There's been a lot of negative press surrounding Lair - and I'm here to tell you to just ignore it all. I'm not quite sure why so many reviewers have taken such a strong dislike to the game and described its control system as broken and unplayable, because not only is it a great system, but it's nothing short of revolutionary; never before has a control scheme felt so tangible and realistic. With astonishing visuals the likes of which you've never seen before and an epic scale conflict that can involve thousands of troops at once, Lair is a definitive PS3 release that demands to be experienced by everyone.

Our story begins in an ancient realm populated by dragons and gargantuan beasts such as mile-long sea serpents, building-sized wasps and enormous, floating manta rays. Long ago there was an era of peace, but the awakening of many volcanoes spread fear among the people as their civilisation was devastated, dividing their religious views and splitting them into two factions, the Mokai in the icy north and the Asylians in the mountainous south. As an Asylian dragon rider named Rohn, it's your job to help protect your realm from Mokai attack - and after a brief training exercise where you take to the skies and familiarise yourself with the controls you're thrust straight into the midst of the most graphically spectacular and atmospheric battle you've ever seen... that is until you get to the next mission!

As I played through Lair's fourteen chapters, I was simply bowled over by the scale of the action and the setting, and by the way the game consistently manages to upstage itself. Just when you think it simply can't get any better or more spectacular, it does, and just when you think you've seen it all and it can't get any better, a new environment is presented that's even more jaw dropping than the last (like the penultimate level set in the midst of a giant storm with an asteroid belt of flying boulders!) On a regular TV the graphics can look a little bit grainy at times (although they're still amazing) but on a decent HD set you simply won't believe your eyes. The landscape is brimming with detail everywhere you look, from the photo quality skies to the incredibly fluid and realistic looking water, which the developers show off in many levels to allow for plenty of sea-based combat. The architectural designs of the Mokai and Asylian steam-powered technology and grand cities are equally as stunning, with intricate attention to detail on every single building throughout the sweeping cityscapes. Your journey will take you from your home of Asylia to stormy seas, through barren wastelands, on a night assault of a massive cliff top temple and to the icy lands of the Mokai themselves, whose main city is just as stunning to fly over as your own. Then there are the dragons, fearsome looking armoured beasts that shoot volleys of fireballs in rapid succession; their animation is outstanding, their wings flapping realistically in the breeze and their flight looking fluid and natural, dozens of them appearing on-screen without even a hint of slowdown.

Dragons aren't the only thing to worry about though - on the land there are full battalions of foot soldiers who will decimate your ground troops if you don't take them out quickly, often accompanied by charging rhino-like creatures and huge beasts reminiscent of the oliphants from Lord of the Rings, complete with platforms upon their backs that house steam-powered rapid fire cannons, bombarding your with a stream of dangerous projectiles as soon as you get close. At sea you'll often be skimming low over the waves to take out half a dozen or more beautifully rendered galleons of impressive design, their sails furling in the wind as their on-board catapults launch a deadly assault on your ground troops and defensive perimeter. Back on land, there are often tower-mounted ballista and rows of catapults that you must destroy before they can lay waste to your forces, including your airborne mantas, creatures many times the size of your dragons that carry lethal explosives to rain down on the enemy.

The combined result of all this can be seen even in the opening level, although the further you progress, the larger and more impressive the battles become. As you soar through the sky the war rages all around you, with friendly and enemy dragons swooping in from all directions, fireballs whizzing past you as ballista shots explode in a crackle of smoke and scattered shrapnel, the cries of ground troops audible in the distance as their catapults launch yet more flaming shots in your direction. The resultant atmosphere is like nothing you've ever experienced; you truly feel as though you are in the midst of an intense and epic scale war, where your skills and prowess as a dragon rider are the only hope that the tide might turn in your favour.

Turning that tide isn't a walkover though - while you're manoeuvrable and heavily armoured, the sheer volume of enemies can sometimes overwhelm you, although you're more likely to fail a mission due to running out of time and failing to destroy a certain threat before it wipes out too many of your forces. The gameplay is intense and based around the quick completion of objectives; while you have the freedom to fly wherever you want and attack whatever you like, if you don't listen to the cries of your fellow troops and the instructions they give then you're likely to end up losing. In a nutshell, this is Ace Combat meets Lord of the Rings - you spend the entire game mounted upon your dragon's back and you're given a series of time sensitive objectives to achieve before the enemy can do too much damage to your own forces. Flying around is immensely satisfying, swooping down and locking onto a galleon before launching a barrage of fireballs that cause it to explode in spectacular fashion as you glide through the flaming wreckage and out the other side to target the next boat (sorry for the repeated use of that word but the whole game really is spectacular!) In the air you can lock onto enemy dragons or just head towards a small group of them and let your aiming assist pick your targets for you, watching as they fall one by one out of the air with a screech, plummeting towards the ground, their wings folded and broken. Those mantas are amazing when they die too, exploding in a massive shower of blood with a lingering, booming groan. You can even swoop in and lift horses and catapults into the sky, then launch them at other ground-based enemies, a handy white glowing area making it easy to aim - and later on you get to go on bombing runs, blowing up enemy structures and eventually decimating a whole city.

While this would all be very enjoyable with a traditional control scheme, there is no doubt in my mind that the revolutionary use of the SIXAXIS controller's motion sensor to control your dragon makes it easier and more intuitive, as well as far more immersing. The basic controls are very simple and extremely responsive; simply tilt the controller left or right to steer (the steeper the tilt, the steeper your turn) and tilting it back and forward similarly allow you to rise and dive. L1 and R1 are used to lock onto targets, something that I gather some people had a problem with; while it's true that you can't select your target and have to wait for a white shimmering effect to appear before you can get the lock, I found the game to be very intuitive for selecting the target you want. It generally selects whatever is in your direct line of sight, while in a horde of ground troops a charging rhino is automatically targeted rather than the individual men. Once you press the button and lock on, all your fireballs (and you can pummel the fire button to send out a barrage of dozens in a few seconds) head straight towards the target, as does your dragon.

This is an area where perhaps people might struggle a little at first, as you might be heading straight for a large galleon only to end up automatically flying around it in a fast circle where your fireballs aren't quite making contact. However, while locked on you must remember to continue steering your dragon, dodging incoming enemy fire as you circle around at an angle that allows you to get the shots in. An extremely handy feature that must not be underestimated is the use of L2 and R2 to brake, billowing your wings out to slow your dragon down to a crawl or even stop and hover, allowing you to get your bearings and veer around again if you've just missed a target and need to come back in for another run. This does make you more vulnerable to enemy fire, but if you only take a few seconds to complete the manoeuvre then you should get away with it.

The only problems I really had with the controls were pulling off a 180 degree turn, something that is particularly important in the heat of battle - often I would perform a speed dash forwards instead, causing me to fly even further from my intended target and costing me precious seconds. Circling around isn't tricky, but the 180 is much quicker and while I got the hang of it in the end, a different motion to pull this move off would have been preferable, as getting these two mixed up is less than ideal when you're really up against it.

As for the camera itself, while you can use the right thumbstick to control it, my advice is to just forget about this altogether and concentrate on flying. As you steer your dragon you're steering the camera too, which stays behind you unless you're locked onto a target and circling around. If you try to steer the camera like you would in a traditional flight-based shooter then you'll end up in a lot of trouble, with it jerking around all over the place and causing confusion and frustration - unless you want to take a look at the scenery or have a quick glance to the side of you to look for enemies, there's simply no need to ever alter the camera using the right analogue stick, because it follows you around in a consistent and helpful manner as you guide your winged beast through the skies, blasting your enemies into oblivion.

There's a lot more to the gameplay than just shooting though; you can pull off some supremely cool melee moves in Lair. Lock onto an enemy dragon and when you get close enough you can hit Circle to scream in for a direct assault, which will either knock them straight out of the sky or result in one of three types of battle. The first is a fight, which you initiate by pressing triangle - the view then switches to side on as you and the enemy dragon begin to freefall, the scenery all around you blurring. This is like a mini beat 'em up, where you block your enemy's attacks and follow up with a flame attack or a combination of strikes and bites, with a number of combo moves available to unlock as you progress. The second possibility is ending up to the side of the enemy, then you and your opponent barrel roll at each other until one of you is knocked down. The final and coolest possibility is the takedown (if you see this flash up on the screen then hit Triangle immediately!) There are many animations for this - sometimes you might use your extendable claw on a chain to whip down, hook the enemy rider and pull them from their seat, flinging them off into the ether. Other times you might leap from your dragon and land on your enemy's, viciously impaling him before jumping into oblivion and being caught by your faithful flying companion. These moves look super cool and are fun to perform, with prompts for movements and button presses on your controller flashing up as you watch the action from cinematic camera angles, God of War style.

It's not just all about the skies either; the first time you land your dragon and charge on your hind legs (T-Rex style) through a battalion of foot soldiers, charring them with your fiery breath, smashing them flying with your front talons and tail and even eating a few of them, you will grin with delight! You're so powerful compared to those puny little men that they don't stand a chance and you can easily lay waste to one hundred in under a minute. Sometimes you might be required to land on a piece of equipment, like a steam generator; your dragon grips onto it and then rips it to pieces, controlled by you vigorously shaking your controller up and down as you watch its energy bar quickly tumble from green to yellow to red and then nothingness. The same move is needed for the heavily armoured rhino beasts too; once you get close you swoop right in, land on their heads and take them out. You can even strafe past the huge beasts with the cannons on their backs and latch your extendable claw on to pull their legs from under them, just like Luke Skywalker and the AT-AT on the ice planet of Hoth!

Speaking of Star Wars, while the full orchestral score is rousing and enhances the atmosphere very well, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. Although the orchestra itself does a fantastic job, the score never really establishes strong recurring themes that you can latch onto and in some places it sounds so much like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and even Harry Potter that I couldn't help but chuckle. The writer of these pieces has done an admirable job, but he's not in the same league as greats like Howard Shore and John Williams, and in attempting to emulate their styles you can't help but feel that he never quite managed to compose something that's truly his own. This is a minor nitpick though, because the music is dramatic and evocative in all the right places, adding to the celebration of victory and the desperation of the situation when things don't go your way.

The rest of the sound is truly excellent; the explosions sound wonderful, you can hear the roars of every dragon, the sound of fireballs whooshing past your ears and the crash when they impact, as well as a cacophony of cries of wounded and dying men. The voice acting is wonderful too. There are no cheesy attempts at English accents here; each character really sounds the part and it's very easy to take the story seriously and care about the people who are caught up in its events. It's also one of the most intelligent and well-scripted tales I've come across in a game in years; the history of your civilisation is quickly established and the motives of each main player are clear and believable. The concept of a religious war is handled very well and the story moves at a good pace - then about halfway through there's a massive and largely unexpected twist that turns everything on its head and puts a whole new slant on events. While there are hints at what's coming, the scale of it all is beautifully realised and very compelling, played out with stunning CGI cut scenes featuring characters that are close to the realism of the Final Fantasy movie Spirits Within, as well as some of the most stunning locales and atmospheric lighting effects I've ever come across. It's just a shame that the cut scenes rendered using the in-game engine are juddery when the camera scrolls around; you do get used to it but it slightly spoils the immersion factor. This one bit of tarnish aside, the story is utterly compelling; rather than just providing an excuse for flying around destroying enemies, it drives the narrative forwards and makes the reasons for each part of the conflict clear, motivating you to play on just because you're eager to discover what happens next.

Unfortunately, this desire to see the story unfold leads to Lair's only real downside - its length. The fourteen chapters are huge and the battles are immense (in fact if the game was too much longer then it might have dragged), but with an emphasis on completing objectives in a timely fashion you'll get through it fairly quickly and the end credits will be rolling before you know it. I completed most of the missions on my first or second attempt, with a handful of them requiring no more than five goes to get them right. The learning curve in each mission can be a little unforgiving; it's sometimes hard to get your bearings and figure out exactly where to go, although you're never unclear as to what you should be doing as a press of the right thumbstick brings up your current objectives, while your allies regularly yell that something needs destroying or protecting as a matter of urgency. Even when you do know what you're doing though, in certain missions there are multiple fronts and you'll feel a bit overwhelmed. The lack of a radar doesn't help (although in a fantasy setting it would be ridiculous to have one!) but you do have an arrow in the top right hand corner that points you in the right general direction most of the time, which I guess represents the fact that Rohn knows where he needs to go! Overall though I feel that the difficulty is pitched just right - there is a small margin for error but if you don't get on with it and deal with each threat as it presents itself then your forces will be defeated, which is realistic and fits in well with the setting.

Once you've completed the game there are medals to earn for each mission - and getting the gold in each is very challenging indeed, with requirements including a target time, not losing any lives (you can die three times in a level before you have to replay the mission), a limit on the number of friendly units you can lose and specials like saving a certain number of mantas or ships for example, plus your total Carnage score. You get points for everything you destroy, which at first seems a bit jarring and the only real reminder that you're playing a game. Soon however you're enjoying watching your score rise and making strategic use of your rage attacks, available after you fill your rage meter by defeating enemies, which slightly slow down the action while amplifying the damage you do and adding a multiplier for every enemy you kill for a short period. There are online leaderboards too and extra dragons and combo moves to unlock, but really your main incentive to come back and get the golds is just to experience the majesty of the game all over again and attempt to perfect your performance. Once you're done, there's also a collection of trailers and concept art to view, along with developer commentary and a place to listen to the 50+ music tracks in the game, among other thoughtful extras.

Lair is a roaring triumph of a game that's blasted onto the PS3 to show us all just what the hardware is capable of. Harnessing the graphical prowess of Sony's powerhouse more than any other title, it's fair to say that you've never seen graphics this amazing on a console before, while the scale of the battles are literally like playing the biggest conflicts from the Lord of the Rings movies, with thousands of troops involved - the fact that there's never even a hint of slowdown makes it an even more impressive feat. The much maligned control scheme is revolutionary too - never has it felt more like you're actually controlling an in-game avatar (and it's a dragon!) - even if it does take a bit of getting used to (personally I felt totally at home quickly and was enjoying the experience within fifteen minutes), perseverance will reveal just how engaging and intuitive this method of control actually is. Just don't try to steer the camera as well and you'll be fine - the game does a great job of following your dragon so let it do its thing and leave it be! Atmospheric, sweeping and epic, Lair is unlike anything I've experienced before and if this is a hint of things to come then my excitement about the future of gaming just went through the roof and into orbit!

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).