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Special thanks to Rod Oracheski for the
following review:
Reign of Fire becomes Reign of Fail.
SIXAXIS control - it's often credited, despite a
host of other flaws, as the major issue that
grounds Lair.
Factor 5's President, Julian Eggebrecht stood
tall on the issue long before the game came out,
after initial feedback indicated that motion
control was poorly received. He defended motion
control, apparently firm in his belief that
analog control was too limited to work in the
aerial portion of Lair, even after further
criticism.
That crusade didn't stop when the game was
released and initial reviews complained about
inconsistent controls, and further review copies
shipped along with a review guide that covers
the controls in more depth and handy 'how to
play Lair' style videos have appeared on the
PSN.
It doesn't help. The controls are terrible and
the game suffers as a result.
Gameplay
When on a dragon, tilting the SIXAXIS will bank
your dragon side to side. This works fairly
well, even with a slight bit of lag between the
action of tilting left and the mount actually
responding.
You're quickly introduced to additional controls
- using the R2 or L2 buttons to hover, and
hitting X (repeatedly) to accelerate. These
controls also work well, though it's extremely
annoying to have to continually hammer on the X
button as you fly across a map to an objective.
Things fall apart when you're introduced to the
most important control mechanic - the 180 degree
turn. To accomplish this, you simply lift the
reins (jerk the controller up). No problem,
right? OK, so you lift the controller...
And your dragon does a speed burst forward.
Confused, you'll pull the controller up again.
Maybe this time it'll do the swooping 180 degree
turn, but more likely it'll trigger another
speed burst. In fact, during an interview,
Eggebrecht admitted he can only pull off the
maneuver about 80% of the time.
This is an essential maneuver in the game, and
even the developers can't get it to work
consistently. Honestly that's all you need to
know about how this game plays, though I'll
humour you and fill you in on some other things.
During the game you get no targeting radar, a
feature that appears in damn near every other
game, and why? Because it works!
Instead, you get a single targeting arrow that
indicates, more or less, which direction it is
to the objective that it's decided you're on.
During missions with more than one objective,
sometimes it's right and sometimes it's not. It
doesn't show altitude however, and it often
disappears completely when you're near the
objective - and sometimes when you're not near
the objective.
This makes missions extremely frustrating, as
you try to pick out enemy units among the mass
of ground combat. There are a ton of units in
play at times, which would be fantastic if you
could tell friendly troops apart from enemies.
In several missions I wound up sending fiery
death down upon my enemies, only to be told the
enemies are actually over there. It's
particularly bad during an early mission on a
bridge, when you have to swoop in and grab large
bull-like creatures with your dragon's claws.
Even if you can find the creatures within the
ranks of your army, you still need to actually
target them. There's no active targeting method,
instead a white dot will appear as an overlay on
whatever the game is currently targeting.
Sometimes it will be on the creature you want,
but more often it will be on a tower in the
background or a dragon nearby. It's particularly
frustrating that you can be perfectly lined up
and have the game switch targets at the last
minute, necessitating either a 180 degree turn
(good luck) or swinging out away from the battle
and setting up for another run.
On the more difficult missions you will
sometimes fail repeatedly, due simply to the
controls - not the difficulty. I'd advise
removing children from the area prior to
playing, as profanity will be commonplace.
Occasionally the camera will become stuck inside
buildings or rocks that you pass by, especially
when you've swooped in on an enemy or done a
speed burst. It will remain stuck until you die
or fail the mission and restart
What does work are the mid-air encounters, when
dragons clash in close quarters combat. It's
simple but effective, as you claw, guard or
breathe fire on the opponent until one of your
corpses falls from the sky though nothing but
the fire attacks actually makes contact with the
opponent. You can also do mid-air takedowns,
which are Shenmue-esque QTE where you'll hit
buttons or tilt the controller in response to
onscreen prompts in order to unseat the other
rider and dispatch his ride.
All this combat happens while you're flying
about the level attempting to accomplish
missions, of course. Most of the combat is
actually incidental to the mission at hand -
you'll fight dragons as you fly towards a ground
enemy that needs to be eliminated, for example.
The game actually works fairly well this way,
simply gliding to the objective and hammering on
the 'breathe fireball' button whenever the white
targeting dot lights up, even if it's not
particularly compelling gameplay.
You'll have to hurry to those objectives though,
as they often don't give much time to
complete/prevent the destruction. You'll be
reminded of this by cutscenes that
play...continually. A cutscene will pop up, for
example, telling you that you need to eliminate
dragons that are attacking whale-like airborne
creatures called Mantas that you need to defend.
Sometimes the objective indicator will tell you
which direction they're in and which of the
beasts they're attacking, but often it won't. So
you scan the horizon quickly, looking for signs
of battle.
Another cutscene plays, telling you there's no
much time. It breaks you back to the action, you
spot what could be the attack in question and
you head there, hammering X to fly as fast as
possible. After you fly a short distance another
cutscene plays to plead for your help, then
drops you back into the action. Most of the time
you'll still be pointing in the same direction,
but sometimes you'll be aimed off at a tangent
and too bad if you don't know which way you were
heading.
As you get close...another cutscene. But then
you're there, and ready to battle, but you're
too late because it wasn't that Manta after all
and a cutscene shows it exploding. Sorry, better
luck with the next one - better get moving.
If you're a gamer with anger issues, this game
will cost you one or more controllers - snapped
after moments like that. Even the most laid back
gamers will likely run into issues that make
them set down the controller for a while.
To be fair, the controls work decently when
you're cruising along at altitude, away from
enemies and miles from the canyons and other
tight environments that missions force you into.
Up there, all by your lonesome, you can enjoy
just banking aimlessly from side to side and
taking in the large environments.
The game had so much promise, I mean how can you
screw up a game where you take a dragon and fly
around breathing fire, chomping on enemy troops
and leaping from dragon to dragon in midair? The
problem is it has almost no delivery on that
promise.
The gameplay is terrible, with fundamentally
broken, yet mandatory, SIXAXIS controls that
hinder more than they help. It's particularly
laughable that Eggebrecht, in an interview with
Games Radar long after Lair shipped, said "I see
motion-sensing as a complimentary, additional
new step in terms of controls and where it fits
you should use it and where it doesn't fit,
don't force it. Please don't force it."
Warhawk, as you may be aware, also has SIXAXIS
controls. They are entirely optional, though
they actually work. That game, incidentally, is
also good, something I can't say about Lair.
Graphics
The theme of 'big setup and limited delivery'
continues with Lair's graphics. The game opens
with well-crafted CGI work, which is
well-received but likely a mistake. Though the
game has large environments and runs at a 1080p
native resolution, it doesn't measure up to the
bar set by the CGI. The dragons themselves look
very well done when in game, with excellent
detail work in their leathery hide, but they
don't really compare to the lifelike beasts that
you saw in the intro.
It's also jarring to see the water lapping at
the shore and the stellar detail on the city's
domed buildings glinting in the sunlight during
the cutscene, then immediately be flying over
water that looks like repeating squares and a
layout of the city that's consistent with the
video, but considerably less impressive.
The water looks far better when you do a
low-level flyover of it, which is confusing. The
gameplay generally takes place in the
mid-to-upper atmosphere of the environment, so
it would have made more sense to have it look
good from that vantage point, but it's hardly
the only poor decision made during this game's
design meetings. Aside from the SIXAXIS
controls, there's also the question of why they
would take a game that struggles with the
framerate at the best of times and then (as the
image at right shows) fill the sky with objects
during a level, sending the framerate into the
single digits.
As mentioned, even when the action is relatively
tame the game struggles to maintain a playable
framerate, growing worse when enemy dragons fill
the skies and bolts of fire or ice are flying
through the air. The inconsistent framerate
actually makes the problems with the controls
worse, as you'll often overshoot when lining up
on a new enemy due to the framerate dipping as
they come on screen.
You name the graphical problem and you'll find
it here. Muddy textures? Check. Screen tearing?
Check. Texture seams? Check. The camera clipping
into buildings and getting stuck there? Check -
and probably the only game you'll find that in
this gen.
Bottom line, the game looks its best at the same
points that it controls the best, when you're up
high (over land, not water) with few enemies
around you, just banking in the breeze.
Unfortunately, unless you ignore the missions,
those moments are few and far between.
Sound
While Lair is the worst-playing game I've
encountered in at least 15 years of gaming, the
audio has some real bright spots. The
soundtrack, in particular, is amazing and really
something to experience, though I'd definitely
suggest you check it out via iTunes, not ingame.
It's a stunning piece of orchestral work that
really adds that feeling of epic adventure that
everything else about the game is busily tearing
down.
The voice work is decent, though the dialogue
itself is fairly generic. It would have been
nice to hear a lot more variety in the "You're
attacking the wrong target, Rohn" style speeches
that you'll hear constantly as you fire randomly
at dragons that look exactly like all the
others, but are on your side. There's also
little variety in the voice-overs that guide you
towards your missions, and you'll quickly get
sick of being told to kill [TARGET X] or save
[TARGET Y] by the same voice clip, especially
when the onscreen indicator arrow is currently
aimed at a totally different objective.
I also had, on occasion, attacks that seemed
like they should trigger a sound effect but
didn't. Using dragon fire would elicit no
corresponding sound, or bowling into enemies on
the ground would be done in silence. It was
particularly noticeable when fighting at sea,
where huge sprays of fire and water would yield
some scattered sounds of hitting wood, but no
fiery destruction or watery splashings.
Inconsistent at best.
Lasting Appeal
Lair has a multitude of locked content, though
it's largely in the form of non-game rewards
like movies or art galleries.
You can also compete in online leaderboards,
though every time I attempted to access them my
PS3 would lock up. The music would continue to
loop, but nothing would allow me to navigate or
back out of the leaderboard screen. I also
couldn't shut off the console or quit the game
via the controller, necessitating turning the
machine off manually. I tried several times,
over the course of a week, with the same result.
Others have reported occasional freezes, while
some have had no issues at all - your mileage
may vary.
In any case, none of the rewards are
particularly worth replaying the game, if you
can force yourself to get through it once. Maybe
if defeating it had unlocked analog stick
control...
Fun Factor
Lair is ultimately far more frustrating than
fun, even when you're not wrestling with the
inexplicably poor controls. Mission cutscenes
pop up far too frequently, as mentioned earlier,
and facing a largely brown landscape full of
largely brown enemies fighting largely brown
friendly forces when you have no idea where
you're supposed to go next or what you're
supposed to do when you get there is just poor
game design. You'll have the most fun simply
replaying the game's opening training level over
and over again, avoiding the frustration that
follows.
Overall 2.5 [ Very Bad ]
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