Matt Hazard: Blood Bath Beyond Review

Blood Bath Beyond, is a sequel to the Xbox 360 launch "Eat Lead" (featuring the same lead charcater, Matt Hazard). In this edition, he goes back in time revisiting his earlier adventures to prevent an evil corporation named Marathon MegaCorp from killing him.

Gameplay

Firstly, drop the story and take this game for what it is. What it is, is a kinky wink and and a tongue in cheek nod to the 8bit side scrolling shoot everything that moves and if something is blocking your way, shoot the hell out of that too until you stumble on a big boss up to the finish.

And that my friends, is the gameplay. What I am elated to report on top of that though, is that this is one seriously fun, addictive, polished, entertaining and genuinely enjoyable game throughout. Never before have I completed a game in one sitting, but the levels just morphed, melted and connected so well together that I truthfully found the game hard to put down.

Character movement is simple (crouch, jump, run) all being handled by the left analog stick and A button, whilst X shoots and grenades are stuck on the right trigger. Holding the left trigger makes Matt fire into the background of the levels and is a genuinely ingenious way of turning a 2d game, into a make believe 2'and a half'd environment.

Bosses are satisfyingly massive, varied, ridiculous and hilarious and fit in well with the whole ridiculous theme the game pulls off so well.

Levels are varied and come with themed enemies - including a suspiciously similar looking level to one of another personal favourite game of mine,  Mirrors Edge and one of a similar style to a certain Italian plumber and chums - and include standout bad guys such as pirates, ninjas, and Left 4 Dead Boomer stylee Penguins that hurl on you. Nice!

One final thing to note, is that the game's difficulty settings cater for every type of player. I'm crap at these sort of games, so played with infinite continues and the game remained challenging but fun. If you're a pr0 at these games, then whack the difficulty up to 11 and hold on.

Graphics

The game is without a doubt, beautiful. Admitedly, the menu layout and design is very poor and looks very bargain basement like, but you hardly spend any time in it anyway, so what does it matter?

Character animations are beautifully detailed, smooth and run at superfast pace no matter how heavy the load becomes when there's too many enemies and bombs coming towards you to even count, the game remains smooth and rich.

Background details, scenarios, level designs have had some thought and it's very rare that an environment becomes stale. It's easy to make a highly detailed bunker with loads of tubes and flourescent lighting, but if you're seeing that same bit of play area for too long, it ages and fast. That's the good thing about Matt Hazard, you're never in an area for long at all, you could be on a pirate ship then on a fast moving train the next all the way up to outer space and all of the areas maintain the same level of detail, design and thought throughout.

Sound

Music is a common inclusion in these side scrollers, but is often either too old school and retro, or not inkeeping with the atmosphere created in the game and just sounds plain wrong. Matt Hazard's designers on the otherhand, have just about made the ideal compromise.

Along with the graphic boost and utilising the power of the 360, the old style tunes that would come blaring out of an 8 bit machine have been ditched for full 21st century scores, but with a sound that is instantly recognisable as straight out of an arcade machine.

Matt's voice overs are well timed, funny and well done and, again, are inkeeping with the cheese factor the game creates. Such one liners as "You don't scare me, I'm the main character" and "why don't you just die already" pretty much sum up the voice score.

Summary

What a shock this game was. I was expecting something dull, repetitve and just plain stupid. What I experienced was far from that though. A genuinely entertaining game throughout and what arcade games should be about.

Average play time from start to finish for me (easy difficulty) was around 5-6 hours but the levels are so good, you'll be playing them again and again. Try the demo out for sure and give the game a try, I'd be amazed if you disagreed.