 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: |   |
Now, naturally, not everything in the game is controlled via the SIXAXIS motion sensors. As far as flying, X will flap your dragons wings for a bit of extra speed, while the shoulder buttons (R2 and L2, that is) cause the dragon to stop and hover in mid-air. If you are near the ground, those same buttons can make you land, and you’ll need to hit them again to take off from it. You can use the down arrow on the D-pad to see important objects with your Rage Vision and, when you build up your Rage Meter, you can go into Rage Mode, which is the typical bullet time feature found in lots of games these days, only for dragons. To fight, you can press or hold Square to shoot a fireball or blow a constant stream of fire, respectively. If you are near a weaker dragon, you can press Circle to perform a physical strike, which will usually drop them in one hit. Occasionally, you’ll also get into scuffles with various dragons, in which case you might either have to line up and ram them using the motion controls or grapple with them, slashing and tearing and spitting fire with the face buttons. In order to do that, though, you need to lock-on to an enemy, which is easier said than done thanks to the clunky auto-aim system that more or less chooses some completely random object for you to attack; you’ll get used to it eventually, but the lack of precise control makes it suffer. On the ground, things get a little bit better, especially since the game switches to more traditional analog control for character movement, and you can wreak havoc on troops by pressing Square to blow fire, Circle to swipe your tail or Triangle to feed. Motion control on the ground is limited, though you can thrust the control downward to stomp the ground. You can also use the PSP via Remote Play to play the game, but the controls are still just as awful and the only thing it succeeds at doing is making the graphics even muddier.
So far, developer Factor 5 has managed to take everything that was good from their past success, the Rogue Squadron series, and completely scrap it for Lair. Now we are getting to what should be the defining factor of any PS3 game: the graphics. Sadly, Lair even manages to drop the ball on this one. Truthfully, the game looks about a step up from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC, Xbox 360 and PS3) at first glance, with the same style of rolling hills, vast oceans and towering, uh, towers all seen from high above (most of the time), but the game doesn’t always stay so beautiful. In fact, the game is plagued by moments where the work only seems half done, with suddenly vanishing bits of detail, slowdown and pop-in, even in the cutscenes. Granted, these moments aren’t as numerous as they are in some games (otherwise I’d just say the game looks horrible), but it is unfortunate in that we have seen the opposite end of the spectrum. The dragons your ride and grapple with, I’m happy to say, are quite well designed, pulling from the stable of classic designs, though some of the larger ones, like the mantas, look like an odd hybrid of a cow and 18-wheeler, weakening the atmosphere. The motion capture used in the cutscenes is fantastic, lacking a lot of the jittery movements we tend to see in such situations, though the running can look a bit odd and the clothing the animators add on never looks quite right. But, like most things, that probably could have been fixed with a bit more development time.
Thankfully, it isn’t all bad in the old audio/visual department either, and the sound is easily one of the best things about Lair. I can’t say much about the sound effects, what with all the various beasts and such simply roaring up a complete din (though, amazingly, you can hear your teammates call out various orders perfectly), but unless you are playing something like a first-person shooter, I’m not sure it’s really all that important anyways. The dialogue can come off as pretty heavy-handed with its message and, as you’ve probably come to expect by now, even a bit clichéd, but the cutscenes are pretty decent. A number of the performances will really draw you in, even if some of the voice actors ham it up from time to time, seemingly determined to make the most out of what lines they do have. It is all passable, though, and in a game like this, that should certainly not be taken lightly...in fact, it is even something of a compliment. None of that, however, even comes close to this game’s music. Lair has a sweeping and epic score, motion picture-like that, quite frankly, the rest of the title is undeserving of. In fact, one of the few saving graces here is that I can listen to it over and over again (and, coincidentally, it is the only thing that makes the Remote Play feature worthwhile right now too).
Since the game lacks any sort of multiplayer (I’m not sure who made that boneheaded decision, but online dogfights could have added to the experience, even with these controls), apart from leaderboards, Lair doesn’t last very long. Ignoring the time I spent wrestling with the controls, I managed to blow through the game in a few short play sessions. Longevity is added, however, by the medals system. Much like you’d find in Rogue Squadron, you can replay levels over and over to try and earn either a bronze, silver or gold medal. Apart from being a perfectionist, however, there isn’t much reason to master the game, as it seems even getting a single medal (whether it be bronze or platinum) still nets you a reward (often in the form of things like health upgrades and the like). But, oddly enough, while the game itself is lacking in so many ways, I do applaud its DVD-like features, which offer up concept art, making-of videos and, my favorite, the ability to listen to any song you’ve already heard in the game. Even though you have to unlock some of it, it is the sort of content you usually don’t find in anything but a tin-cased, art book-accompanied special edition, so it was a pleasant surprise, though ultimately too little, too late.
Bottom Line:
Lair is a disappointment on almost all fronts. It is always a pity when a lackluster game comes out, but it hurts even more with a game like this, where you actually see how good the game could have been if they had just continued to polish it. Of course, I’m mostly talking about the controls and the graphics at this point, as there are a few things that couldn’t have been helped regardless. For one thing, the story is horribly clichéd, and the attempts to make it relevant to today come off as a sort of sad political commentary that tarnish the timeless feel games in this genre tend to have. The game has a couple of redeeming qualities about it though, as the soundtrack is a true diamond in the rough (and if I saw it offered in stores or over the PSN, believe me, I’d pick it up) and the DVD-like extras are appreciated even more when you don’t have to pay the usual Collector’s Edition premium that we see so often today. Still, for a $60 dollar game on a several hundred dollar system, more is expected out of Lair than what we get here.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
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| 5.5 |
Posted: 2007-12-09 18:36:29 PST