Horde3D

Tim Sweeney has presented Unreal Engine 3.5 on this year's GDC. Besides a screen space ambient occlusion implementation (originally invented by Crytek) they can finally render crowds with a hundred characters. A rather impressive video stream is available at this link:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/30825.html

Well, obviously the competition isn't sleeping, but I'm quite happy that Horde had this feature long before Epic Games

And by the way, screen space ambient occlusion is also simple to implement using Horde's pipeline system and doesn't need to be mentioned as a special feature.

The destruction is impressive, especially since its apparently not gimmick destruction like in Crysis. The re-bar not only looks cool but I'm sure solves gameplay problems of a player accidentally blowing away the floor to some place they must go.

Though it really bugs me that for all the different ways destruction has been done there's pretty much squat in regards to papers on the subject (other than some that degenerate into a treatise on marching cubes or voxels). EDIT: nvm, it's trivial until you want to make it fast

I can't compare Geminii though, I've never seen it with any art assets that I actually thought looked good, comic book class characters are unappealling enough to me that I can't make a fair opinion. Though it always looks great in shots without actors.