Let's say the Wii takes over the world. Just naturally, the traditional magazines -- if they stick to their current position of slightly dissing it -- will simply go out of business," said Julian Eggebrecht, presdient of Factor 5's who is most recently responsible for the release of Lair on PS3.
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PSM's Editor-in-Chief Rob Smith sets some facts straight.

"I just want to clear one thing up: I didn't review either Lair or Warhawk. Both reviews were done by staffers. I did sign off on them, obviously, but didn't spend anything like the time our reviewers did."

More after the jump as well as responses from PSM subscribers.
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German gaming webstite Gamefront has posted an image of the latest Playstation Magazine issue, in which both Lair and Warhawk have been reviewed. Both games will be in stores at around August/September but Playstation Magazine does not seem very happy with both games, as the magazine rates Warhawk 6.5, and Lair even lower: 5.0.

In the image of the magazine, you can see that Lair is described as: "A one-trick dragon" and destroys it with a 5.0 rating. Warhawk on the other hand is described as: "A third-person shooter that never quite gets off the ground", and rates the game with only a 6.5. The image can been see below.
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A senior games industry executive has blasted the American ESRB games rating system, saying he thinks it is "absolutely bizarre," and calling for changes to be made to bring it in line with other mediums such as film.

Julian Eggebrecht, the president of Factor 5, drew on the example of the company's own game, the dragon-fighter Lair for the PlayStation 3, for which the company really wanted to get a T for Teen rating in the US, because teenagers make up a big part of the game's potential audience. He said, "Teenagers are really into dragons."

In order to do this, Factor 5 went through a process with the ESRB over "weeks and months," where it tweaked every bit of the game that the ESRB wanted it to in order to secure a T for Teen rating.
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UK TV program Gamer.tv has given Lair 3/5. The episode aired at 10:00am Saturday morning and I personally watched it myself so can confirm the score is correct. They didn't seem to have any issues with the controls but said it was a bit repetitive.
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Although still officially TBC, reports suggest that the title won't be available until October 26th. This date is almost two months behind the U.S. release, which itself was delayed from August 14th to September 4th.
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If you had missed it, they were the first gaming website to review the game and game the game very low scores. According to the latest podcast from them, the sit down and discuss the reviews of the game.

Here is what they liked and hated about the game:
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Sony has just released the official box art for Lair, and it's looking pretty hot (no pun intended). Featuring the armored mug of Rhon, the main character, glaring off into the distance while a battlefield of guys get the marshmellow-in-campfire treatment, it's got classic look to it.
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Weve just dismounted our dragon, that we've affectionately named Puff, in order to bring you this exclusive footage from Sonys fantasy blaster. And it's not all about soaring around hundreds of feet in the air. Taken from the game's first few stages, the footage shows that although there were some aerial scraps to be had, we also got the chance to land our scaly beast on the ground and unleash some fiery breath onto hordes of enemy troops. Escort missions of some much-needed supplies and an ...
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The Play journalist who wrote the Lair review for their magazine (he gave it a 9/10) makes his face known on neogaf, stating that they reviewed the same build as other journalists. This review copy had a poor framerate, and other bugs - but they were assured by Factor 5 that this would all be fixed for release - they thus reviewed it in this knowledge:

"We (Play) received the same review copy that I assume all the other mags did, which had optimized frame rates in the earlier missions, but poor frame rates in the last few missions and several bugs. We contacted Factor 5 and asked for all known issues and Julian himself replied with a detailed list, promising that the later levels were being optimized for frame rates, the bugs were being fixed, and that one aspect of the control would be improved. They said they would have a gold master candidate ready by our ship date, so I wrote the review on the assumptions that their promises would be kept, got the gold master candidate right before we went to press, and played that version for a few hours to confirm that they had addressed the issues. That gold master candidate was dated roughly a month ago, and as far as I know represents the game's final optimization.

I'm not sure what version the OP played-ours were never labeled "Preview Code", but a print mag's Review Code is sometimes a web site's Preview Code. Our last-received version of the game does not run at a rock-solid 30 fps, but I did not consider the frame rate problems to be an issue at all. I don't mind a few frame rate dips into the 20's here and there, if it's for the purpose of making an otherwise amazing looking game. I'm certainly not as sensitive to frame rate issues as the OP, but I don't think the average game enthusiast is either.

Just something to point out to the people who want to hate on Lair here-Sony and Factor 5 went all out to make sure the print mags got review copies as early as possi...
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