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This thread has been linked to the game 'Lair'.
Marmite is the first word that springs to mind after looking at the reviews of Lair. It seems that people either love it or hate it and most of this comes down to one reason, the controls.
Originally touted as the first game to make use of the Sixaxis as its sole control option, Lair was hyped to death when the PS3 first arrived. Who, after all, could resist the idea of swooping through a dragon-filled sky on the back of your winged beast?
Some delayed release time later and we find a game that doesn’t really live up to its fire-breathing hype. And yet, your first play through you will really want to like the game. The first level is pretty much a dogfight against loads of enemy dragons and ships. Although the game holds your hand a bit during this level, you get the sense that the flying side of the sixaxis control works pretty well (even if the 180 degree bit is hard to pull off at times). It’s only when you get to fight the first ‘boss’ that things fall apart a little bit.
While flying itself is pretty responsive, fighting individual enemies on a 1-to-1 basis can be a bit hit or miss. You need to move quickly left or right to bash in to them. For me this was a bit of a missed opportunity, a ‘joust’ style fighting system would have been better, aiming for the rider and knocking them off. Later in the game you do get to do this via a system where you can jump on to the enemy’s dragons, but this again suffers a bit from imprecise controls.
The levels continue to impress and dismay as you take the fight to the enemy. Attacking ground troops is fun although difficult in small areas such as when you have to fly through a bridge (again, the 180 degree control would have helped had it been better here) and general dog-fighting is still fun, but the sections where the controls deviate and often need a bit of fine tuning let the side down.
Which is a shame, as graphically the game shines and the ideas and level design really do work. Had there been a control option where you could fly using the analogue stick it would have improved the game immensely, but this was a game which was supposed to show PS3 owners why they had motion sensors in their controller and as such no such control system was considered.
So the upshot is that if you can live with frustrating controls there is a fairly fine game underneath this. If a sequel appears that can refine the controls (or provide an alternative) and add online play then it will deserve to do well, but as it stands Lair is a bit of a missed opportunity that would be worth picking up for under £20 but isn’t really worth buying as a full price game.
Originally touted as the first game to make use of the Sixaxis as its sole control option, Lair was hyped to death when the PS3 first arrived. Who, after all, could resist the idea of swooping through a dragon-filled sky on the back of your winged beast?
Some delayed release time later and we find a game that doesn’t really live up to its fire-breathing hype. And yet, your first play through you will really want to like the game. The first level is pretty much a dogfight against loads of enemy dragons and ships. Although the game holds your hand a bit during this level, you get the sense that the flying side of the sixaxis control works pretty well (even if the 180 degree bit is hard to pull off at times). It’s only when you get to fight the first ‘boss’ that things fall apart a little bit.
While flying itself is pretty responsive, fighting individual enemies on a 1-to-1 basis can be a bit hit or miss. You need to move quickly left or right to bash in to them. For me this was a bit of a missed opportunity, a ‘joust’ style fighting system would have been better, aiming for the rider and knocking them off. Later in the game you do get to do this via a system where you can jump on to the enemy’s dragons, but this again suffers a bit from imprecise controls.
The levels continue to impress and dismay as you take the fight to the enemy. Attacking ground troops is fun although difficult in small areas such as when you have to fly through a bridge (again, the 180 degree control would have helped had it been better here) and general dog-fighting is still fun, but the sections where the controls deviate and often need a bit of fine tuning let the side down.
Which is a shame, as graphically the game shines and the ideas and level design really do work. Had there been a control option where you could fly using the analogue stick it would have improved the game immensely, but this was a game which was supposed to show PS3 owners why they had motion sensors in their controller and as such no such control system was considered.
So the upshot is that if you can live with frustrating controls there is a fairly fine game underneath this. If a sequel appears that can refine the controls (or provide an alternative) and add online play then it will deserve to do well, but as it stands Lair is a bit of a missed opportunity that would be worth picking up for under £20 but isn’t really worth buying as a full price game.
Marmite is the first word that springs to mind after looking at the reviews of Lair. It seems that people either love it or hate it and most of this comes down to one reason, the controls.
Originally touted as the first game to make use of the Sixaxis as its sole control option, Lair was hyped to death when the PS3 first arrived. Who, after all, could resist the idea of swooping through a dragon-filled sky on the back of your winged beast?
Some delayed release time later and we find a game that doesn’t really live up to its fire-breathing hype. And yet, your first play through you will really want to like the game. The first level is pretty much a dogfight against loads of enemy dragons and ships. Although the game holds your hand a bit during this level, you get the sense that the flying side of the sixaxis control works pretty well (even if the 180 degree bit is hard to pull off at times). It’s only when you get to fight the first ‘boss’ that things fall apart a little bit.
While flying itself is pretty responsive, fighting individual enemies on a 1-to-1 basis can be a bit hit or miss. You need to move quickly left or right to bash in to them. For me this was a bit of a missed opportunity, a ‘joust’ style fighting system would have been better, aiming for the rider and knocking them off. Later in the game you do get to do this via a system where you can jump on to the enemy’s dragons, but this again suffers a bit from imprecise controls.
The levels continue to impress and dismay as you take the fight to the enemy. Attacking ground troops is fun although difficult in small areas such as when you have to fly through a bridge (again, the 180 degree control would have helped had it been better here) and general dog-fighting is still fun, but the sections where the controls deviate and often need a bit of fine tuning let the side down.
Which is a shame, as graphically the game shines and the ideas and level design really do work. Had there been a control option where you could fly using the analogue stick it would have improved the game immensely, but this was a game which was supposed to show PS3 owners why they had motion sensors in their controller and as such no such control system was considered.
So the upshot is that if you can live with frustrating controls there is a fairly fine game underneath this. If a sequel appears that can refine the controls (or provide an alternative) and add online play then it will deserve to do well, but as it stands Lair is a bit of a missed opportunity that would be worth picking up for under £20 but isn’t really worth buying as a full price game.
Originally touted as the first game to make use of the Sixaxis as its sole control option, Lair was hyped to death when the PS3 first arrived. Who, after all, could resist the idea of swooping through a dragon-filled sky on the back of your winged beast?
Some delayed release time later and we find a game that doesn’t really live up to its fire-breathing hype. And yet, your first play through you will really want to like the game. The first level is pretty much a dogfight against loads of enemy dragons and ships. Although the game holds your hand a bit during this level, you get the sense that the flying side of the sixaxis control works pretty well (even if the 180 degree bit is hard to pull off at times). It’s only when you get to fight the first ‘boss’ that things fall apart a little bit.
While flying itself is pretty responsive, fighting individual enemies on a 1-to-1 basis can be a bit hit or miss. You need to move quickly left or right to bash in to them. For me this was a bit of a missed opportunity, a ‘joust’ style fighting system would have been better, aiming for the rider and knocking them off. Later in the game you do get to do this via a system where you can jump on to the enemy’s dragons, but this again suffers a bit from imprecise controls.
The levels continue to impress and dismay as you take the fight to the enemy. Attacking ground troops is fun although difficult in small areas such as when you have to fly through a bridge (again, the 180 degree control would have helped had it been better here) and general dog-fighting is still fun, but the sections where the controls deviate and often need a bit of fine tuning let the side down.
Which is a shame, as graphically the game shines and the ideas and level design really do work. Had there been a control option where you could fly using the analogue stick it would have improved the game immensely, but this was a game which was supposed to show PS3 owners why they had motion sensors in their controller and as such no such control system was considered.
So the upshot is that if you can live with frustrating controls there is a fairly fine game underneath this. If a sequel appears that can refine the controls (or provide an alternative) and add online play then it will deserve to do well, but as it stands Lair is a bit of a missed opportunity that would be worth picking up for under £20 but isn’t really worth buying as a full price game.
The only full priced games I'm going to be getting in the next month and a half are Mario Kart for the Wii, and GTA:IV for the PS3.
Can't wait.
Can't wait.
My list is: GTA4, Mario Kart, Smash Bros, possibly Frontlines (despite the graphics I love the demo and it's only £29.99 on Amazon for the special edition), the misses might want Wii Fit and I'll probably want Haze and possibly Bad Company if it turns out to be as good as it promises to be.