
Available on Steam and Games for Windows Live!	Platform PC Genre Shooter Publisher Warner Bros. Developer Monolith Entertainment ESRB T (Teen) Released February 7, 2012

- Appreciate the customization options - The verticality of the game forces players to always remain alert - Team-based gameplay works...

- ...when it can connect to a server

Review: Batman: Arkham City (PC) Review: The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (XB) Review: Alan Wake's American Nightmare (360) Review: Left 4 Dead 2 (PC)
Newsletter
Be notified of site updates. Sign-up for the Newsletter sent out twice weekly. Enter E-Mail Address Below: Subscribe \| Unsubscribe

Gotham City Imposters

Score: 3.0 / 10

When Steam clocks my time with a game at 16 hours and the in-game stat tracking reports it to be a little more than 2 hours, I know there's a problem not with the the way Gotham City Imposters plays but with whatever mumbo-jumbo magic happens behind the scenes to connect me to matches. For a multi-player shooter this is a huge problem. And it's not just this writer experiencing these issues. On the official forums there's a 40+ page thread (and growing) for would-be players to report on their "Disconnected from Server" issues.

The number of hours staring at the matchmaking screen should not outweigh my playing time 8 to 1.

If I was looking at a "value for dollar" proposition, Gotham City Imposters would score a zero, but there's this part of me that would feel foolish doing so if only for the fact the connection issues might eventually get resolved. And for the moment we'll

Advertisement

- PC Game Reviews
- Shooter Game Reviews

imagine a hypothetical world where this is the case, that a connection to a game is immediate and stable.

That version of Gotham City Imposters is pretty slick.

The shooting feels a lot like Call of Duty though the guns definitely have a cartoony pop to them. It's reasonable to

Advertisement

assume that if you've played a recent first-person shooter, your skills can easily be transferred to Imposters, which takes a lot of it's art design cues from another popular team-based first-person shooter, Team Fortress 2.

Everything is big and cartoonish. A very defined body type immediately identifies each class and what firepower they might be packing (though that seems to wane pretty quick), even if the player has decked themselves out in the most outlandish flair.

The full range of customization options open up as the player earns experience points and costume coins. Or a player can just take the microtransaction route and spend real money to buy in-game items. I have no idea how successful this economic model has been, but with an initial $15 price tag I'll support it. I didn't buy (and won't be) any in-game items but from the players I had contact with it's fairly clear that some are embracing the microtransaction model.

What Gotham City Imposters does very well, at least with my limited time with the game, is offer much more verticality than the typical shooter. Each class has some way to get into the air -- a grappling hook, skate ramp, wings -- so there's a constant sense that an enemy could get the drop on you at any moment from any angle. And it works the other way, too. Take to the air at the wrong moment and it turns into a skeet shoot. That part is a lot of fun. You know, actually playing the game.

But that's kind of beside the point if you can't get a stable server connection. When I was able to get connected, I would often stay connected for three or four matches before something would slip and I'd have to restart the matchmaking process. For the brief glimpse of what Gotham City Imposters has to offer -- and I freely admit it was enjoyable (after the exhilaration of actually connecting to a game) -- how could I recommend, even with a powerful "fans of the genre" type conclusion, a game I can't play with any reliability?

Let me know when this huge problem gets fixed. Then I'll come back and try it again.

- Aaron Simmer

(March 21, 2012)