Monolith is a game developer that is known for their horror FPS games. They made the Condemned and F.E.A.R. franchises and now they’ve developed a title you wouldn’t have expected them to make — a Batman-based FPS game. Monolith and Warner Bros team up again to make a downloadable FPS title like no other.

First off, this game has a very good and very funny intro movie. This game doesn’t have any kind of story other than Batman and Joker left the city and now the crazy citizens are impersonating them but utilizing guns. This game is friendly to FPS newcomers that don’t know typical button layouts. They put in an Initiation mode in the main menu that teaches you all the controls and how to play but it doesn’t teach you the game mode. Don’t worry about that because each game mode, once you first start it, comes attached with a little movie/slideshow that teaches you how to play. The whole movie/slideshow presentation that you find throughout the game is pretty cool because it shows tutorial clips in a funny light.

It’s a strictly online title but it does have a challenge mode where you try to complete a course in a record time with a certain gadget but that’s about it for offline gameplay. The challenge modes can be pretty easy at the start to get a gold medal but the difficulty ramps up after that. I like that the challenge mode gets you XP and helps toward ranking up and it also has a leaderboard implemented.

There are 3 online game modes; Team Deathmatch, Fumigation and Psych Warfare. Team Deathmatch is the most played of course and it deserves to be. Fumigation is a game where if your team doesn’t work together, you’re screwed but what game isn’t like that? I really don’t like Fumigation though, it might be a good game type and it does remind me of Valve’s Team Fortress 2, but what really annoyed me was playing with random people who didn’t know what they were doing and it seemed like the enemy was just “strategically” placing (camping) themselves on each of the so called Gasblasters. I would recommend playing this with friends only.

Psych Warfare is a cool gametype also. This gametype is just like capture the flag except you are capturing batteries to plug them into a giant speaker to demorilize your enemy. I think is one is interesting because when your team gets demoralized, you lose your weapons and you just run around waving your hands in the air while hearing the enemy say stuff like “you should just give up” and other funny things in a calm voice. When you are demoralized, you can still attack if you get close enough and just panic slap them and they instantly die.

Throughout the game you can rank up and get keys to unlock tons of things for your character and for your loadouts. There are tons and tons of things to unlock. This game is just like Call of Duty with it’s custom loadouts. You can equip a freeze gun and have a bow and arrow or what ever you like. There are just too many unlockables in this game to talk about and I really think that is what makes this game truly great. I especially like the customization feature in this game. You get costume coins after each game and when those coins add up, you can unlock clothes for your Joker or Batman character. You can change you’re voice and body size, too.

There are perks but they are called Fun Facts and there are killstreaks but they’re mostly point streaks that do various things depending on which one who have equiped. Also, they have a Psych Profile for your load out which gives you things such as more XP or costume points but there are penalties. Very cool, I must say, and trying to choose which things you want on a class can be hard because everything in the game is helpful. There are challenges for everything in the game that help you level up and the max level is 1000. Yes… I said it. You go from 1 – 100 then you get a promotion and unlock a companion, then you go from 101- 200, etc.

Lots to do in this game and so little maps. This game only came with 5 maps and they are really good maps. I never get tired of playing them over and over again and with promised DLC of free maps, weapons and costume unlocks, it will be hard to pass this title buy seeing as CoD charges $15 for 5 maps.

There are bugs in the game but I haven’t found anything that is game threatening yet. The biggest issue is that they say the game has dedicated servers but I have reason to believe that there is still a host and out of the hundreds of games I’ve played so far, I’ve only lost connection to about 4 and sometimes the game will lag really bad and you just see people teleporting everywhere but this has only happened twice for me. Again, these don’t happen frequently and you shouldn’t be worried about it.

All in all, this is a great $15 game and if you are a fan of Call of Duty or even FPS games then you really can’t afford to miss out on this game. It’s like playing Call of Duty but completely re-imagined and new. There is tons of content packed into this game from funny remarks to weapons and costumes. It will take a while to completely unlock everything in the game.

REPORT CARD

Story: –
Graphics: 85
Audio: 80
Gameplay: 95
Lasting Appeal: 95

Overall

92