My mother always tells the story about how I used to dress up in my Batman pajamas and run around the house with my Super Soaker and homemade utility belt, fighting imaginary evil. I would spend hours finding small household items and fashioning them into my own Bat-inventions. I would watch the Tim Burton Batman movies over and over until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer and I’d play the awful Batman games on my NES. I was like every other kid of the late 80’s. But, here’s the weird part: when my mom would ask if I was Batman I would say, “No, I’m helping.”
Now that I pay bills and have car insurance it’s not okay to run around in my homemade Bat-outift and shoot the neighbor’s bloodthirsty dog with my makeshift pellet gun. But there is an alternative: Gotham City Impostors. In this online multi-player FPS, players take on the mantle of either a Batman impersonator or a Joker look-a-like, as assigned in matchmaking. Almost everything else in Impostors is fully customizable, including tool-belts packed with goodies my six-year-old self couldn’t even imagine.
Players start by picking an arsenal of weapons and gadgets that could fill the Batcave. Some of the weapons are no brainers (machine guns, launchers, semi-automatics) and some are a bit more off the wall (Deep Freezer, Motivator). Each one of these weapons can be upgraded and modded to suit a player’s style. When I was younger, it was a paper towel roll gun with a plastic lid scope, which ostensibly translated to a machine gun with a red dot scope. Each player has some standard support items and then some over the top gadgets like a pair of rollerskates, a grappling gun and spring boots for extra boost. Remember those moon bounce shoes? Totally got to live that dream.
Back in the day, my stomping grounds were the house, the backyard and Meaty’s front yard. Each of these battlegrounds held their own surprises (poop covered lawns, that one stair that always shook loose) just like the arenas in Impostors. Crime Alley and Amusement Mile stick out as obvious favorites, as they’re the most rooted in Batman culture. The other three arenas (The Docks, Gotham Light & Power and Ace Chemical) all feel as if they could have been pulled from any other FPS. I’m sure I’m not the only one who would look forward to maps of Wayne Manor, Arkham Asylum and even somewhere like the Gotham Museum of History.
There are three different modes of play in Impostors. Typical Team Deathmatch pits the Jokerz against the Bats and supports the most immediate feeling of gratification. Fumigation is a tug-of-rope type game where the longer a team has control of the fumigation machines, the more of the percentage bar is acquired. It’s reminiscent of Meaty’s and my favorite game, except that one involved us stinking up his family room with noxious farts until the other had to leave for air. The third play mode is Psych Warfare, which functions like capture the flag. Steal a battery, bring it to your base and defend. The only problem with this mode is that I can’t bring the battery back and then yell, “My dad said you have to get off our property!” until Meaty went home and I won.
The player leveling system constantly teases the player to persist just one more round. You know you want to unlock the bearded face or another mod for your secondary weapon, and Impostors keeps you hooked. The player’s clothes are customized by paying with in-game cash (or money from your PSN or XBL account) but go for a steep price. I’m currently saving up to buy a kilt, which will mimic my sister’s blue skirt I used to wear when doing the Bat-slide down my staircase railing. The customized options seem to go on forever and the length between unlocking is a bit of a dragbut like my dad used to say, “If it was easy everybody would do it.”
Gotham City Impostors is a zany, action-packed game full of FPS imitation madness. With quick load times, barely any lag in frame-rate and enough customization to keep you coming back for weeks, this is easily the best $15 you’ll spend on downloadable content this year. Imagine a world where you can live out your childhood fantasies as an adult and not be looked down upon by your crotchety neighbor who always asks if you’re “in a punk rock music band.” Let your childhood self come out, go pwn some n00bs, and pretend that you’re actually in Gotham, “helping Batman” (or Joker, if you were one of those kids).
