Yes I know this is years late, but bear with me. Follow me on a young man's quest for greatness and videogame satisfaction. Weep as his hopes and dreams are dashed on the cruel, jagged rocks of reality. Ready? Let's go!

Lair. This single word is the name of one of the most cringe worthy titles of the PS3's library. When it shipped, it came with a terrible, terrible control scheme. You were only able to use SIXAXIS and analog controls were not an option. I didn't own a PS3 when Lair came out but once I got mine, I remembered reading the terrible reviews and swore I would avoid Lair like the plague.

Then came a day a few months ago when something in the back of my brain clicked. I thought I read somewhere that Lair got analog controls via an update. I did some research and found out my inkling was correct. After some more research, trying to find out what people had said about the game once the controls were fixed. A lot of the people seemed to be mostly positive in their comments so against my initial warnings, I decided to purchase a used copy for $10. I mean, it has dragons in it right? Dragons are cool.

I was hoping my experience would go something like this:



Yes I know that comic is being sarcastic, but I bought Lair a few weeks ago. I was young and foolishly naive.

Even with the new controls. Lair is a steaming pile of dragon shit.

The first alarm bells went off in my mind when I booted up the game (after installing the updates). You have to sit through over a minute long cut scene that's advertising the THX sound -- the one with the fat plumber looking robot plugging in a cow thing into the THX logo. I've seen that before at the movies, but you can't skip it and you have to sit through it every time you start the game. Annoying to say the least. Also the Factor 5 logo takes forever to load (and it's also unskippable)

I started the first mission and was impressed by the graphics -- they looked pretty enough on my SD TV so I imagine they'd look good on an HDTV. Once the gameplay started the problems weren't far behind.

Whoever came up with these gameplay mechanics needs to be drawn and quartered. There's a small targeting reticule that turns red when you move it over an enemy, but that's all there is for a HUD. I can understand that because I'm on a dragon, not piloting an F-18 or something. But at the same time, there's no map or compass in the bottom corner of the screen. The only thing that shows up to tell you where to go is a yellow arrow that appears at the top of the screen. It gets confusing because the arrow doesn't tilt very well to tell you what altitude your objective is at.

Next up comes the combat and camera controls. You can shoot fire at enemy dragons but it really only kills the weaker ones. The game tells you you should lock on to enemy dragons and hit circle -- it'll make your dragon dash over to them. Time slows down as your mount claws the enemy. During this time you're allowed to rotate the camera and lock on to other nearby enemy dragons to chain together combo dash attacks. The problem is -- the camera controls are terrible! I've only been able to get a two-combo. Pushing down on the right analog stick should make my camera look upwards (I have the Y axis inverted) but instead somebody mapped the "Look behind you" camera control to that specific motion. So here I am trying to find more dragons to attack when suddenly my view snaps to look behind me. My dragon finishes the attack and the slow-mo goes away. Combo failed.

My last big complaint is this. Since there's no HUD, it's really difficult to tell different dragon types apart. I'm supposed to be tracking down Dark Dragons but all I can see are a shit-ton of flying lizards. There's no way to highlight mission objectives (like the Dark Dragons) so I know which ones to go after.

I've played it through to the fifth level and I can't go on. There may be analog controls, but they don't fix shoddy gameplay mechanics. I think Factor 5 cleverly hid an acronym in the game's title -- Lame Aerial Interactive Ruckus Ah foolish optimism and alluring promises, you've steered me wrong once more.