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Categories: Review
Tags: eat lead, matt hazard, neil patrick harris, nph, shooter, will arnett, xbox 360
Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard
Developer: Vicious Cycle Software
Publisher: D3 Publisher
Platform: Xbox 360 (also PS3)
Released: Feb. 26, 2009
Test Freaks’ Freak Score: 5.9/10A funny thing happened after I gave myself permission to stop playing Eat Lead; I started enjoying it. This is when I encountered Altos Tratus, a towering JRPG-style character who’s the endboss of the Fraggmee Warehouse level. In addition to having a clever name, this boss is one of the best JRPG parodies outside of College Saga. And while I was amused all along by the Wafferthinn troops (2D German soldiers), when I hit the Wolfenstein 3D level I thought the game was finally hitting its stride. Only it was far too late.
Matt Hazard is the legendary Marathon character who hit the big time in the 8-bit days. Since then his career has taken a downward trajectory. Hoping to pull himself up from flops like Haz-Matt Carts, Matt is entering the “next-gen” era, but Marathon owner Wallace “Wally” Wellesley has other ideas. Wally hopes to pull off a twist by killing Matt in his own game setting up Sting Sniperscope as Marathon’s new golden boy.
Eat Lead, Wafferthinn!
Eat Lead is a third-person shooter built around the concept that Matt Hazard is a self-aware game character who’s trying to avoid death at the hands of Marathon’s programmers. What would be straight forward levels are turned on their head as programmers rewrite the game while you play it. A single level can shift between a Western saloon, a Russian nightclub and a Soviet missile base. Enemies armed with Super Soakers will attack you alongside space marines while you hear the moans of approaching zombies.
While this sounds like Left 4 Dead’s AI Director gone rogue, the end result is that one generic setting is exchanged for another. There are some good set pieces: a multistage sniper sequence finds you providing cover for Bill the Wizard and fighting zombies on a tennis court is original, but most of the levels are unmemorable.
Eat Lead, Cowboy!
The variety of enemies leads to some interesting weapon drops. You can soak zombies to death or turn a pair of Six-Shooters on some Nazis or take on space marines with your trusty Hazard Pistol. The enemies themselves don’t have a robust AI, but there’s enough of them to make the game surprisingly challenging – and some of the boss battles are downright unfair.
Of course the real challenge comes from multiplayer — not that it has multiplayer, but you get an Achievement for it anyway. But this is a game where you earn an Achievement for pressing start. It’s all part of the sense of humor which carries the game. Will Arnett voices Matt Hazard and he does a great job capturing the meta nature of the character. Neil Patrick Harris has less to work with as Wally, but it’s still NPH.
Much like 2004’s The Bard’s Tale, Eat Lead forgets gaming clichés are fun to point out, but annoying to play through. If a little less effort was put into being funny and more effort put into being fun, this would be a game worth recommending.
Cshane:
I liked it :)
Very nice.
magazin:
Good post thanks for sharing.
I like this site ;)