Control Issues

[Guest MrNeutron]

I was at first disappointed with the Tomb Raider-like controls which I have always hated. The main fault of that game was having to be extra cautious going round corners. One's character is exposed to side attacks that one cannot see. It's a very lame situation made doubly worse by the fact that TR's controls are too awkward for effective melee combat. Jumping around flailingly while shooting? Come on. Indy aviods this mostly by not surprising you too badly, especially in the fashion I described. The shift-turn is a welcome addition too. Still there are three problems, at least in the demo: 1) When Indy comes to a stop an animation is innitiated which you must wait through. If you turn immediately after stopping this is not true, but wait a fraction of a second and you'll lose control of Indy for half a second. This is irritating! 2)The large block you move in the first room (just like in TR) requires you to line up to it just right. Why make it so difficult? Objects on the ground are too alignment sensitive as well. And then the animations could be sped up. 3) Alignment issues are compounded by the lack of side-steping. In Tomb Raider, when one wasn't quite under the correct portion of a ledge, strafing allowed them to adjust this (if painfully slowly). Indy has side-steping, per se, but it hardly seems to work! Indy will only side-step when that direction is wide open. Perhaps the demo is still buggy, but I found it impossible to side-step when it would actually be useful. There is a similar problem with jumping. Try jumping forward at a wide angle into a wall: nothing happens. It's very frustrating when the buttons seem to just stop working. 4)Forget side-stepping, it's painfully slow. Why not just have straffing? I understand that 3rd person games, un-like 1st peson games, don't like to have unrealistic movement. This implies that one can't fly in every direction like one does in Quake without momentum. Momentum in Tomb Raider means stopping animations. But surely strafing while moving forward and backward could be integrated into the animation models. It would be incredibly useful and eliminate much awkwardness. That's the thing. Such awkwardness needs to be eliminated before the genre can move forward. Honestly, before Indy, it was a genre I didn't like at all.

[Guest Thrawn]

These are still only minor problems in the game. I didn't have any problems with a limited side-step. I really never need it in the demo.

 

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"There's no need to fear, your local Grand Admiral is near!"

[Guest earl]

This is basically what all the slamming was about on Voodoo Extreme too, and I guess all the Quakers are gonna slam Indy too.

 

Thing is, Indy is (thank god) not Quake. I for one am starting to get real f****g tired of all this Quake ****. There is no difference between Quake 1 and Quake 3 in my view. It's all blastblastblast. And it was fun in Quake 1, but jesus this whole thing has gone way out of line.

 

Limited movement option is what you're complaining about. Translated into my view that means "focus on problemsolving". So what if you can't move the stone everywhere. It's not the point. The point is to solve the problems by using a combination of thinking and pure luck.

 

If you have absolute freedom and a hundred million needless actions to perform, the focus is all wrong, IMHO.

 

Like it or hate it. I love it. I loved this thing since Last Ninja on the C64.

 

This one is for the action-puzzlers in all of us. Go Indy!

 

PS: Now that Disney raped Tarzan, Indy is the only real "Jungle-hero" we have left!

 

PS2: Although I liked the Disney Tarzan..

 

 

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earl.

[Guest LOR]

I don't agree with either of you.

 

The controls are not great. I hate missing a jump because the jump animation took 4 seconds to perform. I did get stuck to walls on occasion. and I do feel that it all moves too slow.

 

However, it is not nearly as bad as tomb raider. They did lots to fix most of the problems. They made the enemies slow too, and they miss with their shots. and you don't walk off cliffs or miss with your whip or anything.

 

The controls need work, but at least they compensated by making the game a puzzle solving adventure game instead of a reflex driven button mashing game. Instant reaction from a push of the button is not necessary to completing the game.

 

I think if they fix up the controls a little, it will be an amasing game, but even if they don't, it still works.

 

-LOR

[Guest MrNeutron]

You all misinterpreted my tone. What I proposed are very specific. These are things that seemed glaring to me after completing the demo for the 4th time. Were I distracted by new material these would be undefined irritances I couldn't quite arrticulate.

Thrawn's possibly right, the slow tomb raider side-step is possibly useless here, but the addition of straffing isn't. Despite what conclusion earl leaps to, these measures would bring Indy no where near something like a FPS. I didn't complain that the stone one moves only moves in a grid, you didn't read carefully. The alignment of the block is not what concerns me, it's one's character's orientation towards it! You don't actually disagree with me, LOR! Where did I contradict you? No where I can see (unless you said "both of you" to refer to earl and Thrawn).

 

Yes, I got stuck in a jump too: before the whip-swing in the lava room, that legde you swing from, below it is a ledge with a small stepa: Indy's legs got stuck in the small step when jumping forward from the lower ledge.

 

Though pure action is to be avoided, there is a larger design issue here. Should one feel helpless when a tiny scorpion rushes at ones feet? Certainly not. Some like earl seem to think an effective control scheme would defeat the puzzle aspect. But whether action sequences are painful irritances or minor inconvieniances, it begs the question why isn't this a straight adventure game. If this really isn't an action game, than it isn't anything more than LucasArt's first adventure game in which you can die! (you remember what playing King's Quest was like don't you?) We don't want an Indy deathmatch, but without an effective combat mechanism, Indy will have no replay value. Replay value!, the curse of the adventure gamer. I thought The Dig was brilliant, but even had it been SVGA I don't think I would play it again today.

 

Man! I like to type!

[Guest CalaveraCafe]

But the Demo is not the Game.

The Demo has a few bugs in it.

and I think the controls will be alot smoother in the real Game.