We were going to play along. We'd planned to write this review with the conceit that Matt Hazard was, in fact, an old-school gaming hero making a comeback, and name-drop all his old games that didn't really exist. But no matter how much we truly wanted this game to succeed as both a shooter and a send-up, we can’t just grin and bear it. Matt may be instant nostalgic fiction, but the problems in Eat Lead are disappointingly real — and awfully familiar.

Hazard (voiced by Will Arnett, dripping with macho cheese) is your basic shoot-everything-that- moves action hero from the mid-’80s…with a lifetime contract. But Matt’s publisher (Neil Patrick Harris) wants that contract — and Matt himself — terminated. What would have been Hazard’s return to glory instead becomes a lethal remix of his past games: he simultaneously fights hacked-in zombies, mobsters, and cowboys in a dance club, then goes up against space marines on a yacht armed with water pistols. It’s goofy fourth-wall fun, as are many of the inside jokes — real-time elevator rides, self-aware instructional text, 2D Nazis, a shootout in a crate factory, an RPG character who speaks only in text boxes, and a team-up with culinary badass Master Chef.

But the brilliant concept and funny jokes are nearly nullified by mediocre execution: a camera with visibility issues, A.I. gunmen who wait politely, achingly repetitive gameplay… ugh! Even the easy-to-use cover and movement system winds up causing your death as often as it prevents it. Plus there’s the completely asinine tentacle boss battle that recalls all the worst elements of Gears of War 2 — and you can’t save on demand. Eat Lead mocks gaming conventions but never transcends them.

And how do you know when you’re playing a game and when you’re playing along? Several boss battles are creatively bereft quick-time events — is that a knowing wink or simply lousy design? Where does the joke end and the game begin? Is the joke on us?

If you’re going to poke fun at everybody else, you’d better have your own game polished to a shine. Eat Lead could have been a better critique of the medium than any reviewer could ever write, but it’s neither bad enough to be a savage commentary nor good enough to feel like a satisfying, stinging satire. Despite the industry’s desperate need for exactly that, Matt Hazard isn’t the hero we hoped he’d be — let alone the hero we wanted to pretend he always was.

On Xbox 360

+ Great high concept and entertaining story.

- Suffers from the very problems it parodies.

- No save-anywhere option means frustrating repetition.

? Did you hear the one about the game with the wasted potential?

6.0