Lair is something of an oddity – it’s clearly had a massive budget, lengthy development process and its fair share of hype – but the delayed release still hasn’t given Factor 5 enough time to fix the flaws. Much has been made of the control scheme, with a heavy focus on the Sixaxis’ motion controls forming much of the criticism, but with Sony keen to let reviewers know how they’re supposed to play the game via a handy leaflet, we thought we’d give it a go ourselves before the UK release later this month.
First off, then – the controls – they’re abysmal. Never before have we wrestled so much with the scattergun approach to button placement as in Lair, and that’s not even mentioning the tilting. Attack buttons, camera buttons and even movement buttons are inconsistent throughout the three main transport methods. On foot, your soldier is controlled with the left stick and the camera with the right, but once on the back of your dragon the left stick suddenly moves the camera, leaving the gyroscope to handle the direction, pitch and special moves required for flight.
But for no particular reason: Lair would be a far more comfortable game were it not to rely on the motion control – indeed, it’s a far more pleasant experience via the PSP’s remote play function – but the problems extend further than this. Locking onto enemies is performed with the right trigger, but what you’re going to end up locking on to is a complete lottery and at crucial moments when you’re desperately trying to shoot a rampaging rhino whilst your dragon (and the camera) are intent on showing you close-ups of a catapult it’s the single most frustrating thing we’ve come across so far.
Other aspects that baffle us here at TheSixthAxis include the 180 turn, which is achieved via an upwards flick of the control, but which often gets translated as a downward flick, thrusting the dragon forwards which tends to be (literally) the complete opposite of what you intended. The controls aren’t helped by a scatty frame-rate either. At it’s best it dances between 20 and 30 fps, but when there’s lots on screen and you’re in the midst of a battle it can drop far lower, with only a massive amount of motion blur keeping the visuals from resembling a slide show.
Outside of this though, when things are moving smoothly, Lair is an attractive looking game. With a native resolution of 1080p this is a great demo for your HD set-up, and the textures and character models stand up well to close scrutiny, although the level of detail pop-in is noticeable when there’s a lot to shift around. The environments are often big enough to impress, and varied enough to keep the action interesting despite the mission objectives being recycled from level to level throughout the game.
The story itself desperately tries to be epic, but ends up feeling hammy and devoid of the humour that worked so well in Heavenly Sword, with the actors struggling with a rudimentary script and characters that just don’t stand out from each other. However, John Depney’s score is outstanding and the sound effects are presented in 7.1 surround sound that really do try their best to bring you back into the game.
There’s a lot here for fans of Factor 5’s earlier games, and Lair does indeed play like Rogue Squadron without the license. But it’s massively crippled by terribly implemented controls and odd game mechanics that leave you scratching your head in bewilderment. The production qualities are as high as you’d expect, with lots to unlock and online score tables to bump up the replayability factor, but for the most part this was too ambitious a project and could have benefited from an even bigger delay. Best rented.