Video games are still a fairly new story-telling medium and even the plots of good games are usually crap. The horrible cliches, obvious twists, and thin characters make video games ripe targets for satire and the opening scene of Eat Lead: Return of Matt Hazard gives you the impression that this game is going to be cracking nonstop jokes at their expense. All Eat Lead manages to do, though, is add itself to the pile of forgettable action games it's trying to mock.

Eat Lead stars Matt Hazard, a fictional video game star who fell into obscurity after one of his games flopped badly. The game we're playing is his big next-gen comeback, which Matt's really enthusiastic about until he realizes it's all a death-trap arranged by the CEO of the game's developer. In order to survive, Matt must battle his way through waves of enemies from all of his old games.

This sounds like a pretty good set-up. Having Hazard revisit all of his previous games gives the developer the opportunity to make fun of a diverse group of titles. The game's got voice talent capable of pulling off comedy too: Matt and the CEO are voiced by Will Arnett (Gob from Arrested Development) and Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother) respectively. However, Eat Lead never really satirizes action games so much as it emulates them.

The game does attempt humor on occasion but not very often and not very effectively. At one point, Hazard's rescuing his friend who's named - wait for it - Master Chef. He's wearing the same outfit as Master Chief from Halo except with a chef hat instead of a helmet. Yep, that's it. Hazard, as a veteran of many video games, has a very sarcastic, "Oh I've seen all this before" attitude but it never translates into any good lines. The CEO main villain, meanwhile, is just whiny and bland and doesn't make any use of Harris' comedic talents. The best jokes are delivered in the mission objective text, actually. At one point, you're told to "follow Sting Sniperscope into an obvious trap."

The vast majority of the game takes place in common action game locations like a mansion, a yacht, and a warehouse but are filled with enemies that don't fit that particular setting because they're being inserted by the evil corporation. For example, space marines will ambush you when you're walking through the yacht. The setting and enemies are both presented in a very straightforward manner and there's nothing funny about zombies suddenly popping out of the ground in a tennis court. Ultimately the game's premise just feels like an excuse to throw a bunch of random game elements together into some sort of free association shooter.

There are no zany weapons or gameplay mechanics here either. You'll have your usual assortment of machine guns, rifles, pistols, and laser guns. Well, there are a couple lethal water guns but have the same range and effectiveness of a firearm - the only difference is the sound. All of the weapons feel very underpowered too. Many of the enemies can withstand several headshots even on the game's easiest setting. Even the grenade launcher, the only explosive you have access to, is pretty weak; it only has an effective blast radius of about two feet. Compounding the problem is the low amount of ammo you can carry and the fact that you're limited to carrying two weapons at a time.

When you shoot enemies, little blue bits of code flake off of them and they stagger a bit. When they die, they dissolve into big piles of this code, which then fly over to you to boost your upgrade meter. When you fill up your upgrade meter, you'll be able to enfuse your shots with ice or fire power. Fire shots just makes enemies erupt in flames and take damage over time while ice shots freeze your enemy in place. They boost the damage of your weapons enough to make them respectable but unfortunately it takes awhile to fill up your upgrade meter so most of the time you'll be gumming enemies to death with your piss weak sidearms.

The combat's pretty challenging but not in a way that's enjoyable. Hazard has a tendency to stick his fat head out and away from whatever cover he's hiding behind, which goes badly for him because all the enemies are crack shots. Aside from zombies and boss fights, all the other foes are gun-wielders so your strategy's pretty much the same from start to finish. The only way the game can challenge you with such a limited range of enemies is by throwing as many enemies at you as possible in as small of a space as possible.

The game offers a few boss fights for variety's sake. Half of them are quick-time fist fights where you land blows or dodge them by quickly following button prompts - bleh. The other half are shootouts that task you with shooting stationary targets (like shield generators) while fending off spawning henchmen. These encounters look interesting at first - for instance, a giant squid attacking a sailboat - but the execution is lacking. The squid I just mentioned just flops his tentacles onto the deck of the ship in designated areas and you have to shoot the glowing weak spot on the front. Once one of the tentacles has been defeated, the squid won't attack that spot on the deck anymore and you're free to just gun down all the other tentacles from there.

There's only one section of Eat Lead that really captured what the game ought to be and that's when you're fighting Altos Tratus, an effeminate sorcerer. He's a parody of pretty much every character you've ever encountered in a Japanese RPG and talks solely in large text bubbles. When the fight starts, his hit points and mana are displayed in a big window floating next to him and you see him selecting his next attack from a menu. Hitting him with a shot will cause a little "-10" to pop up over his head to signify that he's lost health points. Aside from the encounter being a spot-on JRPG parody, it's also a fun; you have to run around dodging Altos' spells while also avoiding his henchmen and making sure you burn his health down before he can heal. It's a shame that the rest of the game can't be this engaging.

Eat Lead doesn't have any multiplayer and you'll get most of the Achievements in one play-through so once you've finished the 8-10 hour campaign, there's no reason to ever play it again. I'm not sure the game offers up enough to recommend one play-through, really. The action's forgoettable and it's less funny than the games it attempts to make fun of. If you're looking for a good first-person shooter that can make you laugh, you'd be better off tracking down a copy of No One Lives Forever.

Players: 1
Platform(s): Xbox 360, PS3 Developer: Vicious Cycle Software
Publisher: D3 Publisher
ESRB: Teen
Rating: