Category:  Preview

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Animal Crossing: New Leaf – A Day in the Life of a Mayor #3

By Alex Plant, May 15, 2013 2

What’s this? Why am I wearing Link’s hero’s clothes from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Mario’s trademark red cap? Well, it’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but I finally took the time to check out one of the town’s features recently, and I learned that you can earn some pretty unexpected items. Hopefully I’ll be able to complete the whole set soon.

You’ll have to read on to find out how you too can deck yourself out like a hero.

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Animal Crossing: New Leaf – A Day in the Life of a Mayor #2

By Alex Plant, May 8, 2013 0

I took an extended vacation over the weekend to a tropical island just off the coast of Saria Town, but it turned out to be an excellent opportunity to get some work done as mayor as well. The island’s plant and animal life is very different from the mainland, meaning there’s plenty of opportunity to find exotic goods to bring back to sell in town. We’re hoping to raise some money to build a fountain near the center of town, so we’re going to need an awful lot of Bells.

Still, it was a vacation, so I hope I don’t get a bad rep for “wasting taxpayer dollars” or something like that…

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Animal Crossing: New Leaf – A Day in the Life of a Mayor #1

By Alex Plant, May 4, 2013 1

Last night, I arrived in the quaint little seaside town of Saria. I was hoping to start a new life, but it looks like I got a bit more than I bargained for. You see, once I arrived, the townsfolk mistook me for the fellow who was supposed to become their new mayor! It seems like a blur already – all I remember is checking in at the town hall, planting a commemorative tree in the plaza, and getting approved for a loan from this strange character named Tom Nook…

Since then, I’ve been stumbling along, trying to figure out this whole mayor thing. It’s hard work, but I think I’m starting to get the hang of it!

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Zelda 3DS: A Link to the Past 2 – The Demo Explored

By Alex Plant, April 18, 2013 6

While we haven’t gotten a chance to play the Zelda 3DS demo for ourselves, we have certainly seen a lot of it via the videos circling the Internet. As usual, the guys over at NiNTENDOMiNATiON managed to snag the most elusive of sneak peeks… at the game’s soundtrack. They’ve uploaded a full playthrough of the game’s demo dungeon and its music, a good blend of old-school tunes and adjusted instrumentation and additional twists. These aren’t just direct rips of old tunes – they’ve been completely reborn.

I decided to track what I think of the game as we’ve seen it so far based on the demo. Click below for my assessment so far.

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New Call of Duty: Black Ops II Maps Coming

By Mel DeBottis, April 4, 2013 0

The Call of Duty franchise has become synonymous with downloadable content packages, with numerous releases of content featuring maps and the occasional new weapon. Today, Activivision confirmed rumors that the game was going to receive another map pack by revealing the Uprising map pack today.

Read on to find out what will be included in this pack, as well as what new features, and voices, are coming to Black Ops II’s multiplayer mode…

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First English Trailer For Suda 51′s Killer Is Dead

By Joshua Cuplin, March 18, 2013 0

It has been some time since we’ve really seen anything about Suda 51′s new game Killer Is Dead. For those of you who haven’t heard yet, Killer Is Dead is a new IP by Suda 51 that’s set in his overarching Assassin Universe, the same universe that is home to the No More Heroes games and Killer 7. The game follows Mondo Zappa, an assassin with a bionic arm that’s capable of swapping attachments and utilizing special features while wielding a katana in his other hand.

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Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag – Open Seas, Open World

By Alex Plant, March 4, 2013 1

If you’ve been worrying about whether Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is being rushed out the door – don’t. The game will have been in development for over two years when it releases – about the same amount of time that Assassin’s Creed II received – with production kicking off in summer of 2011, and is being put together not only by a core team at Ubisoft Montreal, but teams from Annecy, Bucharest, Kiev, Quebec, Singapore, and Sofia as well. There are even some carryovers from the Far Cry team.

Because the game’s open sea setting will have players moving back-and-forth from their ships to the various islands of the Caribbean frequently throughout the story, Ubisoft had one major goal this time around: a truly open, seamless world, with no awkward transitional or loading screens between areas. While it seems pretty obvious that that’ll be great for the franchise’s sandbox characteristics, it’s got a ton of other implications as well.

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Square Enix Releases New Luminous Tech Demos

By Bre Melvin, January 29, 2013 1

It’s been awhile since we’ve seen any progress regarding Square Enix’s next generation gaming engine Luminous Studio, and considering the more recent news that the company is the first to adopt Epic’s Unreal Engine 4, it will be some time before we see a game from the Japanese studio that actually runs on Luminous.

However, for the first time since this summer, new technology demonstration videos for the upcoming engine have been released to the public.
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Wii U Virtual Console Impressions: Bringing the VC to Next-Gen

By Alex Plant, January 23, 2013 3

If you’ve been following my work here at GenGAME, I’ve probably shoved my desires for a Wii U Virtual Console service in your face. Among the demanded features were Off-TV Play support, a customizable controller interface, and the ability to easily upgrade from Wii VC versions to Wii U versions without having to pony up for another full-price download. As it turns out, Nintendo’s taken all of these suggestions into consideration with the implementation of the Wii U Virtual Console.

Nintendo released NES’s Balloon Fight as part of a promotional campaign that lets players grab certain games for 30 cents, one game per month for the next few months to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Famicom (the Japanese NES), so I picked it up to try out the new service for myself.

Hop inside for my thoughts.

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How Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII Uses Time To Increase Player Immersion

By Mel DeBottis, January 19, 2013 1

Many games have used clocks and time management as a focal point of the story and game mechanics. Classics such as The Legend of Zelda series and Chrono Trigger, among many others, have made time travel play a great factor in how players traverse the universes. Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII uses time as intricately as any other game, but in a way that many players will likely be unfamiliar with.

See why Game Design Director Yuji Abe says “the game’s clear time for one play through is designed to not be longer than many tens of hours” by reading on…

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Fire Emblem: Awakening Demo Preview

By Erica Fernandez, January 18, 2013 0

The Fire Emblem: Awakening Demo became available yesterday on the Nintendo 3DS eShop.  Set to release on February 4th, Fire Emblem is a tactical role-playing game developed by Intelligent systems and published by Nintendo.  If you aren’t familiar with the series, a few characters have appeared in Super Smash Bros, and it’s one of my personal favorites.

The demo released on the eShop is a part of the game, going through the prologue and first level of the game.  If you are new to the series and aren’t sure whether you will like the tactical aspect, I would suggest downloading the demo and getting a first-hand experience with it.  One of the new features to the series is being able to customize your player, and actually join the fray of battle alongside the main characters.

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Combat System For Lightning Returns is Both Old And Brand New

By Mel DeBottis, January 18, 2013 2

Combat has always been an integral and important part of any Final Fantasy game, and the system in Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII continues that tradition. This time though combat is much different than any other game in the series, even from the XIII series, and it is this change that developers are hoping will both revitalize interest in the series and make, “the degree of personalization for [Lightning]…quite high.”

Read on to find out how battles against even the smallest of foes will require precision and focus…

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