Made by Vicious Cycle, published by D3 (is it just me or am I playing a lot of D3 games lately?) this kinda came out of nowhere. What confused me was that it was called “the return of Matt Hazard” and I wasn’t familiar with the character. Well that’s just because there never WAS a Matt Hazard game before. The game was built up a bit. A site showing all his “previous games” and a bunch of previews and some advertisement.

So I decided to check it out. Not because the gameplay seemed overly interesting or anything, but the concept was potentially fun.

Read on! (kinda short)

Looks and sounds
The graphics are… early 360 stage. From what I understand, it wasn’t in their intention to make a game with great graphics. The environments look okay, but there’s a lot of variety. The character models are good. Not overly detailed, and for enemies there’s not a lot of different models for each type of enemy. The animations are simple but effective.  Overall the graphics are very basic, but it fits the style the game tries to have.

The sounds are basic, nothing special here. The music is okay, nothing really memorable. The voice acting is pretty good. Matt sounds like a badass, and the other voices, for the most part, fit the characters well. There’s a few weird voices here and there, and the number of recorded lines for enemies and for Matt (during gameplay) is limited.

Story/Context (minor spoilers)
Matt is an old-school video game character. He lived a glorious life from the 8-bit era to now. His big game was Matt Hazard 3D. It eventually went down a bit when he started directing his own games, including the kid-friendly shooter “Soakem” (pronounced strangely like Socom). His career hit a low for a while, but the company making Matt Hazard games made him return in a new game, a next-gen shooter. Things almost go to a halt in the first level, where there’s supposed to be a plot twist, where Matt dies and is replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger wannabe “Sting Sniper”. But someone stops this from happening and Matt has to go through the game so that he doesn’t die, but people are trying to stop him by hacking the game and placing a ton of enemies to kill him.

The one trying to kill him is the new CEO of the company. Why? Because, although he’s a master of gaming and he finished every game ever, he never managed to finish a Matt Hazard game. And the only way to get rid of him is killing him inside a game.

It’s a rather wacky story, the few characters are fun, and what really makes the game great is all the references to the last 20-some years of gaming. You’ve got Socom, Mario, the Master Shield, Master Chef and a load of other random references. The humor is pretty nice. Don’t expect anything serious, of course. But it’s still very entertaining.

Gameplay

The game plays like just about any other Third-Person Shooter that came out this generation and it doesn’t try to be original gameplay-wise. You get a cover system which works… okay. From there you can go from one cover point to another, or move to an adjacent cover point.The rest is normal shooting. You also have a melee attack, where 3 hits =a kill. There’s not much more in the basics. Oh, well, other than the ability to destroy some cover points. Shooting them a bit “de-rez’s” them, erasing them from the game. Some enemies aim strictly for the cover point you’re at, so you have to always look out for that or your cover will literaly be blown and you’ll be vulnerable until you get to another cover point.

You get a bunch of upgrades. You can infuse fire and ice to your weapons(fire does damage over time, Ice freezes your enemies and kills them if you shoot them enough), you can get the “Maximum Hazard” which doubles your attack and gives you a one-hit kill melee attack. And the last upgrade is the Master Shield, which makes you immune to enemy attacks for a while.

One thing that is nice in this game is the enemy and weapon variety. You get pistols, dual pistols, sub machine guns, dual sub machine guns, AK-47s, shotguns, grenade launchers, laser guns, plasma cannons, and, most importantly, WATER GUNS! There’s a bunch of different weapons to use, but sadly your mostly use them the same way: headshots. There are some weapons that are strong against certain enemies. For example, water guns are good against the guys from “Soakem”, and laser weapons are good against Space Marines(both of those enemy types are strong against other weapons). As for enemy variety… Construction workers, businessman, yakuza, chefs, Soakem dudes, space marines, russians, cowboys, zombies (of course), robot girls that you have to kick (or punch) their asses to kill, beta testers, graphic designers, programmers and the most awesome of all: 2D guys straight from “Wolfenstein 3D”. There’s a ton of different kinds of enemies to pwn. All the clichés are there.

The game is pretty hard. Enemies randomly spawning (they ARE getting hacked into the game after all), you not having that much health (auto-regenerating) and the AI ranging from incredibly stupid to pretty intelligent. Certain enemies can also kill you really fast. When you learn where enemies are spawning from and such it becomes easier. And bosses(there are only a few) can be pretty tough until you figure out their patterns.

The one annoying part of the game: Quick Time Events! Why is it that gaming companies insist on using a long out-dated, awful gameplay mechanic? Some bosses are beaten by doing QTEs and they’re incredibly easy and useless. If Matt Hazard had whined about it, it could’ve been funny, but it’s just stupid and overused.

There’s also a load of glitches, both graphical and in the gameplay. I think some of those are intended though. I can’t say for sure. Some are okay, but sometimes it’s just bad. Sometimes enemies just… freeze out of nowhere, sometimes they get stuck in animation loops, stuff like that. Sometimes it’s annoying.

Overall
It’s a fun game. If it was priced lower it could be worth buying, but it can be finished in a rental, and isn’t worth much more. But it’s still something that you should check out. The humor and references to the last 20 years of gaming make it really funny, the wacky story is enjoyable.
With modified gameplay and more content it would almost be an instant classic. But, as it is, it’s a rental. There was a lot of potential there, and they really didn’t capitalize on it. I see what they were trying to do, and I loved playing through it, but it just lacks something to make it a truly unique experience. But rent it anyways.

jobocan Games, Review