If lightsabers sounded like that in the original Star Wars, there never would have been any sequels.

Didn't I play through that same subway in the beta for The Secret World?

It's a prototype. Prototypes are always ugly. They use placeholder animations and generic resources, and their only purpose is as a proof of concept. In fact, as prototypes go, this one's pretty polished.

Also, couple has a TALKING CAT.

You know, I... I expected more from you. I thought you'd be smarter than this.

FYI, I popped Psychonauts up to check: the default keyboard binding is 1 to bring up the inventory. 2 will flip the page to the right, and 1 will flip it left again. 1 and 2 should correspond to the left and right buttons on the D-Pad if you're using a controller. If you find the button, you'll have to select it and…

Fair enough. I've never been particularly invested in the Aliens franchise, and I wasn't exactly awaiting this release with trembling anticipation. In fact, it wasn't even on my radar. So to me I'm watching this whole disaster with a certain sense of detachment.

True. However I could also argue that if Sega had been paying more attention they might have cut the purse-strings a little sooner rather than having to release an unfinished product. Just as Gearbox fell down on project management and outsourcing, Sega probably cut Gearbox too much slack.

Yep. Hopefully this is a, uh, learning experience for them.

Remember KOTOR 2? BioWare outsourced it to Obsidian. What we got as a result was unfinished, but it's still generally considered a good game. Obsidian did the same thing with Fallout: New Vegas and got decent results there, too.

See, that's part of the problem: Ellsworth says "fired." Gamasutra says "let go." Kotaku says "laid off."

Well no, it wasn't. Very much like this project, DN:F got handed to Gearbox in a completely broken state, late in development, and Gearbox did what they could with what they had. Fixing it would probably have meant rewriting the game from scratch, so instead they cut their losses, brought what they had up to a…

Eh. Developers outsource projects to other developers all the time. In this case it sounds like they made a bad call, and it came back to bite them. Sure, it's ultimately Gearbox's fault, but I don't get the impression they were lazy. They just had more important things on their plate.

Agreed. Still, it sucks. Gearbox knows they can do a lot better.

"Sega was already upset with Gearbox for asking for multiple extensions since the project launched in 2006, so Gearbox had to buckle down and release a game they knew wasn't going to be very good"

I don't have a problem with dissenting opinions: in fact I encourage them, especially if they're well supported. I use reviews to inform myself about a game, not to cheer my favorite games on to victory.

Usually when people "lose" the button it's because they either haven't figured out how to access the inventory or because it's not clear that the inventory spills onto a second screen when it fills up. So, y'know, check your inventory. On the PC it should default to a d-pad button (left I think) or the [ key on the…

Cloud's hair-styling secrets: REVEALED!

Hm. Hopefully we'll get some official announcement of some sort to put this all in context. As it is it's hard to wrap my head around.

That...was a good, informative review. Huh.