Gotham City Impostors.

I thought as a break from all the romance and animated movies, I'd head back to my roots - video games. I honestly really miss video game reviews, it's where it all started for me. I just don't play enough games any more to do it. So whenever I get the chance I scoop it up. Enjoy!

The first thing to state, Gotham City Impostors is a fun title but I'm approaching this critically so despite the fact I enjoy this game, this review is going to be a lot more negative than it is positive, there is a lot wrong with this game.

Actually, let's stick with the positive for a while, although this plays like COD it has the silly elements of TF2 and it really works. A lot of the usual cunts you get on shooter games are just non-existent here. I mean you still get camping, most matches seem to play out entirely over singular rooms for some reason, but the games great sense of speed means you're never really alive long enough to become a genuine nuisance if you do camp. That being said, nothing 'beats' the frustration of getting killed while someone takes the advantage of the fact you are shooting at someone else... And since the entire game is built around teams, prepare for this shit a lot.

As said, the game is built entirely on teams, so how much fun you have on this game is normally centred around who exactly is sharing the game with you. Some games I seem to spend the entire thing dying, over and over and over until I want to cry and others I'm blasting around on my 'blades with my automatic shotgun grinning insanely as 'Multi-Kill' flashes onto my screen. That sounds rather pathetic reading it back, like all I care about is winning, but I'm not sure there is even any logic just some games I seem to do really well and others extremely shitty.

You get points for basically everything in game, so on the leaderboard I'm normally pretty near the top at the end of every game. Not that my kill/death ratio would show it, but that's because you get rewarded for helping to kill a player with a team-mate, for protecting your team, for taking vengeance, for getting headshots etc etc so you can easily get hundreds of points and it's only an assist. I really liked this aspect, I just felt it took a lot of the elitism of the game out. Nothing is worse than being an integral player to a team but being right at the bottom of the scoreboard because you can't get 12 kills with every life.

Fairly quickly though the game starts to suffer from Blur syndrome (copyright pending). The points you earn help you to level up, as you level up you get keys in specific areas so you can slowly build your own custom characters. The problem is, I don't need like four different characters, I have one play style so after I'd got that one character how I needed them, all the unlocks I was getting from that point forward were completely pointless. Admittedly occasionally I'd realise I'd need to make adjustments to my class (like I recently got the automatic shotgun because my character sucked at close range) so waiting for a new gun unlock key was the most amount of incentive I had to play in a while.

Also there is an extreme amount of customisation. You can choose their body types, faces, voices and clothes. Everything except clothes is done through unlock keys so you normally have the character you want fairly quickly, clothes though... on average the most decent clothing items cost around 1000 costume points, you get costume points at the end of each match but you are very unlikely to get more than 20 costume points per match... so think of how many games you'd have to play, for one item, why would you do that...

What perhaps sets this game apart from games like COD or TF2 are the Batman themed gadgets, I guess they had to use the licence somewhere. Although there is a lot of familiar things here, there are a lot of new things here too. Amongst other things you can stun people with boomerangs, you can slow people down with bear traps (these things are a fucking nuisance), glide around the map with a glide pack, use a grapple gun to 'Batman' around the map and blast around on rollerskates (love the speed these provide)

Also the class system is fucking bollocks. I think TF2 is the only game that has ever got classes right (that I've played at least), with TF2 although each class has a weakness each class also has a strength and that strength is directly linked into the actual game itself. Here, not so much... I was playing as a Nimble because A) she's hawt but also I liked the speed I could get around the maps but I soon started to realise how quickly you can get around a map has very little impact on the actual game itself, you could do just as well going at a normal speed, the weakness of a Nimble however is they can be taken down in just a few hits so the speed does not outweigh the fact they are weak as shit. Take the Mighty class, they are the total opposite, despite getting around the map as slow as physically possible they can also take multiple magazines to take down - at close range. So why'd you ever pick any other class? Admittedly there are modifiers that mean you can make a Nimble take extra damage or heal faster or whatever, but it rarely closes the divide noticeably.

Once you realise this fact, the whole game begins to come apart at the seams, there is very little incentive to play this game. Whether it be the meaningless class system, the meaningless unlocks, the fact there are like five maps and Deathmatch is the only gametype that matters the game gives you pretty much every reason to hate it. Yet despite this fact, the general craziness of GTI means you'll never not be having fun for very long.

One other thing GTI's has done right that I couldn't really talk about until I explained some things is unlocking things via keys, its a brilliant idea.

One of the most annoying things about COD for me was being a level one was hell since guns were unlocked in relation to levels and challenges and so on, you were placed at a physical disadvantage from the start and forced to endure until you had good enough tech to compete. And although you obviously have to unlock the unlock Key's as you level up and you only get one in one specific area of the games choice with each level (primary weapon, secondary weapon, weapon add on, support item etc) you can still have the best guns and mods and stuff for yourself within the first ten levels.

So do I recommend it? Although GCI is deeply flawed but there is no denying that incredible rush when a match is going well, when you drop that well placed impact grenade and clear out an entire room to the admiration of your team mates. It does Unlock's so well and rewards you for more than just a good kill to death ratio. It deserves you checking out the trial, at least.

Think About It!

-Locke