Lair would have made a fantastic launch title for the PS3. The beautiful visuals, while marred with weird pop-in details and occasionally herky-jerky animation, are a nice showcase for what the console can do, and the crummy controls would have been more excusable back when we were too excited about the Sixaxis' potential to care. But now, there's just no good reason to spend money on this, unless you're really into dragons, and also frustration. Warhawk offers a much more enjoyable flight-combat experience (not to mention multiplayer action, which Lair doesn't have), and better games - like Ratchet & Clank Future and Uncharted - are just around the corner.

It's a pity, though - Lair does feature some awesome set-pieces with dazzling visuals. The seaside battle against a fortress covered by giant stone heads is awesome while it lasts, and the game's single stealth level - where you'll have to dodge searchlights at night as you try to find and disable the enemy's defenses - has a haunting beauty to it, thanks largely to the choral music that plays as you swoop through. In the end, though, awesome graphics and pretty music just aren't enough to rescue Lair from its deeply flawed design.