Written by John Scalzo  on February 08, 2008

Specials: I wonder how many of them have dead grandmothers?

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Previously on Game Developer Survivor...
The fifteen developers were introduced and the first three were given the boot after a debate among the Gaming Target staff. Cliff Bleszinski was fragged, Tomonobu Itagaki is dead rather than alive and Jade Raymond was taken out by a stealthy assassin.

Episode 2 "The Game Rankings Test" - The second event the developers will have to endure is a survey of the critical reception to their games on the review aggregator GameRankings.com. Here they are from top to bottom, with the developers at the top getting praise and adulation while the three on the bottom get their torches snuffed.

Shigeru Miyamoto
It's no surprise that the man behind most of Nintendo's biggest franchises sits pretty atop the list of critical reception. As the owner of three of the top ten titles in the Game Rankings database, Miyamoto had little competition in this event. It says a lot when two of his games, Super Mario Galaxy and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time have been battling for the top spot over the last few months. And then Super Mario 64 sits at number seven. Not only does Miyamoto own many of the top spots on the list, but he also has a ton of games that are big hits with critics. So it's not just quality, it's quantity.

Gabe Newell
If Miyamoto has an extensive resume of high quality titles, Gabe Newell has one of the shortest. But when they games are Half-Life and Half-Life 2, you know they're classics. Newell is the only other developer with multiple titles in the top ten, as both the Xbox 360 and PC versions of Half-Life 2: The Orange Box have pulled down a critical reception of over 96% giving Newell an easy second place.

Fumito Ueda
While we're talking about short resumes, Gabe Newell's may be short, but Fumito Ueda's is the shortest among the remaining developing. Ueda has only been responsible for the PS2 titles Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, but both titles hover right around 90% giving him a solid third place.

Ken Levine
The brains behind BioShock had an above average career before the 2007 hit, but it was his adventures in Rapture that propelled him to "major name" status. But his pre-BioShock career is nothing to sneeze at either as Thief: The Dark Project, System Shock 2 and Freedom Force all pulled in their share of positive reviews and year-end awards.

John Carmack
While PC gaming's golden boy hasn't developed much since 2004's Doom 3, he is still fondly remembered for his work on the original Doom games and the Quake series. While Wolfenstein 3D predates a Game Rankings rating, his remaining games push Carmack up near the top of the pack. And it's only his more recent offerings, Quake III: Team Arena, Doom 3 and the Doom 3 expansion, that kept Carmack out of the top three.



Shinji Mikami
Shinji Mikami started his career with the painfully underrated Aladdin adaptation for the Super NES. But from there his star quickly shot to the top as critical reaction to the Resident Evil games has always been good. Especially Resident Evil 4, which at 96% is Mikami's lone entry in the Game Rankings top ten. Like Carmack before him, Mikami had a pretty good run through his earlier days and he was excluded from the top three only because of his more recent missteps like PN 03 (64%) and God Hand (75%). Mikami is now developing for Platinum Games and has just announced he has started work on his next mystery project.

Hideo Kojima
Hideo Kojima has an interesting career trajectory. He puts everything he's got into the Metal Gear Solid franchise and the games routinely score huge review score numbers. But he also has several pet projects, including the GBA/DS Boktai series and the Zone of the Enders games (which have a huge cult following, but rarely score high among critics). So here he sits in the middle of the pack because of the huge success of Metal Gear Solid 2 (95%) and Metal Gear Solid 3 (92%) and the collective "meh" that went along with Boktai 2 (78%) and Zone of the Enders (77%). If Metal Gear Solid 4 had made it's original 2007 release date, we'd no doubt be singing a different tune about Mr. Kojima.

David Jaffe
What can you say about David Jaffe that hasn't already been said? The man makes himself known through his outspoken nature (just recently challenging Miyamoto on the ridiculousness of using banana peels in Mario Kart), but he also puts his money where his mouth is with good games. Twisted Metal Black (89%), God of War (93%) and God of War II (93%) all propel Jaffe to the next round. We'll see if he can continue his run, but the early reviewer returns on Twisted Metal: Head On - Extra Twisted Edition (76%) and Jaffe's continued insistence that he won't do "big" games anymore don't look promising.

Will Wright
Will Wright has received surprisingly little support from mainstream game critics. Many find it hard to look past the "electronic toy chest" mentality that many of his games have taken over the years and many don't even end up reviewing Wright's games at all. But he was able to garner enough support to sneak in just ahead of the elimination cutoff and continue his quest to become the Ultimate Game Developer Survivor.

The Tribe has spoken...
These three developers missed the cutoff point and will be spending the rest of the competition on the sidelines.

Keiji Inafune
Compared to Miyamoto, Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune has one of the longest resumes in this competition. But sadly, most of the games on that list belong to the Mega Man franchise. And while the Blue Bomber is a video game icon, he's never been a big hitter with critics. Inafune has branched out lately with the very cool Lost Planet (79%) and Dead Rising (85%), but they were not enough to push him into the next round and he has been eliminated.

Ed Boon
Mr. Mortal Kombat took a hammering from critics after Mortal Kombat 3 as many began to say that the well was tapped on the Mortal Kombat series. He was also not helped by the spinoffs he produced in the series around that time including Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero (53%), Mortal Kombat: Special Forces (40%) and Mortal Kombat Gold (55%), the Dreamcast port of Mortal Kombat 4. Boon has bounced back in recent years with second trilogy of Mortal Kombat titles (Deadly Alliance, Deception and Armageddon) and the series (and the man) still has plenty of fans. So while Ed Boon might be eliminated, we can all look forward to his next title, currently known as Mortal Kombat Next-Gen.

Goichi Suda
"Suda 51" takes the bottom spot and while the man surely has a style all his own, it's never translated over into the universal critical love that many of the other bigtime developers feel. With the good reviews of the recently released No More Heroes, Suda's Game Rankings average shot up quite a bit, but the critical beating that Killer 7 (70% for the PS2 version) and Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked (66%) have taken has not been kind to Suda's score. So happy trails Suda, but we're all looking forward to your take on the next Fatal Frame game.

Next time on Game Developer Survivor...
We examine the sales figures of the last two games released by the developers.