The open beta for the big new mecha action shooter has left fans divided.
Mecha Break has launched its Global Storm Open Beta on Steam, and suffice to say the reception to the new multiplayer shooter has been somewhat mixed.
It’s currently sitting at “Mostly Negative” reviews, with only around 35% of the over 7000 reviews recommending it – and yet, despite that, it’s still topping Steam charts, according toSteamDB.
It sits at the top of SteamDB’s“Trending” chart, and a 24-hour peak player count of over250,000 players, putting it in fifth place, just below the runaway success Marvel Rivals.
Why All The Negative Reviews?
The battle in Mecha Break’sSteam reviewsis almost as heated as those in the game itself.
The primary reasons cited in the negative reviews include excessive and predatory monetization, the grind to unlock new mechs (known as Strikers), a lengthy, boring, and unskippable tutorial, server issues, performance hitches, and concerning anti-cheat, to name a few.
The wave of negative reviews has been met by fans of the game with their own surge of positive reviews, pretty much evenly split between defending the gameplay – which, in my own experience, is solid – and just calling out the players leaving negative reviews for review bombing.
Having only played the game for a couple of hours so far, I can agree with some of the complaints.After slogging through the tutorial, I can see there is a grind tounlock new Strikers, and while a battle pass is nothing new for a free-to-play competitive shooter, the reports that the loot boxes it unlocks can includeways to enhance your Strikersare raising some pay-to-win red flags.
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As for the performance issues and other ways the game is rough around the edges, namely the English voiceover and writing, these are things that can be polished more in the full release. Certain voice lines are even marked in-game as still not being finalized.
NVIDIA announced last year that some of theirAI tech will be present in the game to enhance certain NPCs, but it’s not clear if that is present in this beta, or how it would impact the current state of their dialogue.
But, at the end of the day, the core multiplayer gameplay seems rock-solid and should finally provide mecha fans withsomething new to salivate over after the shutdownof the tragically short-livedGundam Evolutionback in 2023.
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