Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard

(CBS)  It's not every day that we here at GameCore get to talk about a game that makes us take a step back and say, "now why the hell didn't we think of that?" Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard by D3Publisher is such a game. The concept isn't by any means innovative or new. Simply grab concepts from the pool of game related content over the past say 30 years, crazy-glew'em together with a solid game engine, great writing and brilliant VA (voice acting) and you've got yourself a possible winner. If you're any kind of gamer, Matt Hazard will instantly remind you of Duke Nukem, with his witty one- liners, sarcasm and well timed comic relief. But Duke's a washed up relic of the 90's and one could parallel the same for Matt Hazard.

The story/concept is pretty bold though and completely bogus and fabricated which is what makes this title so kick-ass. In a quasi-video game world, Matt Hazard used to be big a super star video game action hero back in the golden era of 8-bit video games. He made one liners cool I guess. But as is the case with many of our classic mega stars from that time period, they tend to fall off the map. Fear not though as it seems that ostentatious washed up curse of the 80's and 90's won't keep its ugly grip on our favorite action hero for long.

Matt gets a chance to prove his merit by a super new mega game publisher, Marathon Megasoft. Apparently the new owner feels he could turn this washed-up action hero into some serious bucks on next-gen consoles. However, our new and much improved Matt Hazard soon finds out that not everything is as it seems and gets thrown into a fight for his life. But he's not alone. With the aid of the mysterious "QA" (I kid you not!) who happens to take on the persona of his saving angel, our 'non-the-wiser' action hero must stay alive against the myriad of videogame characters sent by the very company that practically resurrected him. Matt therefore is an in-game real-life video game action hero in a video game world that mirrors the plethora of game related content of the past 30 years. This is very much like Tron in a sense and I wonder if that's where the base concept came from.

Thanks to Dave Ellis winner of the 2008 Writer's Guild Award, Eat Lead promises to parody the coolest and most memorable moments of classic video game culture. Eat Lead, therefore, becomes an homage to video games past and present with classic enemies like cowboys, zombies (can't not have a game without zombies), snipers that are genetically mutated, marines from outer space, etc.

Developed by Vicious Cycle Software, Inc., Eat lead is on GameCore's radar for a "possible" must have title of 2009. Kudos to D3Publishing, creators of 'Dark Sector', for producing this title for PlayStation 3 and XBOX 360. Keep a close eye on GameCore in the upcoming weeks for more info on Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard.
Produced by Chad Chamberlain