Just Cause 2 is a game I never would have paid attention to if it weren’t for this intriguing video. The game looks to be loaded with a ton of cool “action movie” stunts such as a whole section of this demo where the player is hanging off several different cars during a high speed chase, not to mention starting things off witha little base jumping. I never played the original, but I am certainly considering the sequel.

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This new Castlevania game looks to be taking more than few pages out of the God of War playbook, but the impressive voice cast featuring Patrick Stewart, Natasha McElhone, and Jason Isaacs certainly has me interested.

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If you haven’t seen the phenomenal cinematic trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic, go watch it now….I’ll wait. Snippets of the trailer are intercut with this interview of Gordon Walton from Bioware explaining why you should be excited for their new Star Wars MMO.

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Several people from many different gaming sites are calling Scribblenauts their favorite game of the show this year. After watching several videos, including this live demo, I can see why. The game allows you to type in just about any noun you can think of, and it will spawn in the game world, helping you to complete different puzzles. The tens of thousands of words in Scribblenauts’ dictionary means we’ll be able to let our imaginations run wild.

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Mod Nation Racers aims to bring the user creativity and game customization from LittleBigPlanet into the kart racing genre. This is the demonstration from Sony’s press conference in which they show off the track creator by creating a complete racetrack in just a few minutes.

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The studio behind The Conduit revealed two of their upcoming games this week. One of them is The Grinder, a Left 4 Dead style game for the Wii in which you take on the role of a monster hunter in order to slay waves of classic monsters such as vampires and werewolves. The final game isn’t slated for release until late 2010, but the game already looks pretty promising. The demo only has one player, but The Grinder will include online co-op play for up to four players.

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Put Nazi-occupied Paris, a race car driver, and a stylized B&W art style together, and you get The Saboteur. This open-world game features B&W graphics that are accented with the occasional splash of color. However, as you progress through the game, color comes back into the world as you bring “hope” to the people.

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In Darksiders, you play as one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The problem is that the Apocalypse happened when it wasn’t supposed to. This game looks like an interesting mix of gameplay conventions from God of War, Zelda, and Grand Theft Auto.

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Aliens vs Predator may have a bad stigma at the box office, but it has a pretty good reputation in the video game world. The creators behind the original PC game are bringing the AvP universe to the current generation of consoles. This is a live demonstration of gameplay from the Predator campaign.

The short answer to the question above is: No. You would have thought that Nintendo would have learned a few lessons from last year, but their conference this year was very similar. Someone should remind the Big N that doing a Show & Tell requires you to actually show things and not just talk for a majority of the time. You may be pretty proud of what you are achieving, but that doesn’t mean we want to hear about it ad nauseam. If you are really being as innovative as you claim, perhaps it would be a good idea to show us rather than to stand there talking about it.

Nintendo kicked things off with a montage promo video followed by a lot of talk about how gaming is for “everyone”. They then showed off New Super Mario Bros Wii, a scrolling 2D platformer featuring the rotund plumber and his pals. The game is designed to be played with up to four people at once. A multiplayer Mario was a good start, but Nintendo just couldn’t seem to stop talking long enough to show many games, and most of the ones they did show were rather lackluster.

Next up was the reveal of WiiFit Plus, an expansion of Nintendo’s popular fitness software that is coming in the fall this year. After a lot of talk about the importance of interface to gaming, WiiMotionPlus is mentioned, and WiiSports Resort is shown. Some new minigames were revealed including skydiving, archery, and basketball. After a trailer for Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers it was time to move on to the Nintendo DS.

Several DS games were mentioned with a small amount of footage to go with them. Notable titles coming for the handheld include Kingdom Hearts, Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, and Golden Sun DS. Non-notable titles that still got quite a bit of attention were James Patterson Women’s Murder Club: Games of Passion, C.O.P.: The Recruit, and Style Savvy.

When Nintendo’s global president, Satoru Iwata, took the stage, I thought something good was in store. Surely he would have something interesting to reveal. Instead he took several minutes to talk about innovation only to show a new Wii peripheral called the Wii Vitality sensor. Basically, you stick your finger in it and it takes your pulse. Someone must have thought it would be a good idea to turn some basic hospital equipment into a video game accessory.

Nintendo went back to talking about games for a while to reveal Super Mario Galaxy 2. The trailer for the game looked a lot like the original Galaxy, with the addition of Yoshi into the mix. I loved Super Mario Galaxy, so a sequel is welcome news, but unfortunately Nintendo said nothing about a release date. After that, Nintendo “wowed” the crowd by talking about three third party games coming this year: The Conduit, Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles, and Dead Space Extraction. I think all three games look interesting, but we have already seen a lot about each before this conference started, especially for The Conduit which comes out in a couple weeks. Where were all the new games that we should be clamoring to play?

The show closed out with a welcome surprise for me. They revealed that Team Ninja (of Ninja Gaiden fame) is collaborating with Nintendo on a new Metroid title that is supposed to be “edgier”. It is called Metroid: Other M, and the trailer for the game looked pretty good, despite the generic title. As a Metroid fan, I’m all for a new Metroid title, and right now it is slated for release in the spring of 2010. As welcome as this news was, it was too little and too late to save Nintendo’s briefing.

Nintendo seemed too focused on talking about how innovative they are and how gaming is for everyone. Instead of showing a lot of titles, all we got were a few short trailers peppered in between lots of lecturing. Red Steel 2 was notably absent from the show, a big mistake in my opinion as it looked great during Ubisoft’s conference Monday night. The demo of that game did a lot to convince me that WiiMotionPlus is actually worthwhile, and it looks to be everything the first Red Steel should have been. Also missing from Nintendo’s show was any mention of a brand new Pikmin sequel, something that has been confirmed that Nintendo is working on (and rumored to be at the show this year). A new WiiMotionPlus Zelda title was a no-show, even though I wasn’t particularly expecting it to show up.

Had Nintendo included more games in their briefing, it would have been a much better outing. As it was, they totally dropped the ball again, in similar fashion to last year. The few interesting announcements were revealed to little fanfare, and they weren’t enough to keep the conference afloat amid all the boring lectures. At this point, Nintendo is so far out in left field that they seemingly don’t know how to create a show that actual gamers are interested in. Todays showing felt more like something geared towards investors, and I think even they would have had a hard time staying awake.

Nintendo’s conference was by far the worst of E3 this year. Even taking the talkative James Cameron into account, Ubisoft’s conference Monday night was far more successful at showing off games than Nintendo was able to do this morning.

Microsoft certainly “dressed to impress” with their conference this year. Their presentation stages are usually pretty lavish, but the stage this year seemed to have a few more lights and gizmos than years past. If anyone was worried that Microsoft was compensating for something, it wouldn’t take too much time to calm their fears.

The show started with a long presentation of The Beatles Rock Band. The opening cinematic was shown, featuring some impressive animation. Several people then came on-stage to demo the game, playing through the entirety of Day Tripper. The screens of the game looked almost exactly like Rock Band, however there were three people harmonizing, and the instruments looked rather impressive. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr came on to much pomp and circumstance, but they pretty much said “We think the game is good” and left the stage.

After a long time spent on The Beatles Rock Band, Tony Hawk came out to show off his new skateboard controller for Tony Hawk Ride. The controller features several accelerometers and even something that lets you move your foot to the side of it to accelerate, just like a real skateboard. Honestly, he should have just said “It’s like a real skateboard, only without wheels.” It would have been much simpler.

At this point, I was hoping that Microsoft would show something more impressive. Luckily the next thing they had up their sleeve was a presentation for Modern Warfare 2. After a trailer, they did a live demo of the game onstage, and everything looked very impressive. The level shown was out in the snow, and the graphical detail was very high. Snow was stuck to the characters’ clothes and blowing in the air, and everything looked very “cold”. The demo began with a cliff climbing sequence, and then it skipped ahead to a sequence set on an enemy compound during a blizzard. The blizzard provides cover, but the enemy soon discovered the player’s presence and explosions and gunfire quickly broke out. The demo culminated in an exciting chase aboard snowmobiles. Yes, you can still fire a pistol while tearing through the snow-covered countryside.

After that, the games kept on flowing. Final Fantasy XIII was demoed on the Xbox, and it looked very good. Epic Games presented a brand new title for XBox Live Arcade called Shadow Complex that was apparently inspired by 2D Castlevania and Metroid games. Trailers were shown for Crackdown 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and Splinter Cell Conviction before the latest of Sam Fisher’s adventures was demoed onstage. Splinter Cell Conviction’s live demo was very stunning in both graphics and gameplay. It looks like Sam Fisher is going to be more of a badass this time around, as a ton of bad guys were quickly dispatched during the demo. Microsoft then took some time to show off Forza 3 which wasn’t very impressive to me, but it looks like it will probably go over well with fans of the series.

Next up was Halo ODST, and it didn’t disappoint. The game will switch things up a bit, allowing you to “flash back” and play sections with different characters in different areas, piecing the story together bit by bit. Lots of things blew up, and it looked very pretty. The presentation from Bungie ended with the announcement of Halo Reach, promising to show you the beginning of the Halo story coming sometime in 2010. However, those who purchase ODST will get into the Reach multiplayer beta. Halo fans seem to have a lot to look forward to.

Next up was a game that most had assumed to be vaporware until now, Alan Wake. The game is now slated to come out in the spring of 2010, and the in-game demo of the Alan Wake looked very good. The game appears to feature a voice-over while you play like someone is telling a story, and title cards like “Previously on Alan Wake” seem to imply an episodic structure. The lighting and particle effects in the demo were particularly impressive. At one point, Alan Wake pulls out a typical flare, but when he sets it off, the flare spews out sparks and a ton of smoke, looking very realistic.

After showing off several games, Microsoft turned their attention to XBox Live. To that end, they announced that last.fm, Facebook, and Twitter will be coming to the XBox, and soon we will be able to add movies to our Netflix queues through the 360 interface. Bonus points go to Microsoft for getting Felicia Day to do the Facebook presentation. Also coming XBox Live is 1080p video content that will supposedly play instantly, and the previously announced Live Party will let you watch content with your friends over XBox Live.

Next Microsoft went on to announce their new motion control camera system, but not before a surprise appearance of Hideo Kojima to announce Metal Gear Solid Rising for the 360. The teaser trailer for the game proclaims that “Raiden is back”, implying that Solid Snake will not be in this game or at least not be the focus.

Now back to that camera. To be honest, I was a little disappointed that it didn’t seem to be that far along. Despite spending a lot of time focusing on the new “Project Natal”, everything seemed to be in the prototype stage. There was a lot of “this is what we hope to do” and “this is what we could do” rather than “this is what we’re doing”. It all seemed very hypothetical to me, and any mention of a price or release window was nowhere to be found.

Several videos were shown, talking about what the peripheral can do, including facial recognition, full body motion capture, moving menu pages with the wave of a hand, and other actions. One demo was for a game that looks very similar to the soccer minigame found in WiiFit, except in the XBox version, you are punching and kicking balls into a wall of bricks in an effort to break them down. Microsoft also showed a painting game that seemed like the equivalent of throwing cans of paint at a wall.

After that, Peter Molyneux came out to show a video of Lionhead Studios’ new tech demo, an interactive character named Milo that utilizes the Project Natal camera to interact with the player. In the video, the woman talks to Milo and he responds to her, but the whole thing felt very scripted and perhaps even staged. It didn’t help that Molyneux was in full-on hype mode, making some pretty far-fetched claims about what was going on.

Overall, I think that Microsoft had a pretty strong showing this year, despite the disappointing “what if” attitude while showing off the new camera peripheral. They showed some great looking games, and there were even a few surprises like the announcements of Left 4 Dead 2 and a new Metal Gear game for 360. They had a few stumbles during the presentation, but it never came to the point where they completely dropped the ball. It wasn’t quite the “revolutionizing of home entertainment” that was hyped before E3, but the Microsoft Conference still had quite a bit of news to share. The complete lack of sales charts was also a big plus in my book.

I’m not sure what Nintendo and Sony have in store for us on Tuesday, but I think that Microsoft left the door open for someone to completely blow us away this year. Will Nintendo or Sony be able to do that? I’m not sure, but I am definitely excited to find out. I will be back later this week to share my thoughts on each of their conferences.