There are games I go back to hoping to be proved right, and games I go back to hoping to be proved wrong. Lair is firmly the second kind. I wanted this one to be brilliant more than almost any other early PlayStation 3 game I can think of, and I have spent this week working out whether the problem was the game or whether it was me.
Released on 31 August 2007 as a PlayStation 3 exclusive from Factor 5 — the same studio behind the Star Wars Rogue Squadron games I adored on the N64 and GameCube — Lair should have been a slam dunk. You play Rohn Partridge, a dragon-riding Sky Guard caught up in a war between the wealthy Asylia and the resource-starved Mokai. Enormous battles, spectacular landscapes, hundreds of soldiers scrapping away beneath you, dragons everywhere. The mission structure even feels like Rogue Squadron, just with dragons instead of X-wings.
And we were insufferable about it at the time. We were all having a dig at the Xbox 360 crowd: look, we're getting dragons, we're getting this fabulous new controller, you're going to wish you'd bought a PS3. Yes. Well. Egg, meet face.
The controller that ruined it
The Sixaxis launched with motion sensing and — famously — no rumble, and Lair was supposed to be the showcase for it. Tilt left to go left, tilt right to go right. Want to pull a quick manoeuvre? Good luck with that. Apparently just using the analogue sticks, as we'd all been doing happily for years, was far too straightforward.
The flagship move is the 180-degree turn: you flick the controller up in the air and your dragon whips around. It works sometimes. That's the kindest way I can put it. What actually happens in the middle of a battle is you end up flying a huge lazy circle instead, because the flick won't register, and by the time you've come round you've lost track of what you were chasing.
The reviews at the time were brutal and, honestly, fair. IGN gave it 4.9 out of 10, GameSpot 4.5, Eurogamer a flat 4. Its Metacritic settled at 53%. Having gone back to it, I think 53% is generous.
Things got so bad that Sony sent reviewers a guide explaining how to play the game. That's the equivalent of a restaurant handing you instructions on how to enjoy your meal. It's ridiculous.
Gorgeous, and it counts for nothing
Let me be clear about the things Lair gets right, because they're not small. It is a beautiful-looking game. Factor 5 always had a knack for squeezing more out of console hardware than anyone expected, and Sony wanted Lair to show off what the PS3 could do. Visually, it delivers on that.
The orchestral soundtrack is spectacular, too. Properly dramatic, very Factor 5 — the same kind of sweep you got in Rogue Squadron. I'd happily listen to it on its own.
Visually amazing, soundtrack amazing, gameplay terrible. None of the rest counts for anything if the thing in your hands is infuriating.
And it isn't only the motion controls. The camera's in the wrong place and you're constantly fiddling with it. There's a huge amount to remember even though you're waggling the controller to fly — the stick is still doing camera duty, there's a lock-on, there are other buttons on top. It's confused and non-intuitive. You can come back two days later and genuinely not remember how to lock onto something. Meanwhile the dragon simply doesn't go where you want it to, so you overcorrect, and everything snowballs into exaggerated flailing.
There are flickers of what should have been. Landing and taking on soldiers on the ground is fun. Leaping across onto another dragon for a hand-to-hand scrap is genuinely cool. Flying under bridges while battles rage around you looks fantastic. And there's a seductive moment early on where the opening mission goes smoothly and you think, do you know what, this is okay. Then you hit one of the later missions — the one where you clear the dragons outside a mountain and then fly inside to destroy everything in there — and it's insanely frustrating. Tight space, no reliable 180, you shoot out the other side, lose your bearings, and round you go again. I gave up on a couple of missions back in the day out of sheer boredom.
The patch came too late
In April 2008, Factor 5 patched in traditional analogue stick controls — movement on the left stick, the reticule on the right, dash moved to the d-pad — along with DualShock 3 rumble and a proper targeting icon. It was better. Significantly better. I'd score the game higher played that way, though even then a few of the in-air combat sections stayed on the Sixaxis. But any love I had for it had already gone, and the damage was done: Lair was cemented as one of the PS3's biggest early disappointments.
I reviewed it on the original Sixaxis controls, which is probably mad, but that's how it was meant to be played and that's what the game's reputation was built on. If you're a Lair fan, I'm sorry. Tell me I'm wrong in the comments.
I don't normally pick games I know I won't enjoy, but Lair is an important one to talk about because it sums up everything that went wrong with the PS3's first year — a console with enormous promise, fumbled early on, that only became the powerhouse it should always have been later in the generation.