Highlights

  • Hawked's first major update, Issue 2, introduces new artifacts, gear, and enemies known as Vektr, enhancing the treasure-hunting experience.
  • The Class Card system adds a new layer of strategy, offering bonuses to players with specific loadouts and encouraging diverse playstyles.
  • Despite some technical issues and matchmaking challenges, My.Games' Hawked shows promise in shaking up the PvPvE shooter genre with fresh content.

My.Games' comic-inspired extraction gunfighter, Hawked, is receiving its first major content update today. In addition to furthering the core narrative, Hawked's update yields a slew of new artifacts, exo and ward gear, a new class card system to incentivize certain loadouts, a couple of new firearms, and a new class of enemies known as Vektr.

Hawked's first seasonal update, instead titled "Issue" after the game's comic book aesthetic, launches today, and veteran Renegades are doubtlessly eager for the new content. Game ZXC attended an exclusive preview event and participated in Issue 2's public beta test to get a comprehensive view of everything new coming to the game.

Hawked - Out of the Shadows Teaser
Related
Hawked Interview: Dev Discusses Player Feedback, Future Plans, and More

Game ZXC speaks with executive producer Andrew Duthie about Hawked's comic book origins, its future live-service plans and issues, and more.

Know Your New Foe

X-Isle's normal slew of fanatical island enemies aren't pushovers, but the evilly geometric forces of Vektr are a cut above in terms of health, firepower, and abilities. The rewards for fighting these enemies are considerable; they tend to guard caches of high-powered energy weapons that can make short work of other players. Vektr's presence on the island extends to having a full-blown, fortified base of operations with its own extraction point.

Players who can overrun the base's forces can claim the base, its extraction point, and its defenses as their own, ensuring they have a safe point to drop off treasure. But a squad of players will rarely have time to both hit the vault and claim the base. This set-up encourages epic clashes between the vault-raiding Renegades and base-claiming Renegades. It's an interesting new biome of X-Isle that has some serious potential for shaking up the game's treasure-hunting formula.

New Toys and Classy Cards

Renegades can expect to find new armaments on X-Isle, including many Vektr-themed energy weapons such as the charge-based Twin Eclipse sniper rifle, the horizontally firing Solar Flare shotgun, and the unique Pulsar grenade launcher. New Ward gear includes the Loaded D20, which grants random Glyph buffs, and the Blockade Ram Exo gear, which will give Renegades a brief, impenetrable shield.

The most notable game-changer coming to Hawked though, is the Class Card system. Class Cards give players a bonus when they are equipping specific loadouts. A class card centered around healing gear may have increased revive speed when using healing and shielding exos and wards, while a Shock Rocker build could have an increased AOE damage radius. There are eleven cards available out of the gate, and My.Games stated that they plan to add many more in the future.

The various classes seem reasonably balanced (though it can be challenging to tackle duos who are both equipped with the healing card). The cards will also add content in two ways. To begin with, players must first unlock class cards by acquiring the necessary artifacts and gear to complete that class card's bonus. Secondly, players can accrue Class Card Mastery by playing matches with the given class. Ranking up will entail different achievements, and maxing out a Class Card's Mastery rank will require players to complete a class-specific quest.

Potential Concerns

Hawked Extraction Fight

Even though Issue 2 represents Hawks first major content update, there are still some lingering issues. One of the memory-matching symbol shooting puzzles commonly suffered from visual glitches, and while still mechanically solvable, the lack of polish is disappointing. Lag stutters were also common on the North American server. But these are relatively minor concerns compared to My.Games' central challenge.

Hawked appears to be struggling to find an audience. During the Issue 2 Public beta, matchmaking took up to seven minutes to fill a queue, and once loaded, the arenas often felt sparsely populated. With too few teams competing for the treasure, showdowns are far and few between, and Hawked's formula does not leverage intentional emptiness. The new Vektr bases are a great addition on paper, but without enough players to overcome the strong enemies, it often isn't worth engaging with the challenge rather than gathering glyphs, entering the vault, and traveling to another, less fraught extraction point.

Hopefully, the Issue 2 update will draw more players to the title. Even though it's still rough around the edges, Hawked has potential.