Gotham City Impostors Review (PS3)

What is Gotham City without Batman? A crazed battle-field for all the cities wannabe heroes and villains to battle it out for control – but only when the bats is out on business..

Gotham City Impostors offers an alternative to the heavy first-person shooters we’ve found ourselves accustomed to over the years. Offering some nutty gameplay with its imaginative weapons, crazy costumes and small map environments, the game provides a fun approach to online FPS gaming that will capture you for hours.

Battling out for control of the city, Batman and Joker fanatics have taken to the streets, armed to the teeth with an abundance of wacky gadgets and weapons. The games wanna-be hero/villain approach allows it to use some wicked design styles in both the games character and interface design. There’s something about the games laid back approach to superhero warfare that makes it a more engaging experience, as you’re constantly reminded that it’s there to be fun, not stressful – It’s the first time I’ve played a FPS and not raged over multiple deaths.

There are a number of costume customisations available in the game, each unlockable with the coins you collect from your in-game victories. The games costume focus is great, as it allows you to create your own villainous / heroic identity for use throughout the game. Furthermore, with the promise of more costumes and maps in March, Gotham City Impostors doesn’t look like it will get too generic anytime soon.

The first thing worth nothing is that Gotham City Impostors pretty much takes place entirely online, with very little single player, or story focus. In fact, the only single player focus you’ll experience comes from the games training and short lived challenge maps, which act as an extension to training, forcing you to hone your skills. The challenges make for a fun addition to the multiplayer and even add some replay-ability with bronze, silver and gold medals, although I wouldn’t expect this to capture you for hours.

The games real strength can be found in its multiplayer modes. Gotham City Impostors features three multiplayer modes: Death Match, Psych Warfare and Fumigation. Each of these game modes provides a short, yet engaging team experience where you battle it out against your rival faction. Team Death Match is quite literally, as the name suggests, a massive death match, as you and your team race to hit 50 kills before the other team. Psych Warfare takes a capture the flag approach, as you fight to steal a battery and use it to power a trip inducing propaganda machine. Finally, Fumigation takes a base capture approach, as you and your team (spotting a trend here?) fight to control three gas pumping machines for the longest period of time.

Gotham City Impostors introduces some wacky gadgets that work well to enhance the overall experience. As the game is themed around the batman universe, it should be expected that the gadgets similarly try to follow suit. Gliding rigs, spring shoes and even enemy detecting goggles all play parody to gadgets you’d expect to see Batman and Joker using in a real fight. The goggles in particular are a bit of a god tool, as they allow you to highlight enemy locations for the whole team, turning you into a sort of watch-tower, as you drive your team towards victory.


It’s safe to say that you haven’t experienced how fun the FPS genre can actually be until you’ve played Gotham City Impostors. The game captures everything that is great about FPS games with its universal controls and interface, whilst at the same time shaking it all up with comic-book references and humorous characters. The game is also perfect for both casual and focused gamers, as its short play-times allow gamers to play as long as they like.

9/10