Gotham City Imposters Message Board

Aha, perhaps rather predictable, eh? So predictable, in fact, that when Craig wrote his thoughts about the game down for us, he said: “You feel awfully like you’ve just bought into a free-to-play shooter. On one hand it offers a range customisations for you to trim the fat from the character, or add to it if you want a tougher head to deflect the bullets. There’s an overwhelming number of weapons, body types, and costumes you can tweak. But on the other hand it’s stingy in the way that f2p games are.” But now, with it quietly going free on Steam, the primary element of stingyness, actually having to pay for it, has been removed. That probably doesn’t make it a better game, but hey, at least you can try it for nowt…

Earlier this month, we delivered a big update to your PlayStation Plus Instant Game Collection with the addition of great games like Gotham City Impostors, Pac-Man Championship Edition DX, and Renegade Ops. These three games continue to be free for Plus members, in addition to nine more free AAA games, like LittleBigPlanet 2, inFAMOUS 2, and Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One. That’s not all for this month, though! To round out July (and even getting a bit into August), we’ve got even more goodness for Plus members!

July 17th PlayStation Plus Update

Dyad – 20% Off: Dyad is an abstract game that is influenced by many genres, including racing games, fighting games, puzzle games and classic arcade shooters. Each of the game’s 27 different levels utilizes a variety of mechanics and present unique challenges: forming long combos, racing, surviving as long as possible, hitting certain top speeds, and more. Releasing as part of the 7/17 PlayStation Store Update, we’re proud to present this highly-anticipated game to all Plus members at a 20% discount on day one! Want more info? Check out all the coverage from the PlayStation Blog on this title, or hop into the PlayStation Forums thread to discuss it with the community.

The Games (PlayStation Store Promotion): Start Your Training. Once again four years have gone by in a flash, and the world is getting together to compete in The Games. To celebrate, snag two bonus sporty PS one Classics free: International Track & Field and Hot Shots Golf 2. International Track and Field is a 3D update to the classic Track & Field series and offers fun competition in over 11 different Olympic Events. Hot Shots Golf 2’s gameplay still shines as well, with easy to pick up and play golf action. If you own a PSP and have a Plus subscription through your PS3, you’ll be able to activate these free Plus downloads on your PSP, as well as your PS3. In addition, the sale will feature 50% discounts on select titles for Plus members too.

July 24th & 31st PlayStation Plus Update

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PSN PLAY – 20% off: This legendary PlayStation Store event returns with a killer lineup of new releases and special incentives. PlayStation Plus members get the edge though as each of these highly anticipated new releases will have a 20% discount for all members during the first week! By participating in this event, you’ll not only get discounts on each week of a game’s release (including the pre-order week), but the more you buy, the more actual dollars will end up back in your wallet! So watch out for the pre-order of Expendables 2, starting 7/24 and game release on 7/31.

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Sound Shapes, Papo & Yo, and Counter Strike: Global Offensive are also in the wings to rock your PSN world in PSN PLAY, which continues into August. Want more info? Read more about the PSN PLAY event right here or discuss it in the PlayStation Community forums.

Malicious – 20% off: In Malicious, you’ll take control of a “Spirit Vessel” awakened by prophets to defeat Holders, evil giants bent on destroying The Kingdom. You’re armed with the Mantle of Cinders, a magical artifact that takes the form of weapons or a shield. This awesome new PSN title sports a 20% discount in its debut week on the PlayStation Store on 7/24!

That’s it for now, but keep your feedback coming in by posting your thoughts on this update in the comments section. We got some great feedback from the questions posed in the update earlier this month, so thank you for making your voice heard. What games will you be picking up this month? Thanks, and see you in the comments!

Last month we gave all PlayStation Plus members an Instant Game Collection that included 12 full PS3 and PSN games, and it’s been a resounding hit with gamers everywhere! This month, we’re continuing the free game goodness by bringing three new titles to your collection in PlayStation Plus.

Break out the fireworks for the July 3rd PlayStation Store update, where PlayStation Plus members will be able to download Gotham City Impostors, Pac-Man Championship Edition DX, and Renegade Ops for FREE!

Get PlayStation Plus Now

July 3rd PlayStation Plus Update

Gotham City Impostors: Previously announced as 50% off in Plus as part of the PSN Summer Sale, we’ve got a surprise for Plus members as Gotham City Impostors will be free for the month of July! Hatched from the twisted minds at Monolith Productions, Gotham City Impostors is a download-only multiplayer FPS that pits violent vigilantes (dressed up like Batman) against craven criminals (dressed up as the Joker) in open warfare on the streets of Gotham City. Since its release, there have been a ton of new additions to the game, including more customization options, thousands of player unlocks and upgrades, and more. Check out Giant Bomb’s review praising its gameplay and outstanding humor. Add this phenomenal multiplayer FPS to your collection this July – free with your PlayStation Plus membership.

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX: This edition of one of gaming’s most beloved franchises takes the series in a bold, and incredibly addictive direction. With fast-paced gameplay, countless twists on the classic Pac-Man experience, awesome head-bumping music, and crazy-good leaderboard integration, Pac-Man Championship Edition DX is a title that no gamer should miss — IGN gave it a 10 out 10! And now, with your PlayStation Plus membership, you won’t have to!

Renegade Ops: Last year’s PSN PLAY promotion introduced 4 amazing PSN games to heat up the last days of summer. Renegade Ops was one of those titles and deservedly so. The critically-acclaimed PSN game boasts 4 player co-op, destructible environments (using the Just Cause 2 engine), addictive gameplay, and lots of fun add-ons. This title will spice up your PlayStation Plus game collection with firepower on the back of co-op gameplay, and is a true must-download for all members. Check out 1up.com’s Renegade Ops review, where it scored a perfect “A” grade.

Click here to visit the Official PSN Summer Sale page

PSN Summer Sale: If you saw the PlayStation Store’s Summer Sale news this morning, you know that you’ll be able to heat up your PSN games collection by taking advantage of some deep discounts on major PS3 Full Game titles: Shadow of the Colossus, Killzone 3 Multiplayer, and more are all on sale this week with 50% off deals for PlayStation Plus members!

July 10th PlayStation Plus Update

Rainbow Moon: This PSN exclusive strategy role-playing game comes packed with strong emphasis on exploration, character development and turn-based battles. And the best part is that PlayStation Plus members will receive a 20% discount when it releases on July 10th! With a classic isometric open world, six playable main characters, more than 20 dungeons, around 100 special skills, fully customizable weapons, armor and accessories; Rainbow Moon is a massive game that offers all the features that you want from a traditional RPG… and a lot more!

That’s it for now! We’ll have another update for you midway through the month with more great Plus content, including offers on a psychedelic racing game, exclusive access to an action-packed beta, and amazing deals on anticipated new PSN releases. Keep an eye on the PlayStation Store Update posts every Tuesday to stay current with all the offerings made available to PlayStation Plus members.

Also, please share your feedback regarding this month’s PlayStation Plus update in the comments. Some of the burning questions we have for you include: Do you prefer monthly Plus free games updates all at once, or more of a steady feed of content arriving through the month? On a scale of 1-10, what would you score the current Instant Game Collection lineup?

Want Plus? Click here to purchase online, or activate on the PlayStation Store.

(Please note that Virtua Fighter 5, Hard Corp: Uprising, and Zombie Apocalypse will be rotated out of the PlayStation Plus catalog on 7/3. However, you can still download them prior to the 7/3 PlayStation Store Update hits, and will be able to keep them in your collection as long as you are a PlayStation Plus member – so if you haven’t added these awesome games to your queue then we suggest you do so now! )

#fineart Stacey Clark is a senior concept artist at Warner Bros.' Monolith Productions. In this gallery, you'll find some of her work for games such as Lord of the Rings: War in the North and Gotham City Imposters. More »

Craig may have found Gotham City Impostors to be a run-of-the-mill shooter with the F2P-esque currency equivalent of a hundred-headed hydra, but its zany take on Batman’s mythos, at least, kept him from completely giving it the old POW, THWACK, GARBAGE CAN SOUND. It remains to be seen, however, whether or not its recently released update is up that (hopefully not) orphan-spawning alley. At the very least, all of it’s free and will grant you access to a new map, the up-close-and-personal East End, and a new coin-collecting mode called Bounty Hunter. More importantly, though, you can now make your character say silly things in other languages. Would you like a trailer? Then put on your ill-fitting batsuit and grapple-flail past the break.

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First-person shooter Gotham City Impostors was released. I’ve spent a few days on the streets of Gotham, mopping up crime and causing criminal chaos. Is it ‘Zap!’, ‘Kapow!’, or more of a sad ‘Thunk!’? Here’s Wot I Think.

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We pitched the concept for Gotham City Impostors several times before it was greenlit. Each time, people laughed. The first time, they laughed appreciatively because they assumed we were joking. “A downloadable multiplayer shooter set in the Batman universe featuring guns, killing, and a distinct lack of Batman? Good one!”

As they began to suspect we were serious, the laughter became strained. “You know there’s no way this will ever get approved, right!? Do you realize how many people would have to sign off on this crazy idea!? It’s impossible!”

Once we were able to communicate the vision for the game with imagery and audio, everyone was back to laughing sincerely again because they finally got it. No, it wasn’t going to be a traditional Batman game, but it was absolutely going to be an unabashed love letter to Batman.

But selling an idea to executives is different from selling it to other Batman fans. Let’s just say there was some skepticism when the game was first announced. Let’s also concede that there’s probably still some out there. I even had the opportunity to talk to some skeptics directly at PAX Prime and found there were three questions that kept coming up.

“Why a multiplayer-only downloadable game?”

The answer to this is simple. By the end of F.E.A.R., there was only a small group of us left on the project, fixing bugs and polishing the game. Once we got it out the door, we transitioned to what started as a modest multiplayer support plan but gradually and organically metamorphosed into F.E.A.R. Combat, a freely available release of the entire multiplayer portion of F.E.A.R. with additional modes and maps.

F.E.A.R. Combat was easily the most fun I’d ever had working on a game. The team was small and enthusiastic. Our development process was extremely flexible and highly efficient. And the game played well from day one and only got better as we refined it.

So when we found ourselves between projects with a team too small to create a full-fledged title, I immediately latched onto the idea of another multiplayer game. We had a solid, multiplatform tech base to work with, meaning we could be up and running right away. And we had access to one of the coolest franchises around. And I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it.

“Why impostors instead of the real Batman and Joker?”

One obvious problem is that in a match with 16 players, only one person gets to be Batman. While nobody gets to be THE Batman in our game, everybody gets to be A Batman Impostor. And that’s exactly what I personally love about Batman: he’s just like the rest of us… except with way more money and a much nobler moral code. In other words, there’s nothing stopping any of us from stepping up and becoming an “Almost Batman” except having the will to do so.

Another reason we were attracted to the idea of impostors is that the real world is already brimming with people who love to dress up like Batman knowing he’s a fictitious character. Imagine if he were real. You wouldn’t have to go to a comic book convention to see copycats. They’d be everywhere. Obviously, Batman wouldn’t tolerate imitators who went around killing bad guys, but as badass as he may be, he can only be in one place at a time, which leaves plenty of room in the city for impostors to rampage until he shows up to chase them away.

“Why use the Batman license at all if you aren’t making a Batman game?”

The simple fact is that it was specifically because of the Batman license that we were even interested in making the game. Not only does the impostor concept stand out in a marketplace teeming with military and sci-fi shooters, but we believed that the combination of Batman-inspired gadgetry with the ability to completely customize your loadouts however you see fit would result in a furiously paced, gravity defying, tactically diverse game experience unlike anything else out there. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of similarities to other games, but it’s all about how the elements come together as a whole. To use an arbitrary food metaphor: Just because lettuce shows up in a lot of salads doesn’t mean you can’t make a standout salad with lettuce.

In the end, we hope that Gotham City Impostors makes you laugh heartily as you skewer opponents with an arrow to the face or watch them get zapped out the sky by an Airspace Denier gnome. We also hope that even though we don’t let you become the Dark Knight himself, that you still feel a little closer to him simply by dressing up in a tacky, homemade approximation of his totally sweet costume and engaging in a crass, morally suspect approximation of his vigilante cause.

Gotham City Imposters is Now Available on Steam!

Hatched from the twisted minds at Monolith Productions, Gotham City Impostors is a download-only multiplayer FPS that pits violent vigilantes dressed up like Batman against craven criminals dressed up like the Joker in open warfare on the streets of Gotham City.

This is what happens when you get busy. I did not know that Gotham City Imposters, Monolith’s inventive multiplayer FPS where players are copycats of Batman and his various villains, has a defensive gnome that tazers people. Where I was and what I was doing at the time to not know I don’t know, but I now begrudge whatever it was I don’t remember doing. I hopefully won’t begrudge playing the game on February the 8th, and peeping into the beta tactics video below, I don’t think I will.(more…)

Gotham City Impostors, the bonkers-looking multiplayer from Monolith, has had a bit of a slip, presumably due to the icy weather. According to a press release (or “media alert” as a troubling number of people are now saying when saying their game has a new picture, etc), the 11th January release isn’t going to happen. In fact, it now gets no more specific than “February”, which is rarely a great sign, but could mean they’re hedging their bets.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of Gotham City Imposters, the upcoming Team Fortress but with Batmens and Multi-Jokers shooter, but I am very glad to see Monolith embracing the peculiar once again, after too many years of cheerless FEAR games. And here’s a neat way of promoting it too: a stylised, scrappy, wordless animated short showing off assorted ways for Team Bat to off Team Joker and vice-versa.(more…)

Gotham City Impostors, the other Batman game, has a release date. It’s the 10th January 2012, which sounds like it’s a hundred years in the future, but is in fact in exactly two months.

This is the sort-of-like-TF2-a-bit online shooter from Monolithic, who suddenly remembered they’re at their best when having fun, rather than being all gloomy and serious. Will we be having fun with this? We’ve no idea yet, because we haven’t played it. But there will be opportunities to do so, probably from December when the beta is “expected” to go live. To celebrate there’s a new sreenshot, which is, er, poorly taken. You can see the full size version by clicking on the pic above, and leave your screenshot-taking guides for not leaving the centre of the image mostly empty below.

I still can’t quite believe that Gotham City Imposters is officially licensed. Coming across as a blend of Kick-ass and Batman, its comedic and yet brutal take on a Gotham without its iconic protector and his gruesome nemesis is too crazy to receive DC Comics sanction, surely? Apparently, and thankfully, that’s not the case, with a new animated short demonstrating precisely why I’m amazed and gleeful that the game exists. There’s a massive dose of customisation, allowing you to create a suave Joker or an unkempt and overweight Batman, and the game is currently in a short closed beta. From what I can gather, its multiplayer team-based madness is enjoyable and, well, mad. Watch this and feel your mind boggle.

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Hurrah! A new trailer for the exceptionally bonkers-sounding Gotham City Imposters – a game in which everyone is either pretending to be Batman or the Joker. That is a Good Concept. This one a CG trailer, and therefore not much use to anyone, but it sure is fun to watch. Hey, that’s a use! And it contains lots and lots of bleeped swearing. But what’s this? It turns out that we’re such bloated idiots that we missed a game footage trailer last month. So that’s below too.

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Comic-Con has yet to officially start, but the nerd news we love is already rolling in. Gotham City Impostors -- a 12-player first-person shooter -- finally has some hard facts. The download is expected to launch in the winter of 2012 and should set you back $15 on the PlayStation Network or 1200 Mi...

It's tough to promote a Batman game that lacks Batman. But then again, the Dark Knight himself would never fit into a first-person shooter. Gotham City Imposters is an odd use of the Batman franchise. It's a 4-on-4 competitive multiplayer shooter featuring people pretending to be Batman and his alli...

Last night I mentioned Gotham City Imposters. The question I think everyone was left with was: if we’re all either Batman or the Joker, how much variety do we actually have? A piece of artwork released today suggests: and awful lot. Click on the pic above for a much bigger version, which suggests that as much as each side is themed by the one character, the differences will be striking. Even to the point of being a girl. (So essentially Batgirl and Harley Quinn (yay!), really.) Also, I’m still not over celebrating that it’s Monolith making this, despite its not being a game about sad people being scared on a depressing day!

"When I started at WB, one of the things I was most excited about was that I was going to get to work with the creative teams behind No One Lives Forever, Shogo and FEAR," Laura Fryer, general manager of WBIE's myriad Seattle studios told an assembled audience of E3 judges this morning. "So when I started, the first thing I did when I got that NDA signed was I went and found that team, and I said 'Okay guys, what are you working on?'"

As it turns out, the team at Monolith Productions was in between projects and wasn't actively working on anything. After some encouraging words from Fryer, the team put some serious thought into what it wanted to work on next and the answer was ... Batman.

"Okay, it's cool," Fryer told them, "but we already have a Batman game. And last time I checked, people really liked it so I'm not sure how that's going to work."

"No, not the Batman," they told her. "We want to work on multiplayer Batman."

Woah, this one snuck past me earlier. If there’s anything we like to do at RPS, it’s race our remote-controlled yachts around the castle moat. But we also like to have a good old grumble about how Monolith used to be this team who made brilliantly funny FPS games, and now all they do is make grumpy, grisly faux-horror. Well, hold onto your heads, because it looks like they’re making something silly again! Gotham City Imposters is a Batworld-inspired multiplayer FPS in a Gotham overrun by imposters of Batman and The Joker. Buh?

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Batman: Arkham City may be the center of superhero attention right now, but the Dark Knight has another trick up his sleeve. Warner Bros.' development studio Monolith Games is working on a downloadable multiplayer Batman title called Gotham City Imposters...