8 Amazing Video Games That SURVIVED Development Hell

And finally we have a game whose hellish development is legendary in the annals of gaming lore - Half-Life 2.

It sure didn't help that Valve's Gabe Newell tasked his development team with making a sequel that redefined the first-person shooter, in addition to the inherent pressure of producing a sequel worthy to one of the most beloved games of all time.

In addition to all the new technology that had to be built to realise the game's physics-defying action, Valve also suffered a catastrophic source code leak, leading to an unfinished version of the game being released online.

This crushed morale at the company and forced large portions of the game to be reworked, causing extensive delays until Half-Life 2 was finally released in late 2004 after five years of work.

But Valve's hard graft paid off, as the end product is basically the textbook example of an incredibly ambitious sequel that quite arguably exceeds the achievements of its predecessor.