Prey

Unlike our beloved Duke, not all games wither and die when they get stuck in development limbo. While the majority of titles that undergo drastic changes or lengthy delays end up performing oral acts on donkey’s groins, some survive the pre-release purgatory smelling of roses. Well, more ‘gameplay that’s not shit’ than roses, really. So without furthing rambling, here’s a bunch of games that survived development hell and lived to be damn decent titles.

Anyone want to take bets on how long Bioshock 2’s multiplayer will last? If a multiplayer mode isn’t hugely popular, it isn’t at all. They either prosper or die, especially on consoles, where the community that can develop around dedicated servers isn’t present.

Left 4 Dead 2, Modern Warfare 2, Assassin’s Creed 2, and Uncharted 2 made 2009 a year of epic sequels. Too bad none of the studios in this feature will be releasing any sequels, ever… at least not in their original forms. 2009, like 2008, was a rough economic year, and lead to the demise of multiple influential and promising developers.

The internet is often thought of as a well of information, but that’s a flawed metaphor. It’s much more like a worldwide network of networks, if you follow my logic. And as the internet ages, it’s becoming littered with servers, and those servers are becoming littered with old data.

Sam Fisher’s gone through some midlife crisis-sized changes over the past couple of years. One minute he’s a tortured emo agent on the run, with as little respect for the law as he does for kept facial hair. The next he’s a malicious murderer, who makes Jack Bauer look like Jack Osborne.

Above: From badly groomed to just plain bad

The Conviction of 2007 has heavy influences from

I’m not a miserable sexist ass; I’m just a practical observer. One thing I’ve observed is that men and women are different (I figured that one out pretty early on). Since I’m a rational person, I’m aware that nothing is entirely one way or another. Even the divide between life and death is ambiguous (uh, zombies, amirite?).

This week we discuss Rogue Leaders, a tell-all book about LucasArts, written by PlayStation Magazine’s Editor-In-Chief Rob Smith... who patiently sits through our ramblings long enough to plug his massive tome. If you’ve ever wanted to know all kinds of trivial nonsense about Star Wars, Maniac Mansion or a planet called Fractalus, this is your podcast.