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+----- Thread: Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard Review (/thread-9246.html)
Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard Review - Prime - 09-26-2009
I first recall seeing this in a preview feature in Gamesmaster Magazine a while back. I had a quick glance, read the comments and decided it looked pretty cool, thinking that I'd get it as soon as I got my 360. Turns out when I did, I completely forgot about Eat Lead and only discovered it in the bargain bin in Gamestation a few days ago. At first, I was absolutely stunned and my mate Ollie had to reassure me that I wasn't having some insane hallucination; the original price on the label was £39.99, but there was a line through that, and scrawled underneath in marker pen beside the words "SALE PRICE" was an astounding £9.98. Remembering how cool it looked in the screenshots and seeing as it was under a tenner (hey, opportunities like this don't come along every day) I immediately bought it. I recall thinking at the time it was about the best bargain I'd ever picked up besides The Orange Box and Dead Rising. Later, I found that I wasn't (entirely) right.
The story goes that you're a video game character called Matt Hazard. You've been out of work for a while, but you were a big hit in the 80's, and the CEO of Marathon Software contacts you and tells you that you'll be starring in a new next-gen game. You accept, and the first level sees you infiltrating a Chinese restaurant to try and eliminate a Gang Boss. There's a short tutorial which you earn an achievement for completing, and it teaches you the basic moves - aim, shoot, taing cover, that sort of thing. It all goes very nicely - Matt makes some genuinely funny quips, breaking the fourth wall to an extent that you'd expect from Deadpool, the cover mechanic works very well, and the ragdoll physics when the enemies die are actually pretty damned cool. Then halfway through, things start to get weird. This new guy shows up, a Dutch-accented, obvious homage to muscleman Schwarznegger called Sting Sniperscope, and says that he's going to kill you. Matt jokes that he probably missed something in the script, and then just as Sting shoots you in the head, the game pauses, freezing the bullet in mid-air. A Cortana-esque holographic female character called QA appears and tells you that the new game is a just a plot by the CEO of Marathon to kill you off and replace you with the new character, Sting, and this is where the game really kicks off. From that point on you're thrown into a multitude of levels in a hilarious parody of the action game genre. And it's fun. Very, very fun.
The game design is very well thought-out; it's cliche'd but manages to be funny at the same time and spices things up with new features. You fight a crazed Russian General planning to launch a nuclear missile, and have to kill his multitude of minions and defuse a bomb within a time limit before being ambushed by a horde of Wild West gunfighters, and later you fight Zombies, Space Marines, pixelated grunts reminiscent of Wolfenstein SS Troopers, and, hilariously, Commandoes from the game "Soak 'Em" armed with water pistols that can actually damage you. The aiming works the same as in the COD series and numerous other shooters alongside it - hold the left trigger to aim down the sights, right trigger to fire you current weapon. You can hold up to two weapons at once - three if you count dual-weilding weapons like the Six-Shooters and the SMG's - and due to the diverse variety of enemies you get quite a nice selection of toys to play with. The cover mechanic is brilliant - pressing A will make Matt duck behind cover, and you can lean around and take pot-shots at enemies whilst protected from damage, or even just blind-fire, which is quite useful because it's a good deal more accurate than the game says if you moderate your shots, and you risk minimal damage from unfriendly fire. Pressing B will make you roll over low cover and - this is the really cool part - if you target another piece of cover and press Y then Matt will automatically run for it and take cover behind it for you. All that at the touch of a button. Lazy, yes, but it certainly looks cool, and it works very well when you get used to it.
The graphics are pretty good even for a 360 game, and there are some seriously cool effects. For example, when you kill an enemy they collapse and disintegrate, letting you absorb their "programming code" which powers up your "Hazard Meter", which is basically just another name for the generic "Rage Mode" powerup that so many games use these days. I may be alone on this, but the lighting effects when you absorb an enemy's code (or fire a weapon/explosive) in a darkened area looked seriously impressive to me, and the powerups themselves are more original than the over-used "enhanced damage enhanced speed enhanced everything" super-mode that Doom made popular. For example, pressing up or down respectively will temporarily upgrade your weapon to shoot fire or ice bullets that ignite or freeze your enemy respectively, which is incredibly satisfying and something a little different. The cutscenes between levels provide a nice break from the action, and the deliberately cheesey dialouge is pretty funny on occasion, but unfortunately Eat Lead does have some very irritating flaws.
Level 3 nearly drove me to tears on one occasion. After you've beaten Sting Sniperscope the first time, he reappears two levels later, and this time he's ditched the macho hero acting in favour of hiding in the shadows like a gutless little worm with a sniper rifle. The first part of the level isn't too bad; you take cover, shoot enemies, take their guns, shoot enemies with them, and then Sting has to show up and ruin the fun. About halfway through is where the sniping starts, and it turns into a cat-and-mouse scenario with no prizes for guessing who the mouse is. Now, this part is difficult at first, but it is possible to complete after a few tries, but after a while you get used to ducking behind cover and if you utilize the cover-to-cover mechanic it's not too bad - but at the end of the level you encounter what I think it is safe to say qualifies as one of the most frustrating and unfair levels in video gaming history. Without warning the lights go out and the room goes pitch black, meaning you can't see where the hell you are, or where you're going, or even what the level layout looks like so you can memorise it, let alone where the cover (if any) is. There's about a dozen Commandoes, who, granted, haven't got much better night-vision than you but can still be a nuisance when they find out where you are, and the icing on the cake of despair is that Sting still has a sniper rifle and will STILL kill you if you stick your head out for more than 3 seconds. This would be bad enough in broad daylight, but when you can't even see where to take cover it's even worse. Persevere and you'll get it eventually, but for a while I was beginning to think it wasn't worth it until I completed the section, and beat Sting Sniperscope's Dutch-accented heathen ass once more. Sadly, the boss fight was a rather dissappointing "press-the-buttons-in-sequence-to-win-the-fight" quicktime event, but it was worth it just to see Sting being thrown off the catwalk.
Another example of unfair level design is in the Mansion level when you first encounter Zombies - fighting the Undead is bad enough considering they can't be killed with anything but a direct headshot, but then the armed grunts show up and start taking pot-shots at you from the safety of indestrcutible cover. You, on the other hand, have no cover, but have to choose who to deal with first - the Zombies, or the guys with the guns? The Zombies don't have any long-range attacks but are damned hard to kill, numerous, and in the time it takes to line up a headshot the grunts can often shoot you down. On the other hand, the grunts can take you out at range, but if you ignore the Zombies and concentrate your fire on them, the walking corpses will often just overwhelm you, and since they're immune to melee attacks and can kill you with a couple of strikes, this section is incredibly frustrating - although not as much as the previously mentioned Boss battle.
IN A NUTSHELL:
Graphics: Very pretty effects, fluidly animated cutscenes satisfying ragdoll physics, although this is slight spoiled by the fact that enemies disintegrate after a few seconds. 9/10
Gameplay: Sometimes frustrating but often rewarding in the long run. 8/10
Sound: Superb voice acting, hilariously bad death-noises from the enemies, and although repetetive the music is catchy. 9/10
Lifespan: Some of the achievements will take you a while, and there's a good few levels to complete, plus the extra difficulty modes add replay value. 8/10.
Overall Score: 8/10. Well worth buying if you see it in the bargain bin, but I wouldn't recommend paying anything above 10 quid for it. Great game overall, worth it in the long run, would be perfect if not for just a few irritating flaws and unfairly difficult sections.