I was never really a Batman fan, or even a comic book fan for that matter. I had a small spurt of comic collecting when I was in my early teens, but even then I collected Venom comics, because Venom is cool. The Dark Night is what really got me in to Batman, well not really Batman, more so the Joker, but made me think Batman was cool too. I have always loved video games though.

I have still yet to play through the Batman Arkham games, mainly because I know they are going to be awesome, but there are just so many other games I want to play before them, Gotham City Imposters wasn’t one of those games. I downloaded the public beta for Gotham City Imposters from the Playstation Network on a whim, just to try it out, because public betas are a good way to preview an almost final build of a game before its launch and since I am not an industry insider, I always jump at these opportunities. Not expecting much from the online first person shooter Batman game, I went in to the Gotham City Imposters beta with little hope for the title. I thought that I would download, install, play and the delete the game all quite quickly. Which is not too far off what actually happened.

Although I don’t know much about Batman, this game does not need me too. It is immediately accessible to anybody who has played an FPS game before. The game opens up with the ‘Initiation’ stage, which is the games tutorial level. This basically gives you the run down of how each game mechanic works, like shooting, jumping, gliding, grappling and boomerang-ing. This is all over very quickly and gets you ready to jump head first in to the two game types available in the beta. Fumigation and Psych Warfare.



There are two maps (Amusement Mile and Crime Alley) in the Gotham City Imposters beta, which host the games two available modes. Fumigation is your basic Battlefield style point capture mode. There are three Gasblasters placed in strategic locations on each map available and the goal is for your team to capture and hold as many of them for as long as possible, releasing your teams fumigation gases into the atmosphere. Whichever team holds the points for the longest wins. Simple enough. Psych Warfare is the games capture the flag type game mode. In this mode, your team must seek out a battery and install it in your enemies’ base to infect the opposing team with propaganda, which basically strips you of all your guns and all you can do is run around like an idiot bitch slapping people. You gain points by installing the battery, the team with the most point’s wins. Both game modes are pretty straightforward and standard FPS fare.

Finding a game was real easy as the matchmaking system works great. The online play was really smooth and I never noticed any lag for the matches I was in. The only thing that really sets this game apart from other online FPS games is the setting and some of the power ups available. The gameplay though, is pretty fun and I enjoyed the frantic team based gameplay. Picking up health pack and power ups in the nick of time, allowing me to crack off a few shots for a kill before being shot down by another enemy, was all good fun. Personally, I enjoyed the Fumigation game mode more than Psych Warfare, as it was a little simpler and focused on capture, hold and kill.

There is also a huge amount of customization options available for your character. You can outfit your player badge, costume and weapons. The player badge is shown to your downed foe whenever you kill an enemy player. The costume is pretty self explanatory, but what makes the outfit customization neat, is that you get to make your character look like a goofy, want to be Batman or Joker. Using everyday articles of clothing and items, you mimic the caped crusader or the diabolical Jester in a way that makes you look like a total douche bag version each. The weapons, aside from the power-ups, can all be upgraded with new skins, scopes, magazines and other typical upgrades.



The games graphics are not spectacular, but they don’t need to be. The game is colorful and has a very comic book-cum-noir feel to it. The animations are decent and work well for a straightforward online shooter. From what I played, the frame rate never dipped and seemed to run at a smooth 60 fames per second. In addition I never experienced any pop in or screen tearing.

There is not much going on in the audio side of things other than gun shots, some voice work for kills which is very well done and background music, which all does its job just fine.

All in all, I had some fun with the Gotham City Imposters beta. I think I had just enough fun with it though, as I can’t see myself shelling out fifteen bucks to play more of this game, not when there is similar games out with much more to offer in terms of both online and single player in the same price range. I will probably keep Gotham City Imposters on my Playstation’s hard drive until the beta runs out and then delete the game. I had fun with it, but I am having more fun with plenty of other games that just have more to offer.

-EnKi
http://www.SoundClick.com/HAUL/