Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

When Gotham City Impostors was first announced last month, there were three main topical focal points swirling around the buzzmill. First up, the announcement surprised more than a few based on a fact that Arkham City is due to drop later this year. Secondly, based on the little info and images available at the time, many gamers instantly dubbed the game, “Team Fortress 2 with a Batman theme”. The third eyebrow raiser is the game’s developer, Monolith Productions.

Not unlike a wickedly wrapped Joker bomb, I’m going to take my best crack at addressing all three counting down from three to one. Hopefully nothing explodes at the end, but you never know these days!

First let’s take a brief look at the developers of Gotham City Impostors: Monolith Productions. I find this interesting for a number of reasons, but our own mileage may vary.

Monolith has a fairly lengthy list of shipped titles, among them the third and most recent entry in the F.E.A.R. series which was released this June. If you’ve played any of those titles, you know that Monolith has a pretty solid lock on the “damn that’s creepy” FPS market, or DTCFPS for short. And no, Dead Space doesn’t count since that’s a third-person shooter franchise that desperately wants to be Gears of Gore, but I digress.

The second and final notable entry in the Monolith back catalogue – at least for the purposes of this article – is The Matrix Online, otherwise known as MXO by the few dozen people who continued to play it right up until the servers were shut down on July 31, 2009. Of course by that point the game’s development had been taken over by SOE after the previous publisher, Warner Brothers, decided to take the blue pill and jump ship on the project.

So if you’re following along with me so far, the things we have to stuff in our magical brain blenders include:

• Team-based FPS featuring Hobo Batmen and Junkyard Jokers (and yes, I made those names up!)
• Developers of a fear-inducing FPS franchise that suspiciously launched the same year as MXO, a game that caused many strong emotive responses from MMO gamers, fear not being one of them
• Numerous comparisons to TF2

Still with me? Good. Then let’s take a crack at those pesky TF2 comparisons now, shall we?

As luck would have it, I recently got the chance to spend some hands-on time with Gotham City Impostors. I can tell you first-hand that any comparisons to TF2 can safely be put to rest, the most obvious reason being that GCI is not a class-based shooter. Nor would you want it to be once you get a chance to zip around on roller skates or firebomb enemies with your rocket launcher while drifting along on your glider wings.

Before I drive too far down gadget lane, let me back up a bit and give you a quick rundown of what GCI is all about. As a team-based shooter, you’ll be playing on the side of Batman or the Joker, however, you won’t actually be playing as either one. Instead, you’ll be able to assemble some pretty outlandish costumes based on which side you play on, hence the Hobo Batman and Junkyard Joker references.