as the correct perks (called Fun Facts) have been unlocked.

With an almost endless feeling of customization present in Gotham City Impostors, the possibility to have insane, tactical firefights seems like an almost constant guarantee. My character, for example, sported a grappling gun, assault rifle, and SMG. While the guns that I had equipped were pretty standard when it comes to shooters (don't worry there are some crazy weapons like ice rays and bear traps I wasn't able to unlock), it was the grappling gun that made Gotham City Impostors feel completely fresh. With the gun, I could easily launch myself across the map and get to superior tactical vantage points, which made backing up my squad all the easier. While the grappling gun is great for fast, strategic travel, other skills like the roller skates, which improve speed and allows players to vault off ramps, and the glider, which grants the ability to soar through the air from rooftops or off air vents that are strategically placed on each map, can be just as dangerous in the right player's hands.
 


As I mentioned early, Gotham City Impostors' take on capture the flag (mixed with territories) is called Psyche Warfare. In this mode, each team’s goal is to transport a battery to a brain washing machine in order to score a point. It's not as simple as just getting the battery to the goal, as there is an installation time required to activate the machine. With both teams vying for the battery, getting it to the machine and then defending it, can lead to some truly psychotic battles. The map we played for this mode was the new dock level. It was very well balanced with a warehouse in the center and offered many routes through the structure, around the back, and over rooftops for each team to explore. The rounds were intense and moved at a quick pace, but I had a good time playing this mode -- especially considering I tend to shy away from team-orientated game modes, other than deathmatch. It went back and forth over the course of four rounds -- complete with side-switching -- but due to the game’s off-beat humor each kill and death was highly enjoyable.

Gotham City Impostors looks to be a fairly complete package when it lands next January 10. Tons of customization, from clever costumes to weapon modifications wrap a finely polished FPS game in a nice little package. If you are looking for a fast and crazy shooter experience -- somewhere between Call of Duty and Team Fortress -- Gotham City Impostors should provide the right balance of tactical shooter and zany over-the-top combat for anyone with an itchy trigger finger.
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