Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Ron Burke

One of the first titles that were shown at the Playstation 3 unveiling press conference was Lair.  We got a look at a cutscene of some dragons engaging in aerial combat that looked simply beyond belief.  Two years have passed and we’ve gotten bits and pieces of information and a few early impressions to go on, and it looked like the game was shaping up to be an excellent use of the SIXAXIS to fill the void in the dragon riding genre that had sat unfilled for over a decade. 

The story goes a little something like this – you play the role of a dragon rider named Rohn in the Elite Sky Guard.  Your world has been torn apart by vicious natural disasters which caused mass displacement of its inhabitants - this event was called “The Divide”. The Asylians and the Mokai went their separate ways and evolved on completely different paths.  The Asylians focused on enriching their society with art, science, and harmony with the surrounding nature to the point of nestling their city within the very volcanoes that caused the Divide.  Seething and envious, the Mokai did not fare as well.  Their society was ravaged by The Divide and they turned harnessing the power of the volcano fire to create steampunk weapons.  After more than five generations of war between the two factions the time has finally arrived for both sides to sit down to try to broker a peace.  If life and politics were this simple, there’d be no need for heavily armed warriors riding dragons though, would there?

I have to be honest, what you are reading right now is my fifth revision of this review.  Normally when I write a review for a title I generally can knock out a near final draft in my first at-bat, but this title has proven extremely difficult to review, making it overdue and for that I apologize.  Let’s get this review moving and I’ll explain why.

Drawing on the allure of dragons, the beauty of early Arabic architecture and the latest incredible advancements in rendering technologies and resolutions, Lair is absolutely beautiful to behold.  The sense of scale is fantastic, giving players incredibly large play area populated by massive beasts.  With the game running at 30 frames a second at 1080p, the results should be absolutely mind blowing – but they aren’t. 

Lair clips along quite well for the vast majority of the time, but during sequences of intense action the framerate plummets into the teens, and occasionally even lower.  Dispelling any suspension of disbelief, the framerate issue just rears its head too often to be ignored.  This issue had to be the primary reason for the frequent delays, creating a juxtaposition that makes this game simultaneously the best and worst example of the power behind the PlayStation 3.  Nowhere is this more apparent than the water effects in the game.

Since the crown jewel of the Asylian Empire lies close to the shore, you’ll get a chance to see the incredible water in the game.  Up close it rivals the current water-God title Bioshock with rolling waves crashing on the beach and lapping at the nearby boats.  Realistically you’ll likely be flying your dragon far higher than this though and it is here that the same beautiful water becomes a visual eyesore.  Rather than using a random system to generate the waves, the textures appeared to be copy/pasted onto the surface, creating a repeating pattern that looks very artificial.  Mountain textures look equally great up close but degrade in the same fashion. One area that doesn’t degrade in this fashion and demonstrates an incredible amount of attention, maintaining fantastic visuals and a steady framerate, is the cutscenes.  They are truly a sight to behold, but I can’t play a cutscene now can I? 

Boiling all of these issues down simply begs the question as to whether this game could have been as visually stunning with a stable framerate, proper mip-mapping, and clean ground textures if Factor 5 had simply built the game to run at 720p instead of 1080p.

One of the bullet points that Ken Kutaragi was trying to make when the PlayStation 3 was unveiled is that the system would be a console for the future.  To that end, Lair is one of the first titles to support DTS-HD 7.1 Surround Sound.  The results are pretty fantastic if you’ve got the gear to handle it, offering great positional audio to go with the ultra-shiny visuals. Most people won’t have that kind of setup at this point, but suffice to say that if you do you’ll be quite impressed.  Unfortunately, it isn’t the technology but the actual content of that audio that is a mixed bag.

The music in the game has a great action movie feel with heavy swells during fights and pounding battle songs that maintain the atmosphere.  At some points it feels slightly overbearing, but the ability to tune the music independently helps curb that a bit.  It isn’t until somebody opens their mouth that you’ll start to hear the quality mismatch.

Some of the voice acting in the game is pretty good.  Most of the ‘good guys’ sound like they are mostly interested in the subject matter.  The bad guys on the other hand are pretty hammy and overacted, making some of their exchanges (such as the negotiation table scene) feel overproduced.  Additionally you’ll occasionally have moments where other riders will call out commands that you are in the process of accomplishing, or give you vague directions that don’t do much to guide you to your objective.  A good example is when you are asked to defend a convoy as it moves down a river, but you are also asked to take out other dragons, some siege weapons, and a standing army.  None of them seem to be flagged as more important than the others but you’ll get plenty of flak from your team if you happen to choose the wrong one.  That said, other than the massive roar of your dragon, your mount is surprisingly silent. 

At some level within Sony or Level 5, or some collaboration of both, it was decided that Lair would be driven entirely with the SIXAXIS motion controls.  While it makes sense to allow players to use the motion controls, it doesn’t make any sense to force them to use them.  Unfortunately, that is exactly what is going on here. 

The SIXAXIS controls are actually fairly simple – tilt the controller left and right and your dragon will sweep left and right.  Tilt forward or back to arc your dragon up or down.  Locking onto an enemy is as simple as holding L1 or R1.  When you engage other dragons up close you’ll shift the controller left or right to bash into them, or if you engage them face to face you’ll be presented with a series of button presses you can do to claw or burn your enemies.  Reading all of this makes it sound intuitive and easy – it isn’t.

Flying the dragon isn’t in any way like flying a jet.  They are somewhat slow unless you are boosting towards an enemy, and they fly rather lazily through the air.  You can drift left or right, but actually snapping your dragon around in combat is something that just doesn’t happen.  Often you’ll likely spend the bulk of your time in battle trying to get lined up so the computer locks onto the correct target.  Sadly you won’t be selecting your targets, the computer will.  As it routinely locks onto the wrong target, you’ll find yourself trying to line up again and again.  When you eventually get to the level shown in several of the videos that have been released, you’ll be asked to take out some bull creatures called Toros.  Your dragon can take them out by picking them up and flinging them off the bridge, but good luck actually locking onto them.  In the end I gave up and just attacked them manually on the bridge.  The frustration didn’t end there. 

Another mission that frustrated highly had me assaulting a Mokai lair with giant stone faces that shoot beams of light out of their eyes to spot your dragon.  You’ll pop the eyes in predictable fashion and then fly into the mouth of the base and drop large weights into…uhh...well I don’t honestly know where they go, but you’ll have to drop several of them to complete this section of the level.  Destroying the eyes has to be done at a relatively close range, but actually flying into the mouth requires more of a straight shot, and that means fighting the controls to turn around.  While you are taught early on that you can do a snap of the controller to make your dragon do a 180 degree turn, in practice it doesn’t often work, leaving you shaking the controller like a can of whipped cream and cursing like a sailor. 

The decision to not allow players to use the analog sticks other than while on the ground is short-sighted and smacks of being mandated by somebody in a suit who is unfamiliar with the fact that some people really don’t like the new motion-based control movement.  Here is a news flash – taking away the right to chose their control scheme won’t win you any points, regardless of how well implemented your controls are. 

In the sad-but-true category, people have figured out a way to play Lair their own way.  It seems that plugging in a cheap USB controller allows the use of analog sticks, or you can play it using the remote play system on the PSP.  This should tell Factor 5 one thing – people WANT to play your game; they wouldn’t bother with trying to work around the controls otherwise.  I don’t know if it is too late to patch in the ability to use analog controls, but until that time comes I’m calling Lair’s control system a failure.

Here’s the thing – everybody loves dragons.  There have been several successful dragon flight titles in the past, including Dragonlance DragonStrike which likely served as the muse for the creation of Lair.  The concepts of Lair are certainly well rooted with dragon on dragon battle, massive armies on the battlefield with a morale system, a compelling political intrigue storyline, and gigantic boss battles.  Level 5 had all of the pieces in place to make a fantastic game, and for a few moments you might agree with that statement.  On the surface the game succeeds, but within just a few levels you’ll likely start to see the fly in the ointment.

We discussed the control issues at length above, but obviously poor controls will affect the gameplay drastically.  This becomes painfully apparent when you are charged with fighting a giant sea dragon/snake thing.  Similar to what we’ve seen with God of War, you’ll have to hit certain buttons to kill this boss, but in the case of Lair replace button movements with controller gestures.  Sadly this makes the boss battle infinitely more difficult than it needs to be.  I don’t mind a good challenge, but I expect that when I’m doing the right thing, the game interprets it as such.

I could go on and talk about the odd morale system that seems to occasionally be generated by a random die roll, but there really is no need.  The example above really sums up the gameplay nicely – the concept is there, and the will is there, but you just can’t have a game that is enjoyable to play without proper controls.  As the developer chose to deny me the ability to bypass the weak SIXAXIS controls, I’ve chosen to give the Gameplay section the same score as the control section, adding only a few points for Level 5 at least attempting something new.

I wasn’t thinking that Lair would have an open world like Grand Theft Auto, so saying that it is linear is to be expected.  The whole affair can be churned out in roughly 8 hours if you don’t bother with the medals that you can get based on your performance.  When you finish a level you are graded based on completion time, friendlies lost, lives lost, and amount of carnage measured in tons on the right side of the screen.  Getting gold medals will unlock attack combinations and a few other dragons to help you in your battle against the Mokai.  Additionally there is an online leaderboard system that compares your times and carnage against your friends, if you are into that kinda thing. 

Lair is a beautiful game.  The artwork and environments can be awesome to behold, especially when running at 1080p.  Unfortunately this is coupled with a shakey framerate and odd graphical hitches that make the overall value drop significantly.  I’m not sure if the game was rushed to meet the holiday demand, but there are some missteps that certainly hurt the replay value as well.  I don’t think that the game is worthy of all of the hyper-negative nonsense that some other places have slung at it, but this rampant dog pile of unprofessional behavior will likely continue if companies like Level 5 continue to allow unfinished titles to ship.

As I said earlier, I’ve pored over this title several times trying to make a review that is reflective of the product, and properly quantifies the issues and strengths within. Lair has some serious problems with the controls, but the fact of the matter is that it isn’t irreparable. The omission of analog controls could be corrected with a patch, and it would be a chance for fans to see that the developer and publisher are listening to their feedback. There is a great deal of potential in Lair, and it would be a shame if that potential was never realized.

Gaming Trend Score

57

1. Graphics: 65
2. Audio: 70
3. Controls: 40
4. Gameplay: 55
5. Value/Replay: 55
6. OVERALL:57