Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard
Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard was officially announced on October 3, 2008 together with the third Matt Hazard website, “Matt Hazard: The unofficially OFFICIAL guide to the world’s greatest game hero ever created!!”. It was released on February 26, 2009 under the third-person shooter genre with an ESRB rating for Teens. Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard was developed by Vicious Cycle Software and published by D3 Publisher. It is an action game in which players play the role of the title character of which D3 Publisher has cooked up a history to depict the chronicle of the character’s rise and fall in popularity. The game is actually a parody of all the action-gaming clichés, with a debut trailer in October 2008 done as a Behind the Music spoof called Inside the Game that includes Jim Forbes narration. Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is said to be the first real game in a fictional series mirroring the progression of the Duke Nukem series of games. In Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard, players take the role of satirical video game character Matt Hazard, with an over the shoulder camera perspective with combat emphasizing a duck and cover system using walls and other objects in the game’s environment that is similar to that of Gears of War. However, many of the cover options with the exception for walls act only as temporary cover as they will glitch and be edited out of the game after a certain amount of damage, leaving a tear in the level. This is also another aspect of the game’s parody. While in cover, Matt is still able to target and automatically run towards another cover instead of having to move manually. Matt is only allowed to carry two weapons at a time from a continually changing selection due to the repeated manipulation of the game’s environment and level switching. Weapon upgrades become available as the game progresses after which they can be applied for temporary effect. In order to use these upgrades again, players will have to fill a meter by defeating more enemies.
Reviews
Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is said to have no actual combat that is up to par and strongly relies on the chuckle-worthy observations that are dropped at frequent rates to cover its mediocre play experience. The idiosyncrasies of other popular entries in the genre are constantly pin pointed at through out the entire game to provide entertainment. The design of the game is said to only be at bland level, coupled with a nonexistent enemy Al, and downright cheap boss fights. In short, Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard’s reliance on parody alone to provide entertainment is detrimental to its game design, with repetitive levels and cheap enemy encounters to hold back what is essentially sound shooter.
“Some of you may have been a bit confused when first hearing about Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard. You wondered what the “return” was all about, when you’ve never even heard of the franchise ever before. And there’s a perfectly good and satirical explanation behind all of that. In what may be one of the very few parody games out there, Eat Lead is a Where’s Waldo game of sorts that veteran gamers will look at and spot the various spoofs and parodies.
Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is a great concept that was executed very poorly and seems rushed. With more attention to detail such as better A.I., more fluid gameplay mechanics, multiplayer, and better visuals, D3 could’ve had a solid game on their hands. As it stands now, Eat Lead feels like it should’ve been slapped with a budget price and uploaded to the PlayStation Network as a downloadable game. There is simply no way a $50 price tag is justifiable.” (PSExtreme, 2009)
