Dharma Bum

Two games are coming out next week for the PS3 that have had a little trouble getting off the ground, despite being aerial combat simulators. Both of them were supposed to be ready in 2006, both of them have had huge cuts made to their staff, and both have been hyped to heights that, unfortunately, they can’t possibly reach. The killing blow for either of them becoming a break out hit?

They’re essentially the same game.

With Madden NFL 08 surrounded by controversy due to EA working harder on the 360 version than the PS3 version, August has been a very slow month for Sony. Fortunately, two of its biggest games are going to arrive at the ass end of the month, Lair and Warhawk.

Way back in the day, before the PS3 launch and slightly after I figured out people would pay me for bitching about videogames, our very own Joe Crowe suggested that I review Lair. It was, at the time, expected to be a launch title. It seemed like a really cool concept for a videogame, and he’d liked the early screen shots.

You are a dragon rider, fighting for your nation against a horde of rebels and barbaric indiginous people, raining down fire and razor sharp talons on the ground and air forces of your enemies. As time goes on, the main character feels his heart strings being plucked, and calls his allegiance into question.

Due to any number of mystery factors, the game was delayed nearly a year.

Factor 5, the developer, was previously famous for doing a lot of Star Wars themed ship to ship combat games for the Nintendo 64 and GameCube, and those games were no doubt pushing the boundaries of what could be included in a game for those systems considering their capabilities. They defected from Nintendo to Sony, citing that they were very disappointed that Nintendo didn’t turn up the notch on the processor and graphics power of the Wii.

They may now be cursing themselves for making the move. It is speculated, and I stress speculated, that the difficulty in programming for Sony’s console is what delayed Lair so heavily, as it was supposed to be a killer app (a game released during a console’s initial launch specifically to help boost hardware AND software sales, a la Halo or a new Mario game). If this is true, its very unfortunate, both for Sony and for Factor 5.

While Lair’s development cycle was merely unfortunate, Warhawk is something of a Greek tragedy. The original Warhawk came out nearly a decade ago for the original Playstation, and inspired a special controller that used both motion sensitive controls and had a rumble feature. While the motion sensitive controls are now standard, the rumble feature has been removed from the PS3’s controller schematic to cut costs on production. This is a very minor annoyance when you take into consideration that, while Lair will have a somewhat deep storyline, Warhawk is only multiplayer.

Last year, a full single player campaign was finished and ready to be implemented into the game. The developer, Incognito, later released a quiet trickle of information that they had cut the single player campaign out completely, and were scrapping development. Whether this was the fault of the developer or the fault of, again, developing for Sony’s console, was never really found. Just a bunch of vague, diplomatic answers that implicated no one.

Eventually, the Sony community got their torches and pitchforks, prompting Incognito to admit that the game was moving towards an exclusively multiplayer type of play. This was either a bold or desperate move, as no exclusively multiplayer game has ever sold well on a console – unless it was a fighting game like Tekken.

Rumors started flying left and right about the nature of Warhawk. There was much rejoicing when a Digg article implicated that Warhawk would be a Playstation Store exclusive, meaning there would be no disc to buy or worry about, you’d simply download the game onto your console’s hard drive. This also meant that the game couldn’t be more than $20, which would be reasonable considering the lack of single player. This later proved to be false, and fans were disappointed to learn that they, indeed, would be buying an entire $60 disc.

So, on the 28th, we have a game about a flying dragon roasting enemies from high above and a game about an experimental jet fighter bombing enemies from high above. To add insult to their injuries, their controls are exactly the same. Pitch and yaw are managed by tilting the control, while firing and activating special events are held on the buttons.

These two companies could not possibly have chosen a worse month to come out with their long delayed games, as they’re now competing with eachother, instead of the 360 titles. I hope I’m proven wrong because I really respect both developers, but I think that Warhawk is going to completely flop due to steadily waning interest since the single player campaign was cut, and Lair will have only modest success, not worthy of the effort Factor 5 had to put into the game. The relatively small PS3 install base may also hurt.

A year long delay is absolutely nothing to sneeze at in terms of production costs, and positive press is really hard to keep a hold of in the gaming industry considering all the yellow journalism. It will be very interesting keeping an eye on the numbers, since, regardless of the games’ quality, PS3 owners don’t really have anything else to buy this month. Not only that, I could be completely wrong about both titles simply because Sony fanboys have been waiting for these games so long, they committed to buying them last November.

I wish all the best for Factor 5 and Incognito. They certainly put their time in and deserve credit for all their hard work, whether or not it would have been easier working on other consoles.