Snowbreak: Containment Zone preview - "A firsthand Titan-blasting experience!"

While the world already has its own share of problems that could bring people to the brink of destruction, there's also the threat of what's outside the world. One of these ideas is explored in Snowbreak: Containment Zone by Seasun Games.

It's a third-person shooter that takes place in a world ravaged by an unbearable cold, transformed humans, bandits, and large humanoid constructs. It's an action game where you'll need to complete missions usually involving moving from one place to another and collecting important objects. Other times you'll need to eliminate hostile forces in order to reduce the threat to those you're protecting.

What is Snowbreak: Containment Zone?

With games like Honkai Impact and Genshin Impact dominating online play, there must be something to this particular visual style and format. That's what Snowbreak: Containment Zone applies to its presentation and story. In a futuristic world, the most popular event is the Valkyrie Games where skilled fighters called Valkyries compete against each other. Everything was controlled by Yggdrasil Enterprises, but this all changed when the Titans first fell. Now, the Valkyries are the main force fighting against these monstrous invaders and the fallout that they've created. As the newest member of the Heimdall Force, you're in charge of helping lead the Valkyries on missions while also uncovering your own past.

Heating up with Snowbreak

With anime-style games, there's a tendency to get bogged down with text and tutorials but Snowbreak doesn't suffer from that. In fact, just like the action it proposes to have, it kicks off hard. Within seconds, you're running around a frozen urban setting wondering what's lurking in the distance past all the snow. You're soon fighting odd-looking creatures before coming face-to-face with a Titan, the whole reason the team you're on was founded. You pick things up fast so that you get to defeat enemies even faster.

This is an interesting take on the party RPG in that you're taking direct control of a member as they go on missions. It adds a lot of value to the level-ups that each of your team members earns. It also makes things more interesting when you learn that all of the members come with their own signature weapon, movement, and abilities. Depending on the mission type, you'll have multiple options to choose who to send in, whether they're right for the task or whether their style works well with how you play.

Then there's the overall smoothness and convenience. The game fits well with the keyboard or controller which is perfect considering the style of gameplay. It feels good to run around, interact with things, and use all the elements of gunplay. Of course, you've also got some flashy attack animations for whenever you use a character's special ability and they have quite an impact both visually and mechanically.

The coldness of Snowbreak

Snowbreak is still prepping and likely has a roadmap for quite some time following its release which means that changes could happen every week, or possibly every day. At the moment, there are some improvements that could be had in fleshing out the environments and the enemy behaviour to make the whole setting feel less barren. There's also some room to include synergy between the different team Valkyries so that they can feel more like a team rather than individuals working alone for an overarching organization. You'll need to be quite active with all of the members to make sure none of them falls behind because you never know when you'll come across a mission for which one of the lesser-played Valkyries would be perfect.

Going on Snowbreak

Snowbreak: Containment Zone is a third-person shooter about leading a team of Valkyries across a frozen world as they try to take down Titans from unknown origins. It works well, it plays well, it's flashy and it dives right into the action with different character types to try out. As it approaches release day, there's time to fill out the empty environments and flesh out the team dynamics and mechanics. You'd better grab a coat because the snow will soon break out of the containment zone.