So I rented Lair, the subject of mostly horrendous reviews and the mockery of many lately and I started playing it.

I'm still early in the game, but my impressions are as follows:

- The controls are not as bad as was complained about. The reason I rented the game was if the controls were horrible I would probably hate it, so I didn't wanna drop money on it. Totally exaggerated control problems. Yes, you can only use motion controls and yes they are definitely not perfect. There are occasions when the 180 degree turn fail and it's annoying but a far cry from the reviews which made the game sound unplayable.  The motion controls are so easy, you can literally play the game with one hand (this is not an exaggeration as I tried that and it worked).

- My complaints are actually about other stuff in the game.  

1. Too many short cut scenes after short play sequences. They completely kill the momentum of the game and are overdone. Every time a new objective comes in, they show some set of enemies come in and it's not necessary.

2. The flight combat is unsatisfactory. It plays more like Jet fighters (or X Wings) than dragons in the actual combat aspect which is disappointing, they should have done it differently. You don't breathe fire, you shoot it. It's more like ammunition and you shoot it non stop. Not very dragonlike and makes it feel like a weird dragon/jet combat system. I don't like it basically.  Not too fun either for the most part.

3. The ground combat. Too simple, very button mashy. You run around mashing the swipe or fire button and annihilate lots of guys. If you like Dynasty Warriors or any of those games you might like it, but for me it's not very good.

4. A complaint I didn't expect to be making is about how the game looks. For the most part it looks great, but then there are some things that look very sub par, certain explosions or people or a mountain or something. The reason this stands out more is because everythng else looks so great that these things not looking as good sticks out. Also, overall I expected it to look better than it does, it looks good but not as good as I expected. Before playing this I thought Lair was the best looking PS3 game, now I think Heavenly Sword is the best looking so far (till UT and Ratchet and others later).

5. Game definitely needs radar. 

- The positives (outside of ones mentioned):

1. Up close combat adds fun to the game and makes it more interesting and overall is pretty good (in air up close combat not ground)

2. There is the fun of riding around on a dragon and carrying off bulls and rhinos off the battlefield and throwing them in the ocean and other cool stuff like that. I mean the game is built around a cool idea that already makes it more interesting, especially with the visual and musical quality.

3. The music is amazing. Some of the best game music really, more games should put more emphasis on music like this game and some others do.

Thos are pretty much my impressions. I think I'll continue till I finish the game, unless it gets really annoying somewhere or something. But yeah, definitely a rental not a purchase for me so far. Lair money is going to go towards Forza now :)

Nice, thanks for those!

What about frame rate, that annoyed the hell out of me.

motion controls are fine, not great but playable.

Yeah thanks for the impressions. They should come out with a demo and let the people decide instead of all these tactics about how to play the game and bad mouthing. It is just tough to spend $60 on a game that has gotten so many bad reviews as without renting or a demo is tough to judge for yourself.

There are frame rate drops but nothing to ruin the game so far. I've seen much worse, these are not a big deal to me and not a big factor.

the drop is not as bad as Odin Sphere was during a boss.

 Not great but playable?  Sorry to nitpick, but that's the definition of bad controls.  Next to gameplay controls are one of the most important aspects of a game.  If they aren't spot on, they ruin everything for the game.

 There's almost no game with 100 percent spot on controls. Metroid Prime 3 controls have their problems too.

Well, ckmlb, that's exactly why the Wii can't play games as good as the other consoles. The controls don't allow it to.

 Ok, so spot on wasn't the greatest choice of words but you knew what I meant. Control scheme is probably the number two most important thing next to gameplay (and once again, generalization here).  If there's a major control part that doesn't quite feel right you've got a problem.  I still stand by my not great but playable is bad statement though.