Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. Features

Mecha Break’s robot customization shakes up the battle royale formula

Jess Reyes
By
Mecha Break robot head with glowing blue eyes
Amazing Seasun Games

Mecha Break isn’t the kind of multiplayer game you can master right away.

You might equip a lance that you barely know how to use because it seemed like a good idea, and spend the rest of a round attempting to bash yourself into enemies to help your teammates. It incorporates action that’s more similar to that of Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon than it is to the shooter-focused gameplay in Gundam Evolution, Bandai Namco’s multiplayer mecha shooter that shut down last year. Overwatch does come to mind, but in a way where mechs are still the focus rather than the pilots within them.

Recommended Videos

When I tried it for myself at this year’s Game Developers Conference, I played in a 6v6 tournament on one map that involved capturing keys and uploading them to terminals. After that, I dove straight into the newly announced 60-player battle royale mode, Mashmak. It hadn’t been solidified into a game mode at the time of the alpha at the beginning of the year, so GDC was the first time anyone was able to test it. The flashy, layered combat system was enough to hook me thanks to its diverse selection and customization. Mashmak is an especially strong mode that challenged me to think on my feet and experiment with my kit.

Mecha BREAK|Closed Beta Trailer

Mashmak has an easygoing vibe that reminds me of shooter-based battle royales — something that you could play with a group of friends to just catch up with each other. It also gave me a chance to admire Mecha Break‘s futuristic, sci-fi landscape before it forced us to pick each other off. Like in Fortnite and Call of Duty, the safe zones shrink until players have no choice but to fight. If you dare venture into the storm, it deals damage and jams signals until you either crash or escape.

Related

I went hands-on with only two mechs, Panther and Falcon, but there are currently seven of them in total. Most of them fit into specific roles that can determine how effective your team comp is. For example, Tricera is a thorough defender that became a staple on every team for its shielding and missiles. Luminae, a support unit, also became a popular choice for its healing, though one of the winning teams in the tournament decided to ditch it entirely to focus on offense. We had two teammates who were seasoned veterans that helped us quickly learn the ropes.

The Mecha BREAK Closed Beta recruitment is now open. Join us to forge a mecha combat experience filled with blitz, brawl, and blaze! Sign-up here:https://t.co/0k1vKy6ooS pic.twitter.com/gJPWaCDwoJ

— Mecha BREAK (@MechaBREAK) March 21, 2024

I started with Panther, a brawler class that attempts to balance offense and defense. Unfortunately, I had a hard time keeping up with speedier teammates. Sure, I could pull out my shield to temporarily protect myself from enemy fire or bash into a nearby unit to finish them off, but it was a suicide mission to dive into a firefight because of Panther’s slower speed and limited shield strength. I equipped a lance, which might not have been the best choice because of how slow it was to even approach enemies to joust them. Falcon was the opposite. Its agile build leaned into aerial combat that made it easier to avoid conflict while picking off enemies from afar. However, it was much easier for heavy-hitting melee units to take advantage if I flew too close to their territory.

If you want to try the action for yourself, Amazing Seasun is currently accepting applications for its closed beta for PC. You can sign up now from the official website or find the link on the company’s social media. Based on what I’ve played so far, you might want to sign up.

Mecha Break is currently in development for PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Jess Reyes
Jess Reyes
Jessica Reyes is a freelance writer who specializes in anime-centric and trending topics. Her work can be found in Looper…
You can still get a Thunder Shotgun in Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 2. Here’s how
Fortnite characters in a city.

Fortnite has received plenty of exciting new weapons in Chapter 4 Season 2, and in typical fashion, Epic has also vaulted some of last season's weapons to clean up the loot pool. Among the weapons vaulted for Season 2 is the Thunder Shotgun -- but weirdly, it can still be obtained, as it appears Epic possibly overlooked one NPC who drops it.

Anyone who wants to score the Thunder Shotgun in Season 2 can head over to Frenzy Fields and look for the NPC named Sunflower who walks around the farm. Simply eliminate her and pick up the weapon she drops. It's unclear if this is actually something Epic missed, or if the team just simply didn't want to bother changing up Sunflower's loot drops. Either way, it's currently the only way to obtain the Thunder Shotgun.

Read more
The Finals is the shake-up the competitive first-person shooter scene needs
A player stands up against a wall in a The Finals screenshot.

While I enjoy playing first-person shooters occasionally, it's a genre I've struggled to become a hardcore fan of. To me, it has stagnated, with recent Call of Duty and Battlefield games feeling like little more than rehashes of the same quick-kill-focused gameplay on maps that all blend together after a while. That's why The Finals' longer time-to-kill, unique match objectives, and focus on level destruction all feel like a breath of fresh air.
THE FINALS Closed Beta Trailer
Developed by Embark Studios, the new multiplayer shooter is a notable change of pace for a stagnating genre. Because it takes a lot of effort to defeat an opponent, and the map is continuously changing as you do so, no two matches feel quite the same. I can attest to that, as I recently went hands-on with it and had that exact experience. Lots of thrilling, emergent moments organically happened during each match, leading to some of the most memorable matches I've had playing a first-person shooter in years.
If you've always enjoyed destructible environments in your FPS games and enjoy inventive competitive shooters that aren't just trying to chase what is popular, then you'll want to check out The Finals.
Map mayhem
The Finals' primary mode, Extraction, is framed as a game show where four teams compete to earn the most money during a match. Players do this by locating vaults on a map, obtaining cash boxes, and delivering them to a cash-out station. Extra money is rewarded for kills and a team's total is halved if they are completely wiped. The basics of the FPS gameplay are approachable enough for anyone who has played a game in this genre before. That said, its longer time-to-kill also helps that mission and gives players time to appreciate just how reactive its world is.
In the Closed Beta preview build, I played on two maps based on Monaco and Seoul. Each contains points of interest connected by some indoor arenas and long outdoor corridors that you'd come to expect from an FPS map. But it only stays that way for a short time. As soon as explosives get involved, the map transforms as buildings crumble and the environment reacts to the players. It stays that way too, as developer Embark Studios' server-side technology tracks and accommodates any changes to the map.
Last year, the developers at Embark Studios told Digital Trends that they hope this technology would make other developers panic. While we don't think The Finals will go that far, it certainly handles destruction better than other games that have tried to boast similar strengths, like Crackdown 3 or Battlefield 2042. It's not only a neat technical feat, but it also opens up many organic situations you don't get in other FPS games.

For example, a building was crumbling as I retrieved a cash box and headed to a cash-out station. I was under fire, and an opponent's rocket completely destroyed the pathway to get me to the building my teammates were in. I knew I didn't want the team chasing me to get ahold of the cash box, so I sacrificed myself by throwing the vault across that gap to my teammate before proceeding to hold enemies off as they delivered it to a station.
Even the greenery reacts to the player, especially when they have a flamethrower or flame grenade. At one moment, the station my team was delivering to was out in the open in a park. Other teams were coming at us from all angles, so I threw several fire grenades, and my teammate used a flamethrower. Doing this, we set most of the park aflame, forcing our opponents into pathways where we could pick them off more easily. Floors can crumble beneath you, staircases that get you to objectives can be destroyed, and a lot of map mayhem helps define each match of The Finals.
Leaving your mark
The Finals' destruction creates some compelling dynamics, making the player feel like they are shaping the world that each match takes place in. Players can customize their characters with outfits and special loadouts ahead of matches, and some of these options allow them to set down jump pads and ziplines or use a grappling hook to improve mobility. Turrets, barriers, and mines are also equippable, which can be used to direct the flow of battle and herd opponents into certain sections of the map. One particularly memorable moment saw my team calling two elevators in Seoul, only to find that another team had put a turret in one and all of themselves in another.

Read more
This console generation isn’t about games or hardware. It’s about services
A character stands below a ship in Starfield.

It’s been over two years since the start of the current console generation, which launched with a rocky start at the end of 2020. You'd think it's been more than long enough to understand what it's all about, but for many, there's still confusion. That might be changing this year. As Tomas Franzese wrote earlier this month, 2023 could be the year where we finally see what games define this generation’s consoles, at least in terms of exclusives. He also noted that games could stop being cross-platform, launching on just current-gen consoles instead of simultaneously on last-gen ones.

While that'll finally give us some memorable games, it doesn't bring us closer to defining the hardware itself. Besides a few extra teraflops and new ultra-fast SSDs, there isn’t much that helps the PS5 and Xbox Series X and S stand out from their predecessors. Sure, the PS5 looks like a giant spaceship, and the Xbox Series X is built like a fridge, but we didn’t know what these devices could offer that the PS4 and Xbox One couldn’t besides some pretty lighting effects and virtually non-existent loading times.

Read more