 Review By: Andrew Joy |
Developer: | Factor 5 |
| Publisher: | SCEA | |
| Genre: | Action | |
| ESRB: | Teen | |
| # Of Players: | 1 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | PlayStation Network (leaderboards), PSP Remote Play | |
| Buy Now: |   |
When it comes to outlining the plot of a game, I try not to give away much more than what you’d get from reading a press release, the back of a box, or just playing a decent demo. I do this because otherwise it would just take too darn long to type it all up...that and I don’t want to spoil things for those readers who might actually play the game later (which isn’t everyone, I know; after all, if you read the TV Guide, you don’t need a TV...or something like that). Also, I’m not sure developers and publishers would take too kindly to us giving away the goods like candy on Halloween. However, the usual rules don’t apply in this situation: If Lair were, in fact, one of the aforementioned treats, Charlie Brown would surely say, "I got a rock." As Lair has about as many unexpected turns as the average NASCAR track, I’m not too worried about ruining the game for those of you who intend to pick it up, but, more to the point, if my review does its job, you won’t want to...ever. Originally, one wouldn’t assume there would be much to worry about. After all, Lair was all set to tap into the awesome power of the PlayStation 3, steered in that direction by Factor 5, the developer of the famed Rogue Squadron series (they did amazing things on the GameCube), so the only thing left to wonder about was the story now that they no longer had the Star Wars license to work with. It would seem that sort of...corporate sponsorship...was more important than we had ever realized.
At the start of the game, your character, Rohn, is already a member of the Sky Guard, an elite group of Asylian dragon-riders (though you never feel that elite, as the scaly beasts seem about as common as fleas on a dog) tasked with warding off the also dragon-riding Mokai. Long ago, the two nations were part of the same peaceful kingdom, united under a single ideology...but that was before the volcanoes. Natural disaster though it was, many came to believe that they were being punished by the gods, and society split. Now the Asylians inhabit the last bountiful lands in the south and dominate nature to work for them, while the Mokai have settled far to the north and try to live with the world around them, even in their desolate wasteland, and both remain divided by their religion. Unfortunately, because of the worldwide eruptions, the climate is changing, the air and water have been spoiled and resources are scarce (sound familiar?), making war between these two factions all but inevitable. All hope is not lost, though, as political forces behind both groups (much to the chagrin of some others) seek to end the constant bloodshed. However, before a truce can be made, both leaders are assassinated by one of the Asylian’s own Sky Guard, led on by their religious leader.
Now if that sounds a bit like the plot of an Alexandre Dumas book (or at least a badly adapted movie version), that is probably because it is one of the most hackneyed plot devices in history. But Lair wastes no time at all in using the overused, falling back on that last, little chestnut just five missions in (less, if you don’t count the tutorial). Of course, the character development is decent (if, again, terribly overplayed) as Rohn learns the Mokai aren’t as savage – and his own Asylians not as righteous – as he had once been led to believe. Again, one could try and draw a parallel to today’s world (like the global warming bit above), with the world powers stuffing their faces as the smaller, impoverished nations watch hungrily, but it is all a matter of perspective. In the end, I got the feeling the writers of Lair were more mistaken about the direction of the story than the general public is about the lyrics of "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)." I still don’t know if they succeeded at making the world’s biggest cliché (in which case, bravo) or failed at making a story relevant to today (sorry, but volcanoes erupting all over the world and sparking a religious crisis isn’t quite the same as billions of cars and industrial polluters causing a war of the checkbooks). Either way, there isn’t much here that you haven’t seen before, or can’t see simply by turning on the news.
Given the developer’s track record, it would seem that Lair should have been a shoe-in for having great gameplay, but unfortunately the game suffers from being too complicated to ever be really enjoyable. While almost every motion consists of you zipping around at some point and shooting down swarms of TIE Figh--I mean, dragons, the game will constantly throw out new objectives at you. Now, you may be thinking this is nothing new, and it isn’t, but Lair does it in such a way so as to bog you down with goals. Just because you are given a new objective, it doesn’t mean you have accomplished the old ones. What’s more, there is barely enough time to do everything – if you try to complete your original objectives, you’ll often fail the new ones and lose the game, but if you leave the old to accomplish the new, you face the same dilemma. It is quite the Kobayashi Maru, isn’t it? Of course, this whole time you have to also watch your team’s morale meter. If you aren’t doing enough to help your side, the meter can swing wildly over to your opponents, and this too can cost you the mission; granted, it isn’t too hard to build up morale again, as all you really need to do is land in a group of enemies (and MAKE SURE they are enemies first) and start chomping on some soldiers...just don’t forget about the rest of the mission either. On the other hand, all of this is rather a moot point anyways, since the game is annoyingly difficult to play thanks to the finicky motion controls.
While the motion controls in Lair aren’t nearly as bad as some people make them out to be, they are far from perfect. For the most part, steering your dragon, which is done solely by tilting the controller, works well enough. All it takes is the gentlest of gestures to the left or the right and your dragon will glide in the intended direction. In order to ascend or descend, you need only pull back on the controller or tilt it down, respectively. However, while those things work quite naturally, they are also very subtle movements (though it should be noted that a quick jerk can cause your beast to make a hard turn or dive, if needed), and the real trouble comes with the faster ones. For example, the game often confuses (or doesn’t even register) the motions needed to do a 180° and dash, which require you to either flick the controller upwards or thrust it down. Also, there are times in Lair when you need to whip the controller in one direction or another to get through certain encounters, similar to the timed button presses in God of War, but the controller is often just plain unresponsive. These are common problems, of course, just the sort of thing we run into all the time on the PS3 and even some Wii games (a shocker, I know). However, if you having trouble getting the hang of the motion controls in, say, Motorstorm or Warhawk, you can at least fall back on the more traditional analog sticks and play the game just like you would with the DualShock on the other two PlayStations. You’ll have no such luck in Lair, which is even more painful considering director Julian Eggebrecht’s own comments in the past against forcing motion controls on players.
Posted: 2007-12-09 18:36:29 PST