Lair (Page 2 of 2)

Dragon Your Tail

At its best, the dragon-based combat of Lair is pretty damn awesome. Soaring around majestically in the sky; raining hot fiery dragon-breath death upon your foes' heads; grappling with other dragons and clawing their eyes out; leaping onto an enemy dragon-rider's back and hacking at him with your weapon; swooping down onto the ground and rampaging around like Godzilla--there's no shortage of thrills to be had. Missions have a variety of objectives and you'll constantly be forced to change your tactical focus and point of attack.

While the gameplay isn't revolutionary, it's solidly done, which is no surprise given developer Factor 5's track record with its Rogue Squadron titles. But here's where things get complicated: for all its pretty graphics and sweet dragon-on-dragon action, the game suffers from one colossal design flaw--it relies entirely on the Sixaxis motion sensing controller.

Want your dragon to go left? Bank your controller left. Want it to swoop down? Tilt the controller forward. It sounds simple enough, but in practice ends up being more of a chore than it should be. To be fair, the motion sensing is pretty accurate but requiring you to constantly move your hands around while fiddling with buttons over the course of a fairly long game is asking too much. It's unfortunate that the game relies so heavily on a gimmicky feature that no one has been able to get a true grasp of (pun intended).

Tried And True

What's most confusing about all this is that there is no other control scheme available. Had Factor 5 simply put in an option to switch to an analog-stick based scheme, the game would have fared much better. Sixaxis doesn't ruin the game--spend enough time with it and you'll eventually get used to the controls--but being able to play with a traditional analog stick scheme would have made the game more palatable and enjoyable.

If you factor in occasional goofs like stilted storytelling, frustrating missions that you will have to repeat multiple times to get right, an irritating lack of objective updates during battles and an unfriendly camera that works against you as much as it works with you, and you have a game that could have been great but isn't.

I should point out that we were playing an early review build and Factor 5 will probably make tweaks up to the moment the gold master goes off to the mastering lab, but the core gameplay mechanics are already in place and there's no denying that it's flawed. I expect many fans will be disappointed thanks to all of the hype that's built up around the game, but the inevitable complaints about the control scheme will no doubt be warranted.

Despite all this, Lair still manages to be decent title that all PS3 owners should look into but you may want to reserve your true excitement for the day when the other hotly anticipated PS3 titles like Heavenly Sword arrive.

PROS: Gorgeous graphics, amazing orchestral soundtrack. Dragon-based action has its moments.
CONS: Sixaxis only control scheme hurts more than it helps. Small design flaws cut into the game's potential.

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_Mr.Snake

this is even better than vampire rain!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Graphics-1/10 Sound-2/10 controls-15/10

hiphophippy27

Wow, many 360 fanboys here saying this game sucks, yet I see no sony fanboys bashing Bomberman Act Zero for the shit title it is.[p] I guess PS3 fanboys are more mature after all...

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