Make your own fun. This was
once the mantra of the creative kid in the boring backyard; now it’s a pitch
well-suited for Warframe. There’s nothing openly exciting about where its
repetitive mission designs take you, but the huge variety of weapons, powers,
and combat suits lets your creativity open up the battlefield to fun
experimentation — that is, if you’re willing to pay.
Warframe is a free-to-play,
third-person, co-op shooter in the vein of Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, but with
approximately 250 percent more ninjas wearing sci-fi suits. The starter suits offer plenty of variety right from the get-go:
one, Excalibur, is a well-balanced set that’s a good starting point for
beginners. Another, the Loki set, lets you trick enemies with decoys and turn
invisible in an instant. It feels especially sneaky and manipulative in a
rewarding way. Each of these suits function as entirely different characters,
and each are fun and challenging to play with.
But of course, that doesn’t
really reduce the effectiveness of Warframe’s action-heavy gameplay, or the
pleasure that comes from slicing and shooting its variety of faceless and
disposable enemies, including riflemen, shield carriers, and napalm launchers.
The most glaring issue I
faced as a new player is that Warframe doesn’t explain things well enough.
Suits need to be modded with abilities, but the menus are unintuitive.
Sometimes slotting a new power works fine, but other times the screen flashes
red but doesn’t tell you what’s wrong. The interstellar mission-select screen
is also unhelpful, as it doesn’t show you at a glance which planets have
missions that are unlocked and ready for you to begin, forcing you to click on
each one to track them down.
It also doesn’t put much
care into making missions feel distinct. They include the following: killing
things and then blow up a reactor, killing things and then rescuing a person,
killing things and then killing a boss, etc. Point is, though they’re different
in name, most of Warframe’s dozens of levels feel exactly the same. Follow the
dot on the minimap, shoot or stab the things that reside there, and then keep
going. However, because the combat is so much fun I didn’t mind replaying
levels multiple times to conquer them in different ways.
With a party of four
players, it’s wise to think about team composition – especially in more
difficult stages. Like in most MMORPGs, a healer and a front-line tank prove
essential for most hectic fights. Cutting through hordes of enemies with a
well-rounded team is fast, fun and satisfying. Playing a level alone,
meanwhile, is a big change of pace. Because you take a massive cut in
firepower, it’s more important to earn stealth kills and avoid alarms. You have complete control over the
pacing of combat, which feels welcome and invigorating in a shooter.
The biggest draw of Warframe
lies in using the variety of suits, weapons, and other gear. This introduces a
huge caveat – Warframe is a free-to-play game, and its in-game purchases can
get very, very expensive. There are over a dozen warframes for sale, as well as
dozens of other weapons, drones, and modifications. If you want a small
selection of characters and only a few weapons to swap between them, you’ll end
up dropping a full $60 on Warframe in no time. Rewards
earned from playing normally feel purposely stunted, and it’s very
disappointing for a game that could’ve kept me hooked long enough to fall in
love with it (and throw money at it) with a little enticement.
The store itself could also
be more transparent. For example, people bought a sniper rifle with real money. When
people used it in a game, the reticle was so full of lines, dots, and other stuff
that they could hardly see what they was supposed to shoot. A preview option would've
been handy, especially when things are so expensive.
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