Gotham City Impostors Impressions

Yesterday, I noticed that Gamespot was doing free beta invites for Gotham City Impostors, a new class-based shooter from Monolith coming out in January. I've been hankering for a good online FPS for the last week or so (don't own any on PS3 and my Gold account for Xbox just ran out) so I figured I'd give it a try.

The game most resembles, big shocker, Call of Duty. It has the usual level progression where you unlock more guns, addons, perks, and looks for your characters. Crazy enough, the full game will apparently have 1000 levels, at least according to some of the game's challenges. Someone at Monolith must have a sense of humor.

There is a decent spread of things to unlock and you unlock them in a way similar to Black Ops. Every so often, you earn unlock tokens and get to choose what you unlock (instead of getting preset things at certain levels). This lets you pick things you are interested in. The one thing that bugged me is the lack of a note of when you get new unlock tokens, something I hope is present in the full game.

As for the actual gameplay, it controls like Call of Duty but it much more mobile. Some of the gadgets you can equip are things like a cape, spring shoes, and a grapple hook so mobility plays a huge role in the game. You constantly see people flying through the air and the maps have a nice vertical element to them to support this.

Gunplay is nice and tight, with damage numbers popping up over people you hit (one of my favorite things!). Guns have a decent punch but I have noticed a bit of overuse of the rocket launchers. You are allowed to pair any two weapons together in your loadout so it allows some more interesting, albeit annoying, combinations.

There are currently two gametypes in the beta. One of them is your basic "hold three points" game but the points are gas canisters. Once your team holds them long enough, the other team gets gassed at the end. The other gametype has teams vying for a single battery, returning it to their loudspeaker and plugging it in. Once it has been undisturbed in the machine for long enough, they score a point and the other team must spend roughly thirty seconds without much control, dizzied under the words coming from the loudspeaker.

The main thing you will notice about this game is its sense of humor. The characters aren't afraid to curse and the artstyle is very colorful and wacky. In the gametype with the loudspeaker, it says hilarious things such as "You are a loser" and "Give up" when your team is capped on. In the menus is a little black and white Batman that gives you tips on the whole thing. It manages to capture the feel of Batman without all the seriousness that usual comes with it.

So far, I'm liking the game a lot. It needs a bit of polish before January but I could easily see this being a bit better off than other downloadable shooters like Blacklight: Tango Down. Monolith is a great developer and deserves a bit of praise for its work (and more money to work on Condemned 3!). The game comes out near the end of January for $15 on XBLA, PSN, and PC. Check it out!