One of the most anticipated games of the year; Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, was depressingly missing from the roster of playable games at Play.com Live today. In its place was a large, decidedly non-playable, poster.

Admittedly it was a big poster, but I can’t help but feel a bit miffed by the whole experience. Spotting the shine of a lightsaber from across the room, I was instinctively drawn towards it, feeling the excitement build in my little Star Wars fanboy heart.

As I drew closer, Darth Vader himself stood before me, posing for a photo with a 12 year old boy and a Rainbow 6 Vegas show girl. I arrived at the poster and began looking around feverishly to try and find the playable game, and at that point, the reality of the situation dawned on me.

Top tip for you Mr. Play.com, don’t say you can “see and play with” a game if all you have is a poster. Full initial impressions and gameplay review of the poster coming soon.

I was browsing the interwebs and stumbled across some interesting concept art. Turns out, it was for a little game called Gladius 2, a game that up to this point has not yet been announced.

James Zhang, an artist who has done work for several projects including multiple Star Wars games, had quite a bit of concept art up on his site — JZConcepts.com. A hidden list of links was “stumbled upon” in which there were images for Gladius 2, as well as Knights of the Old Republic 3. Those links are now gone.

The existence of Gladius 2 is further proven by the simple fact that Gladius 2 is listed under “projects” if you click on the client list on his main page. Kinda hard to deny it now, right?

Let’s hope this is more than just wishful thinking or unofficial concept art by a mere fan of the game (even though he works with LucasArts). Gladius was a great game, so a sequel would be much appreciated. Announce it already, LucasArts, and how about a release date some time this year!

In a response to a poster who asks what games will be at GDC this year, Surfer Girl says “YES” to seven games. These games are MotorStorm 2, Alan Wake, Too Human, InFamous, LittleBigPlanet, Killzone 2 and Gears of War 2.

There are three other games that might possibly make it to the event: SOCOM PS3, Metal Gear Solid 4, and WipEout HD.

Unlike last year, Sony and Nintendo won’t be having keynote presentations, so it might be wishful thinking to expect anything on the scale of Sony’s reveal of Home and LittleBigPlanet.

On the other hand, there is a Microsoft day booked for Tuesday, along with an hour long Microsoft keynote. Big things could be coming from the Xbox camp.

What games can we confirm for GDC? Mercenaries 2, Far Cry 2, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and Battlefield: Bad Company.

In addition to these, Square Enix will be presenting their Final Fantasy XIII engine, and three big Fable 2 secrets will be revealed. You heard it here first.

Make sure to come to Ripten for all of your GDC coverage.

*Update* -  Surfer Girl has since retracted her predictions, blaming sleep deprivation for her original outburst.  Please read about this here, along with further titbits on what will be at GDC’08.