Gotham City Imposters Impressions

Gotham City Imposters is quite the conundrum. It's a straight up multiplayer first person shooter - set in Gotham City. My initial reaction to this was, "WTF??". In what may turn out to be an even bigger mystery, the game is actually really good. The game released this week on XBLA, PSN, and PC for $15 bucks. The graphics have a unique style that really fits with the world of Batman. I'm far from finished with the game, but I did play enough games to get a feel for what it's all about.
The premise is that Batman has left town and all of the Joker's henchmen have started wreaking havoc on Gotham City, leaving it up to the imposters (Batman look-a-likes) to stop them. Since the imposters obviously don't have the ability or the equipment that Batman has, they use guns to stop the bad guys. They also have gadgets similar in concept to what Batman uses, though the construction is far less elegant than what Batman carries around; think items found in a garage held together by duct tape.

Gotham City Imposters has 3 online gameplay modes and 1 offline mode. The 3 online modes are: Team Deathmatch, Fumigation, and Psych Warfare.The offline mode is simply called "challenges".
Team Deathmatch is exactly as the name implies, first team to reach the alotted number of kills wins.
Fumigation is essentially territories from Halo. There are 3 zones on the map that each team must attempt to capture and defend the longest. If the imposters hold the zones the longest a pheromone is released that causes large swarms of bats to attack and kill anything resembling a joker. If the jokers win, a deadly nerve toxin is released killing all of the imposters.
Psych Warfare reminded me of assault from Halo. Each team has a brainwashing machine that can be used to brainwash the other side to their cause. There is a battery placed on the map that is needed to run the machine. Each team must attempt to retrieve the battery and take it back to their machine. Once at the machine the team must defend the battery from the other team while the battery charges the machine. Do this successfully and your team wins.
Challenges mode is the only offline mode and has the player attempting to complete obstacle courses in a certain amount of time with each of the game's gadgets. As you complete these you unlock progressively harder tiers.

The weapons of Gotham City Imposters consists of your typical FPS fare; assault rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, sniper rifles, and light machine guns. But it also has the welcome addition of crazy guns you'd expect from a shooter set in Gotham City, like the Freeze Ray. As you level up you unlock things like the ability to customize your character and their loadout. In your loadout you can pick two weapons, a support item, and a gadget. Support items are things like body armor, grenades, and traps. While gadgets are things like grappling hooks, roller skates, spring boots, and a glider.
All of the maps appear to be setup to take advantage of the verticality achieved by gadgets such as the grappling hook and the spring boots. The aiming controls are very solid and make the game that much more enjoyable. And the music consists of the typical quirky, funhouse sounds you'd expect from a game like this.

Overall I was very pleasantly surprised by Gotham City Imposters. I wasn't exactly sure how a FPS set in the world of Batman would actually work, but Monolith not only pulled it off, they took all the staples of current shooting games and still made it their own. I would definitely recommend this to anyone that loves FPS's or Batman.