Brutal Gamer

Eat Lead the Return of Matt Hazard (Xbox 360) Review

By Matttbh - April 9, 2009 - 19:06 UTC

After reading the name in the title you are probably thinking… Who?

At first I believed that he may be an old classic from an arcade game, or something we would now consider retro. This is not the case however; Matt Hazard is a new character.
Eat Lead the Return of Matt Hazard is Third Person Shooter, although strangely that’s not its primary purpose. Its primary purpose is to make us laugh, and no not just because it’s another Third Person Shooter revolving around a cover system. This game is far, far more than a generic shooter; it is a look back at the past 25 years of video games.

You play as Matt Hazard (Max Payne anyone?), the fictional video-game star who is appearing in his latest venture as a private detective in search of money that has been stolen from a mob boss. Although, this changes pretty quickly as you encounter a gun wielding maniac, with a faint German/Austrian accent, I’ll leave it up to you as to who that might be a parody of. It is at this point that you will meet QA, a hologram (in the game world), although sadly a blue and fuzzy one, not one with an H on its forehead. QA (Quality Assurance) gives you guidance as you progress through the game, to make sure you don’t die, as the boss of the game company wants Matt dead, but his contract states that he cannot quit or be fired,so he must die… in a video game.

At the beginning you are thrown into a tutorial, which cues Matt’s response of “not another tutorial, I hate those” (or something to that effect), which is pretty much what I was thinking… Must be something to do with his awesome name…. Anyway, this tutorial mainly teaches you the cover system, which is more or less standard in Third Person Shooters these days. The A-Button makes Matt take cover,the Y-Button makes him run to new cover, makes him jump over cover and the Left Trigger makes him aim. The interesting thing about this cover system is that cover can be destroyed, which you can use to your advantage, but be warned, the enemies can do the same.The game consists of 8 levels, all in extremely varied locations with a multitude of enemies to face and their guns to kill them with. These enemies range from Soak’Ems wielding Water Pistols to Space Marines wielding Plasma Rifles. These enemies will appear when you pass a trigger point, and cover will do the same.

The main bosses are all from ‘previous’ Matt Hazard games and a level usually ends with one. The humour carries over onto them, my personal favourite being a character from ‘Penultimate Illusion’ who wields a giant sword and whenever you damage him red numbers shoot out from his chest. This, although a good parody of Final Fantasy, does get frustrating as you click through the many text bubbles before the fight.
Throughout the game there are classic ‘propane tanks’ for you to destroy as well as fire extinguishers to shoot, both of which harming enemies in the vicinity. There are also Power-Ups scattered around the levels one of which turning you red and letting you deal more damage, and the other turning you metallic and invincible. The weapons are standard with generic SMGs, Pistols, Sniper Rifles, but you can however pick up weapons dropped by the enemies from a humble Water Pistol, to a devastating Grenade Launcher.

There are three difficulty settings Minimum Hazard, Major Hazard and Maximum Hazard. Maximum Hazard being unlocked after your first play through… or if you enter a code at the beginning. The higher in difficulty you go the less health you have (or the more damage they do… either way).

This game has no multiplayer functionality, which is probably a good thing as it let them work on a humorous single player campaign, rather than both a mediocre single player and multiplayer. Anyway, if it did have multiplayer it would be very generic, with no lasting appeal, with people trying to boost the inevitable multiplayer achievements.

On the subject of achievements, they are varied and are given at a steady pace: The majority are for completing each level, and indeed, the game. Some are for getting 50 kills with each weapon. Whereas others, are a lot more random, but I won’t spoil them.

The graphics, controls and sound are all pretty standard, which nothing shockingly bad, and nothing that stunned me. I must say though that Matt’s lines did repeat after awhile, and whilst his lines are funny, they are not funny after the tenth time he has said them.

From the gaming clichés to sarcastic comments; Eat Lead offers a few hours of enjoyment while steadily throwing achievements at you. But sadly, no amount of gaming clichés and humor can make this game any less repetitive. In short, you run into a room, enemies and cover appears, you take cover and shoot them, then scramble for ammo. Rinse and repeat…and repeat…and…you get the idea. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this game as a purchase, I can however recommend it as a rental, and I think that this game is an ideal example of a rental game: something that you probably should play just to look at the satirical view of the past 25 years in gaming, but will only last you a weekend at the most.

No related posts.