Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard follows a legendary, washed-up 1980s video game hero who is lured into a "next-gen" comeback game, only to discover it is a deadly trap orchestrated by Wallace "Wally" Wellesley, a vengeful corporate executive who blames Matt for ruining his childhood. Wellesley hacks the game's source code to permanently delete Matt, forcing the action hero to fight through a glitchy, changing digital matrix filled with hostile parodies of various gaming genres, from space marines to JRPG characters. Aided by a rogue quality-assurance programmer named QA, Matt successfully battles through the corrupted levels, defeats Wellesley's digital defenses, and restores his status as an active gaming icon.

Résumé

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is a third-person shooter video game for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 video game consoles. The game was developed by Vicious Cycle Software and published by D3 Publisher.

Eat Lead pits players in the role of the title character, a "legendary" gaming hero who is "returning to glory" in a new video game, some 25 years after his debut game and 6 years after his last game. In reality, the Matt Hazard character is in his first video game, with a history made up by D3 Publisher to chronicle the character's rise and fall in popularity. The Return of Matt Hazard marks Hazard's fictitious "comeback" to the gaming scene. Hazard is voiced by Will Arnett, while Neil Patrick Harris voices his nemesis Wallace "Wally" Wellesley.

The game itself is a parody of action-gaming clichés. The October 2008 debut trailer was done as a Behind the Music spoof called Inside the Game complete with Jim Forbes narration. It chronicles Matt Hazard's successes and hardships, and mirrors the progression of the Duke Nukem series of games, from early 8-bit to modern consoles.[1]

The cast of Eat Lead received a nomination in the 2009 Spike Video Game Awards, under the category for "Best Cast"