As a request for Season 3, I think you should control Sam using the arrow keys and the mouse. And pressing a key on the keyboard that allows Sam to run, and when pressing it again it makes him walk.
Point 'n Click makes you feel more immersed in the enviroments than using a keyboard to control everything. That's where I thought Escape from Monkey Island failed.
WASD only works with the camera is in FP or TP. Any other way it could work is a 2d platformer. Anything else will destroy the game and feel claustrophobic.
I'd been playing mouse based P'n'C adventure games for so long (Sam and Max Hit the Road, Day of the Tentacle, The Dig, even Monkey Island 3) that when I finally tried out Grim Fandango or MI4 I couldn't work out why I couldn't actually move the characters, the mouse did nothing!
Eventually I did discover the keyboard controls and they really really sucked. Hence I've not finished GF or MI4 at all, because they were too hard to control.
It's only worked for Grim Fandango, but only because Manny's head was considerably larger than Guybrush's, so you could actually see when he was looking at something. With Sam & Max, it just wouldn't work. It would be clumsy and irritating, as well as being completely unnecessary.
I really would be interested to know who dared to come up with the first WASD steering in a graphical adventure. Mostly you don't move were you want to, move slower, bump into something on your way or generally move in bezier zigzags. Unless you don't add some nice guiding system it's a pain. Point&click is so much better suited for these type of games and in both MI4 and Grim Fandango it ruined a part of the gaming experience.
My guess also was that they've done it because it might be easier to implement a WASD steering when they came up with the first 3D adventures but on a second thought it shouldn't make such a difference for someone who does this for a living, more complex yes but it's also not such a big issue.
I really would be interested to know who dared to come up with the first WASD steering in a graphical adventure.
Adventure games were keyboard controlled long before they were point & click. The first one that I know of is that used keyboard controls for navigation was the original King's Quest, which came out in 1984.
Adventure games were keyboard controlled long before they were point & click. The first one that I know of is that used keyboard controls for navigation was the original King's Quest, which came out in 1984.
Very first adventure games were just like Reality 2.0 too : just text and actions you type in (perhaps some images to give you an idea of the environment but nothing else). I was not very found of these games, preferred interaction with the mouse. HtR, for example, got keyboard shortcuts for the pointer type (Get/Talk/Use...), and that was useful. But this doesn't exists anymore on the TT Samnmax so, keyboard shortcuts are less interesting. The only one I could see "useful" is the shift key that would enable Sam running when pressed.
I think the mouse control works just fine, but I do remember a nice little keyboard feature from Simon the Sorcerer 2 that might be a good addition. To reduce the amount of pixel hunting, the player could push a particular key (was it F3?) to put a little shine on all the clickable hotspots in the current scene.
Then again, that might be harder to do in 3D, and besides I don't think pixel hunting has been that much of a problem in S&M so far. Should have been mandatory for every 90's adventure game, though.
Adventure games were keyboard controlled long before they were point & click. The first one that I know of is that used keyboard controls for navigation was the original King's Quest, which came out in 1984.
Yes, but that wasn't exactly my point. What confuses me is why someone got back to this steering after we were used to point&click steering, which worked pretty well.
Yes, but that wasn't exactly my point. What confuses me is why someone got back to this steering after we were used to point&click steering, which worked pretty well.
You can still point and click drive like they made the new driving for the driving challenges that the COPS give, that and you can shoot and drive at the same time.
Hmmm there seems to be some misunderstanding as at least i was talking about the WASD steering in games like MI4 or Grim Fandango, this wasn't related to Sam&Max.
Hmmm there seems to be some misunderstanding as at least i was talking about the WASD steering in games like MI4 or Grim Fandango, this wasn't related to Sam&Max.
Edit: Looking at this with fresh eyes in the morning, it appears that I did blatantly totally miss that the first post was talking only about arrow keys. I fail! Fortunately it gave me an excuse to vomit out ill-thought-out paragraph after ill-thought-out paragraph about something I'm interested in.
Yes, but that wasn't exactly my point. What confuses me is why someone got back to this steering after we were used to point&click steering, which worked pretty well.
I think there are measurable aesthetic reasons as well as gameplay reasons to choose direct control over point and click. I think they each have their place. Grim Fandango may not have been the best example of direct control -- hampered by an unbending background art system which allowed for no camera movement and no scrolling, just cuts... and (no offense to anyone) a frequently clunky keyboard-based movement system -- but in the right situations I think there is a lot to be said for you the player directly controlling your character, instead of ordering them around as a delayed cursor.
It seems like the added immediacy and tactile responsiveness gained by having a nudge on the analog stick translate directly to moving your character (and, in realtime 3D, the camera) adds an additional layer of immersiveness that you don't get from point-and-click (and it's generally visually cleaner, as there's no cursor always flying around the screen).
Of course, the gains brought on by direct control come with a trade off in precision manipulation and, possibly, casualness of play that you get from a point and click game (which generally don't really move much unless you click on a hotspot), so, again, to me it's all really a matter of choice, and of what is appropriate for what game, more than what is absolutely correct or incorrect or outdated or modern or whatever.
I suspect it was always point and click but I couldn't really say. The first week I started was the week Mai was modeling Sam, back when Cow Race production was winding down, so when I got here production had already -- barely -- started. Also I'm the graphic designer/community guy so I have no idea how that stuff went down two-three years ago
Hmmm i really would like to understand the thoughts behind this because to me it makes no sense at all choosing WASD for a character steering in a graphical adventure beside of the shorter development time which i somehow doubt to be the reason for implementing it in games like MI4 and Grim Fandango.
I think a keyboard or WASD steering is good for everything which is more action related and were you need these 0/1 situations without any more natural analog behaviours like acceleration beeing involved. These classic things like shooting, jumping, run at a constant speed to the left, move the spaceship downwards and so on whilst it also could be fun defining the power of your spaceship gun or directly defining the power of your punch via an analog input device but that would obviously involve a different gameplay apart from those classic games too. Emulating analog like behaviour by some calculated acceleration mostly isn't as pleasing as a direct analog input device.
Anyway for everything else an analog input device seems to me better suited especially in situations like you have them in a graphical adventure were you're mostly looking at a scene which is a part of a world populated with some characters.
Example:
My character is standing on a beach (at the lower right side of the screen) and wants to enter a bar in a tree (upper left side of the screen) to which kind of a spiral stair is leading up with maybe some obstacels like drunken monkeys in between.
This is a pain to steer with WASD, so you either have to implement a nice guiding system, narrow the movement controls via some control points or change to an animation like sequence. I think all possibilities aren't great unless you want this to be an action sequence we're the goal is to try to not get hit by the some angry monkeys you bump into and make it up before they throw you down again. [But also here you could implement a handsome minigame also with a mouse steering and utalise the digital buttons or properly interpret the analog input]. I know this is kind of an extreme example but it works the same way if you're just walking around on the streets and a hydrant is in your way.
With point&click you just click we're you want to go and A* or however you implement it takes over. This is the much better direct input and just triggers the action i want the character to do.
I mean you already have the idea to enter the bar. Were is the fun steering up there on your own? Even better if i can doubleclick and instantly am right there when entering for a second time instead of watching the character walking up there over and over again, at least he should run like hell in order to speed this up. To me this more gets on my nerves instead of providing a closer character relationship.
There are game designs which completely build on the idea that you have to master a difficult steering. But i guess an adventure game shouldn't be about that.
An ideal input device should always try to execute my intention as easy and effective as possible. For adventures with actions like steering or interacting with the world (like click clack for a puzzle) i see all points speaking for point&click and zero for WASD.
But as already written WASD comes in handy for minigames which include some action aspect and it also feels kind of satisfying beeing able to hit your keys hard from time to time. It also could work well with the mouse but it thend epends in how much effort is put into a good and simple interface/steering behaviour. So far in Sam&Max i found WASD the much better option (for the car games for instance) and the mouse steering was often fungous. Especially the surfing game in 202 turned out to be no fun because of how the steering was implemented.
I really like that there are so many ex LucasArts people at TTG and i just would hope that they, from time to time, could give some insights on these almost ancient unsolved riddles.
If you're arguing strictly keyboard versus mouse, then I might agree with you, because a keyboard is, to me, a very un-nuanced method of character control unless paired with something like a mouse or control stick, but I thought this conversation was more broad, about direct versus indirect control of a character in general (eg point and click versus any input method in which your movements on the control directly map to the movements of the character). Grim Fandango, in camera-centric mode, was for many people a very funky experience because of that. A direct-control system an analog-controller with a camera that had some give to it may be very nice for an adventure game, though, (for instance see all the scenes inside the mansion in Eternal Darkness on the Gamecube) and would be a very different feeling experience from a point and click game.
I agree with what you're saying regarding WASD specifically -- only having eight directions in which to move is not something to be particularly excited about. (Grim Fandango got around this by having tank-like character-centered controls, allowing forward to always drive Manny in the direction he's facing, and using the left and right keys to just turn him slightly to one of those directions, but that control scheme isn't the most approachable in the world; nearly everyone I see pick up that game inevitably spends the first 5 minutes or so bouncing off walls and going in the wrong door, turning left when they meant to turn right.) But I think limiting the discussion to WASD vs mouse-driven point-and-click is an outdated discussion, as there are many other methods of both point and click, and of direct control, available today in the scope of gaming. I guess you are thinking entirely of PC here, which I also hadn't realized until just now.
After playing games like Ico and Prince of Persia Sands of Time and even Mario Galaxy on consoles (or, in a slightly different direction, things like the Splinter Cell and recent Hitman games), I would love to see a developer take the responsiveness and the tactile feeling you get from simply directly moving a character around in a world like that, and mesh it with the solid world/characters/storytelling/riddles of an adventure game. (In a way that is more than a series of strung together interaction-less cutscenes or story-less minigames, which is what a decent handful of high-profile console adventure games seem to be of late.) The way the above-mentioned games draw a line from your hands gripping the controller straight through the character and on into the game environment is so awesome, it makes me fail to express myself coherently. After realizing that I'd sunk a complete night into Prince of Persia Sands of Time without stopping for food or sleep, I realized that there may never be a need for virtual reality if two analog sticks, four buttons, and a bunch of well-executed interactive animation could so directly connect my desires into the action taking place on screen. It's always a bummer that in those games, which have such a cool tactile immersive feel, letting you crawl through the nooks and crannies of the game world by somehow turning the on-screen character into an extension of your brain, your only choices are basically to run someone through with a sword, shoot a dude, or squash a monster. Seeing that sort of stuff working in tandem with living, breathing characters and nestled in and around a well-built story is an undertaking outside my ability to comprehend, especially at 2am, so I'm not looking for that soon... and I might be a crazy person for even wanting such a thing... but the thought apparently keeps me up at night.
I haven't played the game you've mentioned so i can't judge this beside of pointing out that i generally think that adventures should be driven indirect unless better 3d input devices are more common and maybe it needs a better visual presentation here too.
I've enjoyed beeing in direct control in games like Ultima IX for instance but that was a different type of game and certain actions which are easy to accomplish in a point&click scenario would be a drag to accomplish there.
I don't need to run to a riddle in 3d and then execute the task as the primary fun is about getting the idea of the puzzle, the excitement if this is true and then watching what happens then. I don't see how direct control helps here with the interfaces we are used to today and as we are all more or less working with limited ressources i prefer concentrating on the core of the game.
If i like to solve puzzles, what's the best way of dealing with them with the hardware we have? This for me leads to indirect control and i really like a certain abstract gaming aspect as well that i don't always have to get to a certain point by logic - like walking a complete way from one room to the other as this is not were the fun comes out from.
That's also part of the reason why 2.5D games are often so much fun to play. They concentrate on a solid gaming aspect which makes fun whilst still offering some 3d visualisation.
*just saw that you've update your entry*
I wasn't fond of the games you've mentioned below because they took a bit from here and there but still weren't presenting/feeling convincing enough. Also an input device like the Wii controller feels too squishy and limited and needs some redesign.
I'm sure at some point it will be common interacting just with your body movements and then, again depending on how good the visualisation is, there will be much better alternatives. Swimming by making the swim moves, swinging your arm during the sword fight and so on...then it could turn into real fun but it's not here for a wider audience yet. I could imagine playing such an adventure set in a thriller like Hitchcock story but that would be a totally different adventure game then.
But again you only can hope that something like a clear game concept sticks out as otherwise we will get lost in dozens of "we can do everything"-crossovers like they are published more and more and which i personally do not enjoy so far. It seems to me that sometimes games are afraid of just beeing games anymore.
I think the controls in a game like MI4 would have been alot better is we had the option of using the mouse, I have nothing against using the keyboard to conbtrol the characters, and actually I might even like it in Sam and Max, but the option should still be open to use the mouse.
the gamepad was a good idea and the fact that a pc game is better played with a pad might imply that it was supposed to be ported to a console. at least with mi4 this actually happened..
i enjoyed playing broken sword 3, dreamfall and syberia II on an xbox controller which seemed to work very well.
broken sword 4 had a good combo of both with ability to walk with wasd and point at objects with a mouse
Broken Sword 4 shows that keyboard control can work (although I tended to use the mouse). Basically the problem with pre rendered backdrop adventures is the camera angle jumps, so if you have screen relative controls pressing a key can make you oscillate wildly on the edge of two camera angles. And slowly rotating on the spot with character relative control is just painful.
The reason it worked with BS4 was firstly by being true 3d, like Sam and Max Seasons, the camera moved smoothly, so there wasn't any issues with it jumping arround. Also, whilst the control was camera relative, the direction then locked, so pressing up would start you moving away from the camera, but you continue walking in the same (compass) direction no matter what the camera did. So it actually worked really well, but still IMHO not as well as the mouse.
Direct character controls can increase immersion a lot, but it just doesn't mix with an uncontrollable camera. For direct controls to shine, you need a full 360° 3D environment and either a chase cam or one that can be freely rotated around the character.
Of course moving to true 3D and direct controls changes the whole feeling of a game. It also changes the target audience somewhat, as some people play specifically for the old school point & click feeling, and yet others have orientation problems in a full 3D world.
I'm gonna have to backup the idea of being able to select dialogs with the keyboard. I feel this is the feature that I always missed.
When I play a point & click with a lot of audio dialogs, I just don't bother holding my mouse with my hand while I'm listening to them, so I find it much easier and smoother to queue the next piece of dialog with my keyboard. It's kind of a shame that you don't see this feature often outside of the Scummvm games spectrum.
Other than that, I think the gameplay of the series is pretty nice. You kept it simple and it works great in a storytelling way compared to older point & clicks, if that makes any sense. For some reasons, it often makes me think about the one from Blade Runner.
As for the WASD control of Sam, it'd be obviously pretty awkward to play. I don't know about Grim Fandango, but I guess the idea behind the MI4 controls was to make it more enjoyable for console players.
Comments
Eventually I did discover the keyboard controls and they really really sucked. Hence I've not finished GF or MI4 at all, because they were too hard to control.
It's not difficult to program in since they were able to give us keyboard controls for the Desoto.
But that said, all the reasons above my post are good enough reasons why not to give keyboard controls to Sam.
My guess also was that they've done it because it might be easier to implement a WASD steering when they came up with the first 3D adventures but on a second thought it shouldn't make such a difference for someone who does this for a living, more complex yes but it's also not such a big issue.
Adventure games were keyboard controlled long before they were point & click. The first one that I know of is that used keyboard controls for navigation was the original King's Quest, which came out in 1984.
Very first adventure games were just like Reality 2.0 too : just text and actions you type in (perhaps some images to give you an idea of the environment but nothing else). I was not very found of these games, preferred interaction with the mouse. HtR, for example, got keyboard shortcuts for the pointer type (Get/Talk/Use...), and that was useful. But this doesn't exists anymore on the TT Samnmax so, keyboard shortcuts are less interesting. The only one I could see "useful" is the shift key that would enable Sam running when pressed.
Then again, that might be harder to do in 3D, and besides I don't think pixel hunting has been that much of a problem in S&M so far. Should have been mandatory for every 90's adventure game, though.
Yes, but that wasn't exactly my point. What confuses me is why someone got back to this steering after we were used to point&click steering, which worked pretty well.
You can still point and click drive like they made the new driving for the driving challenges that the COPS give, that and you can shoot and drive at the same time.
in mokey island IV it was pure torture
Oh....
I think there are measurable aesthetic reasons as well as gameplay reasons to choose direct control over point and click. I think they each have their place. Grim Fandango may not have been the best example of direct control -- hampered by an unbending background art system which allowed for no camera movement and no scrolling, just cuts... and (no offense to anyone) a frequently clunky keyboard-based movement system -- but in the right situations I think there is a lot to be said for you the player directly controlling your character, instead of ordering them around as a delayed cursor.
It seems like the added immediacy and tactile responsiveness gained by having a nudge on the analog stick translate directly to moving your character (and, in realtime 3D, the camera) adds an additional layer of immersiveness that you don't get from point-and-click (and it's generally visually cleaner, as there's no cursor always flying around the screen).
Of course, the gains brought on by direct control come with a trade off in precision manipulation and, possibly, casualness of play that you get from a point and click game (which generally don't really move much unless you click on a hotspot), so, again, to me it's all really a matter of choice, and of what is appropriate for what game, more than what is absolutely correct or incorrect or outdated or modern or whatever.
Hmmm i really would like to understand the thoughts behind this because to me it makes no sense at all choosing WASD for a character steering in a graphical adventure beside of the shorter development time which i somehow doubt to be the reason for implementing it in games like MI4 and Grim Fandango.
I think a keyboard or WASD steering is good for everything which is more action related and were you need these 0/1 situations without any more natural analog behaviours like acceleration beeing involved. These classic things like shooting, jumping, run at a constant speed to the left, move the spaceship downwards and so on whilst it also could be fun defining the power of your spaceship gun or directly defining the power of your punch via an analog input device but that would obviously involve a different gameplay apart from those classic games too. Emulating analog like behaviour by some calculated acceleration mostly isn't as pleasing as a direct analog input device.
Anyway for everything else an analog input device seems to me better suited especially in situations like you have them in a graphical adventure were you're mostly looking at a scene which is a part of a world populated with some characters.
Example:
My character is standing on a beach (at the lower right side of the screen) and wants to enter a bar in a tree (upper left side of the screen) to which kind of a spiral stair is leading up with maybe some obstacels like drunken monkeys in between.
This is a pain to steer with WASD, so you either have to implement a nice guiding system, narrow the movement controls via some control points or change to an animation like sequence. I think all possibilities aren't great unless you want this to be an action sequence we're the goal is to try to not get hit by the some angry monkeys you bump into and make it up before they throw you down again. [But also here you could implement a handsome minigame also with a mouse steering and utalise the digital buttons or properly interpret the analog input]. I know this is kind of an extreme example but it works the same way if you're just walking around on the streets and a hydrant is in your way.
With point&click you just click we're you want to go and A* or however you implement it takes over. This is the much better direct input and just triggers the action i want the character to do.
I mean you already have the idea to enter the bar. Were is the fun steering up there on your own? Even better if i can doubleclick and instantly am right there when entering for a second time instead of watching the character walking up there over and over again, at least he should run like hell in order to speed this up. To me this more gets on my nerves instead of providing a closer character relationship.
There are game designs which completely build on the idea that you have to master a difficult steering. But i guess an adventure game shouldn't be about that.
An ideal input device should always try to execute my intention as easy and effective as possible. For adventures with actions like steering or interacting with the world (like click clack for a puzzle) i see all points speaking for point&click and zero for WASD.
But as already written WASD comes in handy for minigames which include some action aspect and it also feels kind of satisfying beeing able to hit your keys hard from time to time. It also could work well with the mouse but it thend epends in how much effort is put into a good and simple interface/steering behaviour. So far in Sam&Max i found WASD the much better option (for the car games for instance) and the mouse steering was often fungous. Especially the surfing game in 202 turned out to be no fun because of how the steering was implemented.
I really like that there are so many ex LucasArts people at TTG and i just would hope that they, from time to time, could give some insights on these almost ancient unsolved riddles.
I agree with what you're saying regarding WASD specifically -- only having eight directions in which to move is not something to be particularly excited about. (Grim Fandango got around this by having tank-like character-centered controls, allowing forward to always drive Manny in the direction he's facing, and using the left and right keys to just turn him slightly to one of those directions, but that control scheme isn't the most approachable in the world; nearly everyone I see pick up that game inevitably spends the first 5 minutes or so bouncing off walls and going in the wrong door, turning left when they meant to turn right.) But I think limiting the discussion to WASD vs mouse-driven point-and-click is an outdated discussion, as there are many other methods of both point and click, and of direct control, available today in the scope of gaming. I guess you are thinking entirely of PC here, which I also hadn't realized until just now.
After playing games like Ico and Prince of Persia Sands of Time and even Mario Galaxy on consoles (or, in a slightly different direction, things like the Splinter Cell and recent Hitman games), I would love to see a developer take the responsiveness and the tactile feeling you get from simply directly moving a character around in a world like that, and mesh it with the solid world/characters/storytelling/riddles of an adventure game. (In a way that is more than a series of strung together interaction-less cutscenes or story-less minigames, which is what a decent handful of high-profile console adventure games seem to be of late.) The way the above-mentioned games draw a line from your hands gripping the controller straight through the character and on into the game environment is so awesome, it makes me fail to express myself coherently. After realizing that I'd sunk a complete night into Prince of Persia Sands of Time without stopping for food or sleep, I realized that there may never be a need for virtual reality if two analog sticks, four buttons, and a bunch of well-executed interactive animation could so directly connect my desires into the action taking place on screen. It's always a bummer that in those games, which have such a cool tactile immersive feel, letting you crawl through the nooks and crannies of the game world by somehow turning the on-screen character into an extension of your brain, your only choices are basically to run someone through with a sword, shoot a dude, or squash a monster. Seeing that sort of stuff working in tandem with living, breathing characters and nestled in and around a well-built story is an undertaking outside my ability to comprehend, especially at 2am, so I'm not looking for that soon... and I might be a crazy person for even wanting such a thing... but the thought apparently keeps me up at night.
Anyway, just my opinion
I've enjoyed beeing in direct control in games like Ultima IX for instance but that was a different type of game and certain actions which are easy to accomplish in a point&click scenario would be a drag to accomplish there.
I don't need to run to a riddle in 3d and then execute the task as the primary fun is about getting the idea of the puzzle, the excitement if this is true and then watching what happens then. I don't see how direct control helps here with the interfaces we are used to today and as we are all more or less working with limited ressources i prefer concentrating on the core of the game.
If i like to solve puzzles, what's the best way of dealing with them with the hardware we have? This for me leads to indirect control and i really like a certain abstract gaming aspect as well that i don't always have to get to a certain point by logic - like walking a complete way from one room to the other as this is not were the fun comes out from.
That's also part of the reason why 2.5D games are often so much fun to play. They concentrate on a solid gaming aspect which makes fun whilst still offering some 3d visualisation.
*just saw that you've update your entry*
I wasn't fond of the games you've mentioned below because they took a bit from here and there but still weren't presenting/feeling convincing enough. Also an input device like the Wii controller feels too squishy and limited and needs some redesign.
I'm sure at some point it will be common interacting just with your body movements and then, again depending on how good the visualisation is, there will be much better alternatives. Swimming by making the swim moves, swinging your arm during the sword fight and so on...then it could turn into real fun but it's not here for a wider audience yet. I could imagine playing such an adventure set in a thriller like Hitchcock story but that would be a totally different adventure game then.
But again you only can hope that something like a clear game concept sticks out as otherwise we will get lost in dozens of "we can do everything"-crossovers like they are published more and more and which i personally do not enjoy so far. It seems to me that sometimes games are afraid of just beeing games anymore.
I didn't use the keyboard for that game. I got myself a game pad!
broken sword 4 had a good combo of both with ability to walk with wasd and point at objects with a mouse
I think you just did.
The reason it worked with BS4 was firstly by being true 3d, like Sam and Max Seasons, the camera moved smoothly, so there wasn't any issues with it jumping arround. Also, whilst the control was camera relative, the direction then locked, so pressing up would start you moving away from the camera, but you continue walking in the same (compass) direction no matter what the camera did. So it actually worked really well, but still IMHO not as well as the mouse.
like numbers for every sentence
dont we keyboard/mouse combination for the minigames in season 2???
Cheers,
- Don [:-]
Of course moving to true 3D and direct controls changes the whole feeling of a game. It also changes the target audience somewhat, as some people play specifically for the old school point & click feeling, and yet others have orientation problems in a full 3D world.
When I play a point & click with a lot of audio dialogs, I just don't bother holding my mouse with my hand while I'm listening to them, so I find it much easier and smoother to queue the next piece of dialog with my keyboard. It's kind of a shame that you don't see this feature often outside of the Scummvm games spectrum.
Other than that, I think the gameplay of the series is pretty nice. You kept it simple and it works great in a storytelling way compared to older point & clicks, if that makes any sense. For some reasons, it often makes me think about the one from Blade Runner.
As for the WASD control of Sam, it'd be obviously pretty awkward to play. I don't know about Grim Fandango, but I guess the idea behind the MI4 controls was to make it more enjoyable for console players.