Preview: Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard

Say hello to Matt Hazard, the quintessential hero of the videogame world. Matt Hazard pioneered the videogame industry by being the first character to jump, go backwards in levels and was the first character in 3D. If it wasn’t for Matt, videogames wouldn’t be what they are today.

Now say hello to the first videogame where the fourth wall has been completely obliterated. Everything that was said above is true, but only in Matt Hazard’s world. Matt was a big-time star and got all of the best roles in videogames. He even banged that chick that raided tombs. But then one day, Matt decided to venture off into other areas of the videogame world and, needless to say, Haz-Matt Carts wasn’t Matt’s best idea.

Matt lost his credibility, which made his publishing company, Marathon, almost go out of business. Then one day, an avid gamer by the name of Wallace Wellesley bought out Marathon and offered Matt a gig to star in the first “next-gen” action title. Matt gladly took the job but soon realized that the game he was starring in was really a trap aimed at killing him once and for all.

Hit the jump to check out my impressions of Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard.

The demo started with Matt being transported to the back entrance of a nightclub/Mafia casino where one of Matt’s videogame buddies was being held hostage. Matt runs into a lot of his videogame pals as he goes through his own game.

Matt also has a friend in the real world by the name of QA. QA hacked the game so that Matt would be teleported to the back entrance, as opposed to the game’s normal spawn point. The game has been designed to kill Matt, so starting at the normal spawn point would have been suicide.

After talking to QA about the situation, he busts into the club and starts taking out all the guards in his way. The first thing you’ll notice upon entering this room is that there’s lots of cover. The main gameplay mechanic of Eat Lead is its cover system. If you’re hiding at one cover spot, you can look at any other cover spot in a room and do a fast sprint to it. All you do is look at the cover in the distance and press Y. Matt will automatically run to the cover you’re looking at, and if you need to break out of the sprint, you simply move the directional stick back.

Whatever Matt can do, his enemies can do. They’ll use cover and can blind fire at Matt, just as he can at them. As enemies are killed, they will “de-rez” and their code will get absorbed by Matt, and he can use the code to get upgrades.

Once Matt ends up in the typical Mafia freezer, an in-game cutscene takes place and the screen blurs a little. He asks QA what just happened and they find out that the game has been hacked (think of the cat scene from The Matrix). Just as QA can hack the game, so can Matt’s enemies. Zombies have now invaded the game and they’re actually from an arcade game Matt starred in called Death Hazard.

Now players will have to deal with Mafia members as well as zombies. Every time a Mafia guard gets killed now, their code gets recoded into the zombie code. The zombies, just like real zombies, can only be killed by getting shot in the head.

After dealing with the zombies and getting outside, the game is hacked again and cowboys have entered the scene. The alleyway you’re standing in gets completely transformed into the Wild West, and cowboys from Fistful of Hazard, another old game Matt starred in, attack Matt. After killing a cowboy, Matt learns a new ability from the de-rez code and he can now duel wield six-shooters.

Matt enters the nightclub once again, which is filled with guards and now cowboys. The demo ends with Matt getting introduced to the first boss, Sniper Scope (who sounds an awful lot like Arnold Schwarzenegger).

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is meant to be an homage to videogames. You’ll see plenty of parodies of videogame characters and lots of clever videogame humor. One of the levels in the game actually takes you to the warehouse where all of the crates, exploding barrels and other generic videogame objects are made.

Story-wise, Eat Lead has a lot going for it. It’s really funny and it helps a lot that Will Arnett and Neil Patrick Harris are lending their voice talents to the game. Unfortunately, the gameplay doesn’t look too hot. The game was in pre-alpha state when I saw it and a lot of work still needs to go into the game. 

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard will be out early next year for the Xbox 360 and PS3. For more on the game, check out these faux sites hyping the game up.