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It was such an easy concept – replace the worn out standard of airplanes with fire breathing dragons. We were sold from the very beginning. Soaring above the battle fields on the silken scales of 1080p seemed like a dream come true. Videos of claws savagely ripping across the backs of rhinos deaden the sting of our beloved absent rumble as Sony promised tighter controls in the tilt sensors of the SIXAXIS controller.  From the malaise that hung over PS3 like a death shroud, Lair was to be the first in a calvary of games to rescue the fading system.

Instead of the powerful winged-beast we were all hoping for, Lair shudders, jerks, and crashes to the ground in a beautiful disaster.

Chasing the Dragon 

Let’s skip the main story that’s so paint-by-numbers that it comes with its own brushes and focus on the burning question – the controls. Left, right, up, and down; your soaring companion loosely follows the tilt of your controller. Take a moment away from the battle to test out your new mount, and you’ll see the second or so delay between your moves and that of your dragon.  Such mechanical oversights are easily covered over by continuously throwing more infuriating obstacles at the player. Why fix the controls when you never give the player the opportunity to enjoy the flight?

The off-set glide of your dragon is actually the more enjoyable aspect of your game. Maneuvering your dragon isn’t challenging – just damn near impossible. To charge forward, players thrust the controller forward. Flipping around 180 degrees comes from a quick jerk up. Lair distinguishes between the two little more than half the time. You’ll either rush back into wrong direction or head long into the mountain wall. Either way sure beats shaking the controller to just to pull the skull off a rhino. Sony – you can expect my chiropractic bill any day now.

When you step back and look at all the choices designs made, only one word comes to mind – compensation. There’s no way to judge where your flaming loogies may land since there’s no reticule. Aiming means keeping the dragon steady and that’s just not going to happen in this game. Designers compensate with a lock-on system that slips from gray scaly mass to gray scaly mass depending on what’s in your dragon’s beady little sights. Since your adversary just flew by, you can opt for making the biggest U-turn in history with the Jurassic equivalent of your mom’s station wagon or choose to just stop dead in midair and turn ever so slowly as you get doused in fire. Either way, that SIXAXIS controller will find itself flung towards the nearest wall soon enough.

At least when you’re a thousand feet in the air, no one can scream at you about twenty different military units that can’t defend themselves from a single dragon… oh, wait.

Misadventures in Babysitting

Getting back to the story, you play as Rohen; a dragonrider for the dragoncorps of the dragon-loving nation of Asylia. The machine-lovers of Mokai have been stirring up trouble in the northern lands and this seems to anger you and your volcano God. Lair paints the story in so many shades of gray that it often forgets where it began. Mokai, for all its machine-love and war-mongering, rarely shows off a machine more complex than a catapult. Asylia, in all their religious fervor, consists of only one really crazy guy and his crony.  The cut scenes show off some of the richest detail on the PS3 – not Sony’s writing skills.

At fourteen thousand feet, no one can hear you scream, but a lot of guys can sure yell at you. From start to finish, Lair introduces this oppressive hand that demands your attention each and every flap of that way. Commanders bark out orders to attack invading troops. You’ll drop to the ground smashing the mindless hordes of mannequin soldiers until your army’s bloodlust has been quenched. Objectives are shown to you in agonizingly lengthy cut scenes through out the battle. If you happen to miss them, there’s an arrow to point the way, commanders to yell at you from explicably from nowhere, a click of the right stick brings up the text version, and if you were still blissfully unaware of your appointed duties; subsequent cut scenes will follow.

Just ignore that bar up top that shows how your army is fairing against the swarming masses. It doesn’t work. It lies. Even as your proud colors push the invading hue to the bitter end, missing one objective under some unknown time constraint can turn the tide of battle in a blink of an eye. Most of the fourteen missions found in Lair force you to protect this or escort that to a certain destination or until you conquer enough enemies. I have no problems with escort missions - Lair is the bigger brat that needs tending.

Soft light and Dragon sight

There’s a definite look to the game - fuzzy. Soft light is more prevalent here than thread in an Anne McCaffrey book. The darkened edges on a high definition display make the world appear as though you’re constantly squinting at it. But that’s how most people will play the game, squinting as they look for brown dragons against similar backgrounds. Back to that little thing called compensation, designers put in something called Dragon Sight that paints all of your opponents in a red hue. The problem is that the camera snaps from behind the dragon to right in front. Save yourself the headache and just fire off some magical homing fireballs.

Peel back the veiled layers and you’ll mostly likely find Star Wars Rogue Squadron, Level 5’s other big series. From the level select screen to the annoying cut scenes in battle, Level 5 practically paints on scales on an X-Wing.  One of the most obvious moments comes when you latch on to one of the larger beasts and bring them down by breaking their legs with your cable. You can almost smell the dirty Wampas. Lair isn’t a broken game; just disappointing that a company with a stellar track record put so little into something that could be so great.

Exit the Dragon 

Lair is like an addled museum curator taking you from site to site. Try this out, he says as he puts “dragon battle” or “blowing up ships” in your hands. Once you start having fun, he snatches it out of your hand and hurries to the next offering. It’s only under protest from the game that you find that there are problems with every set piece. Dragon battles break down to attack-block-repeat. Ships appear from nowhere. Boss fights are more “follow the leader” than actual epic battles. Lair is not a broken game, just one that overcompensates to hide all its flaws rather than fix them.  
 
Article by: Robert Manuel