Lair

"Worst PS3 Game So Far"

Before the PS3 was officially released, Lair was one of the games that was showcased at all the retail outlets. To refresh your memory, you were shown a dragon swooping down and fire bombing enemies, and dragons fighting other dragons. The graphics on this (unplayable) demo were awesome and everyone who saw them remarked that this was THE definitive PS3 game.

They hype was tremendous. I just had to get the game. Unfortunately, I have to say that it was all hype and the bottom line is that I cannot recommend that anyone buy this game. It's not even worth a rental. That's how bad it is.

In fact, Lair is quite possibly the worst PS3 game I have played to date. Here's why:

GRAPHICS: 2 out of 5

The graphics in the actual game are not as spectacular as they were in the demo. In fact, it looks kind of fuzzy alot of the times. Like I'm looking through vaseline. Not at all the quality of graphics I'd expect . Sure the close up of character faces during the cut scenes are rendered in detail, but the game that you play is pretty bland and very dark in places.

SOUND: 2 out of 5

The music and voices get repetitive. You can see this on the first level when you have to bomb the catapult ships: (paraphrasing) "Rohn, get the catapults" "Rohn, get the catapults" "Rohn, get the catapults" This repetitiveness makes you want to shut off the sound!

CONTROLS: 1 out of 5

This is where the game truly sucks. The six-axis control is not a bad thing. But the game's IMPLEMENTATION of the six-axis control is TERRIBLE. First, unlike other flying games where you push the joy stick down to go down and up to go up and left to go left and right to go right, in Lair you have to waste all this motion pushing the controller down and tiling it up and tilting it left and tilting it right. It's inefficient. And they DON'T GIVE YOU A JOYSTICK OPTION. So you're stuck with the inefficient six-axis controller.

But the tilting isn't the problem. The problem is the that they did not give any thought to smoothing out the motions. So if you push down hard, and then try to pull up to compensate, the controls overcompensate leading you to oscillate up and down as you try to level your dragon. Nonsense. All they had to do was add some dampening on the controls to preven the oscillations. That's what they do in other flight tames.

The second problem has to do with when your dragon runs into objects or hits the imaginary game boundaries. Instead of stopping or making you fall, the game shoots you off into another direction, and in the process the game alters the camera angle so you lose your place. Try playing the spotlight level, then accidentally hitting a wall and then having the auto shoot off place you in the middle of a spotlight. Argh.

STORY: 1 out of 5

The story is unbelievable. You are a member of an elite dragon force at war with another nation. After an attempt at peace you are betrayed. What kind of story is that? Where's the story question? Where's the character development. The story could have been done so much better. I would have preferred a "Hero's Journey" style template. Anyway you get the picture.

I could go on, but you get the point. At best this is a rental. But I wouldn't even rent it. That's how bad I think it is.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 09/27/07

Game Release: Lair (US, 08/30/07)