John Zeitler

This is going to sound like a bad thing, but I’m really digging Eat Lead more than I really feel like I should. It’s a generic third-person shooter with minimal difficulty and unimaginative level design– plus the UI is really clunky, and there’s no waypoint system, so it’s easy to get lost. All the same, I’m having a blast with it, mostly because of the humor in the game. Matt’s one-liners, while exceptionally corny and cliched, are just so damn self-indulgent that it’s hard not to crack a smile (the one that got me was “Dos vedanya, comrade!” when gunning down Soviets). The character’s interactions with QA are also funny, and seeing what ridiculous element of gaming we take for granted is going up against the wall next is part of the fun. When the game was initially released there was some discussion as to whether or not it was possible to make a “B” game, but in my opinion all that this one’s missing is Bruce Campbell. It won’t win any awards, that’s for damn sure, but honestly it’s not intended to… it’s a game, pure and simple, and it’s mindless fun.

It’s also an excellent counterpoint to Ace Combat 6, which I’m alternating with it for the foreseeable future. AC6 is everything that Eat Lead isn’t– it’s gravely serious, it has a compelling story (seriously, when Gracemeria was bombed my first thought was “get me into the skies NOW, there’s bad guys who are gonna pay“), and it’s a legitimate challenge that does very little player hand-holding (the auto-pilot is a concession to avoiding vertigo, and the auto-landings and takeoff mechanisms are nice to have if you’re frustrated after pasting your fifth F-14 100 yards short of the runway). My one gripe, really, is that the controls are a little too complex for the stock 360 controller; by default, acceleration and braking are set to the triggers, while yaw adjustments are on the bumpers, meaning that if you’re gunning the afterburners, you have to make a precarious finger switch if you need to make a yaw nudge. Still, the game does an excellent job of keeping you on-task, and it’s about as close to flying in a fighter jet as I’m liable to come anytime soon (and is as close as I want to get, honestly).

The simultaneous good and bad parts about both games is that I snagged them from the bargain bin at the used store at the beginning of the week. Good because I saved a lot off the full prices; bad because I waited this long to play them (particularly AC6– I’d had my eye on it a couple of times when I saw the full flight yoke in the store, but now that I’d be interested in it it’s impossible to find).