Pads & Panels

For the last couple of weeks, I, like most people, have been watching a lot of the Olympics. I’m impressed by just how fast those people can ski down a mountain, when I can barely make it down a bunny hill. Obviously, there were a lot of crashes this year, but overall, it’s still pretty cool. I’m also angry that I’ve had to work during all the awesome hockey games, or I only get to see 5 minutes before leaving for work or after getting home.

Beyond that, I’ve been working on Crime Scene for the DS, which started out fun but turned into more than 16 hours of on-again off-again frustration. The review will be posted later. I’m also working on a Professor Fizzwizzle game on the Wii, and have a couple more are lined up to start after I’m done. (more…)

Kind of a quiet week for trailer uploads, but no less exciting. We start things off with a trailer for Tecmo’s Again DS. Then it’s three more Super Street Fighter IV videos, courtesy of Capcom. First they introduce Ibuki, Makoto and Dudley, then put them in competition in the next two videos. Finally, we wrap things up for Trailer Madness 18 with Red Dead Redemption‘s “The Women” trailer.

Again DS Trailer

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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.

Bill Jones

BioShock 2 Review

Dapple iPhone Review

Chris Park

KORG-10 DS Plus Review

Resident Evil 5: Lost in Nightmares Review

Title: Borderlands Original Soundtrack

Format: CD

Publisher: Sumthing Else Music Works

Review by: Bill Jones

Sometimes a video game soundtrack is a sprawling score that tells a story even without the game, creating a memorable theme that gamers are more than happy to listen to outside of its original setting. Sometimes a soundtrack is simply mood music. The latter is the case with Borderlands. There’s no grandiose theme song, and the nature of the game lends itself to ongoing tones that set the mood of an area – in the case of Borderlands, usually bleak wasteland with threats around every corner. It works well in-game, and players are usually too busy chatting strategy and fending off villains and creatures to pay much attention. But as a stand-alone soundtrack, it’s rather dull. The 27 tracks are named by the conflicts and locations they accent in the game, but most sound like similar tones without much music going on. Next time I hold a haunted house, yes, “Assaulting Krom’s Canyon” will be a good thing to have, but until then the Borderlands soundtrack will more likely find itself collecting dust.

For more info, www.sumthing.com

Pads & Panels received a copy of the soundtrack courtesy of the publisher for review purposes.

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We just got off the phone with people from 2K Sports and developer Visual Concepts – producer Ben Bishop, and designers Jonathan Rivera and Sean Bailey, to be exact – in a conference call moderated by Access Communications media relations director Chase about MLB 2K10. The questions were submitted by our site, as well as others involved in the call. We might be transcribing highlights of it to post or include in a story later, but we thought seeing as we had a decent audio file, we’d post that right away for our visitors who would like to listen to all 46 minutes of it from start to finish, and get to hear exactly what we did. The developers touch on many aspects of the game over the course of the interview. Enjoy! The game is scheduled to hit shelves March 2.

MLB 2K10 Developer Conference Call

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Title: BioShock 2

Platform: 360 (Also PS3, PC)

ESRB: M

Publisher: 2K Games

Developer: 2K Marin

Rating:

Review by: Kevin Haverty

It’s time to revisit Rapture in BioShock 2. It has been eight years since the events of the first game and Andrew Ryan’s old political rival, Sofia Lamb, has taken over. Gamers take control of Subject Delta, a Big Daddy, as he must get his Little Sister, Eleanor, daughter of Sofia Lamb, back before he slips into a coma. Augustus Sinclair, a businessman of Rapture, directs Subject Delta and fills him in on some of the changes that have taken place. (more…)

Title: Yi Soon Shin: Warrior and Defender

Publisher: Onrie Kompan Productions

Writer: Onrie Kompan

Artists: Giovanni Paolo Timpano, Adriana De Los Santos, Joel Saavedra

Review by: Chris Park

The historical fiction of the Korean Admiral Yi Soon Shin isn’t one that many would be familiar with, as Korean history in general isn’t something studied with much depth in college.

The first issue covers Yi Soon Shin’s first naval battle against the invading Japanese army, commanded by Todo Takatora, after the Korean army’s defeat at the Battle of Chungu. It also explores his relationship with the other naval commanders of Korea. Issue #1 feels like a quick glimpse into the world of Yi Soon Shin, but does little to explain anything about his past up to that point, other than a sidebar on the first page of the issue. (more…)

Title: Greek Street

Publisher: Vertigo

Writer: Peter Milligan

Artist: Davide Gianfelice

Review by: Tom Braaksma

Greek Street is a new series from Vertigo by creative team Peter Milligan and Davide Gianfelice. It seems that the public was really craving another pointless, sexed-up (in a weird way, explained later) gangster/murder mystery series. Vertigo must have been thinking this since they gave the green light to Greek Street.

Issue #1 of Greek Street starts off a couple different stories about strippers, an orphan and his mother, and a gangster. These stories are so vague in their infancies that there is no hint at what they will accumulate, if anything worth getting into at all. When the first panel is three strippers (one with an oddly-drawn exposed breast), the reader can expect that this artist and writer are already compensating for lack of creativity. The art is sub par and comes across as generic. The artist, Davide Gianfelice just meanders his way from panel to panel, drawing unpleasant representations of people and environments. (more…)

Title: Surrogates

Format: Blu-ray

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Director: Jonathan Mostow

Writers: Michael Ferris, John D. Brancato

Producer: Touchstone Home Entertainment

Film Rating:

Blu-ray Rating:

Review by: Bill Jones

The Film

Surrogates is based on the Top Shelf graphic novel created by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele. And for better or (mostly) worse, the film follows the general outline of the book’s plot pretty well. In the near future, people live their lives from the safety of their homes, instead plugging into surrogates, androids that look and act mostly like real people, and carry out the real tasks of life. While no damage should come to the pilots if their surrogates take damage, someone is finding a way to electrically blast the surrogates and kill the people behind them. (more…)

Title: SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 3

Platform: PSP

ESRB: T

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Developer: Slant Six Games

Rating:

Review by: Chris Park

There was a movie in the 1980s that could be considered the essence of action movies of the decade.  That movie is Navy SEALs. SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 3 has the overall theme of Navy SEALs, except the four-man team in Fireteam Bravo 3 stop a fictional Eastern Bloc army and rescue the President of a county without little problem. The game is a fun third-person shooter for the PSP, among some of the easiest to control, but after completing the game it felt like there wasn’t enough for the single-player experience. (more…)