Up until now, Lair hasn't been sitting at the top of everyone's Most Anticipated lists beside Metal Gear Solid and Killzone 2. But that, we're willing to bet, is about to change.
Lair's graphical prowess hits you like a bus the moment you start the first level. It has that Factor 5 touch. You leap onto your dragon and launch into the air, and it stuns you with its ultra-high-detail environments that stretch far into the distance for you to gawp at as you soar through the sky on your giant dragon.
Factor 5 clearly still knows how to get a console's chips ticking, as it did when it produced the technically stunning Star Wars: Rogue Squadron games on GameCube.
The first of the six levels we played during our exclusive hands-on is particularly stunning. A town with literally hundreds of buildings is sprawled out in a sort of canyon between two huge mountains. This awesome scene overlooks the sea, with the most amazing water ripple being lit up by a gorgeous sunset. In 1080p on a on a big screen, it really is a sight to see.
Another level has you flying around at night, in which a torrential downpour splashes water off your dragon's wings as they flap, and fierce lightening strikes light up the whole screen for a split second, momentarily revealing the impressively bump-mapped textures of the towering rocky surfaces around you before the whole scene plunges back into near complete darkness. It's awesome stuff.
It's an extremely cinematic game, with its top-notch visuals paired up with an epic, loud orchestral soundtrack and a motion control system that literally has you leaning with the action (as you should already know, you control the dragons by tilting the SixAxis).
Our favourite level is set along a river down which ships full of your men and equipment are sailing. Your primary objective is to protect them until they're safely within the confines of the city walls at the far end of the river.
You start off zooming down the river to maul a group of armour-wearing thugs that have decided to mess up one of your watch towers. Spying the troublesome group in the distance, you swoop down, yanking the L2 and R2 triggers to make your dragon slam on the brakes and land, before stomping over to maul their asses.
The ground combat is simple but satisfying. Dozens (and sometimes hundreds and even more) of soldiers surround you with their puny swords. You have choices at this point. Swing the controller left and right violently (or tap X if you're fat and lazy) to make your dragon batter through them like rag dolls, hammer Square to spit fireballs and roast them all or, our favourite, slam Triangle to snare a dude in your mouth and eat him.
Again, this all looks amazing. As your dragon grips a soldier between its teeth the game occasionally switches to slow-mo and gives you a cinematic panning view of the action. The game is so huge and the soldiers are so small, yet you can still see their limbs reacting with realistic weight and momentum as the dragon thrashes around, and they drop their weapons which fall to the ground.
You wouldn't expect such fine detail in a game with such wide open scale.
Anyway, back to the mission. Once those punks are dealt with, you can take out what we can only describe as a giant cargo dragon - they're a bit like giant airborne stingrays with snouts and teeth, and carry what looks like crates of explosives in their gut. Blowing that thing up is awesome - it causes one of the most violent explosions we've ever seen in a game, whiting out the whole screen and scattering bits of bloody flesh hundreds of feet around it.
Then you're summoned to take out catapults that are battering your cargo ships. Pulling the two triggers takes off again, which the dragon does with much ferocity. The catapults are no match for your fireballs of death. You just swoop in and drop your fiery load like a pile of the world's deadliest bird ****.
Some Ice dragons turn up. They're dragons like you, but they spit ice. Pussies. Again, read our other hands-on preview for a detailed rundown of how aerial battle is controlled. Needless to say it's pretty good fun. The lock-on and charging system rids the game of the typical boring dogfight syndrome in which you and opponents fly in circles until one of you catches sight of the opponent to shoot. None of that here.
The grand finale of the level is to guard the city gates as the boats enter. This is epic.
You fly to the gates where there awaits an army of literally thousands of little men. Not hundreds, thousands - stretching into the far distance. Granted, it seems the closer ones, the first couple of hundred maybe, are the most animated, while the rest follow a slightly less detailed pattern of movement. But come on, guys - there are thousands of men on the screen. It looks amazing!
Excited, we landed to start hyper-slapping our way through them all. Unfortunately though, once you've destroyed the four catapult towers - the main threat to the city walls - and the boats enter the gates, the level ends.
Seriously though - what a rush.
We were concerned for the level of variety in missions, but Factor 5 seems to have it covered. One level has you blowing up ships at sea. Another sees you and a team of five other dragons stage an assault on a massive stone tower with a giant revolving head at the top that seeks you out with spotlights in its eyes and blasts you with lethal cluster bombs. You have to take out its eyes then fly into its mouth to mess up its insides.
We fought a boss too; an insanely huge snake thingy that arches in and out of the sea below like the Loch Ness monster, and rearing its ugly head to spit some nasty black stuff at you.
You often hear people say that graphics are far less important than a game's gameplay. That's true. But Lair is one of those games which proves that extremely high-quality visuals and sound have a massive impact on the experience. They make the difference between a fun game and a mind-blowing, cinematic ordeal.
That's what Lair is.
