Warframe (PC, PS4, XB1, Switch) - "Suit to Kill"

[SonicWind]

Warframe is a free-to-play sci-fi third-person massively-multiplayer action game developed by Canada-based Digital Extremes (Unreal series co-developer, DarkSector). Up to four players take on the role of Tenno-- basically, space ninjas-- and tackle a variety of missions all around the solar system in a futuristic universe, using stealth, acrobatics, and a variety of the titular battle suits and weapons to get the job done and take down anything in their way.

And boy, is that necessary in this universe, because innocents are not having a good time. The Grineer are a force to be reckoned with throughout the Origin System (AKA our solar system), cloning themselves to create a deadly (albeit decaying) army that's cruel and ruthless toward anyone who doesn't bow to them. The Corpus are a money-hungry machinist cult that has access to cutting-edge technology and sells anything ancient they can get their hands on. And the Infested, a horrifyingly twisted mishmash of both parties infected with a terrible plague, only live to add more sorry victims to their ranks (if you can call it living). The outlook is grim for the poor people who just want to live in peace. That's where you come in. You are Tenno, masters of guns, blades, and the deadly suits called Warframes, each one able to channel energy into different kinds of devastating powers to blow away the opposition. "So, if we're around," you're probably asking, "why hasn't all this madness just been wiped out by now?" Well, there's a bit of a problem-- the Tenno have been in cryosleep for a long time. So, yeah. Madness. Fortunately, an enigmatic figure known only as the Lotus has brought you out of your long rest to fight back against the chaos and will guide you along the way. Things only get more complicated from there. There's the remnants of the fallen Orokin Empire the Tenno were created by. There are the dangerous Sentients the Orokin went to war with. And there's much, much more to the story and lore of Warframe that you'll slowly unravel as you progress through the game's many quests and missions. We haven't even scratched the surface.

But on to gameplay. As previously said, Warframe is a third-person action game, meaning that not only are you shooting folks, but you're also using melee weapons to cleave them in twain. You can carry up to three weapons at a time-- primary, secondary, and melee-- with a lineup of different weapons for each slot. You also control one of the Warframes, each of which has a different set of abilities that either support your allies or obliterate your enemies. Dash through enemies with Excalibur. Turn invisible and sneak around with Ash. There are several Warframes, and you can have an entire arsenal of them. You can even bring a companion with you! The best part? You have a large amount of customization options for your arsenal (and even the small Orbiter craft you use as a base), so you can look good while you're killing everything in sight. This isn't just limited to visual customization, though-- your tools of trade are customizable using Mods, which change how they operate in substantial ways and allow you to tweak things to your liking. You'll need to level up your stuff with affinity you collect during missions to get a good Mod build, though, especially since Mods themselves can be leveled up using Endo to increase their effects.

Your goal to clean up the Origin System will take you through a variety of missions and to a lot of planets and bases. One minute, you're tasked with tearing through a Grineer ship, killing a certain number of unfortunate clones before extracting; the next, you're sneaking into a Corpus base to gain access to sensitive, heavily-guarded data; another still, you're fighting to rescue a hostage from enemy clutches. With procedurally-generated levels made from tilesets, no two missions are entirely the same. So how will you travel through them? Cover-based movement? Naaaah. Not in Warframe. You'll be getting around the battlefield in style with a variety of traversal methods: bullet jumping, wall-running, sliding, Archwings, etc. You can also choose how to go through a mission. Want to go in guns blazing? You can do that. Want to play it quietly and stealthily? You can do that. Don't feel like dealing with other players? You can be a lone wolf and do things yourself. During each mission, you'll collect materials you can use to build items in your ship's Foundry.

But let's say you're not satisfied with the vanilla weaponry and Warframes. Let's say you want the best of the best. Well, then, you want the Prime gear. Sporting the Orokin Empire's trademark white-black-gold coloring, these are better versions of their base counterparts. But getting what you want ain't always easy-- you see, to get these items, you'll need to hunt down specific Void Relics, each one containing six different items, and break them open in Void Missions by collecting Reactant, but some of the items are rarer to get than others. If there's a rarer item inside a Relic that you want, you can increase the likelihood of getting it by using Void Traces to bring the Relic up to a higher level, but even then, you won't always get it. And even if you do, it'll take awhile for you to get your hands on 'em because the Foundry takes awhile to build an item. After a time, certain Prime items are even retired and put into the Prime Vault (though, on occasion, they're unvaulted and free to nab again). And this is where the dreaded microtransactions aspect comes in.

Fortunately, DE's smart about this-- you can build most items in Warframe without coughing up Platinum, the game's premium currency, to get them (and if you choose to build them in the foundry instead of buying them outright, the process can be rushed with Platinum). And another upside: you can trade the items you have with other players. Platinum is one of those items, meaning you can rake in the stuff without having to pay a cent (though if you want to do so and support DE's hard work, that's still an option). You still have to use Platinum exclusively for Warframe, weapon, and loadout slots, though, but by trading stuff, it's fairly easy to get some. Plus, you're helping out other Tenno who want those items, so bonus!

DE also patches the game regularly with updates big and small. And we haven't even gotten into the game's deeper systems, some of which are kinda spoilery, so I won't touch on 'em here (not that I was going to).

If I haven't scared you away by now with this dense explanation of how things work (and I applaud you for sticking around), you can get Warframe on PC (either through the game's official website or through Steam), PS4, Xbox One, and Switch. Feel free to share your feedback on the official forums; DE is more than happy to listen, which is more than I can say for most devs these days. There are also social media accounts, of course (Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Twitch, where they stream regularly and have Devstreams bi-weekly | reddit). Don't want to get lost in the game's many systems along the way? Consult the Warframe wiki (but beware of spoilers). There's also a fairly friendly community willing to help you out. As mentioned previously, Warframe is regularly updated, so features described here may change or become obsolete entirely.

In case you want to add me, my in-game ID is SonicWind149. See you in the Origin System, Tenno.

P.S.: When you get access to the Second Dream quest, play it ASAP. That's all I'm sayin'.

[Blue Wisp]

I fucking love Warframe. 

The gameplay and the flow mechanic are so fun to use. The design of the Tenno, the Grineer, the Corpus. Lotus. It's sci-fi goodness.

But holy fuck it feels like forever to progress. It's grindy as all hell. It's addictive, but to get some good gear and level up everything to max it'll take you HOURS and can get monotonous. 

But for a free game, it's absolutely great. You can do everything without spending a single penny. You just need to be patient. If you don't like grind-happy games then it's not for you. Avoid this. 

But Platinum is expensive, jesus christ. 

[Potada]

Man, do I love this game. Going around all sneaky or guns ablazing feels great whichever way you decide to play. But it's true about the grind, though. I'm a few hours in and still only on Mercury with an Excalibur frame. Still, it's a fun time, so the grindiness might not feel too bad at all, really.

[SonicWind]

So, Devstream #107 just wrapped up a few hours ago, celebrating 5 years of Devstreams. Here's the overview. Some quick notes:

• DE is currently developing a Landscape for Venus (think the Plains of Eidolon).
• You'll soon be able to equip up to two Arcanes on each Warframe.
• Text and camera path tools will be added to the Captura mode.
• Two new Zaws are coming to PoE-- a scythe and a katana.
• The Corpus spider robots shown off in the last Devstream are coming along nicely. There are many different variations, each with its own abilities.
• There's a new sword in the works, planned to be released with the Warframe after the upcoming Khora.

[SonicWind]

Noclip has been hard at work creating a documentary on Warframe that covers the 25-year legacy of Digital Extremes and the story of how the rejected original pitch for their game DarkSector became the free-to-play juggernaut we know today. Here's a trailer:

The documentary will be released in two parts, with part one coming out on Monday and part two next Wednesday.

[SonicWind]

It's time.

Warframe's next big Update, The Sacrifice, has launched, bringing with it the third of the game's cinematic quests. Steel yourselves for the challenge ahead, Tenno.

[SgtBloxx]

This game is so friggin’ awesome. It’s addicting as heck and the coop feature makes it more fun; the multiplayer is free for both PS4 and PC (not sure about Xbox 1, since I don’t have one). Though everyone is right about one thing: You have to grind. Like, a lot. But it’s still fun.

[SonicWind]

TennoCon 2018 (it's an entire Warframe convention because the game is that big) has just wrapped up, and we now know the future of Warframe:

• Two more Warframes are on their way, codenamed Revenant and Garuda.
• The game is headed to the Switch, courtesy of a porting job from the folks at Panic Button (who previously ported DOOM '16 and Wolfenstein II to the console, so it's in good hands).
• We got an in-depth look at Fortuna, the game's next Landscape, coming in the self-titled Update and complete with MOA companions, tracking down and saving endangered animals, and hoverboards.
• Segueing from that, we also got a look at Codename: Ripjack, another Update coming after Fortuna that features a crew of four Tenno operating a huge spacecraft and shooting the crap out of enemy vessels while also boarding other ships.
• And finally, we got a sneak preview of (what I assume to be) the next cinematic quest dealing with The Sacrifice's shocking finale: The New War (don't watch the trailer in the link if you haven't completed The Sacrifice, of course).

[SgtBloxx]

That all sounds pretty cool. Nice to know that Warframe is growing more and more every update (didn’t think the game would have its own convention, though).

[SonicWind]

Starting today, Warframe is available to play on the Nintendo Switch!

Also, the Fortuna update has launched, so give that a whirl.

[Graystripe2000]

Downloaded the game but I’m not going to play it until I get some of these other Shantae, Yooka-Laylee and Mega Man done.

[Mad Convoy]

Thought I’d give this topic a bump because I’ve been getting into this game recently.

Well, I asked for portable Sonic Lost World that didn’t completely suck and all I got was this Metroid game.  I’m kidding obviously, but yeah, Warframe does remind me a lot of Lost World WiiU gameplay wise (but more and less refined in different ways) with Metroid graphics and story elements. (It amuses me how much the Infested resembles the X parasites in terms of abilities, near invincibility to all but one thing the player happens to have working for them, the whole floating amorphous orange blob thing they got going on, and even the part where corrupt space government officials try to exploit them for personal gain and pay hard for it. Though I suppose the idea behind both hasn’t been novel for awhile haha.)

I think, at least on the Switch, it is a good starter MMORPG for players. The paid DLC system is fair and you aren’t pressured to pay to win, so you can decide if you like the game or not before shelling out cash for it. The gameplay, in true Lost World tradition, could serve to be explained better and takes some practice to get used to, once you get the hang of it, it’s incredibly fun. Even the bulkiest frames feel flexible and smooth to play as, and the game rewards pulling off stunts well. And the community is generally rather nice and willing to help if you ask. (Just don’t drop the f-bomb... by which I mean Fortnite of course. :p)

Speaking of the community, yeah, they’re very accepting for the most part. Noob-shaming and shitting on the new guy is minimal, and I can only think of one homophobic incident (There was a troll in region chat and somebody told the troll to quit being gay. Even then an actual gay man quickly told the guy to not do that again because gay isn’t bad, and I think the homophobe was just kinda like “oh...” and deflated quietly.). It’s nice not to get mocked for holding the wrong beliefs or for things outside of my control, and it’s nice that people take poorly to dogpiling as well. Only type of players I’ve regularly had to deal with rudeness from are the pretentious speedrunners who choose Public and act like everybody in their squad must wordlessly default to speedrunning with them, and players that equate being bad at the game or getting unlucky as contributing and deserving nothing— but every online game gets those types of people eventually and they’re rare on Public in my experience.

As for problems: the difficulty scaling is wacky. Often one brutal mission will promptly lead into a series of cakewalks, and vice versa. Or a level starts off as a cakewalk and then suddenly kicks the difficulty into maximum overdrive with a massive horde or two of strong enemy types. Or a seemingly endless horde of the most powerful non-boss enemies in the game (hi Orb Vallis! How I love and hate you so!). I also find the difficulty leveling number system really weird and confusing— at this point I just have kinda gone “fuck it, bigger numbers is harder thing maybe”. And the camera is sometimes a pain as it goes inside of your frame, focuses on your frame’s butt upon entering a dojo for no apparent reason, or doesn’t move when you’d reasonably expect it to. I also wish the server switching system was less glitchy, as I’ve had to abort or unstuck myself after getting stuck in the gradient void below the level or faced a door that’s supposed to open but doesn’t because the server didn’t transfer everything over correctly. And it could do with less grinding, though extractors help a ton in this area.

But overall, it’s fun and those complaints are dwarfed by all the good Warframe has to offer. By all means, check it out.

[gato]

I kinda stopped playing after the Melee rework destroyed this game's compatibility with DS4 controllers.

Is that still the case? Because I waited for a month for a response and I kinda got swept under the rug of new updates.

 

EDIT: I should probably clarify since there's been multiple reworks. I'm talking about melee 3.0 phase 1.

Edited June 13, 2019 by gato

[SonicWind]

On 6/13/2019 at 10:50 AM, gato said:

I kinda stopped playing after the Melee rework destroyed this game's compatibility with DS4 controllers.

Is that still the case? Because I waited for a month for a response and I kinda got swept under the rug of new updates.

 

EDIT: I should probably clarify since there's been multiple reworks. I'm talking about melee 3.0 phase 1.

No idea that was a thing, and I haven't checked.

Well, another TennoCon has ended, and with its TennoLive presentation came some new juicy details.

[SonicWind]

 The Warframe known as Gauss has just joined the fight in today's Saint of Altra update:

He's pretty much the closest thing we're getting to Sonic in this game, so naturally, I'll color and mod him as such.