The Electronic Entertainment Expo has long been a favored tradition among the more “core” gamers. Since 2007, the show has been invite only (where else it was pretty open before then), but, so far, it’s still used by many video game developers to show off their upcoming games and game-related hardware. The 2008 event was a bit of a crap-fest, but, in addition to some of the first party titles, there were also some third party games we were hoping to hear from that didn’t make an appearance at this year’s event.

And thus begins this week’s Top Ten.

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10. Beyond Good and Evil 2

The first title was a Zelda clone with a Sci-Fi setting, featuring a female protagonist that, surprisingly, wasn’t sexualized and ended on something of a cliffhanger. The game received quite a bit of critical praise but ultimately didn’t sell very well.

The game has since gathered a bit of a cult following and fans have been hopeful that eventually we would see a sequel.

Luckily, a sequel was announced by Ubisoft back in May (along with a teaser trailer) but was surprisingly absent from this year’s event.

Bummer.

9. The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena

Chornicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay will always have a place among FPS fans as being one of the best video-game-to-film adaptations ever. In many ways, it’s far better than the films it’s based on and introduced a few innovative features to the genre.

There were problems making it backwards compatible with the 360, so the developers decided “Fuck it, we’ll start over from scratch.” Unfortunately, this game was also absent.

8. Brutal Legend

From the mind of Tim Schafer (creater of Secret of Monkey Island and Full Throttle), Brutal Legend is an action adventure game with a Heavy Metal theme, featuring the voices if Jack Black and a soundtrack featuring talent such as Judas Priest and Black Sabbath. We were hoping to hear more at this year’s event but it looks like we’ll have to wait…

7. Half Life 2: Episode 3

Valve announced earlier this year that they wouldn’t be attending this year’s E3, but it’s still disappointing that we didn’t get a glimpse of the final chapter in the Half Life 2 saga. Portal 2 was also a no-show this year, but the game is still early in development.

6. New Indiana Jones Game

A new action/adventure game based on Indiana Jones was announced some time ago along with The Force Unleashed, but we haven’t heard anything since. Force Unleashed made an appearance, but the way things are turning out for the new Indy title, we might as well write it off as vaporware (Duke Nukem Forever anybody?).

5. WipEout HD

WipEout has always been one of my favorite racing games. It’s basically F-Zero meets Mario Kart. I was wondering why we didn’t see a demonstration at E3 but then this article appeared on Joystiq.

Y’know, I’ve watched some of the videos for this… and… uh…

*falls out of his chair foaming at the mouth*

4. Kid Icarus Wii

You don’t need me to tell you that Nintendo’s press release was a disaster, but it’s still surprising that we didn’t AT LEAST hear about the long rumored re-imagining of Kid Icarus. Fans have been begging for a sequel for years and the closest we’ve ever gotten is Pit’s appearance in Brawl.

3. New Super Mario Title

Sorry, Mario, but you’re Princess is another castle…

Goddamnit…

2. New Legend of Zelda Title

They could have at least given us SOMETHING. It’s nice to know that it’s being worked on but, damnit, give us concept art, a teaser, ANYTHING!

1. Duke Nukem Forever

Not that any of us expected it to be there in the first place but that’s what the “game” is notorious for.

Over ten years in development and the company has almost nothing to show for it. After a very brief teaser trailer earlier this year, as well as half-assed reassurance that the game was “under serious development,” Scott Miller had this to say about DNF’s absence at this year’s event.

“It’s just that we view E3 as irrelevant nowadays. In fact, I wasn’t even aware it was coming up.”

Pot, meet Kettle. Kettle, meet Pot.

Duke Nukem Forever has become the ass end of so many jokes, I feel guilty just mentioning it. It’s the video game equivalent of making fun of the Amish: anybody can do it. Hell, even No More Heroes took a stab at DNF.

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ZOMG SPOILERZ!!!