I like robots–especially comically large ones armed with various weapons. When I received an invitation to visit Amazing Seasun Games’ Irvine, California office to try out their latest title, Mecha Break, all I really knew going into it was that I’d be playing a game featuring really big robots armed with various weapons. I’m not quite sure what I was expecting (other than access to the aforementioned giant robots), but I certainly wasn’t expecting to fall in love.
Most of Amazing Seasun Games’ previous titles were unknown to me, and all I’d seen of Mecha Break were some impressive trailers. When I finally sat down to take the free-to-play mech-based third-person hero shooter for a test-fly, I was admittedly a bit apprehensive. The live-service hero shooter market is oversaturated enough as it is, and it’s a tough genre to stand out in. Is Mecha Break up to the task? So far, the answer appears to be “yes.”
The game features a cast of 13 different mechs–referred to in-game as Strikers–each with their own set of unique weapons and abilities. When selecting a Striker, players can look at a graph showing that particular mech’s strengths and weaknesses. Some Strikers are great for lone-wolf playstyles, some are better at supporting or defending one’s team, and some are a combination of both. Each Striker feels surprisingly well-balanced–while I quickly fell in love with a specific Striker that fit my preferred playstyle (more on that in a bit), I never felt that one Striker was too overpowered or underpowered.
But before I get into the nitty gritty of Mecha Break’s gameplay, I have to take a second to praise the game’s absolutely phenomenal character creator. Before you set foot in a mech, you must first create the character who will be piloting it. You can pick from a series of masculine and feminine preset characters, but those options can then be customized. At most, I was expecting a simple customization screen that might let me choose from a handful of hairstyles and colors. What I was not expecting was a character creator so detailed it rivals that of RPGs like Cyberpunk 2077. While there aren’t many body shapes to choose from, the sky’s the limit when it comes to everything else.
Players can customize their pilot’s hair color (including roots and tips), every part of their eyes (from sclera to pupil) and other facial features, their makeup (including eyeshadow, eyeliner, blush, lipstick, and lip gloss), scars and tattoos, and more. Outfit colors can also be customized on an extremely detailed level, and players are given the ability to choose from a wide variety of colors. I had to physically tear myself away from the character creator–one could easily spend an hour or more perfecting their pilot’s look. In the end, I had a female pilot with heart-shaped pupils, impeccable makeup, and beautifully animated waist-length hair with a black-to-purple ombré dye job. While playing, I encountered pilots with equally varied looks, including one who was wearing a sailor uniform and had a PC monitor for a head.
Additional customization options like clothing colors, hairstyles, tattoos, and eyeliner designs can be purchased using an in-game currency that you earn for free while playing the game, which is a plus. After just a few hours, I had more than enough currency to customize every inch of my pilot ten times over. While items like pilot outfits will likely be sold via an in-game store when the game is released, the build I played allowed for plenty of customization without the need for players to spend real-life currency. Oh, and players can also customize their Striker as well as its pilot, using the same in-game currency.
After reluctantly dragging myself away from the incredibly detailed character creator, I climbed into a Striker and tried out three game modes. The first was your standard 3v3 team deathmatch-style mode. The second was a 6v6 mode that really leaned into hero shooter mechanics, with different maps having different objectives–one map had my squad protecting a moving payload from an enemy team as it traveled across the map, while another saw us fighting to control a series of three map points in a king-of-the-hill-style match. The third mode, called Mashmak, is Mecha Break’s “signature mode,” according to its developers.
Mashmak is a PvPvE mode that sees 10 three-player teams dropped into an absolutely enormous map, where they must defeat both AI-controlled enemies and player-controlled squads, collect loot, and–if they want to keep that loot–reach an extraction point. The extraction point appears 10 minutes in, but you don’t have to hit it immediately, as another extraction point will spawn every five minutes for the remainder of the match. But you don’t want to wait too long–after 15 minutes, a Pulse Storm will begin devouring the map. You can delay this to some degree by destroying some of the drones controlling the storm, but ultimately, the appearance of the Pulse Storm is your sign that it’s time to extract as soon as possible.
In addition to being visually appealing, Mecha Break’s Mashmak maps are absolutely enormous. Each of the game’s Strikers has the ability to fly long distances (though some have bigger fuel reserves than others), and during the preview event, we were told that even if the Strikers had infinite fuel reserves, it would still take roughly 10 minutes to fly from one end of the map to the other. Mecha Break’s maps aren’t just wide, however–they also have a huge amount of verticality. Players can fly up and over the side of large mountains which, in most games, are usually put there to keep players penned in. This is not the case with Mecha Break–if you can see it, you can fly over it. Of course, there’s a limit–fly too high and an alert will appear on screen alongside an out-of-bounds timer, signaling players to lower their altitude–but I didn’t often find myself flying too close to the sun.
One might imagine that with a map this big, keeping a squad together might be difficult, but in my experience, that wasn’t the case. Mecha Break’s Strikers fly fast and far, fuel reserves replenish quickly, and as long as you’re communicating with your team, you’re unlikely to find yourself in a situation where your squad is too far away to help.
Speaking of going airborne, flying in Mecha Break feels amazing. The game’s developers lean into airborne combat, rather than shy away from it, so each Striker has decent fuel reserves and can stay airborne for quite a while. Combat, too, felt seamless and satisfying. I played around with a few different mechs, but quickly found my favorite Striker in Alysnes, an agile, sword-wielding mech with an arsenal that also included a machine gun, a shield, and a special ability that shoots deadly lasers in multiple directions.
Mecha Break has an interesting lock-on mechanic–keep an enemy in your line of sight for a brief moment and a large red triangle will appear around them, indicating that your target is locked, and you’re free to fire away. Alysnes’ gun does decent damage, but I had far more fun using her sword. With her sword equipped and her target locked, Alysnes will zoom toward the enemy and begin slashing away. If that target happens to be in the air, she will automatically go airborne as well, leading to tons of intense, mid-air fights to the death.
In its current state, Mecha Break feels like Titanfall 2 if you gave it a can of Red Bull and let it spend the day playing Armored Core. It’s an incredibly good time, and does a great job of making you feel like you really are piloting a gigantic robot. Aside from the lack of variation in pilot body shapes and a few instances of rather silly looking jiggle physics on feminine pilots, it’s truly difficult to find much to complain about when it comes to Mecha Break’s current build.
Mecha Break doesn’t have a single-player campaign, but there is a tutorial mission, and the game has an ongoing plot revolving around the mining of a strange, crystal-like element known as Corite. Amazing Seasun Games says that the story will be supported with additional media, including manga and animated shorts. But even if you completely removed the plot from the equation, Mecha Break could still stand firm on the foundation of its gameplay, which thus far is engaging, smooth, satisfying, and fun. Mecha Break is slated for release on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S sometime in 2025.
