I like robots–especially comically massive ones armed with numerous weapons. Once I acquired an invite to go to Wonderful Seasun Video games’ Irvine, California workplace to check out their newest title, Mecha Break, all I actually knew going into it was that I might be enjoying a recreation that includes actually large robots armed with numerous weapons. I am not fairly positive what I used to be anticipating (apart from entry to the aforementioned big robots), however I definitely wasn’t anticipating to fall in love.
Most of Wonderful Seasun Video games’ earlier titles have been unknown to me, and all I might seen of Mecha Break have been some spectacular trailers. Once I lastly sat right down to take the free-to-play mech-based third-person hero shooter for a test-fly, I used to be admittedly a bit apprehensive. The live-service hero shooter market is oversaturated sufficient as it’s, and it is a powerful style to face out in. Is Mecha Break as much as the duty? To this point, the reply seems to be “sure.”
The sport contains a solid of 13 completely different mechs–referred to in-game as Strikers–each with their very own set of distinctive weapons and skills. When deciding on a Striker, gamers can take a look at a graph displaying that specific mech’s strengths and weaknesses. Some Strikers are nice for lone-wolf playstyles, some are higher at supporting or defending one’s group, and a few are a mixture of each. Every Striker feels surprisingly well-balanced–while I rapidly fell in love with a selected Striker that match my most popular playstyle (extra on that in a bit), I by no means felt that one Striker was too overpowered or underpowered.
However earlier than I get into the nitty gritty of Mecha Break’s gameplay, I’ve to take a second to reward the sport’s completely phenomenal character creator. Earlier than you set foot in a mech, you should first create the character who shall be piloting it. You may decide from a sequence of masculine and female preset characters, however these choices can then be personalized. At most, I used to be anticipating a easy customization display that may let me select from a handful of hairstyles and colours. What I used to be not anticipating was a personality creator so detailed it rivals that of RPGs like Cyberpunk 2077. Whereas there aren’t many physique shapes to select from, the sky is the restrict in relation to the whole lot else.
Gamers can customise their pilot’s hair shade (together with roots and ideas), each a part of their eyes (from sclera to pupil) and different facial options, their make-up (together with eyeshadow, eyeliner, blush, lipstick, and lip gloss), scars and tattoos, and extra. Outfit colours will also be personalized on a particularly detailed stage, and gamers are given the flexibility to select from all kinds of colours. I needed to bodily tear myself away from the character creator–one may simply spend an hour or extra perfecting their pilot’s look. In the long run, I had a feminine pilot with heart-shaped pupils, impeccable make-up, and superbly animated waist-length hair with a black-to-purple ombré dye job. Whereas enjoying, I encountered pilots with equally diverse appears, together with one who was carrying a sailor uniform and had a PC monitor for a head. (I later realized this pilot belonged to none apart from Wonderful Seasun Video games CEO and Mecha Break Recreation Director, Kris Kwok, who joined us for just a few matches.)
Further customization choices like clothes colours, hairstyles, tattoos, and eyeliner designs might be bought utilizing an in-game forex that you simply earn without spending a dime whereas enjoying the sport, which is a plus. After just some hours, I had greater than sufficient forex to customise each inch of my pilot ten instances over. Whereas objects like pilot outfits will doubtless be offered by way of an in-game retailer when the sport is launched, the construct I performed allowed for loads of customization with out the necessity for gamers to spend real-life forex. Oh, and gamers may customise their Striker in addition to its pilot, utilizing the identical in-game forex.
After reluctantly dragging myself away from the extremely detailed character creator, I climbed right into a Striker and tried out three recreation modes. The primary was your commonplace 3v3 group deathmatch-style mode. The second was a 6v6 mode that basically leaned into hero shooter mechanics, with completely different maps having completely different objectives–one map had my squad defending a shifting payload from an enemy group because it traveled throughout the map, whereas one other noticed us preventing to regulate a sequence of three map factors in a king-of-the-hill-style match. The third mode, referred to as Mashmak, is Mecha Break’s “signature mode,” based on its builders.
Mashmak is a PvPvE mode that sees 10 three-player groups dropped into a completely monumental map, the place they have to defeat each AI-controlled enemies and player-controlled squads, acquire loot, and–if they need to preserve that loot–reach an extraction level. The extraction level seems 10 minutes in, however you do not have to hit it instantly, as one other extraction level will spawn each 5 minutes for the rest of the match. However you do not need to wait too long–after quarter-hour, a Pulse Storm will start devouring the map. You may delay this to some extent by destroying a few of the drones controlling the storm, however in the end, the looks of the Pulse Storm is your signal that it is time to extract as quickly as doable.
Along with being visually interesting, Mecha Break’s Mashmak maps are completely monumental. Every of the sport’s Strikers has the flexibility to fly lengthy distances (although some have greater gas reserves than others), and through the preview occasion, we have been instructed that even when the Strikers had infinite gas reserves, it could nonetheless take roughly 10 minutes to fly from one finish of the map to the opposite. Mecha Break’s maps aren’t simply vast, however–they even have an enormous quantity of verticality. Gamers can fly up and over the facet of huge mountains which, in most video games, are normally put there to maintain gamers penned in. This isn’t the case with Mecha Break–if you may see it, you may fly over it. In fact, there is a limit–fly too excessive and an alert will seem on display alongside an out-of-bounds timer, signaling gamers to decrease their altitude–but I did not typically discover myself flying too near the solar.
One may think that with a map this large, holding a squad collectively is perhaps troublesome, however in my expertise, that wasn’t the case. Mecha Break’s Strikers fly quick and much, gas reserves replenish rapidly, and so long as you are speaking together with your group, you are unlikely to search out your self in a state of affairs the place your squad is just too far-off to assist.
Talking of going airborne, flying in Mecha Break feels wonderful. The sport’s builders lean into airborne fight, moderately than shrink back from it, so every Striker has first rate gas reserves and may keep airborne for fairly some time. I performed the sport with each mouse-and-keyboard controls and an Xbox controller, and each enter strategies felt equally seamless once I took to the sky.
Fight, too, felt seamless and satisfying. I performed round with just a few completely different mechs, however rapidly discovered my favourite Striker in Alysnes, an agile, sword-wielding mech with an arsenal that additionally included a machine gun, a defend, and a particular potential that shoots lethal lasers in a number of instructions.. Mecha Break has an fascinating lock-on mechanic–keep an enemy in your line of sight for a short second and a big purple triangle will seem round them, indicating that your goal is locked, and also you’re free to fireplace away. The lock-on mechanic works the identical method for each Striker, and when you lose sight of an enemy, you may must get them again in your visual view and lock on once more if you wish to proceed attacking them. Fortunately, locking on does not take lengthy.
Alysnes’ gun does first rate harm, however I had way more enjoyable utilizing her sword. Together with her sword outfitted and her goal locked, Alysnes will zoom towards the enemy and start slashing away. If that focus on occurs to be within the air, she’s going to mechanically go airborne as properly, resulting in tons of intense, mid-air fights to the loss of life. Talking of loss of life, what occurs when your Striker’s well being hits zero is dependent upon the sport mode. In non-Mashmak matches, your pilot will mechanically eject from their mech, and you will be faraway from the battle for a short time interval earlier than redeploying from the sky to rejoin your teammates. In Mashmak mode, your fellow squadmates must respawn you themselves.
In its present state, Mecha Break appears like Titanfall 2 when you gave it a can of Purple Bull and let it spend the day enjoying Armored Core. It is an extremely good time, and does a terrific job of constructing you’re feeling such as you actually are piloting a big robot–bridges crumble whenever you forcefully land on them, components of buildings break aside whenever you ship an enemy crashing into them, and whereas the Strikers really feel appropriately hefty, they by no means really feel clunky.
Other than the dearth of variation in pilot physique shapes and some cases of moderately foolish trying jiggle physics on female pilots, it is really troublesome to search out a lot to complain about in relation to Mecha Break’s present construct. Not like a whole lot of newer hero shooters presently in the marketplace, Mecha Break seems to have a well-defined identity–it is aware of what it’s, and it is aware of who it is for. Although there are many similarities to Titanfall, it by no means appears like a rip-off, and whereas the Alysnes Striker does really feel loads like Titanfall 2’s Ronin Titan, Mecha Break’s Strikers function differently–and frankly, extra gracefully–than Titans. You may’t manually eject your pilot and run round ripping batteries out of different mechs, nor does every Striker have a singular voice and distinct persona so that you can develop hooked up to, however that does not really feel detrimental to the standard of the sport.
Mecha Break does not have a single-player marketing campaign, however there’s a tutorial mission, and the sport has an ongoing plot revolving across the mining of an odd, crystal-like factor referred to as Corite. Wonderful Seasun Video games says that the story shall be supported with further media, together with manga and animated shorts. However even when you utterly eliminated the plot from the equation, Mecha Break may nonetheless stand agency (and fly excessive) on the muse of its gameplay, which to this point is partaking, easy, satisfying, and albeit, enjoyable as all hell.
Curious to study extra about Mecha Break’s improvement, I sat down with Wonderful Seasun Video games CEO and Mecha Break recreation director Kris Kwok to learn the way precisely this high-flying hero shooter obtained off the bottom.
“I got here to Hong Kong once I was very younger, so I obtained to know [of] mecha once I was very younger, possibly once I was within the second or third 12 months of main college,” Kwok instructed me. “So, for Mecha Break, my greatest inspiration could be these works: To begin with, Gundam. Secondly, Macross.”
Given the complexities of the game–13 mechs with numerous skills, a number of modes, monumental maps–I used to be curious to listen to what kind of challenges the event group confronted whereas working to deliver Mecha Break to life.
“Within the Chinese language market, so long as you are doing one thing sci-fi associated, [or] mecha-related, there’s nearly no starting,” Kwok stated. “If you wish to do one thing, you may be the primary one [to do it]. So, when it comes to hiring the precise folks and getting the precise expertise in place, we had barely something to start with. At first, we invested in a British group. We realized loads from the British group. Their unique [idea] was to do it on PS2, a space-fighter shooter venture. In the long run, we have skilled a number of failures. The second time, we labored with the UK group, our group, and [a team of] Japanese designers. We failed. Then, we did it ourselves–we requested the Japanese designers to be our consultants. We failed. In 2021, I feel we realized loads. On this course of [of failure], we realized just a few key strategies that allowed us to interrupt by. By way of design, [that breakthrough was] the design language of mechas, [which] deviate from the standard, low-quality toy-looking sort of appearances, and [look] far more cool.”
One other problem was making Mecha Break’s mechs look appropriately robotic.
“You can’t simply map the pores and skin onto a human physique, as a result of mechas do not transfer like people,” Kwok defined. “We needed to re-design the animation of the mecha’s skeletal construction, after which we needed to comply with up with animations in that sense. The second [challenge] when it comes to expertise was laborious floor modeling. We needed to make it [look] actually laborious, very industrial trying. By means of quite a few iterations, we mastered that as properly.”
Whereas we have been on the subject of animation and modeling, I needed to know: Why add such an in depth, RPG-esque character creator?
“Wonderful Seasun Video games already has a good historical past for the previous three many years of constructing Chinese language-themed conventional wuxia video games,” Kwok defined. “So, we sort of transferred these core competencies over to the character-creation stage. We do not need you simply to determine with the laborious steel mecha surface–there’s an precise particular person behind it: The human, the pilot, you could ultimately determine with. In the event you get to create a personality that bodily appears such as you, the participant, you should have a stronger sense of immersion on the earth. You are enjoying that mecha, you are the pilot.”
Wonderful Seasun Video games has held numerous neighborhood playtests, so the following factor I wished to know was how participant suggestions has formed Mecha Break’s improvement. Kwok instructed me that he and his group have acquired a ton of participant suggestions relating to the sport’s person interface and gameplay steadiness.
“By way of the suggestions that we have gotten, principally it is when it comes to the product itself, the UI, the expertise, and so forth.,” Kwok stated. “So we’re engaged on that too. And the steadiness takes time, you already know? No one can get it proper the primary time. I am not shocked that we have gotten a whole lot of suggestions when it comes to steadiness as properly, and the gamers had expectations of PvE along with PvP.”
It was at this level, Kwok stated, he and the group have been confronted with a monumental determination: Ought to there be a single-player marketing campaign?
“A [single-player] marketing campaign is a one-time-through sort of deal,” Kwok stated. “So we sort of determined in opposition to it.”
One other side I used to be inquisitive about was steadiness. My expertise with Mecha Break was easy and seamless, and there was by no means a time the place I felt one of many recreation’s 13 mechs had a large benefit over the others, or a blatant weak point in want of addressing. I requested Kwok how on Earth the group went about balancing the sport’s lineup of mech-heroes, and which mech was his favourite. The reply really shocked me.
“So, to begin with, because the producer and designer of all that–I am not speaking concerning the aesthetics or the outward appearances [of the mechs], however the weaponization was all accomplished by me, myself–for me, every of them is like my very own baby,” Kwok instructed me, explaining that he had personally spent tons of of hours enjoying and perfecting every mech. “So, it is laborious for me to inform you which one I like probably the most, as a result of I needed to play every certainly one of them many instances, strive a whole lot of issues, and continuously modify them.
“In fact, steadiness is a really, very troublesome course of. So on this course of, the query is, ‘Which one is probably the most troublesome to steadiness?’ I can not say which one is probably the most troublesome to steadiness. By way of steadiness on this recreation, I might moderately keep away from the standard buffing [or] nerfing some items, giving them extra stats, HP, armor, all that.”
As an alternative, Kwok added that he is extra centered on “the precise participant’s management in-game, moderately than providing you with a quantity to inform you which one is the toughest to steadiness. It is all the time an ongoing course of, there is not any endpoint [to] a recreation’s steadiness anyway.”
It is clear that even whereas tweaking small particulars, Kwok all the time has his eye on the large image before everything. Once I requested what side of the sport he was most excited for gamers to expertise, he merely instructed me, “Truly, I feel [I’m most looking forward to the reception of] the sport as an entire. At its core, what we need to create within the recreation is the sensation of driving a machine gun. Whether or not it is 6v6, Mashmak, or 3v3, we wish all gamers to really feel like, ‘Okay, I am actually driving this machine, I am controlling this machine, it is like a part of my physique.'”
“I am relying on the participant to expertise that sort of integration, unity, the pilot being one with the mech,” Kwok stated.
Mecha Break doesn’t but have an official launch date, however is slated for launch on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Sequence X|S someday in 2025. It’s presently obtainable to wishlist on Steam.