D3
(XBOX 360, PS3)
Rating: 
Finally, after years of anticipation, you get to step back into the shoes of badass videogame action hero Matt Hazard. What, you don’t remember him? Don’t feel bad. No one else does either, because this is actually his first game—and a very meta experience it is. The story is, Hazard (voiced by Will Arnett) was one of those classic eighties characters who built his career in titles similar to Contra and Halo. His chance for a big comeback arrives when the company’s new CEO (Neil Patrick Harris) picks him to star in the newest detective title. Once he’s in the game, Hazard quickly realizes that his boss is trying to assassinate him. To survive, he’s got to defeat loads of enemies from his previous titles using a range of weapons, from Super Soakers to fireand-ice magic to standard guns. The clichés are turned on their side by the game’s unique twists, literally: Hazard has to blow through a battalion of German World War II soldiers who are easy to kill unless they turn to the side, which makes them so thin that they’re essentially invincible. And then there’s the Japanese role-playing-game-inspired boss Altos Stratos, who fights in a turn-based style while you can shoot freely without waiting, but who also has healing powers and can deliver nasty meteor strikes. In short, Eat Lead is an engaging, occasionally amusing, shooter that makes light of what goes on behind the scenes during the creation of a game, and tries to ensure that you have as much fun playing it as the developers did making it.
