Lair Has Faults and Developer Factor 5 Admits It

According to a well-known gaming site, an interview of MTV's GameFile with Factor 5 director, Julian Eggebrecht, revealed that the whole Lair project was a pain in the ass right from the get go. He goes on defending the title for its faulty features, claiming they're not entirely their own, which is most likely true, given that developing games for the PS3 (and especially resource demanding ones like Lair) isn't exactly a walk in the park:

"That is exactly the kick of creating a first-year game: exploring the not-yet-finished hardware and growing the technology while the hardware is coming together," said Julian Eggebrecht, according to gamesradar.com. "I think both Rogue Leader and Lair gave a good stab at poking into the depths of the systems for such early titles, and from that you have a second-generation growth opportunity that surpasses most developers that jump onto the bandwagon later," he continued.

OK, by now we know that whenever a PS3 game turns out to be faulty, for one reason or another, the developer is most likely to include the developing-for-the-PS3-is-hard issue, but again, we might as well believe them - it's not like they could do a better job but they were lazy.

As for the game's control scheme, "The Sixaxis motion control itself feels a lot more organic and free-form than the rigid controls of other flight games and does much better for casual players, as we saw in focus tests," commented the director. "It does seem to alienate some reviewers who are at the top of the hard-core crowd and seem to have a passionate hate for all things motion," once again explaining the reviewers' bad impression about certain aspects of the game.

However, there's at least one aspect (regarding the game's control scheme again) that Factor 5 does admit they didn't fully tap. The director was asked how often he could pull off a 180 with the vertical flick of the pad. His answer...: "About eight out of 10," clarifying that this is "the same ratio that I get in Wii Sports tennis when I try to do a backspin."

Can't argue with him there, 'cause it's fairly possible (you don't even want to know what my ratio is). So now you know why Lair isn't launching to be the title everyone was hoping for. Hey but don't get the wrong idea, reviewers are meant to be picky - for all you know, Lair could be the perfect game for you.