You have probably already read some awful reviews for Lair on the PS3 and I don’t want to kick a game while its down, but I just started playing around with Lair and the game really is hard to get into. I would never have thought that the premise of flying dragons could be done poorly but Lair achieved this. Aside from the remote play that allows you to play Lair on your PSP the game has very awkward controls and even more awkward dialogue.

Lair has a Lord of the Rings feel to it mixed with Dragonheart, the whole premise is you are a dragon rider that defends his kingdom against other dragon riders, sounds cool right? Well in theory it is until you grab the six-axis controller and realize that controlling your dragon is not very fun. The six axis controls are used to steer your dragon, which does not really respond well and can get a bit frustrating when you end up flying in circles to get your enemies. Flying battles turn out to be pretty frustrating as targeting enemies in the air is a bit of a pain to use your fire breath, you can lock on and use physical strikes as well but that just isn’t the same. You can also land your dragon and breath fire on the ground, but this also turns out being a bit more fun as you can trample enemies on foot and even eat them.

The Lair remote play is an interesting idea that lets you play the game via remote play on your PSP fairly seamlessly, but make sure that you have already beaten the prologue because in the prologue the game teaches you how to steer your dragon and one of the lessons is how to use the L and R buttons as breaks, except on the PSP the buttons don’t work and you get stuck flying around without being able to advance the story.

I had very high hopes for Lair and unfortunately the game came up very short. I take biggest issue with the controls and the bad voice acting. I will skip a full review on this game and spend some more time playing other titles.