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

digitaltrends.com:

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.

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.

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.

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I went hands-on with only two mechs, Panther and Falcon, but there