How many games have themes of dragons? Tons. How many games allow you to control a dragon using a wireless tilt motion sensing controller? One, the upcoming Factor 5 title for PlayStation 3, Lair. Factor 5 has experience in flying action games with Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, but Lair is looking to topple any success that Rogue Squadron may have had.

Instead of controlling the actual dragon, you now control the dragon rider. The dragon rider, an Asylian warrior, attempts to assist his allies to defeat their enemies, the Mokal. The dragon can be used in air vs. air, air vs. ground, or ground vs. ground combat. It’s even possible to hop off your dragon on to a foe’s dragon and engage in melee combat with the opposing rider. The majority of information about Lair presently is from the playable demo that was available at Tokyo Game Show 06. The demo had two different stages, a tutorial and a segment of a massive bridge battle with thousands of ground soldiers and other flying foes present.

Lair is a shaping up to be a very innovative game, mostly for its use of the tilt feature of the SIXAXIS controller. Tilt plays a role in the actual flying aspect of the game (tilt left or right to change direction, tilt up or down to change altitude) and also in combat. While flying, combat at this stage of the development, has a lock on system comparable to previous flying games. When you lock on to airborne enemies you’re presented with two options, shoot fireballs at your targets or dive in closer to engage in airborne melee combat. While engaged in melee dragon vs. dragon combat, you can use the tilt actions of the controller to ram into the opposing dragon. Next, your dragon locks claw’s with the enemies and they begin to battle. At this stage you are able to perform different combos using the face buttons to deal damage to your foe. Finally you are presented the opportunity to perform the finishing blow which has a variety of actions, one of which being jumping off your dragon and onto the enemy's to take out to pilot with hand to hand combat.