also.known.as “spvn”

We’ve always had parodies for all forms of media, for example the Scary Movie series for horror movies, the terribly awful Meet the Spartans is another example for movies, plus the thousands and thousands of videos on YouTube that parody everything from movie scenes, to music videos to commercials. Yet while people have been doing parodies of movies and music for ages, for some strange reason no one ever thought of parodying games. With the long list of interesting, quirky and downright stupid facts that have been rapidly growing ever since the age of Pong and Pac man, it would almost seem like a no brainer to create a game which parodies other games.

The closest a game ever came close to this was the Simpsons game that was released in recent years. However, that was more of a parody of the TV series rather than any game, but it was still great fun. However, it seems like someone has finally bothered to come up with a game that parodies the entire gaming industry.

Vicious Cycle Software is currently developing Eat Lead, a game which is slated for release this year (if I’m not wrong). This development studio hasn’t really been known for triple-A titles, but rather for games that receive a lot of hype and recognition due to its branding, but never games that will last the test of time. For example the soon to be released Ben 10: Alien Force was developed by them, as was some Dora the Explorer game, Dead Head Fred, Marvel Trading Card Game, etc. The one exception to this trend was Puzzle Quest (yeah they developed that game) which received critical acclaim acroos the board as well as a huge following.

Now, it seems like they’re continue their trend of so called “second-tier” games, ie. games that are fun for the moment but quickly fade into history. Let’s face it, the actual gameplay of Eat Lead probably isn’t going to be that awesome, after all, that’s not exactly the focus of the game. However, to me it’ll still be worth playing just for the experience of enjoying it as nothing else but a parody of old games. I can just imagine when this game comes out, everyone is going to start discussing where a specific gun/enemy came from and the significance of certain aspects of the game. Meanwhile, deep within the halls of the Vicious Cycle office will be the master list of random fun facts and trivia that they somehow squeezed into the game and fans will be desperately trying to match that list point for point.

Unfortunately it seems like this game is only slated to be released on the two major gaming consoles, and us PC gamers will be left out once again like we always are. One can only hope that they decide to port it to the PC eventually, because I’m absolutely dying to play this game and talk about it online. For someone like me who never got to experience the rise of the gaming industry, this is probably going to be a treat.