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The first few minutes of Mecha Break are mindblowing. I’m torn somewhere between not having a clue what’s going on as hints and tutorials are thrown at me with voiced lines that are a little too low to pick out and are drowned out by the battle and explosions happening all around, and a unique adrenelin rush at all the on-screen action.

Somehow, I get through it. Somehow, I keep managing to destroy the cannon fodder thrown in my path, and yet somehow I feel as though I am a mighty mech hammering my left mouse button with no mercy and splintering giant robots into flying shards everywhere.

In truth, perhaps the opening salvo of Mecha Break is just a mainly, almost on-rails opener that is slickly produced and wonderfully executed.

The first 25 minutes or so of Mecha Break are like living in a Gundam/Macross hybrid world being broadcast on kids’ Saturday morning TV in the 1980s, and it is absolutely glorious.

It’s near 50 gig free download on Steam belies its true purpose in life, however, and that is to, immediately after the opening is done with, ram your face into an item shop filled with ludicrously priced skins and add-ons.

The last time things felt this egregious was when Warhammer 40k Darktide launched with hardly any game but with a perfectly functioning item shop.

Now, to be fair, Darktide was not a free-to-play game, so it deserved its flak, but being presented with a £48/$65 skin and mech bundle almost immediately is a bit in your face. There are plenty of other things to buy as well, bought with in-game currency and other opportunities to dump real money into. There is no way to tell yet how many people will pay for this stuff ultimately, and the publishers may well be hoping for whales to hoover it all up, but it all just feels a little, well, grubby.

This is especially true as a lot of the purchases have a 7-day free trial, which sounds like a nice idea to try stuff out, but it’s unclear how many will actually not purchase and cancel during the free week.

The two beta tests, which I didn’t actually play, were hugely lauded for the customization options for players. Many of the complaints on the Steam reviews where Mecha Break has a predictable Mixed rating bemoan that these have been whipped out or put behind a paywall.

Yes, you can ignore all of this stuff, and there is a really fun game in there with face-paced mech-combat included, 6v6 PVP, and Arena mode where the first to eight kills wins. There’s even an extraction attempt with you versus both players and the environment.

Mecha Break is a cool game….but….

I also don’t really think you can compare this sort of cosmetic item dropping to something like DCS World, where, yes, the game is free and you have to purchase other aircraft and maps, but these you have to learn to fly and add to the gameplay. An overpriced skin is not that.

I’m going to keep Mecha Break on my hard drive for a while yet and see how things develop. There are certainly enough people playing right now on Steam to confirm to me it’s a huge amount of fun. The payer drop-off numbers over the next seven days may be interesting. Whether the devs will take any of the initial critique on board may be significant for Mecha Break’s future successes.