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Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land The Associated Press just published their worst of 2007 list for video games. The straight forward list includes Manhunt 2, Deal or No Deal and Lair along with some biting explanation:
1. “Manhunt 2″: Rockstar Games’ strategy — offend the watchdogs, reap the publicity, then sell a substandard product — reached its nadir with this ugly, unplayable mess. It begins with a lunatic flinging human waste at you; after about an hour, you’ll want to fling “Manhunt 2.”
4. “Lair”: Sony lavished a lot of attention on this PlayStation 3 title, and it sure looks great. And who wouldn’t want to fly a dragon? But with awkward, imprecise controls and lackluster, repetitive missions, “Lair” crashed and burned.
Factor 5 honcho Julian Eggebrecht must be exhausted from constantly “defending” his company’s poorly received PlayStation 3 title Lair and its hit-or-miss SixAxis controls. G4 caught up with the Dragon’s Lair fanboy at Tokyo Game Show to get one more justification out of Mr. Eggebrecht whose game has been retitled Rise From Lair in Japan. I respect what Factor 5 was trying to do, but trying to target gamers who aren’t hardcore with a PS3 game? Simply puzzling.
Fans of Lair will be happy to know that the official soundtrack is available on iTunes for download. And while we understand that Lair isn’t necessarily GOTY, the music has received a nomination from BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) for Best Original Score. To find the album, just search iTunes for “John Debney Lair”.
Hopefully more publishers will see the low cost and potentially huge benefit in offering their soundtracks on iTunes. Because while Kotaku can’t speak for you, we’d love to hear the surprisingly haunting melodies of Pony Friends with the click of a button. LAIR Score Now On iTunes! [via gamelife]
2K Australia/2K Boston’s big man is willing to stand against the waves of critical abuse being tossed developer Factor 5′s way over the somewhat obtuse controls of their glorified dragon flying simulator, Lair. GameDaily.biz has an interview with the BioShock designer, where he states:
“Let me speak in these guys’ defense for a minute as a game developer. I’m sure somebody came to them at some point and said, ‘We have this motion control controller, and we have to make a go of it. And we really think you should try to make your game exclusively on that.’”
It’s not exactly a stunning retort, and maybe there’s some truth in his words, but I doubt it’s going to do much for Lair‘s aggregrated score of 58% on GameRankings.com.
BioShock Dev Defends Lair Motion Controls [GameDaily]
Factor Five’s Julian Eggebrecht may have taken some knocks on the chin for Lair’s gameplay, but not many were complaining about the unquestionably stellar graphics of the title. And that’s pretty much enough for me to name him an unquestionable authority on every platform’s individual graphical nuances (and anything else necessary for this article to be extremely important). Right now, Eggebrecht’s questioning an industry that’s all but given up on the Wii ever making pretty games: If you connect you can get a lot of shader effects which would’ve been on the 360 or the PS3…it’s got so much more power compared to the GameCube. If even with the extremely similar shader hardware, the system clockrate is so much higher, you can do so much more advanced things.
So why does he think games aren’t looking better?
Oh, OK. So Lair isn’t crap. It’s cursed! Factor 5′s Julian Eggebrecht has told MTV that Lair didn’t just endure a troubled development. Something was up. Something…supernatural. I am not a believer in ghosts, but this one was haunted.
Lair’s not doing so good on the reviews circuit. In fact it’s stinking up the place, critics almost unanimous in their disdain for what’s basically a Rogue Squadron game without a Hoth level. This should be a concern for Sony, but really, it’s not, outgoing SCEA PR head Dave “Screw you, Jerktown” Karraker saying: At the end of the day, I’ll be interested in the consumers’ response, because the consumer awareness for this title was so huge. I’ve spoken to any number of people who really like it, and there’s other people that find it a challenge. What really matters is whether or not the consumers are having a good experience, because they’ll tell us on the [PlayStation]blog.
Interesting approach, but unless a game’s got a trusted IP or word of mouth behind it, it’s going nowhere without positive reviews. This is new IP with rubbish reviews. Don’t fancy its chances. Sony Brushes Off Lair Critics [Next-Gen]
Factor 5′s Lair got one bad review. And after that, the levies broke and the criticism came pouring in. Now, in the wake of carnage, we can step back and see where things seemingly went wrong. (Of course, not having played the final build, I stubbornly stand by my impressions.)
So hit the jump for our Frankenreview: the longest, most obnoxious review title you’ve ever heard. And find out why, aside from the questionable control scheme, most reviewers are hating on the game.
Stephen Totilo has an interesting story up on Factor 5′s struggle with Lair and how the developers thought it was cursed from the beginning nearly two years ago.
The curse started with the Lair trailer getting bumped from the initial PS3 announcement reel because it was too dark to see and continued… That was the start of one catastrophe after the other – deaths in the family at the worst time [and]sudden surgeries for key members, which bounced the technology off-track. And just in general, every single time there was a crucial delivery, something bizarre went wrong – all the way to power outages when writing the master disks.”
The folks at SCEA sent me this spiffy Lair-themed lighter along with my copy of the Playstation 3 game. Expect to see it hit a contest on the site in the near future.
