Sept 05 2007

It hasn't even gone on sale yet, but Lair's developer Factor 5 has already started passing the buck for why Lair was utterly panned.

Developers usually keep quiet when the shit hits the fan, so we're mildly surprised to say the least. In an interview with MTV's GameFile, director Julian Eggebrecht first announced that the whole project was cursed from the start, before excusing Lair's faults as not entirely their own. First off the bat, the fact that developing for PS3 isn't like painting by numbers.

"That is exactly the kick of creating a first-year game: exploring the not-yet-finished hardware and growing the technology while the hardware is coming together.

"I think both Rogue Leader and Lair gave a good stab at poking into the depths of the systems for such early titles, and from that you have a second-generation growth opportunity that surpasses most developers that jump onto the bandwagon later."

We're not saying that developing for new hardware isn't tricky; but "a good stab" wasn't expected from a game with so much hype or time spent in development. Sony clearly don't consider the challenging nature of the hardware to be a problem. Maybe, Eggebrecht suggests, it panned because of reviewers' conservatism. Yep, all of them.

"The Sixaxis motion control itself feels a lot more organic and free-form than the rigid controls of other flight games and does much better for casual players, as we saw in focus tests. It does seem to alienate some reviewers who are at the top of the hard-core crowd and seem to have a passionate hate for all things motion."

The killer, however, came when pressed on how often he could pull off a 180º with the much-slated vertical flick of the pad. "About eight out of 10," he revealed, before trying to justify it with, "Which is the same ratio that I get in Wii Sports tennis when I try to do a backspin."