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Lair- Full Review (updated)
Malachi1975
Member Posts: 1,079
Okay,
So I did a BestBuy run last night (namely because I had $25 in credit and a 12% off coupon on anything I bought). I picked up a few titles for both my movie collection and game collection. Sadly, Xbox 360 was left out this run but there's some incoming titles that I will be picking up soon enough. Anyway, I picked up Shaun of the Dead and Dawn of the Dead on HD-DVD, Warhawk, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and as the title implies Lair. I will review the other titles when I put a few hours into them, I don't like to do a 5-minutes-of-playtime review, so give me a little time to devote some play to the other two.
I did, however, play Lair for a while last night and this morning. Now, this game had received some mixed reviews and I actually paid closer attention to the negative marks it received so I could see if these were true for myself. Please, bear in mind that my reviews are based solely on my own opinions and you may or may not agree with them.
Graphics:
The game does have some beautiful visuals. The environment is pretty immersive and you find yourself soaring around to see all that you can. When they stated that you would see epic battles taking place on the ground and in the sky, they weren't kidding. Your opening mission has you buzzing catapult and arbalest toting naval vessels that are cruising on a gorgeously rendered ocean. When you make a pass on them with the sun at your back you get a great reflecton on the water (and yes, strafing a wooden naval vessel with a nice long stream of blazing fire is a blast). I will note that the ground battles seems to use "imposter" rendering pretty heavily when you are higher up, so when you dive on them you may see a change from what appears to be a 2D figure change to a 3D figure, but you have to look pretty hard to catch it. Normally you will be so involved in your attack that you won't pay much attention to it.
Story/Voice Acting:
The dialogue is a bit cheezy at points, but fairly well done. I wouldn't slam the voice acting at all, I just think that the wrting had it's B moments. The story itself is pretty typical to the fantasy realm. Two nations living in relative harmony for years, both with vastly different societies and beliefs, then suddenly one attacks without warning and a gruesome war ensues. If you're looking for something extremely original...good luck. In fairness, I think originality is dead as a whole. Not that I am saying writers don't try, I just feel that after 1000s of years of story writing we've sort of run out of things to write about.
Gameplay/Controls:
Okay, so this is the area where I have heard the majority of the negative feedback remarks. I am going to flatout say that I had NO issues with the Sixaxis controls. Mind you, I am fairly fluid with my movements after training that I have had in the real world so that may take part a bit here. Yes, it took me a couple minutes to acclimate myself to a "new"-ish control scheme, but the same could be said for the Wii. When I first picked up Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition it took me a few minutes to get used to the feel, but once I did I loved it more that the old Gamecube/PS2 versions (I think I killed more zombies with my knife than anything else now).
Back to Lair, the biggest problem I HAVE found is actually camera control.There are times when the camera with automatically whip around your for a slow-mo of you tossing a poor group troop off into the distance (which is a blast) or when you flip a 180 manuever. However, if I were to rank games solely on camera control just about EVERY free-floating, third person perspective game would take a hit. I've found in many games (e.g. - Tomb Raider: Legend, Dead Rising, GTA 3+4 to name a few) that the camera can be your worst enemy and therefore they'd all take a hit.. I think the general functionality of free floating cameras is something that developers need to work on...period. Now, Lair uses a chase cam which is pretty easy to deal with, but you can pan the camera around to view in a 360x360 view for the most part.
As for the Sixaxis controls themselves, I found a little secret: Play with one hand and literally pretend you are a kid doing the "my hand is an airplane" movement agan. For the most part, save a few vision controls, all the controls are on the right hand or use both the L1 or 2 OR the R1 and 2 buttons (air break and landing require both). I had no problem myself controlling my dragon to dive through arches and circle towers or even make a nice, clean strafe down the enemy ground ranks with detail precission. I can see how some people would want to option to choose between Sixaxis control and Analog control, and perhaps they will patch it later, but the people who are slamming the Sixaxis controls as "unusable" either have horrid hand-eye coordination or are just being nay-sayers. My only chief complaint is that the in-game tutorial isn't very clean on some of the manuevers (ie- a 180 up is actually enabled by lifting the controller up quickly, not tilting it as the display shows)
Final Words:
With all that said, bear in mind that this is a preliminary review, I've not played the game through as of yet. I will post a full review at a later date (or I will post it on my site when I get the thing up and running). In short, Lair is a fun game if you can manage the motion control. I don't see Wii players having a single problem with the control system. To the very least, the game is a riot for being able to straddle a dragon's back and rake your enemy with seering fire. The story is enough to keep you involved and into the game. The controls take a bit of time to get used to, but once you do it becomes a pretty natural feel. I won't say that this game is a console war winning title, but it's definitely a right step in a positive direction for the Playstation 3. Personally, I like the competition. It keeps everyone on their toes.
"What is it I have against Microsoft, you ask? Well, you know how you feel when you wait for an MMO to come out and when it does you feel like you've paid to play it's beta test for another 6-9 months before anything even thinks of working the way it should? Being a network engineer you feel that way about anything Microsoft puts out."
Comments
Nice review. Most of the negativity I've heard about this game relates to the control scheme. I hoped it wouldn't be that bad, it's a cool concept for a game that I want to succeed very much. This is a PS3 only title, correct? As in, almost no chance of ever crossing platforms to the PC?
Yes, it is a Playstation 3 "exclusive" title, but I cannot comment on whether or not it will ever be ported to the PC. Right now, if they stick with the Sixaxis ONLY scheme that might be a bit hard to port to a PC. However, in the future, should they patch that or just decide to change the control scheme that could mean that a port is in mind.
I'd love to be able to say with any certainty what titles will stay on which platforms, but we've seen numerous times that "exclusive" titles are timed releases actually. I remember when Resident Evil 4 was touted as a Gamecube "exclusive". Both Halo 1 and 2 made it to the PC after a few years. Final Fantasy 7 and 8 were boasted as "exclusives" and voila...they hit the PC. The question is how much time would go by before we saw a port.
I do know, that the game was coded around the Cell Processor technology, so I am not sure how that would translate onto a PC. Cell Procs are sort of their own beasts, but we've seen with other games that cross-platforming is possible.
EDIT- Oh, and thank you for the kind words. I forgot to say that :P
"What is it I have against Microsoft, you ask? Well, you know how you feel when you wait for an MMO to come out and when it does you feel like you've paid to play it's beta test for another 6-9 months before anything even thinks of working the way it should? Being a network engineer you feel that way about anything Microsoft puts out."
I was thinking specifically of God of War, which was funded by Sony, so I can't see it being released anywhere else. Unless years down the road they decide to let it get developed.
Well, it's not as if Sony does't have PC titles. I honestly, and especially with the heat in the Next-Gen wars, could see Sony conceivably releasing God of War 1 for PC when God of War 3 gears up for the Playstation 3. They would probably see it as a marketing tool. If they could get people heavily into God of War, then there may be a chance that they would buy God of War 3 for the PS3...and buy a PS3.
The war between the 360 and PS3 MIGHT hinder console to PS ports from Sony, but that's up in the air really. I think if there was enough demand for it, the companies might kowtow to the consumers a bit. Hot on the heels of Halo 2 selling so well on the the PS for Vista companies might see that it's VERY easy to make money on older console titles by bringing them to the PC.
Of course, that could be lofty hopes in my mind that these companies would see things logically :P
"What is it I have against Microsoft, you ask? Well, you know how you feel when you wait for an MMO to come out and when it does you feel like you've paid to play it's beta test for another 6-9 months before anything even thinks of working the way it should? Being a network engineer you feel that way about anything Microsoft puts out."
Well, it's not as if Sony does't have PC titles. I honestly, and especially with the heat in the Next-Gen wars, could see Sony conceivably releasing God of War 1 for PC when God of War 3 gears up for the Playstation 3. They would probably see it as a marketing tool. If they could get people heavily into God of War, then there may be a chance that they would buy God of War 3 for the PS3...and buy a PS3.
The war between the 360 and PS3 MIGHT hinder console to PS ports from Sony, but that's up in the air really. I think if there was enough demand for it, the companies might kowtow to the consumers a bit. Hot on the heels of Halo 2 selling so well on the the PS for Vista companies might see that it's VERY easy to make money on older console titles by bringing them to the PC.
Of course, that could be lofty hopes in my mind that these companies would see things logically :P
You have a good point. I can see God of War getting released on the PC in the same way Halo has been. With the competition of the current console war, Sony and Microsoft have been pursuing a strategy of 'exclusive' titles to lure support their way, and I can't see that changing any time soon.
Does it have any multiplayer? I was planning on renting it, but if it has multiplayer I might buy it.
Your mind is like a parachute, it's only useful when it's open.
Don't forget, you can use the block function on trolls.
Unfortunately, no. No multiplayer. That would be a nice feature and I am really not too sure why they didn't put it in (though I am seeing that trend with games recently). I'd suggest renting it to see if it's something with replayability for you. God of War, as mentioned above, is a series of games I actually own and replay like mad, so some single players games CAN do it for a person.
"What is it I have against Microsoft, you ask? Well, you know how you feel when you wait for an MMO to come out and when it does you feel like you've paid to play it's beta test for another 6-9 months before anything even thinks of working the way it should? Being a network engineer you feel that way about anything Microsoft puts out."
I checked out a bit about the game, but I did never understand the point in it. Do you only fly around on a dragon, cause that seems rather repetitive? Is it something more in the game, what exactly do you do?
Dragon combat is pretty much all there is to the game. However, you will note that I didn't say "flight". You can land your dragon on the ground and mash through the enemy ground troops. You can burn them, stomp them, chew them up as food, slap them around with your tail. It's a fairly typical "objective oriented" game. There are times you are off your mount. but all you can really do is walk around a bit and look around a small area. Your only combat takes place on the back of the dragon, At least, that is all I have experienced so far.
"What is it I have against Microsoft, you ask? Well, you know how you feel when you wait for an MMO to come out and when it does you feel like you've paid to play it's beta test for another 6-9 months before anything even thinks of working the way it should? Being a network engineer you feel that way about anything Microsoft puts out."
lol IGN gave Liar a 4.9 out of 10 LOL i feel sorry for the ps3 right now
Thank you for that CONSTRUCTIVE post. Are you trying to pad your post count?
So, IGN tells you what games are good or not? I feel sorry for you...
Next time you're going to come in and post on someone elses legitmate post could you at least provide something useful to the conversation. You've not even played the game to state anything about it.
By the way....just what game IS "Liar"?
"What is it I have against Microsoft, you ask? Well, you know how you feel when you wait for an MMO to come out and when it does you feel like you've paid to play it's beta test for another 6-9 months before anything even thinks of working the way it should? Being a network engineer you feel that way about anything Microsoft puts out."
How durable are you on the dragon? When you engage a huge army, can you leap right in or do you have to slip around and attack targets of opportunity?
You're pretty manueverable so you can avoid most damage. Ocasionally you will lock talons with an enemy dragon and fight in mid air, clawing and biting at one another. When you win those fights (which come from collisions usually) you get a health bonus. I've not had any real problems yet with taking too much damage. I would say about 25% of your health bar regenerates as well. So if you take a little too much damage you can avoid fire and swoop away, letting that regenerate.
"What is it I have against Microsoft, you ask? Well, you know how you feel when you wait for an MMO to come out and when it does you feel like you've paid to play it's beta test for another 6-9 months before anything even thinks of working the way it should? Being a network engineer you feel that way about anything Microsoft puts out."
How long is the game? with all that time put into creating beautiful levels, I can't image the game being much longer than 15 hours.
I'm not quite sure yet. I haven't finished the game but I would reckon between 12-15 hours tops. I've actually been going back on the levels I have completed (your stats stack) so I can unlock everything possible. Once I finish the game I will post the length for everyone. Mind you, I don't do what some reviewers do and burn for the finishline. I tend to take my time and experience everything possible. There are several missions where your only "time" contraint is your troops morale on the ground. So it's very easy to just keep rebuilding their morale and enjoy yourself up in the air for a while longer. I quoted the word time namely because there aren't time constraints in the traditional clock countdown sense, it's more a matter of some objectives might get destroyed if you take too long.
"What is it I have against Microsoft, you ask? Well, you know how you feel when you wait for an MMO to come out and when it does you feel like you've paid to play it's beta test for another 6-9 months before anything even thinks of working the way it should? Being a network engineer you feel that way about anything Microsoft puts out."
Watch tower stage(really cool) especially the music.. listen to how the music dynamically ramps up when the guy gets spotted...
www.youtube.com/watch
LAIR's music alone should warrent this game atleast a 7 from just the music.
What's your Wu Name?
Donovan --> Wu Name = Violent Knight
Methane47 --> Wu Name = Thunderous Leader
"Some people call me the walking plank, 'cuz any where you go... Death is right behind you.."
<i>ME<i>
Doesn't it get quite repetitive after a while doing only the same things? I watched through the combat with a dragon when flying and on the ground, and it seemed rather boring. Just run through the crowds and breath fire.
In ground combat you dominate, yes. In the air on the other hand you can get fairly swarmed, especially if you have to watch out for allies. There are also "stealth" style missions in which you need to do everything possible to avoid being spotted.
I wouldn't really call Lair any more repetitive that most other games. I suppose it depends on your preferences. Action games tend to be action games. With the exception of some games where you can mount up in different vehciles or run on foot, it tends to be the same manuerver, shoot, kill format. Look at the God of War series, Gears of War, Halo, Half-Life series...just to name a few. They are all basically the same things over and over. You have to change your tactics to attack certain targets, which you also have to do in Lair. There are some dragons which you cannot "shoot" down. You have to engage in ariel talon combat, much like the way eagles sqaure off. There are also God of War-inspired mini-games where, when you connect with an ariel target, you must excute certain controller commands to successfully "takedown" the enemy flier (the term in the game is actually takedown). These types of attacks consist generally of you leaping or swinging across onto the enemy dragon and attacking its rider...sending him plummeting to his death.
There are also bombing type mission in which you don't use your flame (as the targets are unaffected by it) but drop bombs on the enemy structures.
The ground combat is a small portion of the game. As expected with a flying dragon title, the vast majority of the game takes place in the air. You will generally only land for fun or to make an easier run at enemy siege weapons. In some missions you will also have to be a tricky pilot while you may be flying in a valley or inside a structure.
As I said above, if the titles I mentioned above seem repetitive, then yes Lair will seem so as well. But I don't think that's something that Lair holds patent to as just about every action/adventure title is the same.
"What is it I have against Microsoft, you ask? Well, you know how you feel when you wait for an MMO to come out and when it does you feel like you've paid to play it's beta test for another 6-9 months before anything even thinks of working the way it should? Being a network engineer you feel that way about anything Microsoft puts out."
Guess what guys... LAIR works with Remote play
Some guy on another board took these pics as proof.. So you can play lair from any where in the world
Other guys pics
What's your Wu Name?
Donovan --> Wu Name = Violent Knight
Methane47 --> Wu Name = Thunderous Leader
"Some people call me the walking plank, 'cuz any where you go... Death is right behind you.."
<i>ME<i>
Alright, here's the full skinny. I am going to just add to this review so you can compare to the initial review. I may give away some details that I do not consider a spoiler, so just keep that in mind as you read this. I will rate everyting on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the worst possible score.
That said, I played the game through entirely twice to get a good feel for everything (and some of the missions I failed the first time around trying to figure out the order of attack). So here's my final review of the game:
Graphics: 8.75/10
This is pretty much the same as the early review. The graphics are gorgeous in the game, no doubt in my mind about hat. I will, however, point out a few flaws.
The first flaw is that the lighting is a bit dark at some points. Oddly enough these dark spots occur in day missions for than the night missions. You'll also note that during many of the cinematics it appears as if you're watching a silhoutte of your character Rohn rather than seeing him and his dragon in all their glory. It's really a minor annoyance, but I couldn't help wonder why they would go to so much trouble to make beautiful texturing and rendering only to hide it in shadows. Sometimes you will also notice that the ground troups and enemy dragons seem to be glowing white, though I believe this was done to make it a bit easier to spot them in the chaos that is the battleground.
The second flaw tends to happen during the cinematics mainly, but appears a few times during the game. Occassionally you will see "drawing" on the textures of the buildings or terrain. That basically means that as you pan the camera or move over an object you will see it's rendering change from medium to high resolutions as it transforms from an imposter object to the full 3D object. As I said this happen more often than not in a cinematic.
The layout and design of the cities is amazing. really something to be able to dive from from high above and zip through the buildings of the two major cities in the game.
Story/Voice Acting: 7/10
This part of the review really won't change. The story, as I said, is a bit cliche but well enough done to make it interesting. I won't go into too many details here as I refuse to post spoilers of any sort.
The voice talent was pretty well chosen and acted. Some of the dialogue is cliche, but you cannot blame that on the voice actors. The are a few familiar sounding voices in the game but I can't quite place the names. The only one I know I heard for sure AND I know the voice actors name is Crispin Freeman who plays a large role in the game. You may have heard him before as Togusa in Ghost in the Shell. The narator/oracle type character sounds supsiciously similar to LindaHunt who was the naration voice for God of War as well as Gaia (though I am sure it was not her). I found that a bit cheesy, but again, that isn't the actors fault.
Gameplay/Controls: 7/10
The game consists of 14 missions and a training sessions which has several different levels of training. The storyline takes about 8 or so hours of straght play (sans failures) to finish, leaving the game relatively short. I've not unlocked everything possible in the game yet (ie- combos, dragons) so I will still have that to go back and do. I've really already spoken on the controls and nothing has changed there, though I will tack a few things on at the end of the segment.
The gameplay is good. I will not give it an outstanding review because it had a few things that were just obnoxious. Let me start by saying that I abhore "defend" missins in games because we are forced to rely on the A-not-so-I. That goes for any game with these sorts of missions though. So I want to be fair in stating that Lair is not alone in this. The biggest annoyance actually comes from cutscenes. The game has a tendancy to overwhelm you with cutscenes that seem as if they were haphazardly thrown in at the last minute. You'll be chugging along to finish an objective when you are interrupted by a cutscene of a ship blowing up or a dragon being shot down. You can skip these cutscenes by hitting the X button, but they tend to interfere with your flow. I love cutscenes as much as the next person, but when you feel like you're watching more cutscenes than actually playing a game you start to feel as if you're just playing an interactice movie. Also, as I said above, they seem to come and go without warning or rythym. Occassionally, they will cut off dialogue that is being spoken during the mission. There is on particular mission that the cutscene always cuts off dialogue, and I found that a bit shoddy. The lack of the ability to skip opening cutscenes on each mission is a bit annoying as well. If you were to fail and have to start over you get tired of seeing the same minute or two of footage.
As for the controls I have only one chief complaint. The 180 manuerver isn't the easiest thing to pull off. You will dash forward several times when you gave the command to pull a 180 turn (that would be lifting the controller straight up as opposed to pushing it forward for dash). You have to be pretty deliberate in your motions. Towards the end of the game I had gotten the feel down pretty well so that I could pull off a 180 3 out of 4 times when I wanted to. I would strongly suggest playing the tutorials to really get the feel down.
My only other main complain in this segment is the "lock on" feature. You will, at times, lock on to something completely random. There isn't a control to cycle through targets so this can get frustrating when you were aiming for a ground target and an enemy dragons happens to cross your flight path at the moment you hit the lock on button. Thankfully, you can pull off quite a bit whithout actually locking on (this would be a white glow around your target instead of the red which means you are focused on that target and the camera will even pan to face it).
The mini-game takedowns and Air-to-Air talon fights between you and other dragons and their riders are great. Rohn pulls off some manuevers that make Kratos look like a grammar school gymnast. There are combos you can unlock when you collide in mid air with another dragon and engage in a talon fight which looks an awful lot like two eagle go at one another. The camera will slow down and swing about Matrix-style while you are your opponent face off.
The most sorely missed aspect of the gameplay is multiplayer. While I have no compunctions playing a single player only game, this game really could have used multiplayer. It's screaming for it in fact. I am not sure why they didn't put it in, perhaps they were just going for their first entrance into the Next Gen games. We all know that Factor 5 knows how to make a fun flight game (see Star Wars: Rogue Squadron), so there is no reason they couldn't have adapted this title for some multiplayer fights. Even co-op would have been nice. Now, we are living in the days where "console" games can be upgrading, updated, and have content added... so who knows.
Soundtrack 9.5/10
Now this is something I left out of my intial review but I absolutely feel the need to include it in my final review. The soundtrack is amazing, pure and simple. The music sets the tempo for the battles and the mood for the environment. Now, the fact that the game comes with a spectacular soundtrack is only compounded by the fact that you can actually play every individual track without playing the game. In the "Extras" section you have the option to enter the "Concert Hall". While listening to your chosen track you can watch a slideshow of screenshots and concept artwork (usually tied in with the particular track to which you are listening). The score to the title (and I use the word score here since it is the proper label. I didn't want to call this segment "Score" as people may have taken it for the ratings) is good enough that if they were to sell it seperately, I would buy it. It's an homage to Basil Poledouris (Conan the Destroy, Hunt for Red October) and Howard Shore (The Lord of the Rings Trilogy). I would have to say that the game would have taken a strong hit without the powerful score.
Final Words: Final Tally Score 8/10. Overall rating 7.75/10 (a bit taken off for the nuissance cutscenes that destroy the rythym)
Yes, the game could have been longer. I would have liked that very much...hell...I'd like am MMO set in the universe actually. Despite some of the negative reviews out there the game is pretty good in my opinion. The control scheme will push some people away, but it's noweher near as complicated as some other reviewers have made it to be (which leads me to question said reviews coordination skills). The environment draws you in fairly wel as you play, especially given the fact that you are high above the battles moving at good speeds at times. A few missions in particular stand out as amazing, but I won't tell you much about them now. You will have to play the game for yourself. If you have any particular questions about the game you can feel free to ask me. If you have a PS3 I would, at the very least, suggest you rent the game and play it all the way through. It is something that I enjoyed and I think just about anyone can enjoy if they keep their mind clear of notions of negativity set out by some other reviewers.
EDIT- I can confirm that Lair will play on the PSP during remote play. I have mine going right now, I will take some pictures later when my digital camera recharges. The flight control is controlled by the thumb nub on the PSP, which leads me to believe that analog control on the PS3 is possible if they wish to patch it. I am not sure how the game will play on the PSP, however, as the takedowns require Sixaxis movements.
"What is it I have against Microsoft, you ask? Well, you know how you feel when you wait for an MMO to come out and when it does you feel like you've paid to play it's beta test for another 6-9 months before anything even thinks of working the way it should? Being a network engineer you feel that way about anything Microsoft puts out."
Thanks for the answer! I think I finally understand why Lair was so extremely hyped.
You're welcome. Personally, I try to avoid hype in everything. I find that it's very hard for anything, be it music, movies, games, and whatnot to live up to hype.
"What is it I have against Microsoft, you ask? Well, you know how you feel when you wait for an MMO to come out and when it does you feel like you've paid to play it's beta test for another 6-9 months before anything even thinks of working the way it should? Being a network engineer you feel that way about anything Microsoft puts out."