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Review

Eat Lead: The Return Of Matt Hazard

4.0

Format Xbox 360

Developer D3

Publisher D3

Genre Action

21-Apr-2009 This one's going to be tough to swallow...

Now here's something unusual. This has to be one of the only games that has attempted to satirise gaming, and in particular the action genre, ever written to shiny disc.

The premise is that you play as Matt Hazard, a washed up Duke Nukem-inspired shooter hero who's hauled out of retirement when the publishing company that owns him gets bought out.

The new owners, however, want to kill off Matt in the new game as a publicity stunt. With the help of a mysterious hacker named QA (hoho!), Matt has to shoot and kick his way to the end of the game as the odds are stacked more and more against him.

All told, this isn't the worst idea ever to be scrawled on the back of a coffee shop napkin, but there are some serious problems. The thing is, if you want to satirise something, you have to be squeaky clean yourself.

And Eat Lead displays a lot of the things that we really despise about shooting games. Insta-death sequences, boring mounted-gun sections, enemies spawning from thin air, an awkward cover mechanic, boneheaded AI, identikit enemies - the list just goes on.

There's two possibilities as to why all these hateful elements appear. Either Eat Lead is simply a poorly designed game, or the developer intentionally included these elements to mock the bad old days of game design.

Whichever of the two it is - and we somehow doubt it's all purposefully awful - people are still expected to play the game. No matter how funny they find the joke, it's going to wear thin quickly.

What's more, the genre has grown up since the stuff Eat Lead lampoons was prevalent, so competition is stiffer than it's ever been. Most modern gamers won't put up with such clunky game mechanics.

It's a bit of a shame but we can't recommend Eat Lead, despite the fact that, as life-long gamers, the writing often genuinely made us chuckle. Unfortunately, it's too agonising to play through - and while that might intentional, it's not in any way enjoyable.

Mike Channell