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4 weeks ago
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It’s that moment when you’re damaged, sparking, and struggling to lift your mighty missile launcher that really makes the mech shooter experience. Locked inside your gigantic battle suit, you heave your way forward through the terrain, crashing through buildings and foliage on your way to a new, tense showdown. It looks like you’re finished, the alarm systems blaring, the fire starting to spread across the top of your suit. But suddenly, your teammates come swooping in, swinging their lances and firing their cannons to keep you alive. Combining the tactical, team-driven combat of Counter-Strike 2 with the chunky mech warfare of Armored Core 6, a superb-looking new multiplayer shooter is soon on its way to Steam, and PCGamesN got an exclusive look live from GDC in San Francisco.
This is Mecha Break, a new multiplayer game inspired by Gundam and the landmark works of Valve and FromSoftware. On a huge 256 by 256 square kilometer map, 60 players battle it out in their respective – and highly customizable – mech suits. Combat is intense and varied. At full strength, you can zip across the landscape at high speeds and deliver devastating melee and explosive attacks in seconds. When the going gets tough, however, Mecha Break becomes a wonderfully weighty fight to the death, where your only real hope comes from working with your squad. Created by Amazing Seasun, PCGamesN speaks exclusively with studio CEO and Mecha Break executive producer Kris Kwok.
“There are three pillars,” Kwok explains. “Speed, power, and firepower. These are the big differences from human-based shooting games. It’s about the acceleration, up to 400 or 500 kilometers per hour, and then the collision between the mech and the environment. It’s not like shooting a gun or a bullet. You can rain fire on your enemy in one second.
“Armored Core 6 fans might love it, but there’s also a big differentiator, insofar as Mecha Break has that massive multiplayer element – 60 people in a single map. Our biggest challenge is to grab players from all around the world. We also want it to go global and cross cultures, and bring in players from everywhere. We want it to be a game with longevity that will last several years.”
When you’ve built and customized your mech, you head into combat across a variety of highly destructive, highly interactive battle royale-style maps. There’s a wonderful difficulty curve in Mecha Break. To begin with, you might find yourself getting wrecked more often than you score a kill, but it’s all about adapting to different playstyles.
Tankier mechs might get ripped apart by the speedy melee models, but if they hang back and provide volleys of artillery fire to support their comrades, they become indispensable. Likewise, the sword, spear, and halberd-wielding mechs are better suited to the frontlines, wading in to clear out the opposition’s ground troops to make way for the chunkier clean-up crew.
“It’s not about being easy or hard,” Kwok continues. “It’s about encouraging co-op. The co-op discipline has to come first. If you play solo, it’s hard for you, so we encourage players to stick with their team. There’s no solo ‘hero moment.’ It’s like Gundam or mech shows. The team. The brotherhood. We want MechaBreak to create an authentic sense of actually piloting a mech. It’s about making the piloting experience unified and authentic.”
We’re still waiting on a release date for Mecha Break, but a closed beta will go live in late April, so you can try it out before the full launch – you can sign up now, right here. If you’ve always longed for a multiplayer Armored Core 6, or a tactical shooter with serious style where you don’t just die the second you get spotted, this is definitely the game for you.
Alternatively, take a look at the best co-op games, or maybe the other best upcoming PC games on their way to you in 2024 and beyond.
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