Remembering Gotham City Impostors Ten Years On (2024)

I was an impostor online way before Among Us. Ten years ago this month, Gotham City Impostors launched to a fairly muted reception, but it slotted into a weird gap in the shooter market that we don't seem to have any more, and I sort of miss it, even if Gotham City Impostors was sort of rubbish. Somehow, it was brilliant, but it was also rubbish. Seems kinda sus (geddit? Cuz 'impostor'? Like Amogus? We are a hoot at TheGamer, aren't we?).

Anyway, if you never played Gotham City Impostors, it was basically Call of Duty except you dressed up as Batman or the Joker. And I do mean 'dressed up'. Batman and Joker weren't in the game at all. Instead it was just random people dressed up as them for a laugh, except they were shooting at you. Usually when someone dresses up at the Joker and starts shooting at people it’s the recipe for tragedy and a bleak indictment of our mental health support systems, but here it was just a right good laugh. The game also spelled The Jokerz with a 'z', which was pretty much the coolest thing a person could do in 2012. Still is today, right gamerz?

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There were four modes, three of which were just King of the Hill, Capture the Flag, and Team Deathmatch except given batty names, and a fourth, much more spectacular mode: Bounty Hunter. It was Team Deathmatch if you imagine all the players were Sonic the Hedgehog, on top of the fact they were all Batman or Joker. Every time a player died, they dropped coins, just as the Blue Blur tends to do. The comedy ching-ching noise was not included, but it was just as silly. You had to scurry to collect all the coins up, as they didn't automatically go to the killer. Like pensioners in Atlantic City, you scrambled on the floor to pick up those shiny quarters. You could even grab the coins of your own fallen comrades to stop the other team filling their pockets.

But the best part of Gotham City Impostors was how much you could make your character feel like you. They still had to look like Batman or Joker, sure, but because there were six Batmen and six Jokerz running around, there was heavy customisation on offer. Shooter games too often make you a generic grunt or just make you some character from pop culture. You can literally be Batman in Fortnite, as well as Harley Quinn, Lara Croft, Harry Kane, Ariana Grande, Nathan Drake, and I could go on and on. There are two different Zendayas in Fortnite now. It feels a little soulless. Even though Gotham City Impostors was all about dressing up as an existing character, it offered far more creativity into the mix than just being that character.

Gotham City Impostors does not have enduring popularity. Many of you had probably forgotten it had existed until you saw this article, and it has been removed from various storefronts while many of the servers have been shut down. It has averaged 3.9 players over this last month, and since it was digital only, the only way to play it is to have bought it before it was delisted. I haven't played it for years, but as it turns ten, it's worth remembering, even if only for a moment.

Unfortunately, it's unlikely we'll see many games like this again. It was a precursor to the hero shooter in a way, with its wacky weapons and heavily stylised characters, but hero shooters come with heroes. They come with characters ready to tell their own story. You can't make Jett your own in Valorant, she's just Jett. The grim, serious shooters are still here as the dominant force in the market, hero shooters have found a way in, and then there are battle royales, which are either equally grim and serious as the classic shooters, or are over-reliant on pop culture tie-ins and therefore limit your ability to be yourself. Why would you want 17 different body type options when you can just pay some money and be Chun-Li?

There won't be another game like Gotham City Impostors for some time, and in many ways that's no big loss. As I said, in a lot of places it was a bit rubbish. But it's sad that the shooter genre, as popular as it is, doesn't seem willing to be silly or to try new things. Keep your Batman Fortnite skins, I'm happy being sus.

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