Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazzard Playstation 3 Review

Hazard's graphical presentation is dull and lackluster and the game engine really shows its age. It seems obvious that developer Vicious Cycle needs to put the boots to their art department.

The character animations aren't as smooth as they should be and they occasionally jerk around or move in an uncoordinated and totally unrealistic way.

Matt Hazard has an average soundtrack composed of generic music styles, with a mix of rock, electronic and pop tunes. It reminded me of a stock sound track of years ago, but it wasn't too bad.

The voice acting was okay, and I especially loved the William Shatner sound-alike wizard who teleports in from a fantasy game.The characters were all entertaining and had unique-sounding voices that made me laugh so hard, I cried.

Hazard drops you in the middle of a fictional game world where you'll be thrown into the shoes of Matt Hazard, an over-the-hill action hero who thinks his silly catch phrase still grabs his fans attention. Matt is out of the limelight for a few years and then decides to make a comeback, but not everybody in this world is happy with his choice or his gameography. An unknown character has hacked into the game code to attempt to take Matt out as he's making his comeback; he's altered all of Hazard's levels, creating a mix of weird and funny environments to play in.

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard only took me about 12 hours to complete, which is pretty short, and although it starts out fast, it slows down on the entertainment value as you make your way through the levels.

After you get beyond the jokes and cheap thrills, Eat Lead is really just a sub-par, straight-forward shooter with levels that turn into shooting galleries. Many times, the enemies come straight for you or run across the room before looking for cover, making them very easy to pick off.

Eat Lead has a clever storyline that had great potential, unfortunately, Vicious Cycle didn't take advantage of the contents possibilities as well as they could have. The laughs start out pretty good, but slowly lose their touch as the game progresses. This is unfortunate for such a promising premise and set up, but I still recommend Eat Lead for its unique take on video games and its clever writing.