The Friday Funspot for 4/5

Let's see.. What do we have in the Funspot this weekend..

Steam Greenlight gets the Booby Prize: Agarest Generations of War

 A few years ago, a company brought a JRPG to America.. that's not unusual, companies bring great series over all the time, but this series was.. slightly different. It featured a ton of fan service over several "generations" of characters per game, and it embraced the fan service both in the game and in it's special edition goodies. One game came out with a mouse pad featuring one of the game's characters, with gel pads where her.. yeah.. you can probably guess. It also featured a full body pillow cover of another game character. So, yeah, they knew their audience and what that audience wanted.

Well, the game series has appeared now on Steam Greenlight, as Agarest: Generations of War. Thankfully, no weird extras, but having the game appear on your steam now playing list may be bad enough. If interested you can check out the Steam Greenlight page here.

No Injustice, No Peace: Injustice: Gods Among Us Demo

I see the demo for the Netherrealm Studios DC Heroes game "Injustice: Gods Among Us" has released, and the game looks fun, but I feel like the previous demos emphasized the environment so much (and knocking your opponent from one area to the next), that when it looks like "DC Heroes Kombat", you lose a bit of enthusiasm for the project. Not that I think it's BAD, mind you (just about any game out there would love to have the level of play the MK series has.. but one of the greatest things about the trailer is it emphasized how much OTHER stuff that superheroes and villains can do other than punch punch kick. But, again, the demo only has three characters and no story mode, so we'll see how it goes.

And dooowwwwnnn the Kickstarter stretch they come...

Two games that I've been tracking on Kickstarter have hit the final hours of their kickstarter. One has far surpassed their goals, and the other.. has got there, but hasn't shocked the world. One is Torment: Tides of Numenera, a in-spirit sequel for Planescape: Torment by Inxile Entertainment. They're aiming to break the record for most money raised in a gaming kickstarter, and they're close too, entering the final 20 hours (at the time I write this) of the kickstarter at 3.75 million pledged so far.

The other one has been Lord British's Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, which has succeeded in its funding goal ($1.4 million of a $1 million goal with the weekend yet to go), but it's been a rocky road as Richard Garriott has made some comments which probably caused a backlash against the game (and the fact that they apparently have decided to make five games in the series already, with the first one coming out in October of 2014, and the next four yearly after that).. We'll see how they finish up.

Neverwinter "release" date announced...

It looks like Neverwinter will reach "Open Beta" status (ie, you can pay us for stuff, and everything counts, but if things go kablooey we can just say "It's still just a Beta) on April 30th. We'll see how that goes.

And Finally.. the Funspot is headed to Funspot

If you're like me, of a certain age, and you have fond memories of heading to the arcade and playing all day, and you're in the Northeast US, you simply must make a trip to the small town of Laconia, New Hampshire and Funspot, the largest arcade left in the world. Not only does it have a ton of "newer" games, they also host the American Classic Arcade Museum, which has over 100 games that simply don't exist anymore outside of private collections. It's a must do, and it'll be great to head up there this weekend and get my game on. Heck, if you're there, and ya see me, say hi.