Today I’ll be reviewing Battlewake made by Survios, a developer who hasn’t let us down when it comes to PSVR games. I’ve been excited to see how Survios made a pirate ship combat game in VR, since the only game like this on PSVR was a small game called Heroes Of The Seven Seas. So, is Battlewake any good?
Battlewake is a game that has you manning a pirate ship in epic battles. There’s a campaign mode that let’s you play as 4 different captains, each with their own mini-story. The stories are basic and each captains story can be finished in under 30 minutes, but I still enjoyed playing through them. You can also play with one other player in the campaign mode. Another single player mode is Warfare, where you endlessly play through missions until you lose all lives. Each of the missions are different, some will have you destroying a structure, some have you destroying ships, and more. While you can play this by yourself it’s much more fun playing with friends, hours flew by really fast when fighting endless bosses and ships. And finally there is plunder mode, which is online only. It’s basically a free for all deathmatch. I would give you my thoughts on this, but every time I tried to find a match there was nobody online.
Once you start a mode you get to choose between one of the four captains, and a ship too. Each captains have their own unique abilities and ships, which really helps make combat more unique. As for the gameplay itself, the entire game takes place inside of your ship. Your ship has two different types of weapons, two cannons on the left and right of your ship, and then a smaller but also faster weapon on the front of the ship. If you’re looking straight ahead you can fire the gun in the front, and if you’re looking left or right you can fire your cannons. As for the movement itself, you can steer the ship left and right, and you can also drop an anchor on either side. When you drop the anchor you turn drastically faster, think of it as like a drift. You will have to worry about HP though, you’re ship can be damaged by other ships and things in the water itself.
The game has several unique and well designed levels that all look fantastic and keep the game from feeling boring. The game is pretty polished overall and runs smoothly. The game does have a few glitches though, mainly having to due with UI and AI, but that’s nothing a patch or two can’t fix. The Warfare mode also needs some balancing, there was a huge difficulty spike that came later in the game mode.
So overall, Battlewake is a really fun game. The game is simple but extremely fun, but with that being said, I think you really need to have a group of friends or join a PSN community before playing this game. The single player content is fun but will only last you around 2 hours, the multiplayer is where this game shines. Survios has proved once again that they can make a solid VR game, this is definitely worth a buy if you like pirate games or multiplayer games.
