by: Michael Barnes

There’s two things that Gotham City Imposters could really do without. One is a veritable catalog of microtransaction junk ranging from pointless character clothes to cheater pills that double your experience point gain for a limited time. The other is the Batman license, which does almost nothing to inform any aspect of the gameplay. The conceit is that these Warriors-like gangs of Batman and Joker imitators in homemade costumes act out one of comics’ greatest Manichean oppositions at a street level using crude weapons and makeshift gadgets. It’s a team-based multiplayer shooter that feels like equal parts Shadowrun, Team Fortress 2, and Call of Duty. In other words, it’s not very Batman at all. Despite the Mad Magazine-style parody you might expect from the ugly character designs and artwork, it doesn’t even really satirize its source material.

But it has its charms. The gadgets, Fun Facts (read: perks), and unconventional weapons give the game a very unique feel that distinguishes it among recent shooters while also feeling current and on trend. This is a game where you might grapple up to an amusement park sign, sight down some enemies with a broken rifle stuck in three-round burst mode, and get blown out of your socks by an explosive soda bottle fired by a roller skating clown with a rigged-up rocket launcher. Slingshots, a hunting bow, gliders and so forth give the game a looser, more absurd tone not generally found in the genre outside of some of the sillier Halo variants. It’s appreciated after what seems like years of grim, gritty shooters that never crack a smile.

That said, much of the game’s humor wears out its welcome early on. I made it through about 30 minutes before turning off the irritating in-game character voices. A lot of the comedy is completely inscrutable. I have no idea what the character motto “flappin’ jacks” is supposed to reference. All I know is that it’s not funny.

Maps are small and the game is stingy with them- there’s only five. The good news is that they’re mostly well-planned to accommodate the variety of loadouts and skills available. Game types are also limited. Deathmatch does what it says on the tin. Fumigation is a Domination variant wherein the teams tussle over gas blasters instead of flags. Psych Warfare is a cross between Battlefield’s signature Rush mode and capture-the-flag. Find the battery, take it to a propaganda machine, and plug it in to demoralize the other team. I almost always gravitate toward objective game types, but this game’s Deathmatch seems to suit the gameplay best.

Single player content is a complete joke. If you’re completely adverse to team-based multiplayer games, stroll right on by Gotham City Imposters. The single player content that is present is almost insulting. There’s a tutorial (like that counts for single player content) and a number of challenges that can be completed for extra experience points but they’re primarily checkpoint races and time trials. Yes, in a first person shooter. Really? I’m not quite sure why Monolith thought that anyone playing this game would want to see how fast they could roller skate through a level.

So it’s a good thing the multiplayer matchmaking and online stability is top flight, right? As of this review, it’s almost a hit-or-miss affair getting into online games and staying in them. Dropped connections abound, and weird errors like selecting one of the match types and being placed in another occur. It’s also worrisome that too many matches seem to wind up with as few as one player on a team. A patch has been announced, but it’s a disappointment that a game that relies on multiplayer connectivity has launched with some very basic issues.