Great idea, but once again, falls short on execution
Last year, Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard was released to poor reviews due to it's horrible level design and bad gun play. A year later, we now have Matt Hazard: Blood, Bath, and Beyond which is obviously a pun to Bed, Bath, and Beyond.
The story is pretty bland, with General Neutronov kidnapping Matt Hazard's past 8-bit self. You, as Matt Hazard, has to now chase him down through parodies of games that never were.
The game is much like Metal Slug or Contra, where the premise is to run left-to-right and right-to-left decimating everything on screen. Starting out with a single-shot rifle, you can pick up weapon upgrades to change weapon from a machine-gun to a flamethrower. If enemies also get to close, Matt will kill them instantly with knife, the same way Metal Slug does. The controls though don't feel as fluid compared to other 2D titles like Shadow Complex, where Shadow Complex used both thumbsticks, one to aim and one to mov and BBB uses one thumbstick to move AND to aim.
The levels can be beat in about 15-20min on your first run through but that is with a high difficulty level. Playing through, I found myself dying 15-20 times a level, but with infinite continues, dying is non-existant. As said, the levels are parodies of other games such as Bioshock(as seen in the Giant Bomb quick look), Mirror's Edge, and Portal to name a few. The enemies vary between stages which include Canadian mounties, penguins, samurai, Russian soldiers , Team Fortress turrets, Big Daddies, mechanical moose, and more, but are all pretty much reskinned enemies to match their surroundings.
The game is fun, but after beating the game and without online co-op, you won't have any reason for returning unless you're hunting for any remaining achievements/trophies. At a $15 price point, that's a tad too much and would've been better off at $10 but if you're a fan of the Metal Slug and Contra series, I recommend this game. If you're not, look elsewhere.
