Gotham City Imposters: Actually Played It!

There was a recent patch (a big one) for Gotham City Imposters. I put a lot of hope into that patch -- that the connection issues and finding a game would make it playable. With actual people. And for longer than five minutes.

From my brief play time last night -- full rounds of team deathmatch for a stretch of 30 minutes -- it seems the patch has cleared up the problems I was experiencing. I played for 30 minutes, went from level 4 to (almost) level 8, unlocked a bunch of stuff, but had to to call it a night because the patch took so long to download. (Some of us have to get up and go to work in the morning!)

But the most important aspect is that after that initial rush of "Yay, it's working!" I was actually having some fun with it. And all those ""Team Fortress 2 with grappling hooks and skates" reductions aren't completely out of line, it does feel like the game is trying to carve out it's own identity. At least, so far.

Gotham City Imposters: No, Seriously, How Do I Review It?

 Steam tells me that I've spent about 9 hours "playing" Gotham City Imposters.

"Playing" is misleading as that word would tend to make a reader think I was, you know, actually playing the game rather than watching the match making screen continually cycle. I spent just over 20 minutes last night connecting to a solitary game. And you know, it was fun for the ten minutes it took to win the Fumigation map. But then it was back to watching that same old match making screen.

I've seen other players on the "experience level" in the 50 range. I'm at experience level 4. The ratio of experience to hours played is ridiculous. It should not look like me kill/death ratio in Call of Duty.

So, I come back to this same question I posed weeks ago: How do I review this game fairly?

Gotham City Imposters: How to Review?

It's a good question.

How do I review an online multiplayer game without actually playing the online multiplayer. I suppose the same way I reviewed a box when the game wasn't included. I can review the looks and music and maybe one or two jokes. But no one buys a game, especially a multiplayer shooter, based on those things, do they? It's about how the game plays! Is it fun? Is the action engaging? Is there some inherent level of strategy involved? Do the different classes compliment each other? What about the game modes? Upgrades? The list of questions is a long one and so far I haven't been able to answer any of them for the very simple reason that I haven't been able to reliably connect to a game.

I managed to get connected to a game last night. Kind of cool right off the bat, but I realized there were a mere three (3) players on the map. Three! Fortunately it was a 2-on-1 affair and my team won.  But I've lost count of the number of lobbies that I've suddenly dropped out of or games that have started only to lose the connection even before the map finishes loading. I've spent upwards of two hours now trying to connect to one freakin' game! (The single player experience boils down to training exercises.)

After the first few times I thought it might be NAT settings, etc. so I went in and started messing with that stuff. I always feel a little blind when I do stuff like that. Like making stabbing motions at the keyboard as I edited ye olde autoexec.bet and config.sys files in the DOS days. I know I'll get some kind of result but not always be able to foresee what the result might be. Stirring the pot and flipping switches hasn't helped but if I'm to have any hope of providing a review of Gotham City Imposters I might just have to keep doing something until it reliably connects.

Of course, I haven't really considered that maybe there just aren't that many people playing. I won't go down this avenue. Not yet.