If you’re unaware, Microsoft revealed that on their upcoming console, the Xbox One, even disc-based games must first be installed in the system hard drive before playing. This policy was implemented in an attempt to reduce piracy. In essence, the hard drive installation acts as a secondary security measure, meaning one needs either the installation and the disc to play a game, or the installation and an approved digital download “unlocker.”

Still reeling from their E3 debacle, Microsoft has held press conference after press conference announcing planning changes to previously released console features. The most recent development, in an attempt to pacify players angry with the installation policy, is a “play during download” feature.

Yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like.

Instead of having to deal with the frustration of waiting for games of ever-increasing size to transfer content onto your hard drive before playing, players will be able to dive right into the game mid-installation. A thoughtful move on behalf of Microsoft which, unfortunately, will likely be taken for granted by its user base.

Is this enough to make up for the previous Xbox One policies in your eyes?

Source: Polygon

The trailer showcases some of the most popular wrestlers such as The Rock (even got his own cover) and Macho Man. Although, the game doesn’t look that different in terms of visual representation from the previous WWE games which is probably due to the fact that the developers have already hit their limit for graphical qualities on current-gen systems.

WWE 2K14 will be releasing on October 29th for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Are you excited to play WWE 2K14 later this year? Let us know in the comments below.

Check back on GamingBolt for more news and updates regarding WWE 2K14.

Game Overview:

Set years before the events of the previous Gears of War trilogy, Judgment centers on Kilo Squad, a troop of soldiers led by Damon Baird and Augustus The Cole Train Cole. They are joined by newcomers to the Gears series, Sofia Hendricks and Garron Paduk, as they attempt to save the besieged city of Halvo Bay from a terrifying new enemy.

Gears of War: Judgment features a Mission Declassification system that lets players experience more challenging gameplay scenarios and achievements by uncovering critical information during the course of the campaign.

Recently, we got in touch with Wojciech Pazdur, the Development Director at The Farm 51 and Reinhard Pollice, Business Manager at Nordic Games. We spoke in great length about the origin of the game, their decision behind developing a requel and their opinion on next generation gaming.

Check out the full interview below.

Ravi Sinha: As a series, would Painkiller be a throw-back to the FPS shooters of yesteryear, where you’re invited to kill tons of enemies in extremely extravagant ways?

Wojciech Pazdur: You could say something like that. I’d just prefer to call it “going to good old times”. If there’s room for new titles like Shank or Super Meat Boy, which takes old school 2D shooters or platformer’s ideas to higher level, why not do the same with first person shooter genre? There are still thousands of people who aren’t just looking for a more cinematic experience in action games; with today focusing on pure gameplay essence is again a matter of debates and experiments.

Ravi Sinha: How was the decision made to do a remake/sequel (requel?) to the original Painkiller, rather than going forward with a true sequel?

Reinhard Pollice: We brainstormed a lot here and had ideas looking into a lot of different directions about a new Painkiller game. We ended up concluding that the market is lacking a key element of the original Painkiller, that “old school” element. So we decided that our game should be in the spirit of old school shooter games. We also noticed especially that console gamers never really had a chance to get into Painkiller, which is why we decided to take that route.

Ravi Sinha: Given that two of The Farm 51’s founders were involved in the original, was there a sense of going back and doing things differently, or just paying homage to what made the first game great?

Wojciech Pazdur: Painkiller Hell & Damnation is equally homage, continuation and expansion of great ideas from the original game. In 2004 there was a lot of performance, engine and timeline limitation that stopped us from making different things like we wanted them to appear in the game. It’s both crazy and extremely satisfying when we got back on the project and re-created the enemies, weapons or buildings exactly as we felt it should have been done years ago.

Ravi Sinha: Painkiller: Hell and Damnation has a fair bit of plot though, featuring characters from previous expansions in prominent roles. Does the straight-forward nature of the game ever feel at odds with that?

Wojciech Pazdur: Since the very beginning, we aimed at creating both continuation and re-imagination of the game universe. When we consider the flexible framework given by this insane mix of demonic and angelic worlds, there is no idea that is crazy enough to be pushed aside. Of course, to make it believable, consistent and cool, we spent countless hours on polishing characters roles, appearances, their look and dialogues – I believe the actual story makes much more sense than the original. This is because in first game it was changed several times during development and now we know what we wanted to tell from the beginning to end.

Ravi Sinha: Judging by the ending of the game though, can we thus conclude that a sequel with the Four Horsemen as antagonists is in the works? Or will it be an expansion like Battle out of Hell and Overdose were for the original Painkiller?

Wojciech Pazdur: It’s not a good time to reveal details of an upcoming project just yet, but the ending wasn’t implemented by accident. Again, the beauty of the Painkiller universe is its incredible flexibility i.e. we can pretty much expand it in all directions, like deeper into Hell, the “real” world, heaven or continue in purgatory… time will tell.

Ravi Sinha: What are your thoughts on criticism with the game, including the short campaign and multiplayer?

Wojciech Pazdur: Well, players have the right to expect a lot of cool stuff for their money. It’s just a matter of what makes sense to deliver when you can’t make all you want. It was not an easy decision on what direction to take, but after a couple of brainstorms we were all sure that it’s better to focus on extra value. This was to be generated by cooperative mode, survival multiplayer and strongly enhanced visuals on a smaller amount of levels, rather than to re-create the whole game that looks and plays exactly like the original. We laid the foundation with PKHD, and now we’re adding more and more new features and elements to remaining levels and modes. Besides regular updates, we will give out the mod-kit for PC, provide regular updates on the gameplay, and add more content to the game.

Ravi Sinha: How has the criticism shaped the development of the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game? Will we see any unique additions for the console versions or improvements to the core experience?

Wojciech Pazdur:  The console versions will deliver all bug fixes and improvements we’ve implemented to the PC game since its release in October 2012. But I think what’s more cool is the ability to play expanded campaign on additional maps that are exclusive for console releases. On top of it, several DLCs for PC version have been already released, so if any console player needs more adrenaline, it’s going to be much easier to satisfy his hunger.

Ravi Sinha: How has People Can Fly (developer of original Painkiller) reacted to Painkiller: Hell and Damnation? How deep was their involvement in the remake?

Wojciech Pazdur: People from the original team helped us a lot with their feedback on creative changes to the game. We were fighting like 10 years ago about weapon mechanics details, balance issues and visuals. Especially after the release of the PC version we got a lot of valuable design inputs that were incorporated into PC patches and our work on the console versions.

Painkiller: Hell and Damnation Intro Cinematic.

Ravi Sinha: What are your thoughts on the next generation of consoles, especially the recently revealed PS4?

Reinhard Pollice: I like a few functions that were announced but so far I personally cannot see a real benefit from buying that instead of a gaming PC. We will monitor further development closely and are also in a stage, where we evaluate certain game concepts for this hardware. Even a great platform sometimes isn’t able to convince a critical mass. A lot of factors are important here. Plus we are not in the position to be under the obligatory first-movers in that sense, so we will be careful for the time being.

Ravi Sinha: Finally, will Daniel ever have a happy ending and just be allowed to live in peace?

Reinhard Pollice: We thought about this many times but I guess “and he lived happily ever after”- peace is impossible for a video game action hero. Even Mario has to fight Bowser all over again, doesn’t he? So it might be that at some point he can escape the vicious cycle he is right now in purgatory but I am not sure if this means he can lean back and start an ordinary life again.

Special thanks to Yunus Ibrahim for setting up the interview.

Now given the massive fan following of this franchise, will Epic Games bring the franchise over to next generation consoles? The lead level designer at Epic Games, Jim Brown apparently would love to do so.

“I would love to say yes; I mean, this is something that is very personal to a lot of us. We’ve been working on it for a decade now and the whole reason we did this one is because so many fans wanted us to and we weren’t done with it.”

Gears of War Judgement Trailer.

He then states that they since the franchise has such a massive universe, they can go with a number of directions. “And it’s such a big universe, so there’s any number of directions we can go with it. But we’re still not finished with Judgment yet; we’re still at home working on DLC. So we are constantly building and expanding on the universe as much as we can,” he said to CapsuleComputers.

Since Gears of War IP belongs to Epic Games and not Microsoft, it will be interesting to see whether they will bring it on the PlayStation 4, if there is a new game announced.

What do you guys think? Let us know in the comments section below.

Upon booting up, Mensa Academy greets you with 2 characters who looked like they stepped out of the last console generation. Don’t worry, they don’t talk too much. You’re then introduced to the meat and potatoes on offer, mainly the single player and multiplayer modes. The single player is further divided into three portions: the Play, Coach and Test modes. Play is then divided up into 5 types of academic disciplines, mainly Language, Numeracy, Logic, Visual, and Memory.

Each of these types contain their own set of minigames, based on the five disciplines. For example, Language will have you differentiate a string of words, and then ask you to pick the odd one out. Similarly, Visual will ask you to determine which of two animals (a hare and a tortoise) will complete a race first. These minigames are broken up as levels and regularly mixed and matched, with only 10 questions given at a single time, along with score that you must beat in order to attain the highest rating.

There are a total of 20 levels per academia. Because there is no way to directly skip ahead, most of the initial levels play out relatively simple enough. Meaning, the player has no control over difficulty. The Coach mode, however, breaks up minigames into their own independent levels. So if you want to discern numerical equation puzzles in a gradually increasing difficulty for ten times in a row, you totally can.

Unlike the in-game 3D models depicted throughout, a good amount of the minigames themselves are presented in a colorful, cardboard cut-out style with progressively subtle changes in the scenery. Since this is where you’ll essentially be spending a lot of your time, it helps that developer Silverball Studios were able to make this far less repetitive than it could’ve been.

What doesn’t help are the constant pop-up messages asking me to sign into Xbox Live. These appear on an alarmingly frequent basis; once before you start a level, and then another after completing it. Also, out of all the modes, Test is probably the least engaging. It also doesn’t help that animations can not be skipped, such as when you’re taking down an elevator to the testing chamber, or whenever Professor whats-his-name is playing on his organ before he declares the result of a multiplayer match.

And while it’s entirely possible to enjoy some local split-screen multiplayer, Mensa Academy doesn’t support online matchmaking. It may seem like a small complaint given the genre, but it would’ve been great to see some Hero Academy-stlye asynchronous multiplayer of sorts implemented. However, not being able to adjust difficult settings amongst players is a definite downer.

Mensa Academy, as a learning experience, won’t exactly set your world on fire. It does what its set out to do, but it isn’t enough to really warrant a look on consoles. It may actually be wiser to check the iOS version, which is likely to be priced much lower. For everyone else, the trial version does pack quite a bit content for those looking to have their younglings entertained.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox 360.

If we are to believe the rumour mill though, it doesn’t seem like Microsoft will have much trouble finding games that will use its hardware in new and creative ways. We’ve rounded up ten titles that we think constitute a dream lineup for the Xbox 720’s software library for your reading pleasure.

For more interesting top 10 lists and cosplays, please click here. What games do you want for the Xbox 720? Do you want brand new video game franchises or more sequels? Let us know in the comments section below. Stay tuned to GamingBolt.com for more news and updates.

And to be fair Pinball FX2 isn’t really a game, it’s more like a loading program but it’s free. If you’re new to Pinball FX, created by ZEN Studios, here’s how it works; you download the free program and then buy the pinball boards separately. You can play trial versions of any board before you buy which takes out the feeling of being stuck with a bad board. But I hardly doubt you’re going to feel like you got stiffed here. Most boards are real fun and cheap, and you can even buy bundled boards for a good deal as well.

For this review I was given the ZEN Classics pack. This pack included Shaman, El Dorado, Tesla and V12. Out of the group I found Shaman the most fun, but I certainly enjoyed every board. Tesla was a steampunk looking board, and looked the best, but I had higher scores on Shaman. V12 was a car themed board and it was also fun, but with so much going on at times I would lose sight of the ball.

The physics of Pinball FX2 is pretty solid. There was never a time where I questioned the bounce or hit of a ball, nor called foul. With the high quality detail on the board, and with the nice reflections, even on the mirrored ball itself, at times you could almost be fooled into thinking you’re playing a real pinball. But if you really have an issue, there’s no worries, you can actually go through the machine and tweak the boards, mechanics, tilts, and just about anything.

One of the coolest features to Pinball FX2 is the scoring. You can obviously score on each board, but thanks to Pinball FX2’s lobby system, all your scores get added up, tournament style. These combined scores create your rank which you can compare with your friends or other people online.

Another neat feature is the multiplayer modes. There are two ways to play, either take turns or split screen. I tried the split screen, and then set the goal of first to 10 million with a 10 percent penalty, which is the default settings. I can honestly say my wife and I had a great time. Having your board halved makes it more difficult to keep track of the ball and even action, but considering how pinball is typically a one player at a time game, the half screen issue is very minuet.

There are a few minor issues with Pinball FX2’s setup. The main issue for me came with visibility. There’s nothing wrong with the level of detail in the game, it’s just hard to see everything on the board at the angle the camera is set at. I couldn’t find a way to move the camera more, and I know for some people it would be cool if you go top down on the board and turn your tv vertical. By default however the camera is set at an angle which makes it hard to see any play in the back field. When the ball does go out of view or in the back field a pop up window will appear on the top right of your screen to show you what’s going on. Add this screen to the window on the top left that shows your score and multipliers and it becomes a little overwhelming.

The only other issue I can see to Pinball FX2 is, what I would consider, its main competitor, Future Pinball. I looked into Future Pinball a few years ago and was thoroughly impressed. It’s a free program to your PC with free boards created by users. Many of these boards are replicas of original boards. The best feature I saw was that you could take two monitors and make one the play field and the other a backboard. I’ve even seen some people make huge cabinets with giant flat screen tvs, and then they add in a Wiimote for tilt. The draw backs to Future Pinball is that your customer service is other users and if you really want to get the full feel of the program you have to have enough money for 2 tvs, and carpentry skills to make a cabinet. In comparison Pinball FX2 is cheaper and easier to run.

Pinball FX2 brings back the essence of old school gaming through pinball. If you’re looking to start your collection, the ZEN Classics pack is a quick shot to some fun and unique boards. The trial versions of every board make it easy to pick and choose the right boards for your library. I would have never thought I would have had as much fun with multiplayer as I did when I tried out the split screen options. The pros to Pinball FX2 easily outweigh the cons here and if you’re a person who enjoys the small games on your console, you’ll easily find a board worth playing.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox 360.

It’s been a long month as we get closer to wrapping up the final loose ends on our biggest release since XenoMiner came out in September.

Earlier in November I started talking to Thibault Calabrese, aka LithiumSound, a French game artist and electronic musician who is known worldwide as the maker of the Summerfields and Greatwood texture packs for Minecraft. Thibault was excited about our project, especially since he had always wanted to work on something for Xbox, and it was a chance to make something in the science fiction genre. Luckily, Thibault speaks good English as Google Translate can only take you so far.

Summerfields was always my favorite texture pack when playing Minecraft, and it is almost always on the list if you do google searches for best texture packs. Thibault has a very smooth, minimal style that looks somewhat cartoon-like yet has a lot of realistic elements. It’s basically the perfect mix between realism and stylization, which I think is why it has such great appeal.

Texture rendering is an area that really sets XenoMiner apart. Instead of using flat images, we assign 3 images to each of the block’s sides. The first is the regular image you see in game, the second is a spec map which gives the surface a metallic vs matte reflective quality, and lastly is a normal map or height map, which gives the texture some dimensionality. Going this far into detail takes time: Many of the blocks end up consisting of 18 different image files, all of which must be properly organized by block type and given a consistent name.

After a couple weeks we had our first renderings: These aren’t perfect as they aren’t using the spec and height maps, but the detail and quality of the new textures are evident.

We’ve also spent the last weeks working on what has been overwhelmingly the largest feature request: Multiplayer. Integrating multiplayer has in no way been easy, but we felt we had to push it to the front of the task list for a several reasons. At this point in history it’s a basic expectation of most games. Players want to be able to share their creations and bot scripts with friends. More selfishly, it helps add to the viral nature of the game’s sales life. A player is more likely to “sell” the game to their friends if they can hook them through multiplayer. It also adds replayability: when players are sharing, they’re more likely to come upon new ideas and play styles and go back to their world with a refreshed mindset and new things to try.

Hopefully we’ll have multiplayer wrapped soon with all the bugs worked out. It’s taken a ton of development time to finish while we have a stack of other features we want to add to the game. Developing independently is always a fight for time, and we’ve really felt it these last few weeks as personal lives and regular jobs keep up constant demand of what resources we have – resources much more limited with the end of year deadline crunch at our jobs and the holiday season.

Hello everyone! This is Jesse Nivens, I do art and interface at Gristmill Studios, the developers of XenoMiner. To get things started, I’ll introduce you to the group and how we work. Gristmill began with three software developers working together at a large business in Madison, Wisconsin: Rod Runnheim, Shaun Nivens and Doug Graham. They bonded over gaming and a shared interest in trying to make them. After that, other co-workers and friends saw something cool happening and wanted to get involved, so the group grew. Shaun (my brother) went on to work for a larger gaming company, but not before bringing me in as an artist.

There are now 6 developers and 3 artists on the team. We have a system for getting games and projects done that we started two years ago: We set aside one night a week (Tuesdays) to all get together and work. But it’s more than just work, it’s hanging out (at developer Doug’s house), eating pizza and bullshitting. A consistent work time not only keeps the project moving forward, but it removes lingering stress from your other nights. What I mean is this: You can spend all week thinking “I need to go into the code and fix that bug,” and then finally actually do it. So the task becomes a weight. It’s better to just know that whatever it is, you’ll do it Tuesday. Of course, it’s not always that easy: There has been a big response to XenoMiner and we’ve been caught in a whirlwind, often having two formal developer get-togethers per week and individual tasks spread throughout the evenings.

XenoMiner is an Xbox Live Indie game that began life early in 2012. Before that, we released Devilsong on XBLIG in 2011 along with doing most of the work on a game called Etch. It’s a tower defense game for iOS, but the iOS marketplace is so crowded that we decided to hold off on releasing it until we built a bit more recognition for the studio.

XenoMiner is a spin off the block-building voxel genre. Since we created it in a scifi setting it really opened up a lot of new options. The first of those, and one of the major reasons we made this game in the first place, is the programmable bot. Everyone who has played a sandbox game has at some point wished they could send out a robot to do some of the grunt work for them.

The robot is a good place to start talking about some of the challenges we’ve had with the game: there have been ups and downs as far as how the community has taken the robot. First I should say that people universally are thrilled to hear that there is a voxel game with an integrated scripting language. We made it hard to use: the language is composed entirely out of alien characters. It took players around 3 days to crack the code (we knew the hive mind could do it, actually it was surprising it was that quick!). Of course, people immediately started posting tutorials on our forum or youtube, so the information is out there.

That’s not enough for everyone though: As one of our fans (angrily) wrote in, only hard-core players are going to jump onto the web and google around enough to figure out how to make the thing work. It’s the classic development problem of “how hard is too hard?” Our thinking so far has been that the bot is a powerful tool that can be used to do just about anything, so if someone wants that power they should put in some effort to get it. We don’t view it as some type of puzzle to figure out in order to advance the plot: if the player doesn’t want to write a working script, they don’t have to. In the meantime, we started a discussion on our forum to get our player’s opinions. There are some good ideas posted on the topic that we’ve been thinking about using.

That’s all the time I have for now, if you have questions, comments, or just want to talk, comment here or drop me an email. Our website is gristmillstudios.com. We’re also on Facebook and Twitter.