Lair

Lair is the product of development studio Factor 5, a part German, part American development company but published by Sony themselves. Lair received heavy marketing from Sony primarily because this game had SixAxis not as a fun add-on or minigame but at the very heart. In fact SixAxis was the only way to play.

Factor 5 had been around since the late 80s, finding early success with the Turrican series on the Amiga. They made a good number of smaller titles throughout the years but most interestingly to me was the foray into the flight arcade games, most notably with the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron games, so looking back it seemed a natural fit to take what they had learnt from this genre and swap sci-fi and spaceships for fantasy and dragons. Their website is worth a look, it is still up as of today and is gloriously mid 2000’s.

When starting up the game I noticed the splash screen mentioned 7.1 surround sound, not rare for a PlayStation 3 game but it stood out to me as something that they really wanted to highlight, after that, the next splashscreen is a THX video (THX certification is a high end, rigorous standard for audio quality) again not that unusual for a game but still pretty rare, and after that we get to the title screen and you are hit with this gorgeous orchestral score. This game has one of the stand out orchestral fantasy scores in gaming. In fact, it was so well received that La-La Land Records, a company that produces high quality physical media releases of film and TV shows, released a 2 disc CD soundtrack of Lair and I can say I am now on the hunt for what is quite a rare item. I highly recommend finding what you can on YouTube if you are into that sort of thing. The primary composer for Lair is John Debney who has credits on lots of well known movies and games.

The game itself takes place in a fantasy world where a once united state has now split into warring factions with dragons featuring heavily as the elite units of military armory on both sides. Your primary gameplay is flying your dragon during massive military engagements. You can even land on the battlefield, set entire battalions on fire and eat your way through soldiers. The gameplay is split over a number of levels with each level featuring a series of objectives like destroying catapults, protecting ships and fighting specific enemies to name a few, there is quite a wide variety of smaller objectives. I tend to find that games of this nature tend to struggle coming up with new and different types of objectives for each level but I am quite impressed with Lairs variety, although ultimately it is “Fly Dragon - Burn Stuff”.

But let’s just jump to what this game is notorious for. Controls, those damn controls. It was clear that Sony really wanted to use the SixAxis feature as something to set it apart in the competition and that this really was the future of gaming. I’m not sure whose decision it was but the decision was made that the controls for flying the dragon would solely be controlled by the SixAxis. If you wanted to descend you tilt the controller down, lifted it toward you to ascend, tilt left and right to bank and then they also introduced a little flick of the controller, as though you pulled hard on the reins, to whip the dragon into a swift 180 degree turn.

But the game launched with no analogue stick alternative, this was it, this was all you were getting. Even on the behind the scenes videos that shipped with the game they confessed the other developers thought the controllers were terrible until they were eventually “convinced” that it was actually “very cool”. This was the breaker for almost every review and consumer at the time. The game launched with giant hype, people hated the controls and the reviews show it.

I launched the game today and intentionally did not install the latest patch just to try it and it was indeed very difficult. I just don’t enjoy it, there is something for me about wanting to relax into a comfy chair and just move my thumbs but if you want to use the SixAxis and be effective with it, you need to give your whole body room to move and it’s just not sustainable. Even for those who do want to try that, the SixAxis is just not reliable enough. The ability to control a character in your game is the bedrock on which all other functionality is built and if you cannot reliably get your dragon into a position to start doing the more exciting functions then you it doesn’t matter how exciting the rest of the game may be.

I am willing to accept that SixAxis may well be a personal choice, but it seems incredible not to have launched the game with an optional analogue option. A patch released 6 months later finally introduced the ability to control your dragon using the analogue sticks and I have to say I never went back for a moment.

Launching with these analogue controls as an option from the start would certainly have helped, but I suspect some of the negativity for the SixAxis would have remained. But it is a real shame because it’s kind of a unique title and the story and lore was pretty decent too and we have already talked about the fantastic score.

Factor 5 closed it’s doors in early 2009. Their website does not suggest this had anything to do with Lair but more to do with the general trend of the industry. This sad story is very common amongst the 7th generation, video game companies were never a safe haven of longevity but this era seemed to claim many mid-sized development houses who just could not compete in this growing landscape where the giant developers and publishers dominated. It’s very easy to be a cynic and say that Lair was terrible but the way I see it, it definitely had potential but even with the analogue controls, it just needed a bit more time, perhaps even a second title.

I do think the later patch with the analog controls does make the game playable, and if you can get it for a cheap price, and you are a fan of arcade flight games, I think it’s definitely worth a try.