Alright, i got about an hour and a half with the game last night. I went in with about medium expectations because I personally had high expectations for the game until the bad reviews started coming out. The game exceeded my medium expectations, but was not as good as I at one point thought it could be.
In general, the motion-sensing works pretty well. Alex59 says there is a 1 second delay between motion-sensing and the screen. What game did you play? At a maximum there is a quarter to a half a second delay when you do the 180 move, but everything else responds instantaneously.
Flying around is really fun. This is great implementation of motion control as seen in Wii bowling, Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3, etc. The only motion-sensing feature that particularly bothered me was the 180. You have to flip up the controller to do it. I have gotten it five times in a row, but sometimes I have to do it 3 times before I get it. You do get used to it once you learn to snap quickly, but it isn't perfect.
Fighting works pretty well. The targeting system is not anywhere as bad as I heard, and you can hit down on the D-pad to see hostiles, objectives, etc. highlighted in red, a really nice feature. You can hold L1 and R1 (I think) and hold your lock on one enemy, a must for close combat stuff. Close combat fighting against another dragon is fun (especially when you eat them for a finishing blow for more health), flying next to a dragon and slamming into them is kind of gimmicky, but it is a good change of pace and gets to be more fun once you are used to it. Killing enemies in narrower areas that require a lot of turns is more demanding, but this is how it is in any flight simulator. The motion-controls might make this maneuvering a tad more difficult, but the institution of the 180 gives you a nice edge, once you get it down. The dragon is pretty agile and the flight looks really graceful.
The graphics are pretty good, not the best I have seen or anything, but good. I was playing it on a 1080i only TV which could change things. I never really noticed much slowdown, but that may change with resolution. The levels I played (I played through 5 not counting the tutorial) are pretty well-paced. None of the objectives are overly repetitive (like I had heard), and the sheer scope of the levels is pretty awe-inspiring.
Sieanr said he hit a ton of invisible walls. I call utter bullshit. The levels are HUMONGOUS and I only hit one invisible wall the whole time I played, and I spent time exploring. The scenery is absolutely stunning, one of my favorite things about the game.
The ground combat doesn't happen that often, and it is also not as bad as I expected it to be. It is a nice break from flying to incinerate, slash, and eat the helpless fodder that are the troops on the ground. There are also some larger ground-type enemies you have to deal with too, mostly strafing them from the air.
I feel like the reviewers were too harsh with the game. I went in looking for flaws since I have heard about so many. I was having fun the entire time I played and was only particularly frustrated with one thing, the 180 move.
Even if you hated motion controls, I think this game couldn't be worse than a 7. I have played games that deserve 3's, 5's, and 6's, but I wouldn't say this is one of them. If you like the motion controls it is probably a 7.5-8.0. There are some flaws with it, but at no point was I not enjoying myself and there are quite a few things done very well, the story among them. Very politically conscious and responsive to the current world-situation we live in.
I give it at least a 7.5. Renting it wouldn't be a bad idea since apparently some people have major problems with the game. I have had far more problems with traditional control schemes in some games (Oni, I am looking at you my loved but hated game).
I gave an honest review, so please don't complain about my score. I read several reviews before playing this game and know in detail the things that bothered some of the reviewers and went out of my way to watch for them.
Edit: I forgot to mention I have played Warhawk and like Factor 5's older games, like Rogue Squadron on N64. I have never played with the Warhawk using tilt controls, but I like Warhawk a lot. Rogue Squadron was one of my favorite games on the N64, which is why I gave Lair a chance. I am not much of a flight-sim guy, but I have played a few as well as quirkier games like Pilotwings 64.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
