Written by: Ian

 

 

 

Humour has always been one of the hardest things to pull of in a game due to the difficulty in delivering lines and pulling off expressions. Does this humour-orientated 3rd person shooter, "Eat Lead: The Return Of Matt Hazard" have what it takes?

 

Featuring American comics Neil Patrick Harris and Will Arnet, can this game succeed where so many others have failed?

 

 

The story is both innovative and dull at the same time. You play as Matt Hazard, a once famous star of 80’s and 90’s games (basically rip-offs of Doom & Duke Nukem) who got washed up after ill-advised karting and water-pistol games. This is your big comeback title, but the president of the publishing company actually tries to kill you off by hacking the code.

 

This brings back enemies, weapons and levels from your previous games that you need to fight off to survive to the end. This allows lots of different level and character designs, and ensuing attempts at jokes, but many of them are either tired, fall flat, or are so deeply rooted in gaming lore that few people will actually get the references. It certainly doesn’t help that Arnet in particular sleeps through many of his lines.

 

 

When the game does deliver with the humour it can be quite funny, but it rarely raised more than a chuckle in my opinion.

 

 

The standard of the gameplay follows a similar pattern to the visual aspects of the game. I’m struggling to think of a game that’s ever been so middle of the road in terms of everything. Again, there’s nothing broken about the game- the cover works, the aiming is pretty solid, there are plenty of guns.

 

You can also power up your weapons, and the AI, whilst fairly stupid, do occasionally attempt to work together, take cover and move to flank you. Having said that, there are a host of issues that stop the game from being up there with the best.

 

Again, whilst it’s difficult to tell whether it’s intentional, given the style of the content, there are moments when the AI is utterly appalling, basically standing there just waiting to be shot. Either way, there are some terrible moments when stuff will spawn in right behind you with no warning and kill you- mostly it seems when you are going to fast for the game’s liking and the spawning points haven’t kept up with your own pace. Also, some enemies take to bullets like they are made of water, and the quick time events are fairly dull and repetitive, even by the standards of the genre.

 

 

Having said that, there’s nothing too bad about the game, and there are quite a few easy achievement points on offer for those that like to collect them! It’s also a short game with no multiplayer, which does affect the scores too, but honestly, whilst it’s nothing special, if you need a rental or are desperate for a new 3rd person actioner, Eat Lead will do you ok for a few hours.