L.A.I.R.: HANDS ON PREVIEW

Courtesy of Three Speech reader and regular contributor Tom Eccles.

After reading what various game review sites and magazines thought about L.A.I.R, I was really looking forward to getting my hands on it. You take the role of Rohn, who rides a veracious dragon defending the skies for the Asylian civilisation – currently at war with the Mokai. The game involves fierce air combat with other dragons, as well as ground fights with enemy soldiers.

The first level of the game is a basic training exercise – like something on a flight simulator. Guided by another warrior you fly up, down and through hoops. You get the idea. Then you get your first taste of combat with another dragon. It’s not very exciting, but it introduces you to the scene and controls so it’s worth going through.

Talking of controls, L.A.I.R’s can be quite complicated. For what should be a simple game, Factor 5 put in some fairly complex controls which will probably take some getting used to. The easy part is moving – simply tilt the Sixaxis in the way you want the dragon to move, then tapping X speeds you up while L2 or / and R2 will put on the ‘brakes’. To target an enemy dragon (or an enemy object; i.e. a catapult) you hold either L1 or L2 until you see a red glow around it – then you can press square to send balls of fire, or circle to swing in and physically ‘attack’ them. After this, things get complicated – you sometimes enter a mode where the two dragons latch onto each other and fight, giving you the option of biting or breathing fire over the enemy. Other times, you enter a mode where you have to line up your dragon with the other before you can attack, and I have yet to be successful in doing this.

One of my favourite parts of the game is landing on the ground and ripping through crowds of enemy infantry. To land you have to fly close to the ground and hit L2 and R2 – after which you can run around on the ground. You can breathe fire onto the Mokai troops or simply hit them with your dragon’s claws. You can even swoop down, pick a soldier up and drop him to his death over the sea. During the game you will not only meet enemy dragons and soldiers, but also rhinos and other weird creatures. In game, often in the parts with big armies, you have a bar at the top telling you who is winning - sort of like a set of scales. The massive battle scenes are definitely one of the best parts to L.A.I.R..

L.A.I.R’s full 1080p graphics look great, the water movement is extremely realistic, the enemy dragons look great and the sky is beautiful. One thing that looks especially good is the lightning during dark scenes, where the sea and any other dragons in the sky get lit up in the flash. Its lighting is fantastic, and you’ll definitely be impressed when you’re flying through the skies. The game runs at 30 frames per second - however when you do actions that require quite a lot of power, or there are lots of dragons on screen, it goes down which is disappointing. Despite that, the game does look great and swooping down onto a mass crowd of infantry is a joy.

L.A.I.R has mission-based gameplay, set in different locations with different objectives. The storyline follows on from each mission and there are a lot of cinematic scenes to help tell the story. If you like story driven games, then L.A.I.R is definitely for you. After the mission, you get a scoreboard which has how much damage you’ve done, how many people you’ve killed, time taken etc. and if you do well enough you get graded with a medal. You can then go to the online leader boards and check how you’re doing compared to others. There will also be online forums for you to use.

Finally, the soundtrack to the game is fantastic. Composed by John Debney (who produced soundtracks for Sin City and Passion of the Christ), the game provides appropriate music for whatever you’re doing in game and it sounds great. The battles are brought alive by the fast paced soundtrack, in uncompressed 7.1 surround sound, which does a great job of immersing you into the game.