I was talking to a friend earlier this week aboutMecha Break, trying - as I often do - to convince them to play a hot new game with me, and after several minutes of passionately describing different types of mechs, a glazed over look in their eye that people always seem to get when I talk too long suddenly faded, replaced by a flicker of recognition. “Oh I know the game you’re talking about,” they said. “This is that jiggle physics game.”
Alas, it is. Mecha Break is a phenomenal hero shooter and the best Mobile Suit Gundam game Bandai Namco has never made. It’s a triple-A free-to-play instant hit from an immensely talented studio. It’s a blast, it’s unlike anything else out there right now, and it has huge esports potential. Unfortunately, yes, it is also the jiggle physics game. I know sex sells, but so do giant robots, right?
Set Sliders To “Perky”
We’ve recently been through this with Stellar Blade, an action game that was good enough to stand on its own, but chose to make the shallow sex appeal of its lead the focal point,and has doubled down ever since. I know I risk redrawing battle lines in the dumbest culture war of all time by even bringing this up, butallow me to echo the sentiments of our own Stacey Henley, who had the best take on the Eve discourse: Eve doesn’t offend me because she’s sexy, she bores me because she’s not sexy enough.
She’s a zero, a blow-up doll with a sword. This is a virgin’s idea of what a sexy lady is; the video game equivalent of drawing a big pair of boobs in your notebook and staring at it all through third period math. Only you wouldn’t call them boobs, you’d call them knockers or bazoongas or something.
Breasticles.
Mecha Break has an entire trapper keeper full of booby drawings in every size and shape. As soon as you launch the game and take one look at the character creator, you’ll see exactly what I mean. There are only a few options for faces and haircuts, but there are a dozen sliders to adjust the breast exactly to your liking - as long as you like ‘em real, real big.
I’m not exaggerating. You can set the size, of course, but you can also decide how high they sit, how far they’re set apart, and the angle you’d like the nipples to point. After that, you’ve got just as many options for the butt. How caked up would you like your nameless avatar to be? Very, or extremely?
That’s an absurd amount of dev time to dedicate to boobs and butts in a mech shooter, but Mecha Break doesn’t waste it. At the start of every round, you get an extreme close-up of your character’s backside as she climbs into her mecha. Every time you die, you get a cutscene of your character getting jostled around in the damaged mech, her heaving breasts swinging every which way. In between matches, for no reason at all, you can go walk around in a big empty military base and get a good look at the goods. The tutorial ends with a slow-motion montage of your character taking a shower. There’s fan service, and then there’s whatever the hell this is.
I’m Not Prude, I’m Just Here For The Robots
I can’t stress enough how much Mecha Break doesn’t need to stoop to this level for attention. It really is a great mecha game with a lot of variety in playstyles and game modes, and even though free-to-play hero shooters seem pretty doomed from the jump these days, Mecha Break carves enough of a niche that I think it can be successful. The jiggling isn’t helping, and in fact, it might be holding it back.
You know that stink every cash-grab mobile game has? Even the ones with high production value and great reviews that try to trick you into thinking they’re legit, you can still tell. There’s just something inauthentic about them that throws off red flags. When I talk to someone about Mecha Break and they already know it as the “jiggle physics game”, that’s another type of stink. For every chud that will give Mecha Break a chance because of the bodacious racks, three other players will avoid it because it comes across as cheap and desperate.
Since when are giant robots swinging axes and firing laser beams at each other not good enough to grab eyeballs? If there’s anything 13 year old boys and grown men who act like 13 year old boys love more than tig ol’ bitties, it’s Japanese fighting robots, right? By all means, make the avatars hot. But this over the top sexploitation isn’t working for Mecha Break. I’ve never been so bored by boobs before.
