If you loved 2023’s Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, you’re probably yearning for more video game mecha action right about now. Thankfully, plenty of games on the horizon are ready to fill that void. In the multiplayer space, the title that should pique your interest most is Mecha Break from Amazing Seasun. The game first caught my eye with a thrilling trailer at The Game Awards 2023, so I jumped at the chance to try out the game’s Closed Alpha over the holidays to see what the studio has in store.
Mecha Break hits all of the right notes that a mecha game needs to, namely by emphasizing customization that will allow everyone’s machine to look and play differently from each other. While I’m unsure that it’ll be the next multiplayer game to take the game industry by storm, I could see Mecha Break being 2024’s Exoprimal, carving out a unique little multiplayer niche for itself by capitalizing on mecha fandom at an opportune time.
It’s mecha time
In any mecha game, customization is a critical component; a major part of the genre’s appeal is molding a robot’s look and feel before testing its viability in real time during intense combat encounters. Even in this alpha stage, Mecha Break provides all the right tools for this. Each “Striker” in Mecha Break has unique attributes and is then split into various parts that players can customize and apply mods to tweak their own playstyle. I settled into using a more aggressive Striker that allowed me to deal a ton of damage in a short amount of time but left me frail if anyone got up close.
Getting even more specific, each Striker has its own pilot with a unique backstory, and players can tweak and personalize the paint jobs of over 120 parts of their mechs. While I didn’t spend much time messing around with this during the alpha, I can’t wait to hop back in and customize my Striker even further. I’m also itching to learn more about the other kinds of gameplay modes Mecha Break will provide, as the options from the “Sand Table” mission select menu were limited in this alpha.
Although a battle royale-like mode with some PvE objectives is planned for the full game, the only option for me in the alpha was “Battlefield.” In practice, these are objective-based 6v6 matches, and my goals fell in line with those common in multiplayer shooters. Match types ranged from capturing certain points to escorting a payload from point to point while fending off the enemy team. No matter what mode I was playing, Mecha Break kept an impressive sense of scale, as each Striker towered over buildings and other objects in each multiplayer map I fought in.
The core concepts of these match types didn’t feel revelatory. Still, Mecha Break provided a unique thrill because I was controlling a giant machine. The rush of transforming my mecha into an X-Wing form and boosting to another capture point before the team could get there is something I can’t get from the latest Call of Duty. The idea of being able to work more closely with a team to refine our team composition, coupled with modes I’ve yet to see in action, should be more than enough to get me to return to the shooter when it actually launches.
Nowadays, there are so many multiplayer games fighting for players’ attention at any given moment, but the specific niche Mecha Break targets isn’t serviced much outside of Armored Core and Gundam games. And for fans of mecha, getting into Armored Core VI’s multiplayer might also be difficult now that its meta has had so long to develop and its players have had so much time to refine their skills. Mecha Break, while not revolutionary, could nestle itself into a distinct, appealing space in the multiplayer video game scene whenever more players can finally get their hands on it.
Mecha Break is in development for PC, with the developers looking to scale up rounds of testing as it heads into 2024.
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