But before we get our chance one question remains: Which show had the best dress up?

Take your time, look through the pics of cosplay from Germany's Gamescom, Blizzcon, Penny Arcade Expo and the Tokyo Game Show and then cast your vote. Four will enter, one will leave.

This time around, the developers focused much more on creating a city and population that fights back, instead of a stomping ground for borderline superheroes.

The story opens in a world pushed to the brink of extinction by a viral outbreak. After members of The Agency's super police force unwittingly release a virus in the city the general population responds with a civil uprising, forming The Cell.

During the day The Agency, struggling to start over, must deal with the insurgent Cell members and at night they fight roving bands of sunlight-sensitive mutants.

The game opens with The Agency getting back online and you having to start as an entry-level, unaugmented Agency grunt. Ruffian Games showed us a fly through of the city during the day, pointing out how its citizens use the daylight to gather enough resources to survive the mutant-controlled nights. We saw folks wandering through dilapidated buildings and working on vehicles that looked like they were pulled from the Road Warrior.

The section of the game we saw, Ruffian said, was called Hope Springs, something they described as a great new 3D platforming space. The developers said they are working hard on holding onto the elements of a 3D vertical platformer in an open world and that they've "really tuned up" the draw distance in the game.

As the agent progresses through levels they want players to feel like he or she is more like a weapon than a person, they said. Quickly progressing the agent to level five for the presentation made him noticeably taller, bulkier and more armored.

After arming him with a new weapon, the UV shotgun, the developers took him over to a "freak breach". The breach, which looked an awful lot like an Emergence Hole in Gears of War, is the mechanic the game uses to have the mutants come out into the city at night, the developers said.

In the demo, a series of explosions ruptured the ground and a few seconds later creatures began hopping out of the newly formed crevice. The mutants looked like hunched over, slightly deformed humans with yellow pustules on their bodies. Most wore black jeans and no shirts, though a few seemed to be clothed in wife beaters.

The developer-controlled agent picked up a piece of pipe wrapped in a fairly large chunk of concrete and began pummeling the mutants with it. Next he pulled out his shotgun. Blast from the weapon essentially disintegrated the freaks, which when hit flew away from the agent as them evaporated into the air.

These freaks, the developers said, were designed to be able to follow the agents everywhere, so no more bounding away to safety when things get hairy. Ruffian Games wanted to make sure that they player feels like they're no longer the most powerful thing in the city.

After showing a mission that involved an attack on The Cell, the developers flipped the four-player coop game over to the popular opened-mode of gameplay called Keys to the City.

In Keys to the City gamers can drop just about anything into the world and have fun with it. In the first game this led to a lot of great YouTube videos. Keys to the City 2, it looks like, will lead to even more.

My favorite new weapon, shown off during this mode, is called the mag grenade. These magnetic explosives can be used to create some pretty amazing traps and explosions. The grenades attract to one another, so if you attach them to, say, two buildings, and a third to a car, you'll get what looks like a giant explosive slingshot.

In the demo, the developers did just that and then grabbed the car and pulled it back and let go, shooting it across the map to explode.

You can also shoot the ends off of gas canisters, turning them into out-of-control missiles. The canisters tend to rupture before exploding, which means if you have a bunch of them, they can knock into each other and create a series of missile launches.

The developers wrapped up the presentation by jumping up to the top of an enormous brick chimney jutting from a warehouse in the game. Once perched on the chimney, the developers used Keys to the City to fill the tube with gas canisters, grenades and vehicles. Then they got back and set the whole thing off. Cars, explosions and canisters flew from the structure for several minutes before finally burning out.

The inclusion of robust multiplayer, four-player coop and Keys to the City 2.0 seem to ensure that this latest Crackdown will most certainly be better than the first.

After the demo wrapped up I chatted with the developers about the original game. When it first released it included access to the Halo 3 beta, leading some to say that the Halo 3 beta came with a free game.

The developers told me that they were delighted to see how quickly people changed their tune once getting their hands on the original game. The free Halo 3 beta pass certainly helped put the game on the map, they said, and they'd love to do something similar with Crackdown 2, but they probably won't have to this time around.

The popular display, tucked away near the Level 5 and Koei Tecmo booths, also had some video games based on sengoku samurai.

This video comes from Sony's Tokyo Game Show presentation during which motion control support was revealed for LBP as well as Resident Evil 5 (video of that is here). We reported that the game would also support, EyePet, Flower, Pain, High Velocity Bowling "and more". The slide at the end of the demonstration also mentions Sing and Draw, Champions of Time, Motion Party, The Shoot and Tower.

[TGS 09] PS3 モーションコントローラ リトルビッグプラネット LBP [EyeToy] [YouTube, thanks John R.]

Playing Space Invaders, Katamari Damacy on Natal
Sony Not Concerned About Japan's PSP - PSPgo Price Gap
Epic Games Expands To Tokyo, Teases "Secret Plans" For Studio
But Will There Be No More No More Heroes?
Sony Drops PSP-3000 Price Tag
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker Looks This Good, This Stylish
Alan Wake Impressions: Bad Time To Lose The Flashlight
A Look At Tekken 6's Scenario Campaign Mode
Pacific City Still Not Pacified in Crackdown 2
Sony Nixes Plans For UMD Conversion Program For PSPGo
Wii Price Drop Timed to Wii Fit Plus Release
Booth Check: Namco Bandai
Booth Check: Alienware
Yakuza 4: The TGS Trailer

Microsoft Announce Natal Partners: Everyone Plus Kojima
Sony's TGS Keynote Liveblog
Nintendo Announces Official Wii Price Cut
The Games Of The Tokyo Game Show
Gran Turismo 5 Is 65% Complete, Apparently (But FFXIII Is Nearly Done)
Frank West vs Tatsunoko vs Capcom
White Knight & Last Guardian TGS Liveblog
Sony's TGS PlayStation Press Conference: The Revenge
Res 5, LittleBigPlanet To Support PS3 Motion Controller
Gran Turismo 5: March 2010
Listen In On Kojima, Inafune, More Talking Project Natal
First Look At The Final Fantasy XIII PlayStation 3
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker Preview: Competitors, Take Notes

No, here's a good, proper look at the thing itself. Lights, buttons, PS button, the works. Not so horrible now, is it? Though that lightbulb could do with some work. Or hiding.

[image credit]

It's at the end, past the Team Ico retrospective, but then, that's worth watching in its own right.

It's called White Knight Chronicles: Awakening of Light and Darkness, which you may already know if you've laid eyes on this week's copy of Famitsu. No real info to report other than that, as only a trailer was shown. We'll update with the trailer as soon as it becomes publicly available.

There's a Bluetooth stereo headset adapter, a converter cable...thing (so you can use older PSP accessories on the PSPgo), a cradle, AV cables and in-ear headset.

If earlier in the day you were DYING to find out what was in the box, well, this is it. Hope you didn't get your hopes up too high.

[thanks GameVideos]

The FFXIII PS3 will be a pinkish white (or a whitish pink!), carries a "Lightning" theme with FFXIII branding and will be a 250GB model of the console. It'll be out on December 17 in Japan.

The game will be out in Spring 2010, and it's far from the only existing PS3 title to take advantage of the new peripheral. During SCEJ's TGS press conference, Sony's Shuhei Yoshida revealed that the controller will also work with existing games like LittleBigPlanet, EyePet, Flower, Pain, High Velocity Bowling "and more".

Whether, like Res 5, you'd need to buy new versions of the game to use the motion controller or just install an update wasn't elaborated. We'll update if we hear more.

[image credit]

Its contents will obviously be revealed following Sony's TGS presser. Our bet? Since it's in the PSP section, it'll be the "solution" for transferring your UMD games to the PSPgo.

That or another Gundam/Final Fantasy bundle.

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The Game Science Museum, which will exhibit game technologies, histories, and trends, will be set up this year in three of the show's halls . One of those displays will be focused on games related to sengoku samurai (feudal warlords) and will include an exhibition of the armor and helmets of nine of the most popular Japanese warlords.

Another hall's exhibit will be about the structure of the latest game consoles in an "easy-to-understand way" and show off some of the latest technology being applied to gaming.

The third Game Science Museum exhibit will be set up in the Kids' Area and will show how game character graphics have
evolved.

This year's show officially kicks off for press and industry folk on Sept. 24 and for the public on Sept. 26 with the show wrapping up on Sept. 27.

The week leading up to the show will also be packed with press events, meetings and, yes, a Kotaku reader party. More details on that in the near future.

[Pic]