When you think of a superhero game, you probably think of a single-player third-person action adventure game/platformer where you play as a superhero. In Gotham City Imposters, which is a Batman-themed game, you don’t play as a superhero nor is there any third-person action. Instead, GCI is a multiplayer first-person shooter where you play as superhero wannabes.
Wait, don’t leave!
As horribly bad and stupid as this concept sounds — and boy does it sound like a “We’ve ran out of ideas for a Batman game” kind of game — GCI is actually not as bad as you think; it’s actually quite the opposite.
Developed by Monolith Productions for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and PC, GCI is a downloadable six versus six multiplayer game that pits the “Bats” (good guys) and the “Jokerz” (bad guys) against each other in what can be described as a comical Batman-themed Call of Duty.
Like CoD, there’s a leveling-up system as well as a variety of customization options, unlockables, rewards, special abilities, and weapons and equipment. Because you’re not playing as famous superheroes and villains like Batman or The Joker, this means weapons and gadgets that some established Batman characters wouldn’t normally utilize are at your disposal. For starters, there are military weapons like assault rifles, submachine guns and sniper rifles, as well as weapon attachments like Penetrator Ammo (which can penetrate Body Armor, as well as thin walls/objects), Muzzle Break (which increases weapon accuracy even when moving and firing) and Body Odor Sniffer (which reveals enemy positions via wavy yellow lines).
Some of the more delightfully over-the-top items include a Grappling Hook (which can be used to pull yourself up to high places, even at great distances), Glider (which lets you glide around in the air and perform Dive Bomb attacks), Trap-in-the-box (which is a proximity-based Jack-in-the-box mine that explodes in a wide area), Rollerskates (which makes you move faster), Boomerang (which can hit and stun multiple targets), Spring Boots (which lets you bounce high and perform Stomp Attacks), and the Motivator (which is a megaphone that heals teammates and grants resistance damage buff with “words of encouragement”).
Overall, the weapons and gadgets/items are fun to use and the more over-the-top items help make GCI a blast to play, though, there should be more over-the-top weapons like the Deep Freezer (which is a gun in the game that freezes enemies; unfortunately, though, it sucks) and Bombardier (which is a slingshot that uses small bottles of nitro explosives as ammo).
The gameplay itself is similar to CoD, but it’s also like Halo in terms of how it takes more time and ammo to kill someone (whereas in CoD, it only takes like three shots to kill). Also, the aiming is looser than CoD and it can get a bit confusing discerning foe from friend, but you quickly learn to adjust.
When playing, you’ll earn points/experience points for things like killing enemies, getting headshot kills, performing multi-kills, and even just dealing damage without killing anyone. You’ll also earn XP, among other things, for completing in-game challenges like killing X number of enemies with X weapon. Additionally, you’ll acquire coins to unlock costume items, and you’ll earn awards for accomplishing feats like getting the fewest deaths, killing enemies while roller-skating, and hitting multiple enemies with a single boomerang.
There’s a surprising amount of customization options and unlockables in GCI. You can unlock weapon colors (e.g, a Riddler-theme with green coloring and question marks) and CoD-style player identifiers like picture cards (e.g., a skeleton wearing a top hat, a red two-headed squirrel holding a cupcake), emblems (e.g., a heart with an arrow through it, a blue cartoony cat head), and text-based catchphrases (e.g., “Go sit in your hole!”, “Do these tights make me look fat?”).
As for the characters themselves, you can customize your cowl/hair, face paint, superhero logo, cape, torso, hands, legs, and feet. Some of the sillier costume items include a cardboard mask, tights, purple leopard underwear, kilt, bunny slippers, spiky hair/Mohawk, and clown make-up with hearts/cat whiskers. You can even change your face type (e.g, bearded, snarling) and character voices (e.g., sassy, crass) as well.
Interestingly, your character’s appearance will change depending on what body type you choose (more on that below), and you can use Microsoft Points to purchase costume items, player cards, temporary buffs (e.g., double XP), and small cosmetic-only companion characters who follow you around (e.g., cartoony Catwoman, Harley Quinn). In general, the prices roughly range from 40 to 240 MSPs, but things like costume items can be unlocked by playing the game naturally.
The rewards and customization options helps make GCI a more rewarding and addictive experience. When you reach certain character levels, you’ll acquire unlock tokens to unlock pretty much everything in the game, from weapons to special abilities. The kicker here is that you’ll only obtain unlock tokens for a specific category of things, so if you want to unlock a weapon, you’ll need to earn an unlock token specifically for weapons. This may seem surprisingly harsh, but thankfully, it’s relatively easy to level up, assuming you can score a decent amount of points in a match.
Apparently, there are over 100 character levels in the game and for every 100 levels you’ll earn a “Promotion,” which, from the sound of it, is basically CoD’s “Prestige” mode. According to the game’s description, Promotion resets your “loadout items” and certain accolades, but you’ll earn more XP.
When creating your character/loadout, you’ll be able to select various special abilities, which fall under three categories: “Fun Facts,” “Rampage” and “Psych Profile.” Fun Facts is essentially CoD “Perks” where you choose enhancements that provide things like more health and faster healing, extra bullet damage, and less damage and side-effects from Boomerangs, Dive Bombs and Stomp Attacks.
Meanwhile, Rampage lets you activate temporary buffs like double damage and faster speed depending on if you score a certain number of points without dying or die a certain number of times in a row during a single match. Overall, it’s great that Rampage abilities give you that extra oomph, but it should be noted that the Rampage system might to be broken, since most of the time I wasn’t able to acquire score-based abilities when exceeding the score requirement and equipping the respective Rampage ability. Also, it would have been nice if there were more variety in the abilities instead of each one repeating and requiring different methods to obtain.
Finally, there’s “Psych Profile” passive abilities, which reward you bonuses or penalties depending on what actions you perform during a match. For instance, the “Codependent” Psych ability will let you earn more XP if you perform “team actions,” while “solo actions” will penalize you. The Psych abilities in general are neat additions, however, the risk might be too severe than the reward, so the abilities are not as enticing as they should be.
Interestingly, you also have the ability to choose different body types, which affect gameplay. So, for instance, choosing a smaller, skinnier physique means you are faster than normal and harder to hit but have reduced health and melee attacks. On the other hand, selecting a bigger, burlier build means you have increased health and stronger melee attacks, but are slower and easier to hit.
All of these things combined — the weapons, attachments, gadgets/items, special abilities, and body types – allow for wonderfully various play styles, which feels more predominant than CoD. It’s fun playing with different loadouts, and playing the game itself is an arcade-y, points-popping good time, whether you’re playing as a lone wolf like in CoD or are a team player like in Battlefield 3. Also, you’re never too far away from the action — which seems suffiecient despite the game’s 12 player limit — thanks to the not-too-small, not-too-large maps.
There are a total of five maps including Crime Alley (which is a small section of a city), Ace Chemical (which has a chemical plant setting), Amusement Mile (which is an amusement park), Docks (self-explanatory), and Gotham Power (which has a power plant setting). All of them include indoor and outdoor areas, as well as environmental objects (i.e., ramps, vents and trampolines) that can be used to your advantage defensively or offensively. For instance, trampolines can be used to bounce to rooftops to make a quick getaway, or can be used as a sort of shoot-and-cover technique as you constantly jump-and-shoot, say, a rooftop full of enemies that may be too numerous and deadly to deal with toe-to-toe. If you have Rollerskates equipped, you can use ramps to blast away at high speed or use ramps to chase after a player/objective. Meanwhile, you can use the Glider to take advantage of air-blowing vents to fly away or perform Dive Bomb attacks on unsuspecting players below.
The environmental objects, as well as gadgets like the Glider and Grappling Hook, refreshingly add verticality to GCI’s gameplay that makes playing more interesting and strategic. The objects themselves are well-placed and are a big part of gameplay, as are the health and ammo-restoring boxes conveniently scattered around levels. Your health and secondary items (e.g., grenades, hatchets, deployable motion sensor) even regenerate over time, and the quick respawns appreciatively help keep you in the action. Occasionally, “Prize Packages” will randomly drop down in a level that grants you temporary buffs like extra speed or armor, assuming you’re the one who opened the package.
When playing you’ll be facing off against an enemy team in either three game modes: Team Deathmatch, Fumigation and Psych Warfare. Team Deathmatch is your typical kill-for-points affair, while Fumigation is basically a capture-and-defend mode where both teams have to activate and defend “Gasblaster” machines long enough to win. When the Bats team successfully hold down enough Gasblasters for a certain amount of time, a swarm of death-dealing bats will be summoned and kill the opposing team, while the Jokerz will release a deadly gas if they capture enough Gasblasters themselves.
Meanwhile, Psych Warfare is a retrieve-and-capture mode that’s a lot more team-oriented than the other modes. Here, the goal is to grab a battery and attach it to the enemy team’s brainwashing machine. Once the machine is activated and defended long enough from attackers, your team will score a point, and the team with the most points at the end of the match wins. The twist, though, is that if your team fails to detach a battery from their own machine in time, your entire team will suffer a temporary psychedelic effect that prevents weapon usage. What’s funny is that a voice will say demoralizing things to you as this is happening.
The Psych Warfare and Fumigation modes are nice, amusing twists to the standard capture-and-defend and capture-and-retrieve modes seen in other FPSs. Unfortunately, though, there’s no Free-For-All mode, which is disappointing since it would have been a blast having 12 players battle each other.
Despite the absence of Free-for-All, there’s another mode called Challenges, which involves completing several solo challenges in time to earn medals. There are three difficulty settings, and some challenges include collecting orbs solely with gadgets or collecting orbs and shooting dummy targets with both gadgets and weapons. Your skills and abilities will be tested, and if you mess up a challenge you can quickly restart a level and try again. Being able to quickly retry a challenge was important since you won’t feel the need to quit as easily. Plus, not only do the single-player challenges let you earn a little extra XP, but they help familiarize yourself with the layout of the game’s multiplayer maps as well.
Depending on what “home turf” you’re playing on, you’ll be randomly invited to join one of the game’s five gangs to increase your “Reputation Points” and, thus, earn rewards. What rewards or benefits you gain exactly is unclear (this was even the case when I was able to increase my Reputation from zero to three, which took a long time). Besides being able to see where your gang ranks via an in-game map/statistics page, the gang feature doesn’t really seem to add anything special (yet), nor does it detract anything; it’s simply just there.
One issue that I had with GCI was how weak the game’s default loadouts eventually became. At first, I was able to play just fine with the standard loadouts, but at some point I kept dying and was having a really hard time killing anyone. Enemy players seemed to be way more powerful than me to the point that it felt way too unbalanced and unfair. Every time I was toe-to-toe against someone, I would almost always die even when I showered my opponent with bullets first. The problem got so bad that I no choice but to create my own loadout; once I did though, things got much better.
On another note, GCI, as aforementioned, is fundamentally a shooter, but I can’t help but wonder that the game would be more fun and interesting if it wasn’t so shooter-centric. There’s already a flood of FPSs out there, and though GCI is fun to play, it feels like there were missed opportunities. For instance, it would have been neat if GCI was an arcade-y third-person brawler/beat-‘em-up where the emphasis was less on shooting and more on utilizing over-the-top traps, gadgets and even environmental hazards (which, sadly, is absent). Alternatively, the game could still be a FPS, but as aforementioned, there should be way more over-the-top weapons to really take advantage of the fact that you’re not playing as famous, established characters.
Aside from the missed opportunities, there are also a few technical issues like freezing and lag, but luckily, they didn’t happen often (maybe three or four times) so they’re not deal breakers. What is much more detrimental, though, is the seeming inability to jump in a match that’s already in progress. So if you want to play a match, you first have to sit through a matchmaking lobby that has enough people in it. Considering this is a download-only multiplayer game (i.e., a game where player numbers might not be as high compared to well-known boxed retail titles, let alone, any boxed retail title), this could harm GCI in the long-run as player numbers dwindle in the future like with any multiplayer game.
Fortunately, at the time of this review, there seems to be a healthy amount of players, at least for the Xbox 360 version I played. However, there are few times when the game is unable be able to find players (note: this seemed like a bug, rather than lack of players), which means you have to sit through the pre-matchmaking screen for awhile. While this doesn’t happen too often, it wouldn’t be so bad if the game didn’t lock out the ability to customize your character, change loadouts or view your stats while this was happening.
Oh, and one more thing: the game gives a terrible first impression. The first time you boot up the game you’re introduced to screen after screen of text such as legal notices and privacy polices. Needless to say, this is awful and the game even acknowledges how awful it is via an on-screen cartoony Batman-looking character.
Fortunately, the problems are completely overshadowed by fun gameplay, and the game’s psychiatric hospital/criminal theme is comical and charming. For instance, when scrolling through Psych Profile abilities there are certificates that state the abilities as if they were mental illnesses. And at the end of a match, you’re able to see the characters of the top three players in a police lineup. Additionally, it’s neat how the game explains the things you unlock via a cartoony, old-timey movie that plays whenever you get something new.
GCI is a fun, arcade-y and rewarding game that’s a blast to play thanks in part to over-the-top items/gadgets. There should be a lot more over-the-top weapons, however, and it’s a bit unfortunate that the game is mainly a CoD-like shooter. GCI could have been much more unique with it’s over-the-top premise, but regardless, GCI is still an enjoyable, robust FPS that has a surprising amount of customization options and unlockables. Don’t let GCI’s concept of a pseudo-superhero multiplayer FPS deter you from picking up the game.
(Note: It was announced that in March there will be a free update/DLC to the game that will include lag-reducing dedicated servers, “matchmaking fixes,” weapon balance tweaks, “quick-scope” exploit fix, framerate optimization, and the ability to join a match that’s already in progress. There will also be new additions including a new Fun Fact, a new item, new costume items, new weapons, a new map, and more player cards at earlier levels.)
