The Top 7… E3 no shows

This year’s E3 was one of the best we’ve seen in years. But despite all the exciting hardware and game announcements, extravagant booths and impressive presentations, there were still some glaring absences from the show floor. What follows are the announcements we were hoping to hear and the games we desperately wanted to see, but couldn’t because they were nowhere to be found.

7. Devil’s Third

A teaser trailer for the latest game from Tomonobu Itagaki’s was released just before E3. With THQ as the publisher and Itagaki’s new Valhalla Game Studios handling development, the game looks ready to marry swift swordplay with fast gun slinging, featuring lots of over-the-top acrobatics, wall-running, and epic explosions. Unfortunately, that was the last anyone’s seen or heard about the mysterious action title, leaving us with left to do but speculate that it’ll be like a lot like WET, only harder and with better boob physics.

6. Something new from Respawn, Bungie, or Insomniac

When Infinity Ward masterminds Vince Zampella and Jason West were let go, we knew they were going to do something big. The two of them are, in part, responsible for the success of both Medal of Honor and Call of Duty. A few months after the Infinity Ward/Activision debacle, they announced the formation of Respawn Entertainment, and a partnership with EA. We heard they’d be at E3, and sure enough, Zampella was at the EA press conference… in the audience.

We know it hasn’t been long, but we imagine that the Respawn Entertainment team was sitting on all kinds of ideas while they were working on Call of Duty, and a logo would have been enough to make our hearts go all aflutter.

Bungie, likewise, is done with the Halo series and is making something new. Granted, they’re still finishing up Reach, but no tease at all? And formerly-PlayStation-loyal Insomniac (Resistance and Ratchet & Clank, if you weren’t aware) also confirmed a new multiplatform game, but brought nothing of it to E3. What are you all doing?

5. Arkham Asylum 2

Batman: Arkham Asylum was GamesRadar’s 2009 Game of the Year, thanks to sky-high production values and gameplay that successfully blended Batman’s combat prowess, love of gadgets, stealthy style and Holmes-ian detective brain. It was, to quote our own awards article, “the greatest superhero game ever produced”.

The sequel was officially revealed back in December 2009, via a tantalizing trailer that offered tons of hints but very little definite information. Fans went crazy, salivating over every potential clue they could glean from the vague-but-suggestive images. That includes us.

So, what do we fans know about Batman: Arkham Asylum 2 so far? Not nearly enough. We know the Joker and Harley Quinn return, we know we at least hear the voices of Mr Freeze and Talia Al Ghul, and we know Two-Face, The Penguin, Catwoman, and Black Mask have all been hinted at. We know a run-down amusement park probably appears. And we know that all signs point to this being an interpretation of the “No Man’s Land” storyline, in which an earthquake rocks Gotham City and Batman has to reclaim it, bit by bit, from all the villains who’ve carved out a chunk of the resulting chaotic wasteland for themselves.

Oh – and we know that six months after the trailer revealed its existence, Batman: Arkham Asylum 2 completely skipped E3 2010. And that we are not happy about it.