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Video Games > A L S > Item 15
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Lair
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PLAYSTATION 3
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ESRB Rating:
Teen
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List Price: $59.99
$23.73
At Amazon
on 3-7-2010.
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Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and Criticism
Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars
By now all of the back and fourth between "This game is epic!" and "This game is epic fail!" is probably giving those of you who are considering Lair a few headaches. A lot of press reviewers hate it, a lot of user reviewers love it, the creator of Bioshock defended it and there are mixed reviews abroad. The controversy is mainly around the controls/gameplay so that will be my focus, primarily sticking to the technical details. I picked up this game on clearance at a local retailer since they had it on clearance and I will do my best to collect the facts together from my experiences since simply yet another opinion might not be too helpful at this point. First and foremost, as action oriented as this game is, it is NOT for the impatient. The title does not lend itself well to anyone who feels it shouldn't be necessary to put effort into liking a game. I'll explain in a bit. Julian Eggebrecht (the game's Director) mentioned in an interview with G4 that, unlike Factor 5's previous games, the dragon you fly has real weight and physics attached to the flight simulations thanks to the PS3's super-de-duper Cell processor. They wanted banking to "feel heavy" when using the Sixaxis controller as your dragon's fat rump flings through the air across your screen. What this means is that the beast is not ever going to turn on a dime, even if your Sixaxis will. Needless to say, turning an intense action game into a fantasy flight simulator pushes up the learning curve considerably, let alone adding an extra level of skill required to line up even the simplest of shots. Motion Control: How the Sixaxis flight controls actually function is more absolute than relative. If you want your dragon to fly straight, you hold the controller level and if you want to pull up, you tilt the controller up. While this sounds pretty straightforward on the surface, what often throws me off is the "absolute" nature of this. If you want to keep pulling up, you have to keep the controller held vertically and if you want to hold a nose dive you have to hold the face of the controller away from you for as long as you want to hold the dive. If they were to make this more like other flight-sims, tilting the controller up would control the rate-of-change rather than the absolute angle. Having played a handful joystick flight-sims I found myself leveling out the controller at times I wanted to hold my incline or descent, but ended up leveling out myself instead. Horizontal banking is a bit more intuitive even with its absolute nature so long as you do not mind the massive delay for your overweight, infantry munching dragon to respond to the Sixaxis' orientation. Before the patch, there were a couple of waggle functions I did not particularly like at all. Thrusting the controller forward would effectively be a speed boost. Quickly lifting the controller upward would do a midair 180. The problem is the game only understood my gestures three out of four times and every once in a while it would confuse which gesture I was trying to perform. Also, there is a full second delay after you perform the gesture before the dragon performs the action. Having motion controls for these also disturbs your flight control for obvious reasons. After the patch, they bound those two waggle functions to D-Pad Left for 180 and D-Pad Right for boost (those buttons were previously unassigned). I find these to be much more responsive and predictable. The motion for 180 remains, but they took out motion control for boost to avoid any input confusion. Analog Control: I have played with the motion controls for quite a bit (I do not want to say "extensively") before that 245MB Lair patch landed on PSN. So how does the analog controls compare to the default Sixaxis? Let's just say that after toying with the analog mode in a previously played mission to get a feel for it, I jumped straight into the Hard flight course and beat my previous best time by 30 seconds. While the dragon still maneuvers like a starving whale, I had a MUCH easier time actually flying *through* the rings. Thinking "maybe I'm just getting used to the physics of the game" I went back and did the course again with the sixaxis. Try as I might, I could not even beat my previous best let alone come anywhere near what I did with the analog. The kicker for me was that I actually know what the extremities are on the analog stick because I know how the analog stick works. With the sixaxis I kind of have to pick an angle and just kind of hope my dragon does what I want it to do in due time. If you're patient, the tilt controls can be fun, but if you've watched the "mastering the beast" video on Amazon page for this very product, I would say those developers were drinking the kool aid if they honestly felt they could remove the analog controls from the game when the Sixaxis was introduced to them by Sony. In the same interview with Eggebrecht that I've mentioned earlier, the Director felt that the controversy was that gamers were more or less set in their ways because novices liked the tilt controls and the core gamers didn't. I think the real story here is that the novice gamers don't really know what they were missing and were just stoked that they could control a dragon by moving a controller around. While I do feel the sixaxis control in Lair could be improved, it doesn't really end there. Targeting: Any target that enters your dragon's direct line of sight gets a subtle white glow on it, hitting R1 or L1 will lock on and the glow will turn red to indicate as such. While locked-on your camera will always face the target regardless of which way you are flying, though you will generally orbit any target you are locked on to. Your dragon will autoaim on anything with the white glow without having to lock on which is extremely handy. The quirk here is that there are a LOT of any potential targets on any given battlefield and it's very easy to switch to an unwanted target the very second you hit the shoulder button. Advisably, you should only lock on to standouts like objectives, turrets or the tougher dragons you wish to execute take downs on. Trying to target everything you strike will give seizures to players with even the mightiest constitution. The patch added an option to turn on Crosshairs which produces a Starfox style reticle. I highly suggest using this because it instantly cleared up how the heck the game was picking its targets as well as having the sixaxis control actually make some degree of sense. If you think that's a lot to forgive, it is. There is an enjoyable game to be found here, but like I said, it'll require patience.. even at half the price. If you think these quirks are minor enough for you to give it a try, well.. there's more. Missions: Without giving too much away, various missions do offer variety, but most of them will have you fending off several fronts at once without a good way at letting you know which forces need to be prioritized, so it is largely a game of trial and error the first run through. There is an arrow that vaguely points to the direction of your current objective and it only appears if the game thinks you are ridiculously lost. If you are anywhere near the action (often when you need it most) the arrow vanishes. Just... keep your eyes wide open and watch where you're going. While the replay value of this game is much higher than what you might expect, the first run through will drive you nuts. When diving into a new level with a billion things going on, it's very easy to lose your bearings. The moment you are about to figure out where you are in relation to the action, the game interrupts with a cutscene, introducing a new threat and throwing you off. Once you recover from that, you'll get hit with another cutscene. Then they'll do it again. Even in the earlier missions they cutscene the crap out of you. I LIKE cutscenes, but even I think Lair pushes it to the point of silliness. Of course once you actually played through a mission once or twice, you know where the triggers are and where the threats are and that's the point the game becomes enjoyable.. if you can get past the controls. I give Lair three out of five stars. It is not without issues and I believe they could have made the game much more accessible than they did, it is not a complete disaster. It's a game. Think about the functionality I've described and see if you can picture it fitting your play style. If your primary game is action-simulation, flying or driving, with a strong desire to burninate, you'll likely find something to enjoy here. If you're all about the first person shooter with lightning quick reflexes, steer clear.
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Lair
Available from Amazon
Price: $23.73
Updated on 3-7-2010.
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