Pads & Panels

We love games, and we love writing about them here at Pads & Panels. We love it so much that no matter how much we get up on the site here, it’s never enough to quench the thirst of gaming journalism for some. That’s why our latest segment of Pads Around the Internet sees even more great articles published at other sites by our writers. Here’s the best of what’s related to Pads & Panels’ interests.

Mr. Chris Park

Divinity II Ego Draconis Review

Bill Jones

Super Ramen BROTHers Development Story

Harry Potter Year One Ultimate Blu-ray Review

Harry Potter Year Two Ultimate Blu-ray Review

Trials HD Review

Rethinking iPhone Development Story

Hope everyone’s having a good weekend. Thanks to everyone who checked out our site and entered the last few contests. We’ve got a list of confirmed winners below. If you weren’t one of them, no worries. We’ll be announcing how you can try to get your hands on a copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine for Xbox 360 on Monday, and we’ve also got giveaways of Plants vs. Zombies, Patapon 2, Forza 3 and more on the way. Congrats to all of our winners! Thanks to Sony for sponsoring the LittleBigPlanet contest, Chair Entertainment for providing the Shadow Complex code, and Activision for the copies of X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Pirates of the Caribbean LBP DLC Giveaway Winner

April (snwbuni), of Eaton Rapids, Mich.

Shadow Complex Giveaway Winner

Jack (digital ink), of Levittown, Penn.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (PS3) Giveaway Winners

David (Reckilla), of Bourbonnais, Ill.

Aaron (Jesteraron), of Little Elm, Texas

Title: MAG

Platform: PS3

ESRB: T

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Developer: Zipper Interactive

Rating:

Review by: Bill Jones

Go ahead and call MAG a one-trick pony. It’s not a totally inaccurate statement. MAG revels in the fact that it’s a multiplayer-only affair, the only true bullet point of which is bringing good 256-player online first-person shooter action to the console market. But don’t think for one second that assessment makes it a bad game. Zipper Interactive delivers on its promise. Its battlefields and its action come on a scale that ranges from big to massive. But more importantly there’s a complexity to the gameplay to makes it a different experience than other console shooters, and in many ways more accessible to a wider audience in a genre often overcrowded with hardcore mentalities. (more…)

Products: Marcus Fenix (Platinum) and Boomer (Bronze) Statues

Company: Mindzeye Studios

MSRP: Marcus Fenix $205 (Also in Bronze)
Boomer – $260 (Also in Platinum)

Review by: Bill Jones

Photos by: Sarah Kumley and Bill Jones

Mindzeye Studios already had our attention with its painted Hellboy statue. Despite some very minor flaws, the incredible attention to detail made it a fantastic collectible for any fan of Mike Mignola’s creation. And as much as it pains me to say it as such a big fan of Hellboy, the company’s take on the Gears of War license is even more impressive.

At the core, it’s that same attention to detail, not to mention a respect for the Gears property, that makes the latest creations of Pete Jirles and his design team incredible successes. Mindzeye earns every cent of the $200+ price tags on these heavy pieces of sculpted metal. While the statues may not be in everyone’s budget, Gears of War is a franchise that has spawned a nearly $1,000 Lancer replica and a $500 Locust bust. So in comparison, the statues come in at a fraction of the cost with all the same display case prominence to stare at in appreciation and show off to friends. (more…)

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Happy Friday! We told you to be ready for a giveaway today, why not two? The X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie may have sucked, but the game that Raven made and Activision published was pretty damn good. That’s why we gave it our “Chronicles of Riddick” Award with our 2009 year-end list.

Activision was kind enough to send four copies of the game our way to give to lucky readers, and we decided we’d end the work week right by giving away the two copies we have in hand for PlayStation 3 (watch Monday for two Xbox 360 copies). And the first one is going to see who is on his or her toes. The first eligible registered user to comment on this post will receive one copy. Details on snatching the second one are below. (more…)

Title: Lenore : Noogies (Color Edition)

Publisher: Titan Books

Writer: Roman Dirge

Artist: Roman Dirge

Rating:

Review by: Thomas Braaksma

Edgar Allen Poe’s characters have been parodied, re-imagined and of course blatantly ripped off throughout the years. Lenore: Noogies is Roman Dirge’s own Goth-inspired interpretation of one of Poe’s beloved characters from “Lenore” and also a name in “The Raven.” Unfortunately, Noogies takes a character of Poe’s and turns it into a morbid Goth fantasy of childish proportions.

The comparisons between Roman’s Lenore and Poe’s original begin and end right here – with the name and the fact that both of them are dead. Lenore is the “cute little dead girl” that fills the pages of this collection of the first four volumes of Dirge’s comic strip. The book as a whole is a reworked and updated color version of the collected short stories, but the content of the collection deems this update unnecessary. It’s not that Lenore was already at is highest standards, but that there is no need to rework these juvenile, morbid stories of a little dead girl. (more…)

Title: Army of Two: The 40th Day

Platform: PS3 (Also 360)

ESRB: M

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Developer: EA Montreal

Rating:

Review by: Bill Jones

Sometimes a sequel creates great innovations to surpass its original. Sometimes it disappoints based on the expectations laid out by series predecessors. Sometimes a sequel is just a downright bad video game. Army of Two: The 40th Day oddly falls somewhere in between all of these options, with disappointment and poor design, but a few clever new ideas.

The original Army of Two was nothing to get excited about, but ultimately provided some fun. Set to be a revolution in co-op gameplay – a game designed with only that purpose in mind – it offered little more in the way of co-op than the traditional wall boosts and an “Aggro” distraction system built for flanking in the third-person shooter. If anything, its co-op achievement came in the charm of the interactions between Elliot Salem and Tyson Rios, two ridiculously masculine mercenaries who had a penchant for gold-plated guns. (more…)

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West Coast correspondent Chris Park has been busy lately. Last week, he got a hands-on look at Risen, an upcoming action-role-playing game for Xbox 360, from publisher Deep Silver and developer Piranha Bytes, that mixes the standard RPG formula with a consequence system. Park reports. (more…)

Title:  0 Day: Attack on Earth

Platform: XBLA

ESRB: E

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: GULTI

Rating:

Review by: Dan Braun

In an already crowded marketplace of decent top-down, dual-stick shooters, 0 Day: Attack on Earth does nothing to help itself stand out from the crowd, and does enough wrong to turn gamers off of within the first few minutes of play.

The core of Attack on Earth plays like an old-school arcade shooter, with a choice of four different vehicles and weapon loadouts. As the game progresses, more vehicles are unlocked for use. Players are expected to fly around a fixed map in one of three cities: New York, Tokyo or Paris. In each city, the player is faced with seven days of battling an alien invasion and some boss-like monsters. These bosses must be dispatched within a certain amount of time, with players deciding whether or not they need to wipe out the lesser threats during the battle. Of course, the game provides incentive for attacking the smaller enemies, as they provide a bump in firepower to the player’s arsenal. (more…)

It’s not every day that a developer actually visits a writer’s house or apartment to show off its game, but such a day befell West Coast correspondent Chris Park last week, when W!Games came by his place Jan. 18 to show him Greed Corp., an upcoming turn-based strategy game for PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade in which efficiency and expedience are key. Park reports on the visit…

Greed Corp is the first in a planned series of games that takes place in a universe of W!Games creation called Mistbound. It is a world that is crumbling at the feet of those who live on it. (more…)