I am a bit confused by your question. You know the answer to that already, and it's been answered many times in the thread anyways :) No animator or art director aims for uncanny animation really. It's just unfortunate when it happens ... As for the PS2 examples, I think what saves them to an extent is the voice acting.…
Sounds like an easy job to do with Maxscript... a one-click light switcher. I bet there's something already made for this, or very close (and easy to edit into shape). http://www.scriptspot.com/
I would recommend Switcher from the makers of NEX. It will bring you the Maya nav you are familiar with, and, also give you the option to lock the orthos! Great tool, loving it
hobodactyl; strange, ctrl+alt+mmb works fine for me with default settings... on a side note, I bought the switcher plugin from digitalraster (3 months ago), so "problem" solved
Max is quite a powerful modeler. Having said that I do use things like Digital Raster's Max Switcher to change some of it's navigations and selection schemes to behave more like Maya.
Thats some great work man. The only thing I have to say is that the "usage" around the firemode switcher looks a bit wierd. Mabey a little more univen or not as clear (you dont switch firemode that often :P )