Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard

A decent enough FPS with some nice humour and oddball opponents. But why the levels are so dull-looking and straight-forward, when the situation pretty much allows anything you can imagine? [Apr 2009]

Matt Hazard is not a great game. It falls victim to a lot of the cliches that it pokes fun at and Matt Hazard doesn't have the star appeal of a Duke Nukem or a Marcus Fenix. It doesn't take the spoof thing far enough--they totally waste the voice over talents of the awesome Will Arnett--and the action needs three more coats of polish but it definitely has its moments. Despite its faults, I more or less enjoyed it.

It comes out of the gate with a strong opening set and sprinkles in a good joke every time the audience gets restless. But the gameplay itself is as diluted as a happy hour special in an 18-and-over club.

Speaking strictly in terms of mechanics, calling Eat Lead mediocre would be excessive praise. But its charm, savvy writing and excellent humor shines in the face of all of its shortcomings and elevates it to a being a game that may not be worth owning but should certainly be played by anyone who can manage to plant their tongue firmly in cheek.

If you're the type of gamer who still has fond memories of the 8- and 16-bit era, plays a broad range of genres and doesn't scoff at the idea of playing non-triple-A games then Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is an absolute blast - pun intended.

If you can look past the remarkably average gameplay, Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is an enjoyable action parody.

In the end, Eat Lead's story and characters have far more personality than the gameplay.

Eat Lead is a funny game to play, nevertheless the gameplay doesn't function properly. Thanks to the large amount of humor in it, the game will give some satisfaction. Although it doesn't have a high replay rate, it will get you laughing.

If Eat Lead developers wanted to revive some of 80's gaming cliches, they succeeded: but this brought with it some heavy shortcomings, like great linearity, no environment interaction, and a very repetitive soundtrack. Nevertheless, the game is still enjoyable, mainly due to some very crazy moments. We suggest to give it a chance just for trying, but only when you'll be able to find it at a budget price.

This game brings back a lot of memories but fails to provide many out and out laughs. The game is also remarkably short and easy even on the toughest settings, so will not really provide any long term appeal. Rent it for a nice homage to some classics but never imagine it will be join them in the upper echelons of gaming goodness.

The cover system is actually pretty good. The rest of the game, completely rote.

A warm-hearted parody but pretty repetitive game, Eat Lead may sometimes be the victim of its own jokes, yet few titles have ever sent up our hobby in such a passionate and enjoyable way.

The purpose of parody is to comment on a topic, by means of humorous or satiric imitation, and Eat Lead manages to pull this off admirably. I enjoyed playing this game, not because it was a very good shooter, but because it made me think (and laugh) about the other games I play.

Eat Lead could have been a better critique of the medium than any reviewer could ever write, but it’s neither bad enough to be a savage commentary nor good enough to feel like a satisfying, stinging satire.

Eat Lead's humor carries its lackluster gameplay for only so long.

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is trapped in many of the clichés it seeks to skewer, but it’s still a fairly adequate shooter and occasionally gives you a chuckle. It’s just that we were hoping for something truly unique.

Indeed, Eat Lead is like Domino’s Pizza…satisfying in its initial moments, but after a while it sits in the pit of your stomach leaving you wondering what the hell ever possessed you to indulge in the first place.

Despite the classic gameplay, which does not rejuvenate the FPS genre, Eat Lead is a nice experience, because of the intelligent humor wich pervades the adventure. A brilliant parody of videogame icons, of videogamers and of the industry itself.

Probably the most disappointing game I have played this year. It had potential to be one of the most original titles to come along in quite some time. However, the mechanics of just about everything are not the punch line and truly make the game unplayable in certain portions and outrageously frustrating in others.

The problem with Eat Lead is that it only replicates the looks of all the games it spoofs, and not the gameplay. What's left is a repetitive, subpar third-person shooter skinned in various game themes and filled with cheap gags.

Ugly graphics and bad gameplay totally ruined a good concept. Despite this we recommend you try Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard because it’s a funny game based on a histrionic character that will make everyone laugh all the time.

A bad shooter with worse excuses, and there’s little chance you’ll enjoy playing it as much as Vicious Cycle enjoyed making it. The developers relied too heavily on cheap laughs, and didn’t take advantage of the satire nearly as much as they should have. Instead, they used it as a crutch, explaining missing features and other problems on the game’s premise – an excuse that grows thin quickly, as far too often, it’s used to the detriment of the player instead of to their benefit.

Eat Lead The Return of Matt Hazard does a good job of creating a cohesive universe. However, the game play is so poorly executed that even its best moments are not worth the time.

The nuggets of genuine hilarity hidden within a few encounters are worth a once-over, but Matt Hazard's reboot should perhaps have been left for a later date.

There are laughs to be had, and for that it might be worth a rental, but anything more will only be Hazard-ous to your wallet.

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is a disappointing effort to obtain a good action game with an original and innovative focus. The bland spectacle of boring and senseless action destroys what could have been an enjoyable and bizarre game.

A game I wanted to like but it slapped me across the face and called me "Imelda" due to its poorly implemented ideas and less-than-fleshed-out possibilities.

While Eat Lead tries its hardest to be a funny game, it never manages to stay funny long enough to be enjoyable. Thanks to the game’s weak enemy AI and frustrating shooting and cover mechanics chances are that you won’t invest the time to see what happens to Matt. This game has Bargain Bin written all over it and even then, I would be hard pressed to recommend it to anyone.

The story isn't there, the gameplay is tedious, and there's nothing visually exciting about this one. There are a few laughs here and there and some Achievement padding, but this has "bargain bin" written all over it.

Bland shooting, idiotic bad guys and an average story left us disappointed. Developer Vicious Cycle should've spent less time making fun of superior shooters and more time making Eat Lead play like one. That's no joke.

Eat Lead simply isn't a good enough game to make the most of the brilliant script. While you're likely to enjoy Matt's many one-liners and smirk at the sheer absurdness of what's going on, you're not going to enjoy the clumsy combat and generic gameplay.

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is a rather average game, which is a problem when it is up against some great titles.

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is a tedious game. The gameplay consists in shoot everything, take cover, and shoot all over again. At least, the initial idea (control a star of video games in a bad moment of his career) is funny, and there are a plenty of jokes to laugh at.

Videogame humor is the main -and almost only- strong part of Eat Lead, but it falls to be, in fact, a good game. It is not bad, but actually what it proposes in gameplay has been already made a lot of times with better results.

The game just doesn't do anything for me and it's just a bit "meh!"

The problem isn't that Eat Lead is bad, it's just very, very average and at no point justifies its smarter-than-thou stance. [May 2009, p.117]

I love what Vicious Cycle and D3Publisher tried to accomplish with Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard. Unfortunately, the satire and humor isn't enough to save the title from its contrived gameplay.

On the whole, you’ll experience a game that takes neither itself nor the consumer seriously. The “humorous” vibe of the game isn’t funny and the gameplay sucks, too.

Matt Hazard’s designers clearly tried to do something interesting here, and the basic concept of a videogame action star as a washed-up Hollywood type is really quite cool. If only the game actually lived up to its premise.

No amount of clever quips and Master Chief parody characters is worth slogging through a shooter that makes Dark Sector look like an inspired stroke of genius. By the end of the game, no amount of clever enemy character names or profanity-laced outbursts by Neil Patrick Harris can distract you from the fact that you’re simply not having much fun.

Humor is entirely subjective, and maybe some of the stuff I found to be a little easy and dull will get you going. However, I'm a lot more certain about the quality of Matt Hazard's gameplay, which almost feels like it's going out of its way to be mediocre at best. Hey, maybe that's part of the joke!

Eat lead has its humor going for it, and perhaps is the only reason the game should be played.

The idea behind Eat Lead sounds more than fine and the humor and self-mockery in the game should be an example for other developers. For the rest there is little to be proud of. Return to sender.

It's too agonising to play through - and while that might be intentional, it's not in any way enjoyable. [May 2009, p.86]

This is a game that doesn't take itself or the videogame industry seriously. The main focus here is humour and taking cracks at stereotype content in different gaming genres. There are some laughs to be had here, but since the game is utterly mediocre in every category it tries to make fun of the overall feeling is that the parody aspect is just a way to mask a poorly executed game.

You'll be laughing at, not with, this parody - which perpetuates every cliche it sets out to mock.

Eat Lead wants to be recognised as this post-modern mockery of all those big budget and casual games that sell rather well. But it’s not, it’s just some guy who thinks he’s rather clever, telling obvious jokes that everyone gets that got old two years ago.

The villain's aim is to destroy Matt Hazzard. This game does it for him. [June 2009, p.78]

The only real laugh in this game comes in the opening introduction (which you can watch in its almost-entirety here). The rest of the game is a plodding, boring mess that that forces you to play through the worst shooter genre clichés, and then asks you to laugh simply because the game's creators self-referentially point out how annoying those tropes are.

If only the rest of the game had offered some fraction of this scene's inspiration, Eat Lead might have even been worth buying, rather than just taking up space in the budget bin.

Ultimately, it’s a shame to see a game with such an intriguing concept go to ruin.