On veiwing loads of media of interviews and gameplay, I had pegged Lair as a must buy gaming experience for me and could obviously see it was presenting a very uniquely true current gen experience which hadn't really been present 'till it's release.

So on seeing the shockly absymal reveiw ratings it got I was totally baffled. I mean, I've been gaming for well over 25years (and no, I didn't start gaming when I was 5 or some ridiculously young age) and at this stage of my gaming hobby I pretty much know what I'll definitly like once I've seen enough media on it. So needless to say I was flabergasted at the reviews and had even thought maybe I really got this one wrong. However on veiwing more media and listening to some people that had actually played the game my conviction to play the game grew stronger and a week later (after ignoring the clerks at my local games shop rabidly imploring me to not buy this "crap" game) I got it home and played it.

Almost instantly I realised that the likes of Gamespot totally were out to lynch this game cause I remember seeing a pic in their reviews that indicated that the controlls were so unresponsive it wouldn't go right when you wanted it to go right.
I had nothing even close to this experience at all. The controlls did PRECISELY every thing I wanted it to do and there are some mission in this game that percision is a must.

After playing through the whole game I staired at the credits in bewilderment thinking "Holy crapaoli!" This is a master piece, how the hell can this be seen as bad or even mediocre?" I played through it again in hopes that maybe I may see somethings I missed that reviewers likely saw but infact, the more I played, the more fantastic things about the game I kept noticing. 'Till this day Lair is my most played campaign on any game I own and I own about 9 games.

So I it got me thinking. Why would such a game with blatantly obvious high production value; that's unique on the market and fun as hell not even so much as get a "good" score rating talkless of "great" or "superb"?
Well some things came to mind like maybe NA reviewers wanted to really take it to Julian E for making comments about the game and liking it to 911 thus insinuating resembulance in Asylian tribes (America) and Moki tribes (extreme Islamic groups) and seeing that Factor 5 had the Moki win the Battle in the game that perhaps this was a jab back at Factor 5.... but I think another scenerio is more likey than not the real reason they rated such an obviously great game as bad, "unplayable" & "unresponsive".

I trully believe that the main reason Lair was lynched was that it was the first game to show that the Sixaxis could do gameplay that was even more interesting than the likes of the Wii-mote. The wii-mote is THE only significant thing that's given Nintendo it's big edge with the public gaming market and should a game show it can do similar or even better things with motion sensing, then Nintendo's appeal would take a severe hit as it wouldn't have anything to make it stand out from current gen machines.

I believe Lair was given outright horrible reviews to discourge other developers from creating games that were motion sensing heavy so as to put forth the view that the motion sensing could only be done right with the wii-mote.


I'm sorry but if every single person on this planet was to tell me games like god of war are 5/10 type games I wouldn't believe or agree with them when I've seen it's gameplay and played it myself. It's obvious it's very easy to target new IPs in their first installment to curb sales than it is with older franchises.
Case in point, the likes of gamespot giving games like Monster Hunter2 (5/10) and Rachet & Clank:ToD (7.5/10) couldn't really ward off gamers cause we know the games already and can easily over look such obviously nonsensical reveiws but with new IPs with no history, it's a lot harder to dispute.

I believe that Lair was given severly grotesque scores to make sure it, and whatever future series it may have, dies out and like I said eariler, make sure no other developer even thinks of creating motion sensing heavy gameplay for the Sixaxis & the PS3.

It's also my belief that had Factor 5 brought out Lair for the Wii using the the wii-mote in the EXACT capacity as they did with the Sixaxis, that Lair would have be hailed as the most intuative and innovative game in 2007.
Had Lair been a 360 exclusive though, it would have had it's fanbase on every gaming forum beating their chests at how no other console could do the things the 360 could do with Lair; it would have been given high 8s, 9s & 10s with editorial reviewers and most certainly a vast majority of it's fanbase would have at least rented tehe game to get their gamer points and thus sales would have been way better.

This is what I strongly believe.

Thank you for reading my oh-so-long blog :P