Lair: Extreme Makover Edition – Part Two

With a single 246 MB download, a majority of Lair reviews
became irrelevant last night. Sony, who recently gave their Playstation Store a
much-needed make-over, made a patch available that made significant changes to
the title. Last week, we re-examined the title in anticipation of the download.

Like most reviewers, we found Lair’s motion-only controls to
be unwieldy and inaccurate. To compound the issue of control, the game showed
significant drops in overall framerate. At times, the game was nearly
unplayable; with a healthy dose of aim-assistance, players would clumsily move in
the direction of a mission objective, and mash the fire button in hopes of
connecting with an enemy.

The Dragons and Control Pack (named as if the game lacked
control altogether) adds a few new features to Lair. First, is the ability to control
your dragon with the analog sticks. Secondly, the game adds a targeting cursor,
which turns red to indicate an enemy lock-on. Finally, the game add rumble for
DualShock 3 owners.

The game’s controls, which significantly hampered
playability before are now a non-issue. Turning, while ascending or descending,
was difficult with the motion only controls. Now, with the patch in place,
control is nearly intuitive. Strangely, the 180-degree turn maneuver, usefully
when an enemy is assaulting you with fire, still uses the motion control, and
is as unresponsive as ever.

With the targeting cursor, auto-aim has been toned down. However,
with the cursor combat is much easier as the player can actually tell what they are shooting at. Sadly, the graphical engine received no tweaks- the
framerate is inadequate about half the time, and the ground terrain has a weird habit of
morphing as you fly over.  

However, Lair’s patch is important, because it renders huge portions
of its reviews obsolete. Reviews that attacked the game for its motion controls
are no longer pertinent. With titles like Lair and Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia
receiving significant patches that fundamentally alter gameplay, our current
systems of game criticism are no longer applicable. Games are showing signs of changing
and evolving through title updates, and are becoming increasingly fluid in
their content. Our current methods of writing a single, unchanging review is
becoming less useful when patches significantly alter a game. Perhaps game
reviews and journalist need to mirror the direction of designers, and revisit revised
titles, and keep the criticism fluid as well.