Hawked (PS5) Review

 

Hawked was an Extraction Shooter from My.Games, who also published games like Warface or Allods Online. The big twist of Hawked was its focus on PVE and in particular Treasure Hunting. You could say it was the Indiana Jones version of Extraction Shooters.

While in most Extraction Shooters you are only focused on collecting weapons and gear that you extract and sell after the match, in Hawked there was a big emphasis on exploring jungle ruins and solving puzzles instead. This is also what made the game stand out in the Extraction Shooter genre. Most of the puzzles were switch and lever puzzles, but there were also some combat challenges. Players needed to solve 3-5 puzzles to unlock glyphs around the map, which would allow you to retrieve a final artifact from a treasury. You then had to escort the artifact to an extraction site while other players were hunting you and trying to steal the artifact for themselves. During Season 3 of the live service, they removed the treasury and from now on hid the artifacts in a final Boss Dungeon instead.

The dungeons weren’t bad, but I always preferred the race to the extraction points instead. Extraction points still existed but became nearly obsolete now. Hawked was always an extraction shooter with a bigger emphasis on PVE than most games, but this change moved Hawked even further into that direction. I do like PVE, but I also believe a strong reason for this decision was the small playerbase of Hawked. During the Open Beta in late 2023 Hawked still had decent player numbers, but even in the first months after launch in early 2024 there was already a severe lack of players present. I encountered much fewer enemy teams during the matches and sometimes my own squads didn’t fill up anymore. It is nearly surprising that the game managed to last another 2,5 years before the inevitable server shutdown.

The lack of players definitely influenced the experience. Where previously you had to hurry up while solving the glyph puzzles, so that other teams didn’t get the chance to third party you and where you constantly had to look over your shoulder while trying to extract the artifact, this all changed without the human competition. While I enjoyed the intensity of these moments, it’s fair to point out that Hawked always had a smaller focus on this pure survival feeling than many other extraction shooters do. Apart from the PVE and Puzzle focus, the colorful comic-book art style probably contributed to this as well. Games like Hunt Showdown or Escape from Tarkov are dark in tone and visuals, while Hawked is a very vibrant game instead. That’s also why a lot of people referred to it as the Fortnite of Extraction Shooters.

There honestly isn’t all that much to say about the gameplay. Hawked was a third-person shooter and both gunplay and movement felt at least competent. If I had to choose, I would clearly give the edge to the movement, however. Sprinting, sliding and climbing animations were very fluent. There were special grappling and rope-swinging opportunities and you could use a hovering board for traversal on water. The gunplay was pretty decent as well, but weaker than in the best extraction shooters. Weapons could have used more impact and sometimes the hit registration just felt a bit off. Nothing too major, but nobody would have been drawn to Hawked because of the gunplay alone.

Hawked featured a large and beautiful Jungle map. It was a lot of fun to explore that map and to search for the glyph chambers and temples. Since the map was huge, you would only get to experience a certain part of it every match, which helped to keep things fresh for a while.

Hawked also had an underwater base as a hub area, where players could relax outside of matches. You could access different settings or functions, similar to many other games, but you could also talk there with NPCs to gather some equipment or progress some background story via cutscenes. While I do think it’s a positive part of the presentation that they included some kind of overarching narrative, it was very bland and forgettable and players who ignored it haven’t really missed out on anything.

In the beginning Hawked only featured regular monsters in the form of reptilians called ‘The Disciples’. Season 2 would add robotic aliens in the form of the ‘The Vektr’, while Season 3 provided us with new corrupted mutants. Each of these factions also had different gamemode queues to face them. I am not entirely sure if it was a good idea to divide the small playerbase even further with additional queues, but what do I know… The gamemodes to play against the Vektr and corrupted enemies were, btw, also paid DLC till the shutdown announcement of Hawked.

This feels like a good moment to also talk about P2W aspects in Hawked. While Hawked was not the most P2W game in the Extraction Shooter genre, it still had some really annoying elements. Players with an active Hawked subscription, called Grail+, not only progressed faster, but they also got an additional sub-exclusive loadout slot. Season 2 and Season 3, furthermore, introduced some of the best gear and abilities in the game and locked them behind a DLC paywall. Players could also pay to skip the grind for gear and boosters. Non paying players could get there too, but it required much longer time to become competitive. At least players in Hawked could never lose their once-unlocked weapons and gear, so there were no purchasable insurances, like in many other Extraction games.

 

Result:

The Treasure Hunting focus gave Hawked a unique position inside the Extraction Shooter genre. It was a good game and fun for a couple of hours, but it’s also fair to say that Hawked never achieved greatness. The best moments were when you got caught in between solving puzzles, extracting artifacts and fighting off other squads. The game, however, suffered from a lack of players pretty early on, which only sped up its downfall. The art style was controversial, the gunplay nothing special and the story was very shallow and forgettable. P2W aspects like a subscription-exclusive gear slot or gear locked behind paywalls prevented the game from ever attempting a comeback. I liked Hawked, but I also understand why it didn’t succeed in a highly competitive market.

 

7/10

Airship (PC) Review

 

Airship is a relatively new Game Creation Platform on Steam, which practically nobody has ever heard of. That’s not a good sign, but I can’t say I am blaming anybody. This already starts with the name of the game. ‘Airship’ is as generic as it gets and I wouldn’t even associate that title with a videogame.

As its main selling point, Airship offers the ‘Bed Wars 2’ Gamemode, which it claims is the official sequel to the popular Bed Wars Game in Minecraft and Roblox. I was originally a bit surprised by this claim since Bed Wars on Minecraft or Roblox had millions of players, while Airship 2 had less than 10.000 total mobile downloads and usually below 10 simultaneous players on Steam. But it turns out, Easy.gg is actually the developer of both the original Roblox version and the sequel.

Bed Wars 2 plays the same as the original, just with a new engine. Each player starts on his own island with a bed that he needs to protect. By looting of resources, players can create weapons and objects to reach and attack the other players islands. A player that loses his bed also loses the match. The last remaining player wins. Bed Wars 2 is fine to play, but it doesn’t feel like an improvement over the original versions of Bed Wars 1. The main difference, however, is, that you often can’t even start a match in Bed Wars 2 or only get 1-2 opponents, since Airship is so unknown.

All the other games in Airship besides Bed Wars 2 are pretty terrible. They all have a very scuffed and cheap feeling. This is probably also based on the fact, that Airship has so few players and none of them are talented game developers. You can’t blame those players for not creating masterpieces on their first tries, but not a single one of those games was actually worth trying out. Some of those games are multiplayer based and some singleplayer experiences. But as I already said, none of them are worth playing. There are no other players to play with and the gameplay is really awful in all of them.

One of the few things worth praising in Airship are the settings. They offer a lot of customizability for visuals, sound and controls. Airship sadly, however, doesn’t offer any controller support, which was surprising, given the otherwise strong customizability.

Apart from two moments, the game always had a pretty dead playerbase, which is devastating for a Game Creation Platform. Usually there are less than 10 people online. Airship also doesn’t offer any Steam Achievements.

 

Result:

Airship is a totally forgettable Game Creation Platform, which will probably soon disappear. The only thing it has to offer is Bed Wars 2 and even that isn’t better than the original Bed Wars. All the other games in Airship are abysmal and could, without insult, be labeled as trash. There are rarely enough players for a Bed Wars 2 match present and none in any of the other games. Bed Wars fans should stick with the original and everyone else should certainly avoid this game.

 

3/10

 

Update:

Something in the game must have broken, since Bed Wars 2 has been removed from public lobbies. Most of the other games have been removed as well and the remaining games all display error messages when trying to access them. Currently Airship is therefore not even playable at all.

Real Cake Maker (PS4) Review

 

Real Cake Maker is the newest Shovelware Game in the Playstation 5/4 F2P section. It was developed by Qubic Games, which in the last couple of months released a bunch of free Playstation Games. Some of them, like Puzzle Galaxy or Cup Heroes, were actually quite good. Qubic Games, however, also has a bit of a reputation for publishing huge amounts of Shovelware Games on Nintendo Switch. Real Cake Maker is without a doubt part of the latter group. It’s one of the worst games I have played in a while.

After doing some research, I found out that Real Cake Maker apparently already released in 2016 as a mobile game. Why they released this 10 years later with no improvements on the Playstation Store will probably forever stay a mystery.

You play as a little girl, who is baking cakes for animals, babies and other children. The gameplay of this baking activity is simply abysmal. You occasionally move the analog stick in a circle, press the X-Button, wait for the cake to cook itself, before you put some sweets on top of it and feed it to your customers via analog stick movement. Yikes!

I know what some people will say: “This is a children’s game. You shouldn’t be so critical with the gameplay.” I am sorry, but I have to disagree. No child deserves to be tortured with shovelware crap like this. Moving your analog stick in a circle and occasionally pressing a button is not gameplay. Every interactive movie game has 10 times more actual gameplay. This is just nothing and having to watch the slow cooking animation is pure torture.

But wait, you can also have a cooking party, where you can feed 3 participants simultaneously. Oh god… And there is also a small coloring book activity that is completely disjointed from the rest of the game and was apparently ripped straight out of one of Qubic Games other games called ‘Coloring Book’.

The visuals of Real Cake Maker look like something from a 15-year-old crappy phone game, certainly not a PS5 or PS4 game. The developers put no effort into this.

But there are, of course, multiple purchasable DLC. Only 3 Cake recipes are available for free, but you can buy a dozen more in the Playstation Store, plus 100 additional skins… Jesus Christ…

The game features one of the easiest Platinum trophies you could imagine and 11 additional gold trophies. So it might be worth a look for trophy hunters, but the platinum takes around 30 minutes to unlock and I certainly regret spending any time on this trash game to review it, but maybe I can at least warn a couple of people before trying this out.

 

Result:

Real Cake Maker is abysmal shovelware trash and I don’t think it’s a game suited for children either. Any child, who is old enough to understand what is going on on the screen, will be underwhelmed by this and any kid younger than that should either not play videogames yet or watch their parents play something better. There are many good games also perfectly suited for a younger audience. There is no need to torture anybody with shovelware like this.

 

1/10

Warface Battle Royale (PS4/PC) 2026 Re-Review

 

Regular readers of my blog know that I enjoy Battle Royale Games. Many players, however, only know the biggest BR games, like Fortnite, Apex Legends, Warzone or PubG, but there are a lot of lesser-known games also worth playing. Don’t get me wrong, there are also plenty of terrible or mid BR games (my blog can prove that much), many of which have already shutdown, but I believe the BR mode in Warface is actually one of those hidden gems, not many people have talked about.

Warface is not a dedicated Battle Royale Game, which means that BR is only one of many PVP-Modes in Warface. Sadly, this also means it will shutdown together with all the other Warface Gamemodes in late August 2026. I have previously reviewed this game around 6 years ago, but I thought this was the right moment to give it one more updated closer look.

In Warface Battle Royale, players start in a match, together with a maximum of 32 other players, at the edge of the map circle. So there are no planes and no parachutes to start with and the map circle begins after just a few seconds to slowly and continuously close in. Players start with melee weapons only and have to search for firearms, which usually have very limited ammo. Players can also only carry one heavy weapon in addition to a pistol and the melee weapon at the same time.

The start of the match at the edge of the zone, when you can see a player 50 meters left of you and another player 50 meters right of you and you all only have melee weapons, is something really special, that only a few BR games can replicate. You start to run desperately looking for a gun somewhere, but you also know you can’t afford to miss, since the gun will barely have enough ammunition to take out more than one player. If you miss too much, it might not even be enough for that. This keeps you on edge during the whole match, which is just very immersive.

I really like this concept. It reminded me of the Hunger Games and perhaps games like The Culling. Nowadays BR games are usually set up differently, which certainly isn’t worse, but it’s always nice to also see a more classic Battle Royale concept implemented.

Warface BR is therefore less focused on collecting loot than most other games in the genre, since there are simply fewer weapons available and the ever-closing circle alone keeps you on edge most of the time. Getting one of the better weapons is naturally still important, if you want to compete for the win. Nonetheless, I like that you actually have to consider when you spot another player, if you attack him, which could waste your precious ammo or go in another direction instead. You are also, of course, forced to aim better since every bullet can count.

The pacing of the game is, despite the sneaking possibilities, relatively fast and the matches are over pretty quickly. Rarely does a round take longer than 5-10 minutes.

There are 2 different maps with Mojave Desert and Prypjat City in Map Rotation. I have to say I like them both. Prypjat creates the atmosphere of an abandoned Russian Ghost City and Mojave is a cool and bright desert map. Both maps offer you a lot of cover possibilities to sneak between buildings or environments.

One of the bigger disadvantages of Warface Battle Royale is that there are no Duo or Squad-Modes available. Every game is Solo only. Some people won't mind this, for others it might be a real dealbreaker. There are also no Battle Royale statistics in the game, that tell you how often you have won or how many Kills per game you achieved and so on. These are just some of the other signs of the simpler presentation. You are not going to get the same amount of polish as in other games, which exclusively focus on a Battle Royale mode.

The visual presentation of the game is also rather basic and could in the best case be described as average. Warface is not among the very worst-looking, but also certainly not among the best looking games either. You can clearly see that Warface is actually an older F2P (Free to play) game. The game originally released in 2013. There is only so much you can do without a change in graphics engine.

Even though theoretically 32 Players can engage in a match, I have rarely experienced that. Between 2018 and 2019 (the PS4 launch time) I have most of the time been playing with 20 to 24 players, occasionally dropping to even lower numbers than that. Since the gamemode for a long time required at least 16 players to start, it was a lot more difficult to get games going in the following years. It was still possible on occasion, however, on PS4, but next to impossible on the PC version. In 2026 the developers actually reduced the minimum number of players to 4, which thankfully revitalized the gamemode. While I never saw numbers like back in the day, I still participated in a couple of matches with more than 10 players in 2026.

Another aspect we simply have to address, when it comes to any Gamemode Warface related, are the Pay-to-Win Elements. Thankfully, the Battle Royale mode has been much less affected than any other Gamemode in Warface. There are no Loadouts available for BR, so premium armour or weapons from the shop do not affect the gamemode. Unfortunately for a long time you were able to take more powerful melee weapons as your starting weapons into a Battle Royale match. A Kantana, for example, did more damage and had a longer range than a starting knife. The effects were a lot smaller than in the other PVP-Modes, where paying players could straight out buy better weapons, but an unfair balance was still being created in Battle Royale. A couple of years ago they fixed this unbalance by giving all melee weapons identical damage, range and speed values. So in the last 2-3 years there was no longer any P2W to be found in Warface Battle Royale.

 

Pro:

- Serious survival atmosphere

- Lack of Ammunition encourages strategy

- Fast pace

 

Contra:

- Solo only

- (Small) P2W elements for a long time

- Visuals were quite dated-looking

 

Result:

Warface in general was a really mixed bag. A fun, but dated FPS with a big variety of gamemodes, that was severely limited by its heavy P2W issues. Thankfully, Warface Battle Royale was a lot less affected by this. The maps, the lack of ammunition and the smaller player count created a real survival atmosphere, which is Warface Battle Royale's biggest strength. You didn’t just had to hunt down other players, like in a lot of other BR games, but your main goal in Warface Battle Royale was to actually just survive. It’s a shame this gamemode never got much attention, because I think it would have deserved it.

 

7/10