Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard
released on Feb 26, 2009
Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is a third-person shooter video game for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 video game consoles. The game was developed by Vicious Cycle Software and published by D3 Publisher. Eat Lead pits players in the role of the title character, a "legendary" gaming hero who is "returning to glory" in a new video game, some 25 years after his debut game and 6 years after his last game. In reality, the Matt Hazard character is in his first video game, with a history made up by D3 Publisher to chronicle the character's rise and fall in popularity. The Return of Matt Hazard marks Hazard's fictitious "comeback" to the gaming scene. Hazard is voiced by Will Arnett, while Neil Patrick Harris voices his nemesis Wallace "Wally" Wellesley. The game itself is a parody of action-gaming clichés. The October 2008 debut trailer was done as a Behind the Music spoof called Inside the Game complete with Jim Forbes narration. It chronicles Matt Hazard's successes and hardships, and mirrors the progression of the Duke Nukem series of games, from early 8-bit to modern consoles.[1] The cast of Eat Lead received a nomination in the 2009 Spike Video Game Awards, under the category for "Best Cast"
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Hilarious game and a perfect match for me.
I loved Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard. It is the ultimate definition of parody and still managed to be a fun game with excellent music and acceptable game play.
In the game, you take on the fictional hero Matt Hazard, a video game character that was, like Duke Nukem for example, a true classic back in the day. Now, twenty five years later, he returns to the scene with a new video game. He screwed up his reputation back in the day by trying other genres, giving him the accidental reputation of a “kid friendly character”. Now, he attempts his ultimate combat by starring in some sort of mafia crime game, where he is a detective.
He is supposed to be the star of the game, but instead, is hindered and placed in unfair situations by some unknown force, that changes the environment constantly right before his eyes. It is later revealed by QA, your AI companion and your guide through the game, that Wallace Wellesly is behind all of this. He is the lead programmer for the fictional company that created the game and because he hates Matt Hazard for ruining his childhood game experience with his earlier games, he wants to mock him by letting him die on the first level.
Wallace created “Sting Sniperscope”, a generic dude with a sniper rifle and a German accent, who is supposed to whoop the floor with Matt and become the replacement hero of the game. Matt defeats Sting however and because the game will break if there is no main protagonist, Matt takes his place and tries to reach the headquarters of the company to take revenge on Wallace. He is constantly attacked by all sort of random enemies and situations, that are hacked in into the game in real time by Wallace and his team members to stop him. Matt defeats Wallace and takes his place in gaming history once again as a true, classic video game hero.
Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard plays in third person with an over the shoulder angle. The game follows a linear path in which you progress through levels. You can hold two weapons. It also features a cover system which worked quite well in my opinion. There is a bar that you can fill by defeating enemies, which let you use special skills like freezing bullets. These skills come available when you progress through the game.
The graphics are not bad actually. It is PlayStation 3 era, and for this time, the game looks good. The glitch and programming effects are nicely done and the animations of Matt and enemies are good enough.
Where the game shines is its music. The fight tracks are epic and pump you up for the fighting ahead. It is wonderful what good, metal soundtracks can do to enhance your experience. The sound effects are fair, although a little blend and “pea shooter” like. I say fair, because some parody weapons in the game are designed to sound like crap.
The controls are a little stiff, but still playable. The cover system and the controls to switch cover work great. The only problem is that you cannot maneuver quickly or do anything really to evade enemy fire while not in cover. This is also my only complaint with the game, especially on higher difficulty levels, which makes the game almost unplayable then.
The game is linear, a little repetitive and comes with “kill walls” in which you need to defeat every enemy on screen in order to progress. This can be a little tedious, especially because of the automatic checkpoint system that saves your progress after two or three of these kill walls. If you die, you know that you need those two or three rooms all over again, without any other approach to do it.
However, Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard makes up for this by being funny as hell. Sometimes, games try to hard to be funny or make really lame jokes that do not even make you breeze through your nose, but with this game, I actually laughed. The humor is spot on. Many franchises are completely destroyed with parody like the failed Socom series, which is now called Soak’em. Enemies fight with water guns, that do a surprisingly amount of damage. Reject Wolfenstein 3D soldiers are introduced and even zombies. The best part of the humor in my opinion, is the self confidence of Matt, where he believes that he is the most badass dude in the game, while constantly being mocked, insulted or downright laughed at.
In the end, I really enjoyed Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard and I truly recommend this underrated classic, despite its flaws.
I loved Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard. It is the ultimate definition of parody and still managed to be a fun game with excellent music and acceptable game play.
In the game, you take on the fictional hero Matt Hazard, a video game character that was, like Duke Nukem for example, a true classic back in the day. Now, twenty five years later, he returns to the scene with a new video game. He screwed up his reputation back in the day by trying other genres, giving him the accidental reputation of a “kid friendly character”. Now, he attempts his ultimate combat by starring in some sort of mafia crime game, where he is a detective.
He is supposed to be the star of the game, but instead, is hindered and placed in unfair situations by some unknown force, that changes the environment constantly right before his eyes. It is later revealed by QA, your AI companion and your guide through the game, that Wallace Wellesly is behind all of this. He is the lead programmer for the fictional company that created the game and because he hates Matt Hazard for ruining his childhood game experience with his earlier games, he wants to mock him by letting him die on the first level.
Wallace created “Sting Sniperscope”, a generic dude with a sniper rifle and a German accent, who is supposed to whoop the floor with Matt and become the replacement hero of the game. Matt defeats Sting however and because the game will break if there is no main protagonist, Matt takes his place and tries to reach the headquarters of the company to take revenge on Wallace. He is constantly attacked by all sort of random enemies and situations, that are hacked in into the game in real time by Wallace and his team members to stop him. Matt defeats Wallace and takes his place in gaming history once again as a true, classic video game hero.
Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard plays in third person with an over the shoulder angle. The game follows a linear path in which you progress through levels. You can hold two weapons. It also features a cover system which worked quite well in my opinion. There is a bar that you can fill by defeating enemies, which let you use special skills like freezing bullets. These skills come available when you progress through the game.
The graphics are not bad actually. It is PlayStation 3 era, and for this time, the game looks good. The glitch and programming effects are nicely done and the animations of Matt and enemies are good enough.
Where the game shines is its music. The fight tracks are epic and pump you up for the fighting ahead. It is wonderful what good, metal soundtracks can do to enhance your experience. The sound effects are fair, although a little blend and “pea shooter” like. I say fair, because some parody weapons in the game are designed to sound like crap.
The controls are a little stiff, but still playable. The cover system and the controls to switch cover work great. The only problem is that you cannot maneuver quickly or do anything really to evade enemy fire while not in cover. This is also my only complaint with the game, especially on higher difficulty levels, which makes the game almost unplayable then.
The game is linear, a little repetitive and comes with “kill walls” in which you need to defeat every enemy on screen in order to progress. This can be a little tedious, especially because of the automatic checkpoint system that saves your progress after two or three of these kill walls. If you die, you know that you need those two or three rooms all over again, without any other approach to do it.
However, Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard makes up for this by being funny as hell. Sometimes, games try to hard to be funny or make really lame jokes that do not even make you breeze through your nose, but with this game, I actually laughed. The humor is spot on. Many franchises are completely destroyed with parody like the failed Socom series, which is now called Soak’em. Enemies fight with water guns, that do a surprisingly amount of damage. Reject Wolfenstein 3D soldiers are introduced and even zombies. The best part of the humor in my opinion, is the self confidence of Matt, where he believes that he is the most badass dude in the game, while constantly being mocked, insulted or downright laughed at.
In the end, I really enjoyed Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard and I truly recommend this underrated classic, despite its flaws.
There's goofy fun to be had
You know what, call me crazy, it's probably true, but I I really enjoyed this game. I can't say it's a great game. Heck, I'm pretty sure it's mediocre. But it certainly has its charms.
At this point you probably have wondered, who the fuck is Matt Hazard? He's basically an alternate universe Duke Nukem, but with everything problematic toned way down. In the game's world, he's a legendary video game character that have fallen through the cracks after a string of bad spinoff games, but he's got one more chance to be in a good game. Obviously things doesn't go as planned, and now he has to fight his way through a ton of bad enemy AI to prevent his deletion from the game company's server, which will effectively turn him into lost media. While the main idea of the story is nothing too unique, and the writing is just meh, I grew to enjoy the game's messed up virtual game world gimmick a lot. It leads to a handful of neat moments and details, like seeing Matt's wholesome interactions with his fellow famous video game character compatriots (expect some lazy parodies of real game characters). I can't say that the humor lands, but it never feels like the game is trying too hard to be funny, and honestly that is enough to make the story feel enjoyable. Having Will Arnett and Neil Patrick Harris as voice actors also helps, they did an okay job here.
The gimmick is also used as an excuse to throw a bunch of different enemy art styles together. Matt has lived a long life, and he's been in all sorts of games. Now, old enemies from his past gets uploaded to the game occasionally. You can expect to see regular modern setting enemies, old timey cowboys with revolvers, space marines, zombies, and even water gun soldiers. It does lead to a messy visual identity, and on the mechanics side, they didn't do quite enough to differentiate them, but I think it adds to the charm of the game. There's something fun about seeing how honest the game is at presenting its virtual world setting. It's not a game that is trying to fool you to thinking that its set in the real world, in fact it's the opposite of that. Sometimes I get reminded of much cooler games like No More Heroes, there's clearly a vision that the devs are aiming for, even if a lot of it gets lost in execution.
As a cover shooter aficionado, I think that the gunplay is pretty decent. The impact of the gun effects are not that satisfying, and it doesn't really feel like you're shooting powerful weapons. But there's a decent amount of challenge here, although it can wildly spike at times, leading to some pretty frustrating moments. Thankfully the checkpoint system is excellent, it saves often and respawning after dying happens in like a second. The weapon variety is pretty good, although the lack of grenades or any throwable weapons is quite confusing. The cover system is functional enough, I rarely had problems such as hunkering down in a spot that I didn't intend to.
Lastly, I can't say the "boss fights" in this game are any good, except one. It happens to be a spoof of a stereotypical turn based JRPG boss fight, but you're still fighting it in real time with guns, while the boss attacks by waiting for his MP to fill up before selecting his attacks (which you can see as a floating menu with classic blue Final Fantasy style textbox). It's actually really neat, haven't played any other game that does it like this.
Eat Lead is a respectable attempt at a "game about games" game, even if it can feel like it barely got in the finish line just in time. It's one of the games that you wished would get a sequel, there's just so much to flesh out and improve on, the jump in quality could be night and day.
At this point you probably have wondered, who the fuck is Matt Hazard? He's basically an alternate universe Duke Nukem, but with everything problematic toned way down. In the game's world, he's a legendary video game character that have fallen through the cracks after a string of bad spinoff games, but he's got one more chance to be in a good game. Obviously things doesn't go as planned, and now he has to fight his way through a ton of bad enemy AI to prevent his deletion from the game company's server, which will effectively turn him into lost media. While the main idea of the story is nothing too unique, and the writing is just meh, I grew to enjoy the game's messed up virtual game world gimmick a lot. It leads to a handful of neat moments and details, like seeing Matt's wholesome interactions with his fellow famous video game character compatriots (expect some lazy parodies of real game characters). I can't say that the humor lands, but it never feels like the game is trying too hard to be funny, and honestly that is enough to make the story feel enjoyable. Having Will Arnett and Neil Patrick Harris as voice actors also helps, they did an okay job here.
The gimmick is also used as an excuse to throw a bunch of different enemy art styles together. Matt has lived a long life, and he's been in all sorts of games. Now, old enemies from his past gets uploaded to the game occasionally. You can expect to see regular modern setting enemies, old timey cowboys with revolvers, space marines, zombies, and even water gun soldiers. It does lead to a messy visual identity, and on the mechanics side, they didn't do quite enough to differentiate them, but I think it adds to the charm of the game. There's something fun about seeing how honest the game is at presenting its virtual world setting. It's not a game that is trying to fool you to thinking that its set in the real world, in fact it's the opposite of that. Sometimes I get reminded of much cooler games like No More Heroes, there's clearly a vision that the devs are aiming for, even if a lot of it gets lost in execution.
As a cover shooter aficionado, I think that the gunplay is pretty decent. The impact of the gun effects are not that satisfying, and it doesn't really feel like you're shooting powerful weapons. But there's a decent amount of challenge here, although it can wildly spike at times, leading to some pretty frustrating moments. Thankfully the checkpoint system is excellent, it saves often and respawning after dying happens in like a second. The weapon variety is pretty good, although the lack of grenades or any throwable weapons is quite confusing. The cover system is functional enough, I rarely had problems such as hunkering down in a spot that I didn't intend to.
Lastly, I can't say the "boss fights" in this game are any good, except one. It happens to be a spoof of a stereotypical turn based JRPG boss fight, but you're still fighting it in real time with guns, while the boss attacks by waiting for his MP to fill up before selecting his attacks (which you can see as a floating menu with classic blue Final Fantasy style textbox). It's actually really neat, haven't played any other game that does it like this.
Eat Lead is a respectable attempt at a "game about games" game, even if it can feel like it barely got in the finish line just in time. It's one of the games that you wished would get a sequel, there's just so much to flesh out and improve on, the jump in quality could be night and day.
This review contains spoilers
Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is a “parody of a parody” simulator and third person cover shooter developed by Vicious Cycle Software for the Xbox 360 and PS3 generations. Now from what the Wikipeeds has told me, the marketing for the game involved websites being made and “Behind the Music” styled interviews being released, and D3 had a whole gimmick of pretending that Matt Hazard always existed and would be returning. Can I prove any of this? Not really. Seems like I can’t find any sources for this other than two interviews which I’ll post down here, if you find some sources feel free to lemme know and I’ll post them in the review. I just don’t have the energy for that shit right now. My only other exposure to the game would be seeing it in some gaming magazines being teased but I completely forgot about it until recent days. The reason why I started playing the game mainly revolves around two separate things. The first involves the game Dead Head Fred, which I played as my PSP Exclusive game of the year I decided to play and write up a review on in my never ending quest to knock out my gaming backlog, which I thought was great aesthetically but the gameplay felt obnoxious and frustrating. The second part of the equation is Nick, one of my buddies whom every Tuesday we try to get together to play games on the hardest difficulty both for trophies and for entertainment purposes. Nick decided to bring this in as a sick joke and ironically enough after doing some research, I learned that the same developers made this game as well. How did they go from frustrating to worse? I don’t know but the dip in quality between both titles is fascinating, and is one that sadly I’m going to have to go over considering we not only beat the damn game, but I wrapped up the trophies for the Platinum.
The story starts off with this: Matt Hazard is an aging video game star who used to have it made back in the day with popular game after popular game from the 8-Bit era to the old school FPS era before eventually making it to the PS2 era of gaming. However, Matt Hazard attempted to over-expand into markets that aren’t meant for him, including kid friendly racing games and water gun shooters only for his company, Marathon, to nearly go bankrupt. A CEO pops in however and makes Matt Hazard into the star of a new shooter as a detective. However, going through the game scenario for the first level, in which Matt Hazard goes against the triads, reveals a deadly twist: he was actually a false protagonist for the game and was supposed to be killed off so the game’s real star, Sting Sniperscope, could take over instead. However, time is frozen and a mysterious hologram comes out. She reveals herself to be named QA, and relays that all of Matt’s save files have been mysteriously deleted from the game so when Sting was supposed to kill you, that means Matt would’ve stayed dead. Confused but wanting to find out what’s going on, he goes along with QA after one punching Sting Sniperscope in a quicktime fight.
The second level involves Matt being dropped into a level from his old game, “A Fistful of Hazzard” after some awkward flirting with QA because she needs time to figure out what’s going on, so with some programming technobabble bullshit you’re told that if you continue to play the game as Sting then it’ll take a while before anyone catches on. However, fighting your way through reveals a strange blend of the western game and those old enemies raid the club programmed into the game’s objectives. Following those guides, it’s learned that Matt’s old ex-girlfriend Kitty runs the club. However, he’s a cheating piece of shit and she rightfully slaps him before soviet soldiers raid the club to kill everyone. However, Matt shoots his way through the entire game before taking out his old nemesis, General Neutronov. It’s revealed that the Soviets were there to kill Kitty, and that someone is targeting all of Matt’s old friends. The next target is revealed to be a guy named “Bill the Wizard”, and Matt goes into whatever world he’s in to save his life.
The third level mostly revolves moving forward through a boring warehouse, sometimes protecting Bill the Wizard but honestly Bill doesn’t even make much of an appearance for the most part to really warrant much to the section. After shooting your way through tons of goons and avoiding an enemy helicopter that’s kind of frustrating, you end up at the finale of the stage. Sting Sniperscope Mark II is here and he’s going to try to murder you…again. You shoot through all of his guys and avoid the bullets, before running up to Sniper and beating him up in ANOTHER quicktime event before throwing his ass over a railing. In the real world it’s revealed that the CEO, Wallace Wellesley wants him mucho deado. Problem is, he can’t get rid of him because the previous owner signed him to a lifetime contract which states that unless he’s killed in a game that he can’t get rid of him at all. It’s revealed his dad owns Zappland, a huge arcade chain. Basically Wallace got pissy because he couldn’t beat any of Matt Hazard’s games due to difficulty, so he decided to use daddy’s money to buy Marathon games to try to kill off Matt out of petty anger. They decide to use the rest of his buddies as bait after stealing his assistant’s idea to do it, deciding to keep him busy while setting up a trap.
The fourth level involves Matt going into his old partner Dexter Dare’s games, with Dexter being the former co-star of the “Matt and Dexter” games. Matt drops down into Dexter’s old mansion to rescue him from Wallace’s henchmen. However, Dexter betrays him because of an offer from Wellesley to have his own set of games, appealing to both Dexter’s dislike of Matt as well as his burgeoning ego. However, that’s dashed when after a beatdown Matt saves his life from a malfunctioning robot called “Dexter’s Darlings”. Grateful, an apology is made before Matt makes his way back to the beginning of the game. However, some malfunctions and QA can’t save him while zombies surround the entire mansion. Then all the sudden a red version of QA comes in and suddenly moves him into a giant yacht of sorts. Totally not a trap at all.
The fifth level consists of Matt roaming through a yacht and shooting more goons and saving an old buddy, a Halo parody named “Master Chef” from space marines. However, she’s been acting strange and surprised that both he’s alive while also sorta flirting with him a bit. Either way Matt is all confused and shoots his way through more of the level. Both versions of QA pop up, the original blue and the evil twin red version; mainly getting rid of the red version because she’s too plainly obvious in her overt attempts at an ambush, before the evil QA forces Matt to fight for his life against the Kraken on a ship in one of the most frustrating fights in the entire game. Killing the Kraken and blowing the ship up, Wallace gets angry and recaps the last two levels in the game and that they don’t know if Matt is dead because the level is wiped from the servers.
The sixth level has Matt teleported to the Fraggme warehouses, a “part of the game’s server infrastructure”. Mario parody Captain Carpenter has Matt held up in his warehouse as a safety precaution and after an attack, Matt goes to save another old buddy from being murdered. Shooting through more goons, it’s learned that the warehouse is home to the props that are made for all of Marathon’s games. Deciding to go back home to his wife and to wait for everything to blow over, Captain Carpenter jumps into a block and down a green pipe and in a funny bit, Matt tells him to “say Hi to Karen for me”, Karen being his wife. Anyone with the name Karen just makes me giggle now to be honest. However, in the basement Matt uncovers Altos Tratus, a JRPG parody of all the spikey haired fucks with big swords who only talks with text prompts. This bit was actually kind of funny, and made me giggle a whole lot but Altos insists on killing you out of respect for his master and dies just the same as everyone else. They find a paper containing a shipment being sent to the final level of the Sting Sniperscope game and Matt proceeds to go to the last level. Wallace is given bad news of his escape and tells his assistant to get the programmers to throw everything they have in the final level.
The seventh level is at some docks, and consists of Matt shooting his way through an entire shipping yard full of goons and defeats Sting Sniperscope for the third and very last time after a boss battle involving a giant laser. After a bit of fake flirting, the fake ending credits roll for the game and Matt is teleported to the final level: a virtual world of the Marathon Megasoft building.
The final level has Matt fight his way to the top while going through pretty much every enemy in the game, before Wallace becomes desperate and deploys his own staff to use their virtual avatars in an attempt to kill Hazard himself. After shots are fired at Duke Nukem (in a cardboard cutout named “Nuke Winter” with the pose looking exactly like Duke), Matt fires actual shots at all the programmers and makes his way to Doogie Hauser’s office. Matt fights the guy from “How I Met Your Mother” in his virtual office while QA kills the fake QA. However, old QA is killed by Wallace and the final and second most frustrating boss battle commences. Matt makes his way to Wallace and Dexter pops by to help him out with the fight. Wallace is defeated and QA is revealed to be a guy named Quentin A. Myers, one of the lead programmers of his old games. However, Quentin takes over the company after he bought 49% of all the stock after he learned Wallace was going to buy the game. I guess a tease at the evil QA coming back is revealed and Wallace is back working at his dad’s old game store, where he rages after seeing Matt Hazard come back with a brand new game titled “Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard”.
Overall, the game is a goofy and dumb game. That’s the whole point, being a sort of parody of not only video games in general but definitely a sort of parallel to Duke Nukem and his infamous “Duke Nukem Forever” development hell cycle. As for the plot, I’m not surprised that the game is like this because it’s a comedy game so it’s going to take the piss out of everything. However, the comedy isn’t really that funny, at least to me. While I’m not expecting a cinematic masterpiece, I expect the game to at least make me laugh. It made me giggle once or twice at some of the gags, mainly the physical ones and some of the loading screen tips like literally describing out what a tip is in context to restaurants. However, I wouldn’t really consider playing this game again. It’s lowbrow, and while I’m certainly ok with lowbrow considering most of my joke repertoire consists of cracking gags about blowing people's dads, if you’re aiming to be a commercial product of some sorts you have to know your audience and what they like. Maybe I’m just not the audience, I don’t know but other than that it’s harmless and mindless. The only thing I could say is harmful is the next section: gameplay.
The gameplay is again one of the worst factors of the entire thing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s playable, you can play it; but enjoying it is hit or miss for me. For the most part you go from Point A to Point B, shooting any and everything that gets in your way while taking cover behind environmental pieces. How does it fare in this regard? Honestly, it feels mediocre; between the actual movement feeling awkward to shooting being so-so from the power of the weapons to attempting to maneuver cover feel sluggish. Don’t get me wrong, it’s manageable and in some case you’ll feel like you’re actually doing decent enough but I never got the feeling that I was mastering the game or even navigating it when I was playing it on any difficulty. In fact, the higher the difficulty the more a lot of these problems are compounded due to the sheer chokehold some of these arenas have in game. I’m also not too much of a level design guy, but I don’t really feel like a lot of these maps are great for level design either. Take the final boss for example right? You have to take cover behind a bunch of small boxes while taking down enemies wave by wave. This is the penultimate moment in the game where you use the strategies you learned to fight against waves of opponents. Cover is a bit small, enemies kinda pop out from everywhere and they decide to use the worst enemies of the game: the Dexter Darling bots, which don’t die unless you melee attack them to finish them off. Melee Combat is often detrimental and the takedowns are slow and usually require three hits for damage (though thankfully for the Darling bots it’s just one giant fist ramming into the ass, though I guess I understand how I feel while playing this game). The fighting animations look weak and most of the time honestly, they feel weak and that’s another thing I don’t like. In correlation to the final boss, you’ll have to finish these guys off while trying not to get murked immediately all while dealing with small cover, getting clipped by invisible walls and praying that the robot doesn’t heal from her animations AND that her besties are too busy running in circles.
That’s another thing, the actual AI aren’t really great or smart; they just kind of wander around (except the zombies which shamble, note here by the way avoid them on the hardest difficulty it’s a one hit kill), pop their head out of cover and try to flush you out of yours by approaching. One might say “isn’t that what most enemy AI are supposed to do?” and I’d say “Yeah I suppose, but the flaws in the gameplay just make it more apparent than it should be”. I’ve played cover shooters that do all of this stuff before, like Spec Ops: The Line which is an average cover shooter. But even despite the averageness of Spec Ops’s gameplay and even ignoring the stellar presentation, it was at least competent enough not to make it feel like a slog. At least in other games like that you’re allowed to throw grenades, unlike this game. You’ll get a grenade launcher sure but that’s at the end of the game. One thing in gaming that kind of irritates me is if it’s a third person or third person shooter, if someone is using a weapon then I want to be able to use it too. They throw grenades? Let me pick them up. Well, you can’t and while I don’t remember seeing the grenades often, when my buddy played I remember him getting absolutely pelted a couple of times and getting irritated really quick. If I’m wrong and grenades aren’t used in game, my apologies maybe I’m mistaking it for the grenade launcher and my memory is shit but it’s still kind of frustrating not being able to at least use grenades for certain encounters.
So one’s probably thinking then, what weapons are there since you keep bringing up how weak they are and such? There’s the pistol (the .45 and 9MM which are replaced by the Hazard Pistol later on), the Submachine Gun (which can be dual wielded), the awesome revolver, the water gun, AKs, shotguns, grenade launchers, laser pistols and a couple others that seem to be in every single game like this. There isn’t anything really unique other than say the Water Pistol and SMG, which are funny and actually do damage even if it feels weak and it’s a bit of a gag weapon. However, you also have power ups that are placed in certain parts of the map. One of them is the Maximum Hazard power up, which increases your damage with guns and your fists. The other one is the Shield, which makes you look like the Silver Surfer as you’re basically invincible to take out groups of enemies before time makes it disappear. You’re more likely to see Maximum Hazard than the shield in the game and it’s kind of a shame because it would’ve made this game less of a slog. The last thing gun wise I want to bring up are special ammo types; these come about as you slowly kill enemies over the course of the game and it builds up a sort of special meter. When it’s full, depending on what stage of the game you’re at you can choose between Ice and Fire Ammo. Ice was always my to-go choice as it freezes enemies in place and if you can get a good headshot then it’s an instant kill, while Fire is okay but deals damage over time and to me I always felt like I didn’t want to wait to kill these guys if I could do it as soon as possible.
The final thing I’ll bring up are the boss battles before I move onto the graphics and audio. Most of the boss fights consist of two things: arena shooting or a QTE fight. The QTE fights are laughably easy and consist of pressing buttons in an order for Matt to knock someone down. Most of these look poor and sloppy and are obviously on purpose with some comedic timing, my favorite being one of the only things to give me a chuckle: Dexter’s QTE. You just kind of manhandle the guy and smash his face into the hood of his sports car repeatedly and there’s something about how the camera is positioned to where it honestly gave me quite the giggle. Other than that, you’ll see these fights as early as the first level with Sonny Tang and for the most part it’s a giggle. The only three fights I can remember that were arena shooting are the Kraken which involve dodging tentacles with one hit kill powers in Maximum Hazard difficulty and let me tell you this fucking blows. There’s another fight involving moving into small buildings to trick Sting Sniperscope into blowing up his own generators that took me a bit to realize what the strategy was but was actually somewhat decent other than the laser being OP and dodging enemies. The last one is Alto Tratus, the Final Fantasy expy guy whom you shoot repeatedly in a room full of enemies who provides the funniest gag in the game yet is still forgettable all the same. I guess the point for these boss battles is that they either range from “Decently okay” to “meh” to “did these really need to exist?” and nothing really pops out like it should.
The graphics/art direction is in my opinion kind of a mixed bag? I mean obviously being stuck in various video game worlds it’s going to be a strange mishmash of different genres such as wild west, soviet cold war, and the such. That’s great, except for the most part the art design just mainly seems to be dull and boring, from gray warehouses to more cold warehouses. Again, when it has something different like a hallway dedicated to a Wolfenstein 3D parody then it’s great, and I suppose if everything were to be a mismatch of different environments then it would get stale, but I’d appreciate the variety more than the usual warehouse/shipping yard stuff when you have so much at your disposal as a video game parody. Usually in these types of games I at least like to see a bit of variety in the differences between different worlds, almost as if it’s like a bit of an amusement park ride in the vein of “oh wow, this is a parody of Mario because XYZ” and again they have some of it but not enough to hit anything that truly boggles my mind.
The graphics for the most part are okayish, models and textures are around 2008-ish looking but for the most part it’s kind of samey as everything else that came out around that era and nothing really popped out to me environment wise. See if I were to continue on with talking about the models of weapons and characters then it would be a continuation of the same sentence, mostly going with “this is okay, this is alright '' and most of it passes. There’s nothing wrong with that by the way, if anything I consider graphical fidelity to be the least important because the truth is what really matters is the depth and value of the game and its relation to you. Nothing however really pops out here, other than Matt Hazard himself looking like a fish person with no jawline with an outfit that looks like an oversized tire on a bad Mad Max parody. Also, the futuristic 80s grid line Tron/Scooby-Doo Cyberchase movie look they have going on with the virtual world sometimes is kinda cool in here too.. Overall, It’s okay and nothing to write home about.
The audio design for certain weapons are surprisingly amazing, varying from the magnum sound seemingly coming straight out of Dirty Harry to the Pistol sounding like maybe it could come out of New Vegas. The other weapons on the other hand kind of vary in quality like the laser pistol, while honestly accurate and a must have for the later game, it doesn’t sound great. Most of the game varied like this to me, especially on the weapons side. The environmental side sounds consistent and a bit better, for example on the last level when you’re walking outside on the patio, the footsteps sounds are amazing. It’s one of those sounds that sort of tickles some sweet spot in my brain where I’m like “alright, dis shit pretty good”. Other environmental sounds are good for the most part but don’t pop out and I’m okay with that.
The voice acting is alright for the most part, none of them take it seriously and that’s for the better to be honest considering the subject matter of it being the equivalent of one of those mid-2000s parody movies. Will Arnett plays Matt Hazard himself in one of those cheesy action hero roles and for the most part he does okay, he didn’t really get me any laughs with his performance but at the same time I’m not so sure that’s on him as much as it is the script. Neil Patrick Harris definitely hams it up with his role as “Cut the crust off my sandwich Mom, I live in your basement” CEO/spoiled brat Wallace Wellesley. He just gives zero fucks and goes on constant rants about “why Matt Hazard isn’t dead” and while the subject matter is repetitive I can appreciate how easy to hate this guy is. Olivia Hack does a good job playing the “Hacked in” (heh) AI sent to help Matt Hazard, nicknamed QA. Overall, the voice acting is fine, does perfectly well with its job and has for the most part the right comedic voice acting to do a decent job. The last thing I could add here is that I wish they would add fucking subtitles but that’s just me I guess.
If I were to give a bit of a criticism in the audio design I would just say it’s the soundtrack. Not that the soundtrack is bad, in fact I can appreciate its variation. From the fight with Sonny Tang and the blaxploitation-esque tune to “Exploring Hazardland” sounding straight out of a 007 Goldeneye pause screen menu, I felt like this did a decent job at delivering appropriate sounds related to the genre it’s trying to parody. However, even though I don’t remember the track (though I think it’s Maximum Hazard), I specifically remember one being looped over and over again to the point where it lost most of the traction for me in its placement. Most of it just consists of thrashing air guitars which I get bored of quickly, though I’ll give Master Chef a bit of props for breaking out the string section and attempting to parody Halo with it’s main theme. Overall, it’s okay even if the most you’ll hear is one or two tracks (or at least multiple air guitar tracks that tend to loop and blend in with each other).
Matt Hazard to me is one of my least favorite games that I’ve ever played this year besides the snooze-fest Too Human. It’s not the worst game, but even as a parody (in which oftentimes you can expect lower quality) it’s dull in its performance. It almost feels as if it’s a parody of itself more than an actual commentary on the gaming industry. You have your usual cracks at Halo and Duke Nukem, action hero quips and the like but without what seems to be a soul or at least gameplay that aspires to be somewhat decent. It feels like a worse version of Kane & Lynch, and while I understand that it’s clearly on a budget with how it operates, I don’t feel like it made a good use of it’s budget. It’s a painfully average game that wallows in itself and makes itself worse without actually trying to improve. The results of this culminated in the release of the game, which landed with a clear thud and with everyone forgetting about it. Nowadays you’ll see Youtube videos with the titles of “This game is the weirdest parody game ever”, or “A Bizarre comedy shooter from 2009”. I can’t really tell you what happened after that except everyone forgot about it, but what I can say is that the developers later released a side scroller “Downloadable Store” game only titled “Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond”. What is this game like? Hell if I know, but apparently the metacritic score is 65 and since then Matt Hazard’s career hasn’t made another comeback in the slightest and honestly? Some things are better left untouched, though if you want to play this game then you better get on your 360 or PS3 digital store and buy them quick cause eventually these games are going to disappear when the storefront goes down.
Links:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2009/03/02/eat-lead-the-return-of-matt-hazard-walkthroughguide-958346
https://thevideogamedatabase.fandom.com/wiki/Eat_Lead:_The_Return_of_Matt_Hazard
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1437207/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Hazard:_Blood_Bath_and_Beyond
https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/eat-lead-the-return-of-matt-hazard-original-videogame-soundtrack-2009
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38ZRlrBHiLc&ab_channel=IGN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2UXUGY164U&ab_channel=TheEscapist
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/EatLeadTheReturnOfMattHazard
The story starts off with this: Matt Hazard is an aging video game star who used to have it made back in the day with popular game after popular game from the 8-Bit era to the old school FPS era before eventually making it to the PS2 era of gaming. However, Matt Hazard attempted to over-expand into markets that aren’t meant for him, including kid friendly racing games and water gun shooters only for his company, Marathon, to nearly go bankrupt. A CEO pops in however and makes Matt Hazard into the star of a new shooter as a detective. However, going through the game scenario for the first level, in which Matt Hazard goes against the triads, reveals a deadly twist: he was actually a false protagonist for the game and was supposed to be killed off so the game’s real star, Sting Sniperscope, could take over instead. However, time is frozen and a mysterious hologram comes out. She reveals herself to be named QA, and relays that all of Matt’s save files have been mysteriously deleted from the game so when Sting was supposed to kill you, that means Matt would’ve stayed dead. Confused but wanting to find out what’s going on, he goes along with QA after one punching Sting Sniperscope in a quicktime fight.
The second level involves Matt being dropped into a level from his old game, “A Fistful of Hazzard” after some awkward flirting with QA because she needs time to figure out what’s going on, so with some programming technobabble bullshit you’re told that if you continue to play the game as Sting then it’ll take a while before anyone catches on. However, fighting your way through reveals a strange blend of the western game and those old enemies raid the club programmed into the game’s objectives. Following those guides, it’s learned that Matt’s old ex-girlfriend Kitty runs the club. However, he’s a cheating piece of shit and she rightfully slaps him before soviet soldiers raid the club to kill everyone. However, Matt shoots his way through the entire game before taking out his old nemesis, General Neutronov. It’s revealed that the Soviets were there to kill Kitty, and that someone is targeting all of Matt’s old friends. The next target is revealed to be a guy named “Bill the Wizard”, and Matt goes into whatever world he’s in to save his life.
The third level mostly revolves moving forward through a boring warehouse, sometimes protecting Bill the Wizard but honestly Bill doesn’t even make much of an appearance for the most part to really warrant much to the section. After shooting your way through tons of goons and avoiding an enemy helicopter that’s kind of frustrating, you end up at the finale of the stage. Sting Sniperscope Mark II is here and he’s going to try to murder you…again. You shoot through all of his guys and avoid the bullets, before running up to Sniper and beating him up in ANOTHER quicktime event before throwing his ass over a railing. In the real world it’s revealed that the CEO, Wallace Wellesley wants him mucho deado. Problem is, he can’t get rid of him because the previous owner signed him to a lifetime contract which states that unless he’s killed in a game that he can’t get rid of him at all. It’s revealed his dad owns Zappland, a huge arcade chain. Basically Wallace got pissy because he couldn’t beat any of Matt Hazard’s games due to difficulty, so he decided to use daddy’s money to buy Marathon games to try to kill off Matt out of petty anger. They decide to use the rest of his buddies as bait after stealing his assistant’s idea to do it, deciding to keep him busy while setting up a trap.
The fourth level involves Matt going into his old partner Dexter Dare’s games, with Dexter being the former co-star of the “Matt and Dexter” games. Matt drops down into Dexter’s old mansion to rescue him from Wallace’s henchmen. However, Dexter betrays him because of an offer from Wellesley to have his own set of games, appealing to both Dexter’s dislike of Matt as well as his burgeoning ego. However, that’s dashed when after a beatdown Matt saves his life from a malfunctioning robot called “Dexter’s Darlings”. Grateful, an apology is made before Matt makes his way back to the beginning of the game. However, some malfunctions and QA can’t save him while zombies surround the entire mansion. Then all the sudden a red version of QA comes in and suddenly moves him into a giant yacht of sorts. Totally not a trap at all.
The fifth level consists of Matt roaming through a yacht and shooting more goons and saving an old buddy, a Halo parody named “Master Chef” from space marines. However, she’s been acting strange and surprised that both he’s alive while also sorta flirting with him a bit. Either way Matt is all confused and shoots his way through more of the level. Both versions of QA pop up, the original blue and the evil twin red version; mainly getting rid of the red version because she’s too plainly obvious in her overt attempts at an ambush, before the evil QA forces Matt to fight for his life against the Kraken on a ship in one of the most frustrating fights in the entire game. Killing the Kraken and blowing the ship up, Wallace gets angry and recaps the last two levels in the game and that they don’t know if Matt is dead because the level is wiped from the servers.
The sixth level has Matt teleported to the Fraggme warehouses, a “part of the game’s server infrastructure”. Mario parody Captain Carpenter has Matt held up in his warehouse as a safety precaution and after an attack, Matt goes to save another old buddy from being murdered. Shooting through more goons, it’s learned that the warehouse is home to the props that are made for all of Marathon’s games. Deciding to go back home to his wife and to wait for everything to blow over, Captain Carpenter jumps into a block and down a green pipe and in a funny bit, Matt tells him to “say Hi to Karen for me”, Karen being his wife. Anyone with the name Karen just makes me giggle now to be honest. However, in the basement Matt uncovers Altos Tratus, a JRPG parody of all the spikey haired fucks with big swords who only talks with text prompts. This bit was actually kind of funny, and made me giggle a whole lot but Altos insists on killing you out of respect for his master and dies just the same as everyone else. They find a paper containing a shipment being sent to the final level of the Sting Sniperscope game and Matt proceeds to go to the last level. Wallace is given bad news of his escape and tells his assistant to get the programmers to throw everything they have in the final level.
The seventh level is at some docks, and consists of Matt shooting his way through an entire shipping yard full of goons and defeats Sting Sniperscope for the third and very last time after a boss battle involving a giant laser. After a bit of fake flirting, the fake ending credits roll for the game and Matt is teleported to the final level: a virtual world of the Marathon Megasoft building.
The final level has Matt fight his way to the top while going through pretty much every enemy in the game, before Wallace becomes desperate and deploys his own staff to use their virtual avatars in an attempt to kill Hazard himself. After shots are fired at Duke Nukem (in a cardboard cutout named “Nuke Winter” with the pose looking exactly like Duke), Matt fires actual shots at all the programmers and makes his way to Doogie Hauser’s office. Matt fights the guy from “How I Met Your Mother” in his virtual office while QA kills the fake QA. However, old QA is killed by Wallace and the final and second most frustrating boss battle commences. Matt makes his way to Wallace and Dexter pops by to help him out with the fight. Wallace is defeated and QA is revealed to be a guy named Quentin A. Myers, one of the lead programmers of his old games. However, Quentin takes over the company after he bought 49% of all the stock after he learned Wallace was going to buy the game. I guess a tease at the evil QA coming back is revealed and Wallace is back working at his dad’s old game store, where he rages after seeing Matt Hazard come back with a brand new game titled “Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard”.
Overall, the game is a goofy and dumb game. That’s the whole point, being a sort of parody of not only video games in general but definitely a sort of parallel to Duke Nukem and his infamous “Duke Nukem Forever” development hell cycle. As for the plot, I’m not surprised that the game is like this because it’s a comedy game so it’s going to take the piss out of everything. However, the comedy isn’t really that funny, at least to me. While I’m not expecting a cinematic masterpiece, I expect the game to at least make me laugh. It made me giggle once or twice at some of the gags, mainly the physical ones and some of the loading screen tips like literally describing out what a tip is in context to restaurants. However, I wouldn’t really consider playing this game again. It’s lowbrow, and while I’m certainly ok with lowbrow considering most of my joke repertoire consists of cracking gags about blowing people's dads, if you’re aiming to be a commercial product of some sorts you have to know your audience and what they like. Maybe I’m just not the audience, I don’t know but other than that it’s harmless and mindless. The only thing I could say is harmful is the next section: gameplay.
The gameplay is again one of the worst factors of the entire thing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s playable, you can play it; but enjoying it is hit or miss for me. For the most part you go from Point A to Point B, shooting any and everything that gets in your way while taking cover behind environmental pieces. How does it fare in this regard? Honestly, it feels mediocre; between the actual movement feeling awkward to shooting being so-so from the power of the weapons to attempting to maneuver cover feel sluggish. Don’t get me wrong, it’s manageable and in some case you’ll feel like you’re actually doing decent enough but I never got the feeling that I was mastering the game or even navigating it when I was playing it on any difficulty. In fact, the higher the difficulty the more a lot of these problems are compounded due to the sheer chokehold some of these arenas have in game. I’m also not too much of a level design guy, but I don’t really feel like a lot of these maps are great for level design either. Take the final boss for example right? You have to take cover behind a bunch of small boxes while taking down enemies wave by wave. This is the penultimate moment in the game where you use the strategies you learned to fight against waves of opponents. Cover is a bit small, enemies kinda pop out from everywhere and they decide to use the worst enemies of the game: the Dexter Darling bots, which don’t die unless you melee attack them to finish them off. Melee Combat is often detrimental and the takedowns are slow and usually require three hits for damage (though thankfully for the Darling bots it’s just one giant fist ramming into the ass, though I guess I understand how I feel while playing this game). The fighting animations look weak and most of the time honestly, they feel weak and that’s another thing I don’t like. In correlation to the final boss, you’ll have to finish these guys off while trying not to get murked immediately all while dealing with small cover, getting clipped by invisible walls and praying that the robot doesn’t heal from her animations AND that her besties are too busy running in circles.
That’s another thing, the actual AI aren’t really great or smart; they just kind of wander around (except the zombies which shamble, note here by the way avoid them on the hardest difficulty it’s a one hit kill), pop their head out of cover and try to flush you out of yours by approaching. One might say “isn’t that what most enemy AI are supposed to do?” and I’d say “Yeah I suppose, but the flaws in the gameplay just make it more apparent than it should be”. I’ve played cover shooters that do all of this stuff before, like Spec Ops: The Line which is an average cover shooter. But even despite the averageness of Spec Ops’s gameplay and even ignoring the stellar presentation, it was at least competent enough not to make it feel like a slog. At least in other games like that you’re allowed to throw grenades, unlike this game. You’ll get a grenade launcher sure but that’s at the end of the game. One thing in gaming that kind of irritates me is if it’s a third person or third person shooter, if someone is using a weapon then I want to be able to use it too. They throw grenades? Let me pick them up. Well, you can’t and while I don’t remember seeing the grenades often, when my buddy played I remember him getting absolutely pelted a couple of times and getting irritated really quick. If I’m wrong and grenades aren’t used in game, my apologies maybe I’m mistaking it for the grenade launcher and my memory is shit but it’s still kind of frustrating not being able to at least use grenades for certain encounters.
So one’s probably thinking then, what weapons are there since you keep bringing up how weak they are and such? There’s the pistol (the .45 and 9MM which are replaced by the Hazard Pistol later on), the Submachine Gun (which can be dual wielded), the awesome revolver, the water gun, AKs, shotguns, grenade launchers, laser pistols and a couple others that seem to be in every single game like this. There isn’t anything really unique other than say the Water Pistol and SMG, which are funny and actually do damage even if it feels weak and it’s a bit of a gag weapon. However, you also have power ups that are placed in certain parts of the map. One of them is the Maximum Hazard power up, which increases your damage with guns and your fists. The other one is the Shield, which makes you look like the Silver Surfer as you’re basically invincible to take out groups of enemies before time makes it disappear. You’re more likely to see Maximum Hazard than the shield in the game and it’s kind of a shame because it would’ve made this game less of a slog. The last thing gun wise I want to bring up are special ammo types; these come about as you slowly kill enemies over the course of the game and it builds up a sort of special meter. When it’s full, depending on what stage of the game you’re at you can choose between Ice and Fire Ammo. Ice was always my to-go choice as it freezes enemies in place and if you can get a good headshot then it’s an instant kill, while Fire is okay but deals damage over time and to me I always felt like I didn’t want to wait to kill these guys if I could do it as soon as possible.
The final thing I’ll bring up are the boss battles before I move onto the graphics and audio. Most of the boss fights consist of two things: arena shooting or a QTE fight. The QTE fights are laughably easy and consist of pressing buttons in an order for Matt to knock someone down. Most of these look poor and sloppy and are obviously on purpose with some comedic timing, my favorite being one of the only things to give me a chuckle: Dexter’s QTE. You just kind of manhandle the guy and smash his face into the hood of his sports car repeatedly and there’s something about how the camera is positioned to where it honestly gave me quite the giggle. Other than that, you’ll see these fights as early as the first level with Sonny Tang and for the most part it’s a giggle. The only three fights I can remember that were arena shooting are the Kraken which involve dodging tentacles with one hit kill powers in Maximum Hazard difficulty and let me tell you this fucking blows. There’s another fight involving moving into small buildings to trick Sting Sniperscope into blowing up his own generators that took me a bit to realize what the strategy was but was actually somewhat decent other than the laser being OP and dodging enemies. The last one is Alto Tratus, the Final Fantasy expy guy whom you shoot repeatedly in a room full of enemies who provides the funniest gag in the game yet is still forgettable all the same. I guess the point for these boss battles is that they either range from “Decently okay” to “meh” to “did these really need to exist?” and nothing really pops out like it should.
The graphics/art direction is in my opinion kind of a mixed bag? I mean obviously being stuck in various video game worlds it’s going to be a strange mishmash of different genres such as wild west, soviet cold war, and the such. That’s great, except for the most part the art design just mainly seems to be dull and boring, from gray warehouses to more cold warehouses. Again, when it has something different like a hallway dedicated to a Wolfenstein 3D parody then it’s great, and I suppose if everything were to be a mismatch of different environments then it would get stale, but I’d appreciate the variety more than the usual warehouse/shipping yard stuff when you have so much at your disposal as a video game parody. Usually in these types of games I at least like to see a bit of variety in the differences between different worlds, almost as if it’s like a bit of an amusement park ride in the vein of “oh wow, this is a parody of Mario because XYZ” and again they have some of it but not enough to hit anything that truly boggles my mind.
The graphics for the most part are okayish, models and textures are around 2008-ish looking but for the most part it’s kind of samey as everything else that came out around that era and nothing really popped out to me environment wise. See if I were to continue on with talking about the models of weapons and characters then it would be a continuation of the same sentence, mostly going with “this is okay, this is alright '' and most of it passes. There’s nothing wrong with that by the way, if anything I consider graphical fidelity to be the least important because the truth is what really matters is the depth and value of the game and its relation to you. Nothing however really pops out here, other than Matt Hazard himself looking like a fish person with no jawline with an outfit that looks like an oversized tire on a bad Mad Max parody. Also, the futuristic 80s grid line Tron/Scooby-Doo Cyberchase movie look they have going on with the virtual world sometimes is kinda cool in here too.. Overall, It’s okay and nothing to write home about.
The audio design for certain weapons are surprisingly amazing, varying from the magnum sound seemingly coming straight out of Dirty Harry to the Pistol sounding like maybe it could come out of New Vegas. The other weapons on the other hand kind of vary in quality like the laser pistol, while honestly accurate and a must have for the later game, it doesn’t sound great. Most of the game varied like this to me, especially on the weapons side. The environmental side sounds consistent and a bit better, for example on the last level when you’re walking outside on the patio, the footsteps sounds are amazing. It’s one of those sounds that sort of tickles some sweet spot in my brain where I’m like “alright, dis shit pretty good”. Other environmental sounds are good for the most part but don’t pop out and I’m okay with that.
The voice acting is alright for the most part, none of them take it seriously and that’s for the better to be honest considering the subject matter of it being the equivalent of one of those mid-2000s parody movies. Will Arnett plays Matt Hazard himself in one of those cheesy action hero roles and for the most part he does okay, he didn’t really get me any laughs with his performance but at the same time I’m not so sure that’s on him as much as it is the script. Neil Patrick Harris definitely hams it up with his role as “Cut the crust off my sandwich Mom, I live in your basement” CEO/spoiled brat Wallace Wellesley. He just gives zero fucks and goes on constant rants about “why Matt Hazard isn’t dead” and while the subject matter is repetitive I can appreciate how easy to hate this guy is. Olivia Hack does a good job playing the “Hacked in” (heh) AI sent to help Matt Hazard, nicknamed QA. Overall, the voice acting is fine, does perfectly well with its job and has for the most part the right comedic voice acting to do a decent job. The last thing I could add here is that I wish they would add fucking subtitles but that’s just me I guess.
If I were to give a bit of a criticism in the audio design I would just say it’s the soundtrack. Not that the soundtrack is bad, in fact I can appreciate its variation. From the fight with Sonny Tang and the blaxploitation-esque tune to “Exploring Hazardland” sounding straight out of a 007 Goldeneye pause screen menu, I felt like this did a decent job at delivering appropriate sounds related to the genre it’s trying to parody. However, even though I don’t remember the track (though I think it’s Maximum Hazard), I specifically remember one being looped over and over again to the point where it lost most of the traction for me in its placement. Most of it just consists of thrashing air guitars which I get bored of quickly, though I’ll give Master Chef a bit of props for breaking out the string section and attempting to parody Halo with it’s main theme. Overall, it’s okay even if the most you’ll hear is one or two tracks (or at least multiple air guitar tracks that tend to loop and blend in with each other).
Matt Hazard to me is one of my least favorite games that I’ve ever played this year besides the snooze-fest Too Human. It’s not the worst game, but even as a parody (in which oftentimes you can expect lower quality) it’s dull in its performance. It almost feels as if it’s a parody of itself more than an actual commentary on the gaming industry. You have your usual cracks at Halo and Duke Nukem, action hero quips and the like but without what seems to be a soul or at least gameplay that aspires to be somewhat decent. It feels like a worse version of Kane & Lynch, and while I understand that it’s clearly on a budget with how it operates, I don’t feel like it made a good use of it’s budget. It’s a painfully average game that wallows in itself and makes itself worse without actually trying to improve. The results of this culminated in the release of the game, which landed with a clear thud and with everyone forgetting about it. Nowadays you’ll see Youtube videos with the titles of “This game is the weirdest parody game ever”, or “A Bizarre comedy shooter from 2009”. I can’t really tell you what happened after that except everyone forgot about it, but what I can say is that the developers later released a side scroller “Downloadable Store” game only titled “Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond”. What is this game like? Hell if I know, but apparently the metacritic score is 65 and since then Matt Hazard’s career hasn’t made another comeback in the slightest and honestly? Some things are better left untouched, though if you want to play this game then you better get on your 360 or PS3 digital store and buy them quick cause eventually these games are going to disappear when the storefront goes down.
Links:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2009/03/02/eat-lead-the-return-of-matt-hazard-walkthroughguide-958346
https://thevideogamedatabase.fandom.com/wiki/Eat_Lead:_The_Return_of_Matt_Hazard
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1437207/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Hazard:_Blood_Bath_and_Beyond
https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/eat-lead-the-return-of-matt-hazard-original-videogame-soundtrack-2009
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38ZRlrBHiLc&ab_channel=IGN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2UXUGY164U&ab_channel=TheEscapist
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/EatLeadTheReturnOfMattHazard
This game is somewhat interesting to me. Where I first saw this game was at my local YouTube funny man (love this guy btw), and literally under two weeks later, I went to a second hand games shop I usually frequent and found like two copies of it, got one for dirt cheap and it's been over three months since I finally decided to play it. This is mostly because my 360 wouldn't read most of my games so I thought it was broken or something, but turns out that out of all my games, THIS is the one that it can play. Seems like the universe wanted me to play this game. Now, this isn't what interests me about this game, what interests me is something I couldn't have even seen in that funny gameplay.
After inserting the disc, the game started and I was greeted by the most horrendous spanish dub I've ever heard in my entire life. It's the most lifeless and dull it could have been. Despite including some VAs whose work was something ranging from decent to surprisingly competent, the main character sounded like he was asleep during the entire game. Seriously, if you speak or at least understand spanish on some level, look up clips of the game because it's the worst dub in any language I've come across. I was expecting to hear the voices of Will Arnett (yes, the same Will Arnett from BoJack Horseman) and Neil Patrick Harris (yes, the same Neil Patrick Harris from How I Met Your Mother), which are the main character and the villain correspondingly, but instead I got a really amateur voice work from their characters. Now, the reason I bring this up, since I know most people reading this don't necessarily speak spanish, is because this sets a really bad precedent for the game right before I could even start playing. When I first heard Matt Hazard's voice, I knew I was in for something unique. Uniquely bad that is. Look, no one on this planet thinks this is a good game, and I'm no exception.
The game opens with a monologue from the titular Matt Hazard, where he infodumps his entire life and career as a video game protagonist, starting in the arcades and ending… in a third person cover shooter. A really, really, really bad one. The controls are really stiff, there's no aim assist and enemies move fast enough that it is hard to aim right at them. This is when the cover mechanics come in, aaand… they're… not horrible? Look, my references here are Max Payne 3, Uncharted and twenty minutes of Gears Of War, those last two being ones I played on console. If remember correctly, Uncharted was more fast-paced and with more movement and Gears Of War was more methodical, you could say even tactical I guess? Eat Lead falls somewhere between both of these, never leaning to one side entirely. It's not as fast-paced as Uncharted but also isn't as static as Gears Of War, it is slow but the movement between covers is encouraged, since most of the covers can be destroyed with a few shots. You get buttons to go from one cover to another automatically, you can roll over the cover to hide on the other side. But it is slow and will likely get you killed if the other cover is somewhat far away or there are many enemies surrounding you. The game doesn't quite know if it wants to be fast or slow, movement-oriented or methodical.
Oh yeah, the enemies! They suck. They're every enemy from every TPCS ever made. They go in cover, move from cover to cover, they peek out to shoot while being more exposed, yada yada, you know the drill. Tho there are some interesting ones, like the Lovers of Dexter (I'll get to that in a few paragraphs hopefully), which are sexy robot chicks with dual SMGs who you need to knock out AND THEN melee-kill them before they get back up. Those dual SMGs and their pinpoint accuracy can go fuck themselves (you can also use them though, but you don't have the same precision, sorry bucko). Then, there's the uhhh, the zombies! Yeah, this game has zombies! Did you know this game released in 2009? Damn, that's crazy, I wonder how do you kill them tho… by shooting them in the head, of course! I knew it! Then there are the Water Gun Commandos (you read right) and the Space Marines, ones use water guns and the others use laser pistols, these weapons are only effective to the enemies they come with, which is a pain in the ass when I have a shitty pistol and a normal rifle, because until I get my hands on one of theirs guns, they're basically bullet-sponges. There are also these guys, the Soviet Union Soldiers and the Cowboys but they use normal guns and can be easily killed, and I think the cowboys make a reference to Revolver Ocelot from MGS3 (they do that thing with the revolvers). As you can see, a pretty original roster of enemies. And the weapon roster is as original, but I won't talk about it.
But you know what's more original? The level design. Isn't it exciting when a game that parodies other games like Mario Bros, Halo and Final Fantasy among others, has a level design that is just: Warehouse, Docks, Rooftops? A game like this could have used way more creativity, even if the levels are just hallways with covers, it could have done a more interesting job with the visuals, because visually it is dark, grey and generic looking. It is especially dark, I had to squint my eyes sometimes to even see where I was going, and increasing the gamma didn't make much difference. But this game's biggest sin was including multiple forklifts in every single level and not letting me ride a single one, fuck off Matt Hazard, you're nothing. To no surprise, the effort that went into the enemy roster is almost the same here, if not less. And well, the game is nothing but a narrow hallway, who could have guessed. The environments themselves lack a lot of detail, every level is extremely bland and boring. It's just so... empty. This is just Parking Garage Gaming at its worst.
As stated at the start of the last paragraph, this game has a lot of parodies. In fact, the Wikipedia page mentions SOME of the parodies in the game, check it out, and this is the element that makes this game stand out in an ocean of forgettable third person cover shooters. It even has film parodies, the first words spoken in this game are: "The name's Hazard, Matt Hazard". Real funny!! Did you know this game won the award for "Best Comedy Game" at the Spike Video Game Awards 2009? But the thing is, these parodies are used for nothing but to poke fun at other franchises, and I don't get it. Is it saying that Eat Lead is better than Halo and Mario? I don't think so, because Master Chef (yeah) is an ally, also Captain Carpenter (bootleg Mario). Why does it have a cutout that's just Duke Nukem with another name? Idk, because it's just there, it's not even a joke. But it actually makes fun of Final Fantasy, VII presumably, with long message boxes and a really extensive monologue, typical JRPG stereotypes easy to make fun of. Check the scene here. Does Matt Hazard think it's better than Final Fantasy VII? Is it really that narcissistic?
The plot of Eat Lead is nothing short of uninteresting. You go from one place to another looking for someone to save. When you go to save Dexter, who is supposedly your old friend, he betrays Matt and uses sexy robot chicks to try and kill him, but Matt survives. You go to save an old magician named Bill and then go save Master Chef, and then Captain Carpenter, and then you kill for the third time the one guy who's been chasing you, and then you're at the final boss battle and then you kick Neil Patrick Harris in the balls and then the game ends and it still has the guts to drop a "Matt Hazard will return" at the end of the credits. What kind of plot is this, seriously? It is about nothing, nothing impactful or relevant happens in the entire game, you just go from Warehouse to Docks to Final Battle and it ends. WHO is awaiting a continuation of this game? WHO wants to play as Matt Hazard again? I've consciously omitted mentioning some stuff from this game because it really isn't worth it; horrid boss battles, obnoxious shootouts, unoriginal enemy types, unfunny plot twists, uninspired mechanics, etc etc. I could quote everything wrong with this game, but it just ain't worth it. Go play the game and see for yourself, or better yet, go watch the YouTube funny man gameplay, you're going to have a better time with it.
The text is already over, you can go and do more interesting stuff than reading a random dude's rambling on the internet, but if you're staying: do you remember at the start when I said that this was an interesting game to me? The thing with that is, this game, with all of its parodies, jokes and references make this a somewhat unique experience. Zombies, retro games nostalgia, the late 2000s/early 2010s "nerdy" aesthetic (?) and the jokey style turns this otherwise dull and straight up uninteresting experience into something like a time capsule. Embedded into 2009 internet culture, this game brings a strangely specific atmosphere I haven't seen in any other videogame ever. I grew up on stuff like Smosh and Dick Figures, this game brings to me some kind of nostalgia I have never felt. I don't consider myself a nostalgic person, I mean, I look back fondly on Dick Figures, watched the movie a couple of times, but I don't come back to it that much to have some "comfort nostalgia". The same goes for basically anything that marked my youth. And rarely any piece of media takes me back to a past I don't really care much about, but out of all the media out there, I didn't expect frickin' Matt Hazard to do that. This is a "you had to be there" thing, and this makes me wonder if in twenty or so years from now on, will I still understand this game and the cultural context it was built in. I just wanted to say that I was scared af someone would pop up in a Bacon costume, that's all.
After inserting the disc, the game started and I was greeted by the most horrendous spanish dub I've ever heard in my entire life. It's the most lifeless and dull it could have been. Despite including some VAs whose work was something ranging from decent to surprisingly competent, the main character sounded like he was asleep during the entire game. Seriously, if you speak or at least understand spanish on some level, look up clips of the game because it's the worst dub in any language I've come across. I was expecting to hear the voices of Will Arnett (yes, the same Will Arnett from BoJack Horseman) and Neil Patrick Harris (yes, the same Neil Patrick Harris from How I Met Your Mother), which are the main character and the villain correspondingly, but instead I got a really amateur voice work from their characters. Now, the reason I bring this up, since I know most people reading this don't necessarily speak spanish, is because this sets a really bad precedent for the game right before I could even start playing. When I first heard Matt Hazard's voice, I knew I was in for something unique. Uniquely bad that is. Look, no one on this planet thinks this is a good game, and I'm no exception.
The game opens with a monologue from the titular Matt Hazard, where he infodumps his entire life and career as a video game protagonist, starting in the arcades and ending… in a third person cover shooter. A really, really, really bad one. The controls are really stiff, there's no aim assist and enemies move fast enough that it is hard to aim right at them. This is when the cover mechanics come in, aaand… they're… not horrible? Look, my references here are Max Payne 3, Uncharted and twenty minutes of Gears Of War, those last two being ones I played on console. If remember correctly, Uncharted was more fast-paced and with more movement and Gears Of War was more methodical, you could say even tactical I guess? Eat Lead falls somewhere between both of these, never leaning to one side entirely. It's not as fast-paced as Uncharted but also isn't as static as Gears Of War, it is slow but the movement between covers is encouraged, since most of the covers can be destroyed with a few shots. You get buttons to go from one cover to another automatically, you can roll over the cover to hide on the other side. But it is slow and will likely get you killed if the other cover is somewhat far away or there are many enemies surrounding you. The game doesn't quite know if it wants to be fast or slow, movement-oriented or methodical.
Oh yeah, the enemies! They suck. They're every enemy from every TPCS ever made. They go in cover, move from cover to cover, they peek out to shoot while being more exposed, yada yada, you know the drill. Tho there are some interesting ones, like the Lovers of Dexter (I'll get to that in a few paragraphs hopefully), which are sexy robot chicks with dual SMGs who you need to knock out AND THEN melee-kill them before they get back up. Those dual SMGs and their pinpoint accuracy can go fuck themselves (you can also use them though, but you don't have the same precision, sorry bucko). Then, there's the uhhh, the zombies! Yeah, this game has zombies! Did you know this game released in 2009? Damn, that's crazy, I wonder how do you kill them tho… by shooting them in the head, of course! I knew it! Then there are the Water Gun Commandos (you read right) and the Space Marines, ones use water guns and the others use laser pistols, these weapons are only effective to the enemies they come with, which is a pain in the ass when I have a shitty pistol and a normal rifle, because until I get my hands on one of theirs guns, they're basically bullet-sponges. There are also these guys, the Soviet Union Soldiers and the Cowboys but they use normal guns and can be easily killed, and I think the cowboys make a reference to Revolver Ocelot from MGS3 (they do that thing with the revolvers). As you can see, a pretty original roster of enemies. And the weapon roster is as original, but I won't talk about it.
But you know what's more original? The level design. Isn't it exciting when a game that parodies other games like Mario Bros, Halo and Final Fantasy among others, has a level design that is just: Warehouse, Docks, Rooftops? A game like this could have used way more creativity, even if the levels are just hallways with covers, it could have done a more interesting job with the visuals, because visually it is dark, grey and generic looking. It is especially dark, I had to squint my eyes sometimes to even see where I was going, and increasing the gamma didn't make much difference. But this game's biggest sin was including multiple forklifts in every single level and not letting me ride a single one, fuck off Matt Hazard, you're nothing. To no surprise, the effort that went into the enemy roster is almost the same here, if not less. And well, the game is nothing but a narrow hallway, who could have guessed. The environments themselves lack a lot of detail, every level is extremely bland and boring. It's just so... empty. This is just Parking Garage Gaming at its worst.
As stated at the start of the last paragraph, this game has a lot of parodies. In fact, the Wikipedia page mentions SOME of the parodies in the game, check it out, and this is the element that makes this game stand out in an ocean of forgettable third person cover shooters. It even has film parodies, the first words spoken in this game are: "The name's Hazard, Matt Hazard". Real funny!! Did you know this game won the award for "Best Comedy Game" at the Spike Video Game Awards 2009? But the thing is, these parodies are used for nothing but to poke fun at other franchises, and I don't get it. Is it saying that Eat Lead is better than Halo and Mario? I don't think so, because Master Chef (yeah) is an ally, also Captain Carpenter (bootleg Mario). Why does it have a cutout that's just Duke Nukem with another name? Idk, because it's just there, it's not even a joke. But it actually makes fun of Final Fantasy, VII presumably, with long message boxes and a really extensive monologue, typical JRPG stereotypes easy to make fun of. Check the scene here. Does Matt Hazard think it's better than Final Fantasy VII? Is it really that narcissistic?
The plot of Eat Lead is nothing short of uninteresting. You go from one place to another looking for someone to save. When you go to save Dexter, who is supposedly your old friend, he betrays Matt and uses sexy robot chicks to try and kill him, but Matt survives. You go to save an old magician named Bill and then go save Master Chef, and then Captain Carpenter, and then you kill for the third time the one guy who's been chasing you, and then you're at the final boss battle and then you kick Neil Patrick Harris in the balls and then the game ends and it still has the guts to drop a "Matt Hazard will return" at the end of the credits. What kind of plot is this, seriously? It is about nothing, nothing impactful or relevant happens in the entire game, you just go from Warehouse to Docks to Final Battle and it ends. WHO is awaiting a continuation of this game? WHO wants to play as Matt Hazard again? I've consciously omitted mentioning some stuff from this game because it really isn't worth it; horrid boss battles, obnoxious shootouts, unoriginal enemy types, unfunny plot twists, uninspired mechanics, etc etc. I could quote everything wrong with this game, but it just ain't worth it. Go play the game and see for yourself, or better yet, go watch the YouTube funny man gameplay, you're going to have a better time with it.
The text is already over, you can go and do more interesting stuff than reading a random dude's rambling on the internet, but if you're staying: do you remember at the start when I said that this was an interesting game to me? The thing with that is, this game, with all of its parodies, jokes and references make this a somewhat unique experience. Zombies, retro games nostalgia, the late 2000s/early 2010s "nerdy" aesthetic (?) and the jokey style turns this otherwise dull and straight up uninteresting experience into something like a time capsule. Embedded into 2009 internet culture, this game brings a strangely specific atmosphere I haven't seen in any other videogame ever. I grew up on stuff like Smosh and Dick Figures, this game brings to me some kind of nostalgia I have never felt. I don't consider myself a nostalgic person, I mean, I look back fondly on Dick Figures, watched the movie a couple of times, but I don't come back to it that much to have some "comfort nostalgia". The same goes for basically anything that marked my youth. And rarely any piece of media takes me back to a past I don't really care much about, but out of all the media out there, I didn't expect frickin' Matt Hazard to do that. This is a "you had to be there" thing, and this makes me wonder if in twenty or so years from now on, will I still understand this game and the cultural context it was built in. I just wanted to say that I was scared af someone would pop up in a Bacon costume, that's all.
The humor wears thin pretty fast and the gameplay is boring and repetitive. That might be ironic meta commentary on how shooters like this are "shoot a bunch of guys then move to the next room and shoot more guys," but that joke isn't funny for 7 hours.