MATT HAZARD! INDOMITABLE HERO OF SUCH INSTANT CLASSICS AS ADVENTURES OF MATT IN HAZARD LAND AND THE REAL MATT HAZARD AND WEAPONS OF HAZARD DESTRUCTION AND OTHER GAMES WITH THE WORDS MATT AND/OR HAZARD IN IT! You’ve heard of Matt Hazard, of course. Matt Hazard pretty much invented gaming. Actually, chuck that “pretty much” – Matt Hazard totally invented gaming. As John Romero wrote in his autobiography, Actually, Matt Hazard Invented Gaming, “Actually, Matt Hazard invented gaming. I just cribbed everything from him.” If you didn’t import the Japan-only release of Goonzilla versus Mega-Matt or never played Matt Hazard: Alien Assassination Arena, you’re simply not a gamer. Get off this website.

But seriously. Clever concepts and marketing notwithstanding, Matt Hazard’s debut-pretending-to-be-a-retro-comeback, Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard, sort of ate its own lead, rolled over, and died shortly after its 2009 release. It was actually a bit rubbish. Undaunted and apparently determined to make this whole thing work properly, Vicious Cycle went back to their game laboratory to drink Mountain Dew, browse crumbling alchemical compendia, and find some way to turn lead into gold.

Well, Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond might not be quite the Philosopher’s Stone, but it’s a lot shinier than its predecessor. Discarding all that newfangled 3D FPS nonsense that all the kids are into these days, Vicious Cycle’s gone with a retro 2D scroll-’em-up that plays exactly like a retro 2D scroll-’em-up. Much like Eat Lead, the game sees Matt “revisiting” a bunch of his previous titles in pursuit of the nefarious Neutronov, which mostly includes the not-so-discretely balding protagonist running and gunning his way through a bunch of instantly recognisable titles from everywhere else – including a version of Portal stuffed with giant killer penguins, a Bioshock starring sailors in hotpants, and Lunar Lander being Lunar Lander at its most infuriating. It’s like the last two decades of gaming slept with Gunstar Heroes and had an angry baby with a rocket launcher.

It’s not particularly innovative or anything, but then, it doesn’t want to be. It seems the game exists almost entirely to mock itself and Eat Lead‘s commercial failure, with lots of shooting stuff and explosions. It’s terrific fun, but a shame that, clocking in at around just 3 hours or so, it’s all over so quickly. A couple of absurdly difficult Xbox Achievements might mitigate that somewhat, however, depending on your perseverance and number of expendable controllers. Oh, and do wait for the bit after the credits.

If ever there was a game designed almost solely to be appreciated by long-time gamers who’ve been at it since damn near the beginning, it’s Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard. This game is filled with so many industry inside jokes, ripoffs, and pop-culture references from the last thirty years, that someone whose first experience with gaming is picking up an Xbox 360 or PS3 controller couldn’t hope to truly understand it all.

Eat Lead casts players in the role of Matt Hazard, a washed-up has-been of a video game hero who used to be the biggest star in the business. However, the success went to his head, and a string of bad choices and scathing endorsements soon ended his shining career, dooming him to sit alone at his home, soothing his troubles with ice-cream and reruns of his past successes. But as luck would have it, a new gaming company called Marathon Megasoft has just offered him the chance to get back into the game, so to speak, by casting him in the lead role of their new, big-budget shooting game. Seeing an opportunity to regain everything he lost, Matt jumps at the chance – but there may be more to this kind offer than meets the eye.

Eat Lead plays like a standard third-person shooter. Players can make Matt move around, strafe, aim, and snap to cover – pretty standard stuff nowadays. The cover system deserves a mention, though, because it features a new ability which allows Matt to quickly dash from one cover spot to another automatically, and it works really well – something which Matt himself feels the need to comment on in the game. Matt can find a variety of different guns from different types of games, such as pistols, dual cowboy revolvers, sniper rifles, futuristic laser weapons, and even water pistols. Also, Matt later acquires the ability to charge up his ammunition with fire or ice effects to take out enemies quicker.

For some reason, the general consensus about this game is that, if you take away the humour, you’re left with a pretty standard shooter. But can’t the same be said of just about every shooter on the market? Strip away the big budget trimmings from, say, Gears of War or Killzone 2 and you’re left with a “pretty standard shooter”, so I don’t know why it became an issue in this game. At any rate, Eat Lead’s gameplay is fast, smooth, and quite varied for what it is – especially the boss encounters, which are an intense song-and-dance routine as you rush about throwing switches, dodging sniper fire, or hiding from attack choppers as you attempt to get near enough to take them out.

While Eat Lead might not be the best shooter on the market, it’s solid with smooth and varied gameplay – but what really makes it unique is that the hilarious parody of the gaming industry, which makes the game appeal to long-time gamers on a different level than usual. If you’re in the market for a solid shooter with a great sense of humour, give it a try.