To hardcore gamers, the name Matt Hazard should be synonymous with high-octane action, rapid-fire carnage, and lots of other game clichés. (If not, it might be because he never existed.) For years, his games — like The Adventures of Matt in Hazard Land and Murder Force — made Marathon Software millions of dollars. (Or would have, had the games or the company been real.) But more recent duds like Haz-Matt Carts showed Matt was out of touch — and put him out of work. Now, armed with big guns and snappy one-liners, he’s mounting a comeback. Problem is, someone doesn’t want him coming back — to the point that they’re hacking his game (that is, Eat Lead! The Return of Matt Hazard, the one you’re playing) to retire Matt once and for all.

If you’re confused, that’s the point: D3 wants to blur those lines between fact and fiction with a game that not only knows it’s a game, but also wants you to know you’re playing a game that knows it’s a game. That means when comedian Will Arnett portrays Matt, he trades quips and gunfire, goofing on the conventions of action games while simultaneously delivering the kind of third-person-shooter gameplay — taking cover, blind-firing, running and gunning — that will keep this jokey game from actually being a joke.

The level we saw featured Matt heading to meet a friend at the butcher shop — and naturally, everyone at the meat market carried sub-machineguns. Midway through the level, the mysterious hacker spawned zombies from one of Matt’s earlier games, changing the action on the fly. Moments later, the game glitched again, and Matt found himself battling cowboys from A Fistful of Hazard. Enemies don’t bleed; they just de-rez into bits of code. All the “by gamers, for gamers” references running through Eat Lead! are enough to make us intrigued, but can Matt Hazard rewrite action-game history for real?