Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard Review

By Tom Bramwell Published 11 March, 2009

Don't call it a comeback.

Version tested: PlayStation 3

Hey! Aren't videogames silly? Eat Lead says so. It's an attempted parody of everything from Final Fantasy and Super Mario to SOCOM and Wolfenstein, repeating EA's trick of using The Simpsons Game to poke fun at the opposition.

Unfortunately for developer Vicious Cycle, it lacks the recognisable characters, catchphrases and writers pool that helped propel the former to passable mediocrity in 2007. It's not even all that obvious what it's poking fun at half the time. There's an Austrian man who says silly things and sounds a bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger, for instance. Was that really the best idea on the whiteboard at the end of the brainstorm? What's it got to do with anything?

The joke is that the titular Matt Hazard is a washed-up videogame character whose career has gone south, back for one last cock of the shotgun, only to discover that the game he's in has been designed to kill him off after the first level. Matt's new corporate overlords would prefer to replace him with the aforementioned Austrian interloper who, frankly, is at least likeably naive and silly. Matt's just a cynical, badly written Crimewatch e-fit who greets everything with a mixture of brash condescension and witless taunts.

At its heart, the game he's in is a third person, cover-based shooter in the same vein as Gears of War, but with controls and mechanics disfigured by inexperience or incompetence. Movement is slow and cumbersome, popping out of cover seems to readjust the aiming reticule to minute but devastating degrees, and when you pop back in you've sometimes been arbitrarily repositioned. You're also worryingly vulnerable to bullets fired from the front even when you should be protected, which is the worst thing a cover-based shooter can get wrong, with the possible exception of not including cover (in case you get to the end of the page and wonder where the remaining points on the score came from).

'Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard' Screenshot 1

The JRPG boss who makes you click through reams of dialogue is a joke laboured too far. The punch-line hits in a second, and then you really are just clicking through reams of dialogue.

There's one bolt-on to the otherwise standard over-the-shoulder run-and-gun, and that's the ability to move directly to another cover point adjacent or ahead, but this isn't all that different to Gears of War anyway. It's slightly more automation, but in reality you seldom want to take advantage of it because the people shooting at you are accurate, numerous and capable of teleporting into existence in flanking positions. A more typical approach is to edge forward until you trigger the next influx and then back off and make the best of it. And then get killed and retreat even more, since regular headshots are the only way to survive.

Enemies spawning all over the place is one of many things in Eat Lead that may well be intended as a joke, but functions as a massive pain the arse. Other things are more clearly just regular pains in the arse: enemies, for example, are more, or less susceptible to specific weapons depending on their place in the Matt Hazard canon, so water pistols struggle to convince Nazi stormtroopers to fall over. Since all the weapons are feeble and boring, however, this is needless, unintuitive complexity. It's easier to understand the system of saving up for fire and ice d-pad weapon power-ups, which allow you to freeze or enflame enemies for a limited period, but the advantage conferred isn't so much empowering as less enfeebling.

Level design is worse. Almost relentlessly dull and repetitive, it's been contrived to act as a good foil for cover, but in light of Gears of War 2's immaculate sense of pace, and the imagination with which it engineered new tactical situations, walking through a room with some crates in it and then going along a walkway with some metal patches on it over and over again isn't exactly on the same plane. There are factories, warehouses, casinos and weapon silos, but there's no evolution in gameplay. When your babbling headset helper-woman reduces the complex objectives list to "kill anything that moves", it's a joke, but it's also true, and doing it isn't any fun.

'Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard' Screenshot 2

There's no multiplayer, and all the Achievements and Trophies are easy enough to obtain, so there's not much replay value. Not that you would.

Or visually appealing. In fact, Eat Lead is a dog only barely fit to bark at last month's abysmal Shellshock 2, with horribly low-rent textures and models set amongst ghastly, poorly lit environments. Enemies are diverse in theory, ranging from 2D soldier sprites to multicoloured SOCOM troopers, scientists, builders in hard hats and cowboys, but they're all Playmobil-basic and move about unrealistically, and boast all the tactical ingenuity of a drunken metronome. The overall aesthetic would embarrass the majority of PlayStation 2 shooters, in spite of which our PS3 review copy slows to a terrible crawl on any number of occasions, apparently unable to render a sea of crude, angular objects unless they are viewed from specific angles.

Videogames should be allowed to take the piss out of one another, especially with gentle affection (the princess always is in another castle, after all). But Eat Lead is far from a compelling parody, taking weak, ambiguous pot shots at other games. Even though these attacks are often hard to trace to their intended target, it's fair to say that Eat Lead isn't worthy to mock them, because whatever else it's trying to be this is a howling misfire of a cover shooter, neither funny or enjoyable, and guilty of worse crimes than the ones it's attempting to mock.

3 / 10

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (49) Latest comment 1 year ago

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  • Bloodhunter #1 3 years ago

    so much for the team that made this' expectations...

    i doubted it would do well

  • seasidebaz #2 3 years ago

    I KNEW this would be awful.

    Ever since EG sent a link to the 2D Flash version of the game. That was awful, too.

  • bad09 #3 3 years ago

    I saw this on Plyr this weekend, I must admit the old game enemy sprites thing seemed quite a cool and funny idea, rest of the game looked terrible tho!

  • DDevil #4 3 years ago

    Eat Lead is a bad game? Who'd have thought it?!

  • lcmnick #5 3 years ago

    I'm stunned.

  • Pinewood_Groves #6 3 years ago

    How shit does a game have to be to get less than a 2 or 3 on EG?

  • seasidebaz #7 3 years ago

    At least this shit.

  • the_dudefather #8 3 years ago

    Meet the Spartans: The game

  • EffEmmGee #9 3 years ago

    Oh come on EG! Wheres your sense of humor? This game is easilly a 7/10. This review reads like someone who detests games wrote it.

    Also I found it easy to suss out the games its poking fun at (and its TYPES of games rather than specific titles).

  • seasidebaz #10 3 years ago

    Oh come on EG! Wheres your sense of humor? This game is easilly a 7/10. This review reads like someone who detests games wrote it.

    WOO! Only the 9th post as well!

  • menage #11 3 years ago

    This looked awful from day 1. Bad ideas never turn into good games.

  • Gnort #12 3 years ago

    I had hoped this would turn out as quite an entertaining game, as I liked the idea behind it and appreciated all the work D3 did in setting up the fake backstory. After all, Blood on the Sand ended being up okay, and this game has a far less loathsome premise.

    Unfortunately, the critical mauling it has received (not just from this site) has put me off. Maybe when it's dirt cheap and I have nothing else to play, but while the former seems pretty inevitable, the latter doesn't seem very likely.

  • guernican #13 3 years ago

    Any chance I'll stop getting that fucking advert when I load a video, then?

  • dr_faulk #14 3 years ago

    So it's the "Scary/Date/Musical/Hero Movie" of videogames?

  • Xerx3s #15 3 years ago

    Sooooo...it bites the bullet then?

  • DFawkes #16 3 years ago

    I'm wary of scores that low, but I was never thinking this would be that playable - games comedy rarely works, unless it's a reassuring tousling of the hair at the end of Braid levels that makes you smile, or Reset Generations cast of characters layered onto a good game that'd have been just as good without.

  • UKGN_Zoidberg #17 3 years ago

    The fact that I remained interested in this all the way through to completion when I still haven't finished Killzone 2 or Resistance 2 speaks volumes IMO. Yes, some of the comedy falls flat. Yes, it's not got anything original about it but at the end of the day it was FUN! Surely that's what games are meant to be?

    3/10 is totally wrong. More like a 6/10 for me.

  • seasidebaz #18 3 years ago

    @squarejaw:

    They do, there was a feature in gamesTM (although might have been Edge) where some comedy writers were saying about the game scripts they'd worked on.

  • Aretak #19 3 years ago

    "Oh come on EG! Wheres your sense of humor? This game is easilly a 7/10. This review reads like someone who detests games wrote it."

    Whereas this post reads like someone who developed Eat Lead wrote it.

  • Kami #20 3 years ago

    Jokes need structure to work, they need set boundries, good build-up and a decent delivery.

    Games are a great medium to make fun of - the amount of cliche and the copycat nature of it all does lend itself to a good bit of satire. But a game doing it to games... mmm... it's dodgy ground, and sadly it seems Eat Lead! is about to do just that - another game that really wants to be funny but just doesn't get the joke itself...

    It's a cliche game making fun of cliches in games.

    Fail.
    Edited by 1 at 11/03/09 @ 09:47

  • Kazzahdrane #21 3 years ago

    Damn, I wanted this to be good so I would have a reason to play through it and enjoy NPH's voice work.

    Might give it a LOVEFiLM rent down the line anyway, I do love me some NPH.

  • space_ace #22 3 years ago

    next matt hazard should go after games journalists

    :)

  • Meho #23 3 years ago

    It IS a terrible game, no mistake about it. And I don't say these things lightly as I know that even terrible games were made by people working their arses off... Played the first stage a couple of days ago and was actually shocked at how bad it is. I don't even talk about the script/ dialogue as they are clearly not supposed to be terribly highbrow, but the gameplay is simply awful. Stop & pop shooters have been doing this better since friggin' Kill Switch, let alone Gears of War. The level design is actually less terrible then everything else in the game, allowing for a fair share of flanking to both parties, but the enemy AI leaves a lot to be desired. Also, the aiming is all screwed up as the default setting for the sensitivity is way too sensitive and there doesn't seem to be any correction in the game. I don't remember when it was the last time with a console shooter that I had to repeatedly go into settings and adjust aiming sensitivity just so I can hit anything. Blood on the Sand is a far superior game to this in many respects and that was one game I actually loathed...

    Speaking of Blood on the Sand: Quick Time Events!!! The game is generally made to feel casual, but then you get a miniboss fight where you don't shoot but rather slug it out bare-knuckles style and, it's just a long and terribly, terribly designed QTE sequence with unmaginative camera angles and pedestrian screen prompts. Get ONE button press wrong and it's game over though, which is quite the opposite to the Ninja Blade problem I mentioned some days ago, where thre was no punishment at all. Shit, it's not that games today have QTEs, it's that most games don't get them right. I don't really understand why developers don't look at God of War if they're going to put QTEs in their games. That game gets it right... Matt Hazard, not so much...

  • Widge #24 3 years ago

    Oh someone is dragging up the "fun" argument, all other games are "anti-fun" because they are not a big pile of slapstic arse.

  • GordonCaladan #25 3 years ago

    3/10 is the new 7/10

  • Triggerhappytel #26 3 years ago

    Oh dear, not even GOB Bluth could save this one.

    Parodying other games is fine, but it needs the raw gameplay to back itself up.

  • seasidebaz #27 3 years ago

    Also, the aiming is all screwed up as the default setting for the sensitivity is way too sensitive and there doesn't seem to be any correction in the game. I don't remember when it was the last time with a console shooter that I had to repeatedly go into settings and adjust aiming sensitivity just so I can hit anything.

    It was probably the first time you fired up an FPS / TPS on the 360. Then it was saved as a Gamer Default, and all subsequent games would have used your setting to remain consistent.

    Apart from this one, apparently.

  • Ranger101 #28 3 years ago

    Ouch!

  • creepylizard #29 3 years ago

    I think its going to be a while before games are actually funny...apart from a few notable exceptions, of course....

  • TheComedian #30 3 years ago

    When was the last time EG gave a game a 4/10?

  • sneetch #31 3 years ago

    When I first read about this game warning lights went off.

    When I saw ads telling us that "25 years of gaming history had it coming" (or whatever) then not only did warning lights go off but klaxons sounded, a distress signal was sent, escape pods were manned and jettisoned, a rescue ship was dispatched and insurance claim proceedings begun.

    Well, the signs were there from the start, I say we stick a fork in this one and we're done.

  • Tomo #32 3 years ago

    Shame, this was a genuinely interesting idea. Could've been the Airplane of games but sounds more like Epic Movie.

  • schnide #33 3 years ago

    Tomo +1

  • sneetch #34 3 years ago

    @creepylizard
    I think its going to be a while before games are actually funny...apart from a few notable exceptions, of course....

    Yeah, it used to be a lot better in the era of the point-and-click adventure. LucasArts (the old, good LucasArts)... I miss you. :(

    Apart from Psychonauts I don't think any recent games have done "funny" well (I eagerly await correction).

    Edit: Actually, now that I think of it, Fable II had some really funny, laugh-out-loud bits in it.
    Edited by 1 at 11/03/09 @ 12:39

  • groovychainsaw #35 3 years ago

    They missed the point i think - you have to make a good game first, and add comedy. Even monkey island (which is superbly funny) was a very strong game at the time it came out, well structured and interesting puzzles. Sounds like they started with a comedy premise and tried to wrap a game around it. And the game came off worse.

  • Salt_The_Fries #36 3 years ago

    Lol, he looks like MK vs. DCU's version of Lex Luthor

  • BBIAJ #37 3 years ago

    Methinks EG kinda missed the point with this one, and had a sense of humour bypass in the process.

    Oh, and the aiming from cover rarely, if ever, moves from where you had it pointed in the first place, that was one of the first things I noticed, as it was muchly appeciated.

    The difficulty spike of the Kracken boss though, not so much.

    And I thought the FFVII boss fight piss take was a particular highlight, along with the rather amusing Achievements.

  • creepylizard #38 3 years ago

    @sneetch I thought the silver gargoyles were funny, actually..
    also, Portal was funny in a black kind of way...

  • Ninja_Tino #39 3 years ago

    Hey, someone mentioned GOB Bluth!

  • Icebox #40 3 years ago

    shame, the premise sounds great.

  • darc #41 3 years ago

    Writing a bad game to parody bad games... brilliant.

    My company's game is a parody of Duke Nukem Forever. So, I haven't started coding yet.

  • sneetch #42 3 years ago

    @notmyrealname @BBIAJ et al

    Or perhaps Tom just didn't think it's that funny?

    It is a pretty piss poor attempt at comedy: it's the equivalent of a plastic dog turd and for some people plastic dog turds just aren't that funny.

    @creepylizard
    The gargoyles were fun and I loved Stephen Fry's character, especially at the very end.

    Oh yeah, portal was funny and very charming, especially the turrets, dammit the game is just a joy.

  • JayKwon #43 3 years ago

    Nice review. Wasn´t expecting any more from this game.

  • JayKwon #44 3 years ago

    @ sneetch and @ creepylizard,

    yeah I miss laughing fun in games, the most moments spending ingame laughing were because of a bug or glitch in a game. Psychonauts, Fable II and the Simpsons game (if you like the simpsons) however made me laught quite a lot of times:).

    Portal was big fun, I think I played the whole game with a smile on my face because of GLADUS (correctly spelled?), but it wasn't real laughing fun though, if you get what I mean.

    I'm sure there were a few other funny games as well. Can't think of them though.

  • Kujata #45 3 years ago

    /orders Onechanbara

  • dnd #46 3 years ago

    @notmyrealname

    disagree, a crap game is a crap game. at the end of the day the review scores are meant to reflect the playing experience, right? it's about the end result, not how it was achieved. most people don't play something thinking, 'man this is utter crap, but i'm enjoying myself because i can see that the devs were trying really hard.'

  • peak_performance #47 3 years ago

    No More Heroes did funny really well for a recent release, I also really liked the social commentary of gamers (in contrast to games). It did have some gameplay to back up the funny as well though it could have been better and thats not even mentioning the city :p

    Eat Lead sounded like it could have been fine and the first trailer I saw with the jRPG conversation was funny. Until the gameplay started and looked completely arse. Dismissed the game right then and nothing I've seen since has changed my mind. This review seems to confirm my suspicions.

    If you parody something, you need to have something more than just cheap shots that work one at a time. That's what the creators of Meet the Spartans don't get, but geniuses like the creators of Air Plane do.

  • wraithdub2 #48 3 years ago

    i picked this game up for 30 euros id give it a 5/10 i would recommend you guys rent rather than buy or wait till its cheep in the bargin bins
    Edited by 1 at 07/04/09 @ 22:14

  • valeforXD #49 1 year ago

    I totally have to disagree with, well, almost everyone. Eat Lead is enjoyable. It doesn't have any silly gimmicks like bubble shields or slo-mo (?), it's just an FPS. That's what I like about it.
    Plus, it is very funny. How can you not see the humor in it? I'm only so many levels into it and yet, I've enjoyed myself thoroughly. I certainly got my money's worth.