“I tell you I will not forget our adage: I dig giant robots, you dig giant robots. We dig giant robots, chicks dig giant robots”.
“By the gods, nice“.
The past almost-decade has seen a surprising amount of dominance by Overwatch, with every shooter that didn’t go Battle Royale somehow trying to chase the colorful tones of Blizzard’s hero shooter. In fact, you could argue Overwatch 2 is chasing that same glory- amid a hail of last minute changes trying to get people to relive the magic the first time Tracer came to our screens.
Mecha BREAK, with its beta out now, I initially thought, would be chasing that same high. “Hero shooter with mechs” isn’t an inaccurate way to describe what it is- but underneath that is such a specific and intense love for the mech genre and borrowing from its greats that it creates one of the best multiplayer experiences I’ve had.
No Overwatch Clones Here
Interestingly enough, you’re more likely to associate Mecha BREAK with its closest contemporary, Armored Core. Your Strikers aren’t set up too differently- the buttons all correspond to various pre-set equipment for them, and there’s an emphasis on dodging and verticality. Good god, let me tell you how good that movement is.
From dodging to boosting to flying up, everything feels snappy and responsive. Given even more time I’m sure we can start to witness some truly magnificent piloting, as players can sidestep, super jump and the like with ease. Missiles? Sure. Gatling gun fire? Why not. With enough familiarity with your mech you can easily move around the battlefield like a butterfly, delivering your payloads of destruction all the while.
The Joy of a Good Stable Of Mechs
It also helps that the mechs in the game are so inherently different from each other- part of Amazing Seasun Games’ big triumph is that you can’t really tie any of the Strikers in Mecha BREAK to a modern hero shooter counterpart. Everything behaves as a mech would, which means no time for Medic-esque Healing Beams or TF2 Engineer turrets. Instead you have fast jet-transforming aerial units, grounded brawler units with offensive skills, defensive units that turn into turrets and a whole scale of light to heavy in all those different classes.
The fact they’re all equipped differently makes it so that each kit feels hyper specialized instead of needing every mech to have a checklist of skill types. Welkin, the aforementioned brawler has disruption tools to stay alive longer while Panther, another brawler instead has an instant energy refill for when you run out of stamina.
It helps every character feel so much more in-depth and difficult to learn as a result- you’ll want to spend as many games as you can with your favorite Strikers since you feel like you can do so much with them. I myself am really fond of said Panther- being able to ambush vulnerable units and deal with them before the team fight starts is really valuable, and makes you feel like your own mini Char dashing around the field that way.
For The Love Of Mecha In The Mecha BREAK Open Beta
In fact, let’s talk about that mini Char feeling. There’s lots of little mecha-isms that don’t really affect the gameplay but tell you so much about the team behind this game. From the loading screen being your mech being deployed like a drag racer to the satisfaction of disengaging by back dashing and covering your tracks with rifle fire, it’s a game that trades on the fantasy of being a mech pilot the same way Armored Core does- it knows how you want to feel and panders to it like a new Stepfather trying to get a peaceful Christmas.
It’s really interesting to see- with the dominance of Overwatch clones came that same UI, those same sound effects, that same kill screen. And yet, here’s Mecha BREAK professing its love to the mech genre instead and creating a visually unique game as a result of it.
It even leads to gameplay benefits- the fact flight is a real feature every character has adds a huge level of complexity to combat, one that has to be supplemented by the removal of hard aiming and instead using the Armored Core-style lock-on. Even if you aren’t humming Gallant Char to yourself, Mecha BREAK is worth checking out if you’re simply looking for an arena shooter that does something new.
A lot of its shortcomings happen outside the battlefield: Your Strikers are powered by Mods that give small percentile increases to stats and are obtainable via gacha, so I do expect that to be a bigger problem down the line as people start optimizing builds. There’s also the case for the game’s no-stacking rules: if you’re queuing up for the standard matchmaking there’s a strong likelihood you’ll get locked out of your favorite suit because someone else called dibs first, which is never fun when you’ve spent the last hour perfecting your drill-lance plays.
Still, on a mechanical level Mecha BREAK is an absolute breath of fresh air. The Limited Access Beta is running now, with the Open Beta set to launch soon, and you should absolutely check it out if you want a chaotic mess of a 6v6 that also happens to pay visual homage to one of the greatest anime genres ever made.
