Didn't read the article yet, will do thought.
I own Torque2D and GameMaker Studio.
Torque2D is nice, but is also very complicated and has a very bad documentation. I could not establish a good looking game with it for some weird reason. The lack of documentation and streamlining totall threwed me off once I tried to make something that looks half way professional.
A lot of games do proove though that it is possible, but I am a hobbiest and without a proper documentation I am lost. So 120$ out of the Window for me.
GameMaker is much better and streamlined imho. And the standard version on Steam costs only 40$ and if you ever want the HTML5 and other plugins, the professional has a 50% discount attached if you own the standard. So you don't pay twice.
GameMaker is easy to use and hard to master. You can click together a basic game in like 10 minutes if you like. But to do something more serious, you can do a lot of coding and a lot things including 3D. And you can even expand it with .dlls etc. Awesome.
For 2D I recommend GameMaker or Torque, for Torque a serious amount of research and trial&error is required though imho.
Just my 2 cent as an enthusiast and not professional.
