Let’s face it, Matt Hazard’s first outing was a critical and commercial flop.  It meant well, and the heart was in the right place, but it was about as exciting and thrilling as a piece of concrete.  On the floor.
OK, yes it was funny with a half-decent script and some solid voice acting, but it was severely let down by the last-generation graphics and sub-par gameplay.
Distinctly underaverage, but playable, if you manage to avoid the game breaking and seemingly random glitches.

But this review is not about the malformed TPS on Disc, but rather it’s flattened baby brother available via download off PSN and XBLA.  Costing around about the £10 mark, it’s a bit steep for a download game, but there has been a lot of work put into it, so it can be forgiven for that.
Basic gameplay is run-and-gun in a 2D plane, as you control our plucky hero, Matt, trying to stop some evil Russian megalomaniac from his past killing him in the future and thus creating a time paradox and…
GAH! Stop screwing with time and paradoxes you oxymorons.
Basically, shoot guys and save the world.

It runs in the same vein as Contra and Metal Slug, but it has 3D graphics (creating the 2.5D (????) experience).  Nothing new or innovative here, simple level formulas finished off by boss fights.
One neat feature, however, is the ability to shoot into the background, something you don’t normally see in a side-scrolling shooter.

The story comes in the dialogue between levels, there’s no voice-overs in cutscenes, and it is a bit wordy, but it’s worth reading for the in-jokes.
Parody is the aim here, and all the levels are an homage to the cliches you get in every action game.  Again, nothing new here.

There’s the usual fare here: healthbar, lives, gun upgrades, grenades, a “rage” meter type thing, a point counter and some pickups that unlock some pretty meaningless stuff in the main menu.

The presentation is nice and it’s put together well, and it retains it’s bigger-budget brother’s humour, and is entriely self-aware, so it makes it not a terrible game, just north of the mediocrity line.

It’s one for Neo-Retro fans and people who want a little bit of a laugh, and nothing serious.  It’s got no agenda, nothing to say about anything and it does what you want it to.  And most importantly, it works.