Much like the insane release schedule we’re currently stuck in, the downloadable titles just keep coming. This week we’re getting a side-scrolling shooter starring everyone’s favourite fake classic Duke Nukem wannabe in Vicious Cycle’s Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond. For only 1200 MSP, you too can get a ticket on the ride he’s offering.
Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond is a semi-sequel to Matt’s previous work, Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard. It was a third-person shooter with cover mechanics, based around a humourous plot that took Matt Hazard into various different sorts of games, to make fun of them. This follow-up continues with the humour, forcing Matt on an adventure he doesn’t understand, but at least he gets to murder like a million dudes on the way.
Gameplay involves running to the left or right, pressing A to shoot and grabbing powerups, Contra-style. Other buttons are used for jumping, aiming at dudes in the background, free aiming, throwing a grenade, activating Maximum Hazard mode and so on. I found it a little cumbersome, but it did work. Everything looks good enough, with levels being a parody of some sort. Animations seemed a little stiff and when the screen got really busy with stuff I had a hard time picking out bullets that needed to be dodged.
The challenge seems to be there, at least in the form of cheap deaths. I played on the easiest difficulty (because I wanted to see as much as I could), but I still ended up dying on the first level over ten times, and having to continue at the boss. I always felt I was sort of wrestling with the controls, and especially with jumping, which never really felt solid. The game wears its M-rating with pride, splatting the screen with gore and using bad words.
The game is good fun. It’s cheap thrills and tons of shootin’, even if some of the screens feel identical to others. The story is amusing and silly enough, although it falls into the same trap as the previous boxed release. It makes fun of cookie-cutter games and over-testosteroned lead characters by…putting the player in a cookie-cutter game with an over-testosteroned lead character. The game offers local co-op support, which is at least something.
I’m finding it hard to recommend, simply because someone jonesing for some side-scroller action has so many other options. The same 1200 MSP could go towards the stellar Shadow Complex. Or 800 MSP could get Alien Hominid, Splosion Man, Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Mega Man 9 or Prince of Persia. Classics such as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Metal Slug 3 are available too.
The trial is worth a download for those who are Matt-curious or are already the masters of everything scrolling on Xbox LIVE Arcade, but this one is easily skippable for everyone else. I know I’m going back to give it another shot, even if just to finish the second level, which seems to be about pirate strippers or something.
