Eat Lead: Matt Hazard’s Return is a third-person shooter video game for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. Vicious Cycle Software created the game, which D3 Publisher published. Eat Lead places players in the title character’s shoes, a “famous” gaming star who is “returning to fame” in a new video game 25 years after his debut and 6 years after his last. In reality, the Matt Hazard character appears in his first video game, with a backstory created by D3 Publisher to chart the character’s rise and fall in popularity. Hazard’s fake “return” to the gaming scene is marked with The Return of Matt Hazard. Will Arnett plays Hazard, while Neil Patrick Harris plays his adversary Wallace “Wally” Wellesley.
The game is a satire of action-gaming tropes. The first trailer, released in October 2008, was a Behind the Music spoof dubbed Inside the Game, complete with narration by Jim Forbes. It follows Matt Hazard’s accomplishments and failures and the evolution of the Duke Nukem series of games from early 8-bit to modern consoles. [1] Eat Lead’s cast was nominated for a Spike Video Game Award in “Best Cast” in 2009.
