D3P Announces Game Industry Parody Matt Hazard

D3Publisher announced Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard, a third-person shooter parodying game genres, pop culture, and the video game industry. The title follows Matt Hazard, an action game star with a revered catalog of fictional titles under his belt, as he looks to prove himself as the king of shooters. Marathon Megasoft, a mega game publisher, gives Hazard that chance with a comeback role pitting him against foes from his previous adventures. Eat Lead features a "strategic cover system," upgradeable weapons, and environments that transform during gameplay via "hack effects" employed by an antagonist who alters the game's code on the fly. Vicious Cycle Software is developing the title with a new in-house game development engine, Vicious Engine 2. Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard will ship for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in the first quarter of 2009. Ahead of the game's official unveiling, D3P promoted the title for a month with an uncomely "unofficial fan site" inviting visitors to explore Matt Hazard's fictional back catalog, which includes his arcade debut The Adventures of Matt in Hazard Land and unsavory spin-offs like Haz-Matt Carts. "Our goal all along has been to create a homage to the gaming industry that sparks nostalgia for the last 25 years," said D3P marketing manager Sam Guilloud in an interview with video game website GameSpot. "The back catalogue of Matt Hazard assets we've released, including some eyebrow-raising box art, screenshots, Web sites, and other marketing materials, are here to remind us all of some of the most infamous moments in gaming history ... Gaming's a lifelong hobby, so we want to tap into everyone who fondly remembers the milestones we've referenced."