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One of the hardest things for a video game character to do is to revive a failing career.  Just ask Sonic the Hedgehog.  Luckily for Matt Hazard, he's been given a golden opportunity to revive his old washed up antics in the new adventure Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard.  Never heard of him?  Well neither have we here at Neoseeker.  But that's just one of the many jokes played on gamers by the developer Vicious Cycle Software.  Luckily they do an excellent job of including all of us in on the joke.

Matt started his 'career' as an 8-bit side scrolling action figure, shooting his way to the top with classic games such as The Adventures in Matt Hazard Land and A Fistful of Hazard.  Nearly 20 years later Matt started to sell out to the more casual crowd with Haz-Matt Carts and Choking Hazard: Candy Gramm which ultimately saw Matt Hazard's demise.  Marathon Software was forced to merge and became Marathon Megasoft. They decided to bring Matt back in all of his glory to redeem himself and the folded up studio.

Unfortunately the new CEO Wallace "Wally" Wellesley III (voiced by Neil Patrick Harris.....yes Doogie Howser) has other plans for Matt Hazard (voiced by Will Arnett).  What starts out as a revival for Matt, quickly turns into a fight for survival as wave after wave of enemies from his past titles are thrown at him.  Turns out Wally doesn't like good ol' Hazard too much after all, and is setting him up for a fall. 

After a brief movie intro of Matt's faux video game past, Matt breaks down the premise of his 'new' game.  He is a detective who is sent to a Japanese steakhouse to investigate money stolen by the owner. You're then taken to the tutorial to get Matt reacquainted with the controls.  Will Arnett does a fantastic job of delivering one liners teasing the idea of even needing a tutorial.  After all he is the great Matt Hazard, and he knows how to fire a gun.

Eat Lead utilizes a point and cover system which allows you to quickly move from one piece of cover to the next nearly flawlessly.  You can move along or around cover as well as come up over the top to take out a baddie in your line of fire.  There are a few minor hiccups with the cover system.  Every so often firing around the edge of the cover will kick you back so that you aren't quite in cover, and not quite out of cover.  At that point you aren't able to lean around the cover and return fire anymore.  Also the point and cover system wasn't nearly as simple as pointing the reticle and pressing the button.  Often times you would end up on the opposite side of where you had pointed the reticle, fully exposing yourself to the enemy.  This doesn't hinder the game play too much, but definitely takes time to get used to.  After the first level the cover system (and it's flaws) become second nature as the game play relies heavily on it.