Review: Gotham City Impostors

Gotham City Impostors is a game of two seemingly diametric sides: the soulful and the soulless. One side has plenty to like, from its charming faux-Batman and Joker stylings to its wonderfully designed transversal mechanics. But the other side is just impossible to ignore, from questionable business decisions to technical issues galore.

Gotham City Impostors (PlayStation 3 [Version Played], Windows, Xbox 360)
Developer: Monolith Productions
Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Release Date: February 7th, 2012 (NA)

The play mechanics of Gotham City Impostors get the feel of a multiplayer first person shooter exactly right: the guns all have a certain responsiveness, a just-snappy-enough movement speed, and the special transversal tools allow one to really explore the structure of a map. The maps and transversal mechanics support each other perfectly. There are holes in roofs for spring jump boots to launch out of, or air gusts that allow the glider to dive bomb from the perfect distance into the enemy’s base, or buildings set just far enough apart to allow grappling all the way around the map.

Many things in the game are conceptually typical though: the game types are Team Deathmatch-, Control Point-, or Capture the Flag-style modes; the weapons are standard shotguns, rifles, rocket launchers and variants (with a few special weapons, like a freeze gun). But it is the flair added to these genre staples that makes Gotham City Impostors feel so soulful: the explosive traps are wind up toy boxes; the double jump boots are beach balls taped to shoes; the (not so) imposing Batmen can have cardboard cowls and a bath towels for a cape; all of the kill cam voices can be pitched shifted up and down. It is readily apparent how much Monolith must have loved coming up with these silly things.

At the same time though, when trying to purchase a piece of cosmetic gear to dress up in, the game asks: do you want to spend real money or the in-game currency? Most things can be unlocked through play, but the in-game currency is doled out slowly. Similarly, the game locks too much away at the starting levels for custom load outs, requiring one to level quite a bit before getting to a comfortable spot. If Monolith wanted the game to be a slower burn, then fine, but when there is an option to spend 50 cents or one dollar to level up faster (as an individual or as a team, respectively)—it is then that the slow design feels insidious.

Even if this faster leveling up “pill” is bought, it is still not certain many matches will be stable or fair during the hour it lasts. Some games can be extremely unevenly matched, for some reason putting together a team that already has a collective 100 hours in the game against a group of players who seemingly just bought the game. One match will go perfectly smooth and the very next one will disconnect right before a winning point is scored.

It is the times that it works that makes me like this game quite a bit but too frequently does it not. It is the feeling of the mechanics, feeling the heart and soul that was put into the stylish flair contrasted against the insidious and cynical feeling microtransations. Gotham City Impostors is a really lovable game, and a really great game, but it is unfortunately dampened by its bad side.

Score: 63%