That niggling feeling in the back of your head that Nintendo wasn't talking to you with their E3 press conference? Good news: It wasn't your imagination! Straight from the mouth of Shigeru Miyamoto, the company says that they're not using E3 to speak to the core gamer anymore. Yeah, thanks Shiggy, we pieced it together.

What, you ask, are they using E3 for? Well Miyamoto describes it as "an opportunity for [them] to introduce new concepts and new types of play that [they] intend to bring to the broader audience, particularly because of the media that gathers at E3 now." So, there you have it. Hey ... does that mean that we don't have to go anymore?

[Thanks a ton, Ridgecity!]

After a brief hiatus, we've returned with the grand finale of our E3 2008 podcasts. This one's way better, we promise. First off, we're actually talking about games. Which games, you ask? Well how about Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Resident Evil 5, Tomb Raider: Underworld and Dark Void for starters? Yeah, we thought so.

Oh, and it's not too quiet, there a bunch of embarrassing stories and no one falls asleep. So, yeah, a success all around.

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Hosts: Chris Grant, Ludwig Kietzmann and Justin McElroy

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OK, so this isn't necessarily a sneak preview, as the game's already out on the iPhone App Store for free. Hell, it's not even necessarily worthy of a post. But it is a really great example of the spiritual and mental toll that E3 takes on the people covering it. As lame as this video is, we swear we laughed about it for 20 minutes.

Plus, we figured out a way to make it look like Justin's beer can pour into Kevin's beer, and that's a little something we like to call emergent gameplay. Consider yourself buzzworded.

(Bonus entertainment: Check out how horrified PS3 Fanboy's Jem Alexander is about the entirety of the proceedings.)

You have to give it to Tom Clancy: He hasn't let his success keep him from trying his hand at new things. One of his latest of these ventures is HAWX, a new action flight game that I got a chance to play during E3. I only got to sample the multiplayer, but what I saw left me really impressed.

At first, the game seems a fairly common take on the genre: You coast around in a strikingly realistic world that's been generated by Google Maps. When you find a target, you can either paint them with heat-seeking missiles or blast them with machine guns (the latter of which I never had much luck with).

Normally, we wouldn't be so quick to hand down a major honor like this, but with just a few hours left in the show we feel pretty confident. So, on behalf of Joystiq and the Joystiq network, we're pleased to present Running With Scissors, creators of Postal 3 with the coveted Weapon of the Show award for ... badger on a harness.

Confused? Here's the basic premise: It's a badger on a harness, and when you point it at people it wrecks their shop until they die from it. Congratulations, Running With Scissors, enjoy it in good health.

We've always had a rocky relationship with the Destroy All Humans series, which itself has had a rocky relationship with quality. The whole thing depresses us because of how much we want to be on board with the game. No fan of humans ourselves, their total annihilation is not something we're inherently resistant to. But there's only so much we can do, and ignoring mediocre gameplay isn't one of those things.

But this new trailer for Destroy All Humans: Path of the Furon has actually given us a little hope. Could this be the first DAH game to marry quality with a great premise? Absolutely. Could our enthusiasm be the direct result of the trailer's reliance on cinematics rather than much actual gameplay? Ab-so-lutely.

As you're being assaulted with the blasts of light and color from the E3 showfloor and press conferences, we thought a small sliver of reality might be in order. What you see above is the one and only E3 press room at the LA Convention Center.

Yeah, yeah, we hear you, it's a little unimpressive. But it's got all the amenities you could hope for (Free WiFi! ... Electricity!) and it's the conduit through which we bring the magic to you. As such, we felt compelled to give it its due.

Before I get into talking about my brief hands-on with Resident Evil 5, I want to make something perfectly clear: I'm fairly sure you're going to love it. It's gorgeous, it's fun and it looks like it's going to be horrifyingly intense. So why am I about to tell you I'm a little disappointed? Well, as good as it is, it's also Resident Evil 4.

To clarify, where it's not RE4 is in terms of graphics. E3 isn't the best place to judge this stuff because the setting is always so ideal, but the game looks astoundingly realistic. As hordes of not-zombies lurched towards the window of the hut I began in, I was almost a little disturbed at having to blast things that looked so ... human. From the standpoint of graphics, I don't have any complaints about RE5.

If you're a frequent visitor to the digi-halls of Joystiq you probably remember my all-but-glowing take on Capcom's upcoming jet pack-based shooter Dark Void. Yesterday I got to play the game and I'll keep it brief because it's basically the same section I watched and you know all the details. But I figured you'd like to know if it plays as good as it looks.

Short answer? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Taking cover and gunplay feels pretty Gears of War, not that that's a bad thing or completely unexpected. But taking vertical cover, clinging to a cliffside while robots blast down toward you, feels completely fresh.

I'm no great fan of Banjo-Kazooie. In fact, if memory serves, I once stated on the Joystiq Podcast that a bear who had a bird in his backpack is the single dumbest idea for a game in history. So it was no small amount of dread that I sidled up to Banjoe-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts last night at a Microsoft party.

As a game, I still don't feel like I get BK:NaB. In the sliver I was playing I got a sense that I needed to win some races to collect some puzzle pieces, and that frankly wasn't enough to inspire me to keep playing.

Sure, it looked really gorgeous, with zero pop-in and tons of color, a welcome respite from a lot of the grays and browns I'd been seeing during the week. Controls were pretty solid too. Some of the vehicles were disorienting at first, but they didn't take too long to get a hold of.

Regardless, it could have been the result of the selection I was playing or how much time I could spend with it, but I was bored and almost ready to pack it in, secure in the knowledge that my preconceptions were once again on the money.

But then I tried the vehicle editor.

I should come right out and say that I'm probably not going to be giving you the most objective view on Fable 2. I know, exactly what you wanted to hear, right? I'm sorry in advance, but I'm a big fan of Fable, and that's the viewpoint I'm coming from.

To that end, I should open by saying this: If you too are a fan of Fable, you need read no further, though I know you will. Judging from the build I played, it's more of the stuff you love with richer combat and ... well, you're just going to adore it. Promise. But not everybody played Fable. In fact, there are a sad few that played it and didn't even like it. It's for them that I'm soldiering on.

We had a lot of fun playing Fable 2 last night (more on that in a bit), so we were disappointed when we heard from several Lionhead staffers that the game's main story would take most around 12 hours to complete. It's not that we thought we were getting ripped off, after last night we just hoping the answer would be a little closer to a hojillion.

Also, keep in mind: That's just for the main story. That's not figuring in the time you'll spend gambling, romancing, trying to get fat and all the other side quests that make Fable so Fabley.

As we perused Fallout 3 today (more on that soon) Bethesda treated us to some refreshment in the form of Nuka Cola. But did we ingest the only known post-apocalyptic soda? No, dear reader, we did not. We left its dark mysteries bottled up in the hopes that we could pass the bottles along to you at Thursday's Joystiq Reader Meet Up Party.

A similar fate will befall the other Bethesda swag we nabbed, a SimTek 1000 holographic ... OK, it's a ViewMaster. But it's got Fallout 3 three-dimensional screenshots, so you won't hear us complaining. If you want a crack at it make sure you attend the shin-dig.

There're really no details to relate at the moment, but we thought we'd let you know Activision has picked up a couple of movie-based properties, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. We don't know any release dates yet, but Wolverine is due out on May 1, 2009 with T:RotF coming the same year. We figure it's a pretty safe bet that you'll see both games near their film counterparts.

So after a trailer leaked out earlier today Activision has now confirmed Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2: Fusion. The "Fusion" part of the title is apparently pretty literal with characters mixing their powers to create new, doubly rad powers.

It's official, now what do you have to say about it?