Warframe

My initial draft of a review for Warframe was written in mid-December, roughly a month after I began playing the game. I never got around to publishing that version for a couple of reasons, such as focusing on a few other reviews first, generally being busy with the holidays, and the fact that I never seemed to finish playing the game, adding a couple hundred hours to my total time. I made a second attempt a few months later, and saw plenty of changes with the game – two new warframes (characters), a couple dozen weapons, a massive UI overhaul that included 3D portraits and generally sent the feeling of production value in the game through the roof, brand new structures and research for the game’s clan housing, three events, two new game modes, two brand new tile sets (the environmental pieces that get put together to create a level), several new bosses, the introduction of an invasion process where one of the game’s factions can attempt to conquer the various levels, and more general gameplay balancing changes than I can count. This actually marks my third (final?) attempt, which is good because I’ve seen plenty of additional changes in the last few months, including another new character, another revamped boss, another dozen weapons, and the introduction of player controlled maps that can be fought over. Clearly this is a game that the devs are putting a lot of work in to, and it is obvious that no review I produce will remain accurate for long. That being said (i.e., disclaimer covered), I’d like to point out that the current version of the game is 13.5.3. (though much of this review was originally written and subsequently updated prior to that, because it's hard to stay up to date when there is a patch or 3 a week) and that even though Warframe is a game that violates soooo many of my rules (it’s multiplayer, technically in beta, and free to play), you should take a long look at this game, because you just might find that it satisfies a craving you never realized you had.

Plus, you can get a group of brightly colored characters together in what feels like a meeting of the Power Rangers.

Warframe is a Free-to-Play title currently in “Open Beta.” You play as one of several different classes of ninja in this third person shooter/parkour/RPG blend of gameplay that is surprisingly enthralling, particularly if you’re the type that tends to get sucked into experiences where you always have more to do to improve your character – one new item drop, a few more stat upgrades, etc. In this sense, it’s very much like a traditional MMO, and the time, if not the financial resources, required is roughly the same. Basically, view this paragraph as the second disclaimer, because if you have been sucked into MMOs before and regretted the hundreds of hours spent, then it may be a good idea to go try something else.

With the status of the game, you’ll find that there is not much in the way of explanation about what’s going on. All I know, from the single in game trailer that launches the tutorial, is that you’re some kind of space ninja, known as a Tenno. Apparently you’re a humanoid (maybe a regular human?) that suffered the effects of too much exposure to a certain part of space, which apparently made you the perfect candidate to put into a ninja suit known as a warframe. This was all done during some previous period of unrest and war, followed by cryosleep. Apparently now the solar system is in turmoil, with the clone army of the Grineer ruling much of it, though the corporate robotic centric Corpus aren't doing too badly either. Oh, and there is also that zerg/flood like mutant race that seems to bring all organic matter into its fold, the Infested. Unfortunately, that's about as much background as the game gives you. Sure, there is a little bit more about a previous technologically enhanced race called the Orokin, which may have created the Tenno 1000 years ago, and some weird space between space called the void. Basically, think of a combination of Mass Effect/Halo/Starcraft for the ancient race and crazy universe threatening life forms, seasoned with something like Dawn of War for the in between space areas, and garnished with a healthy dose of typical Sci-Fi universal power conflicts, in a farming centric game that reminds me of Phantasy Star Online (for the Dreamcast, Xbox, or Gamecube) or Diablo. I don’t know, the whole damn thing is too vague and tucked away in places like the official website or an in game codex. What really matters is you’re a space ninja!

Actually, the Ash warframe was original simply called Ninja, making him the most ninja like ninja in a game of ninjas. Here you can see him use his Bladestorm ability to teleport to and stab enemies.

Before I get into the specifics on space ninjas, I think it’d behoove you to know a bit more about the general game structure. Warframe can be played either solo or online, either open to the general public, people on your friends list, or people you invite, with up to four players in any game. The game itself consists of a variety of missions (more on that later) that can last anywhere from a few minutes to a theoretically infinite amount of time. Games are hosted by one of the four people playing, rather than having a dedicated server, so a good internet connection on everyone’s part is key. There is no open world or central hub, though there are chat channels that reach all players. There are clans and clan housing, which can be used for everything from a very basic trading system, to a place to practice your parkour skills, to a place to research new items for use during the rest of the game. Crafting is something you’ll be doing plenty of as you look for new and more powerful items, which does mean a fair amount of farming for some of the rarest materials. Spending money is beneficial, but not at all necessary, as this game is certainly not a pay-to-win type title. Alright, got all that? Good.

First up, ninjas! Or, in the common gaming use of the word, classes. Or, being this game specific, warframes. Warframes are, as you might have guess from the previous sentences which have all tripped up Microsoft Office’s grammatical checking tool, the various ninja like classes in the game. There are, as of this writing, 19 different classes. However, that number seems to be rising fairly quickly, as I have seen 3 brand new warframes added since I started playing, as well as two Prime warframes, which is a slight variation of the standard ones. Classes come in a variety of flavors, from high damage low health types, to more robust characters, to a few with healing abilities, to those focused on crowd control or other support type characters. Every class has 4 abilities, a health pool, a regenerating shield pool, an energy pool, armor, and stamina for stats, though the exact values for each, or the combination of what’s low and what’s high, depends on the warframe you’re currently playing.

I like the Rhino warframe beacause it's one of the earlier ones you can get, and it's a very hardy character, which is great when you're farming things by yourself.

Initially you’re allowed a choice between three different warframes: Excalibur, Mag, and Loki. Excalibur is considered a balanced warframe ideal for new players, with average health/shields/armor, with some decent damaging abilities, and with some crowd control, but no category where the character truly shines. His Slash and Dash ability is great if enemies are all lined up, while Blind stuns and disorients enemies for a limited time, and Radial Javelin is a pretty solid AoE move. Mag is a great class for crowd control and support, and has pretty high shields. Pull, which grabs nearby enemies in cone and pulls them towards the character, knocking them down and dealing damage in the process, is useful when getting overwhelmed or finding the point you’re defending occupied by too many bad guys, while Bullet Attractor makes it easier to hit a target, particularly behind cover, Shield Polarize does AoE damage to enemies with shields, while also topping off your allies. Loki is really a support character, and can be pretty nice to have with abilities like Decoy to distract enemies, Radial Disarm to force them to melee, Invisibility, and Switch Teleport to confuse enemies, he’s a nice warframe to have when you need some help that doesn’t require lots of damage very quickly.

After those three initial characters, of which you only pick one, you’ll either have to buy the remaining characters with an in game currency you can buy for real world money or trade other players for or find the three blueprints necessary for crafting the components (systems, chassis, and helmet) that drop off of bosses, are researched in a clan’s lab, or are the rewards for select missions, buy the actual character blueprint, and then build the character. The whole process can take a good amount of time (building a warframe, not the parts, alone takes 3 days), especially if the warframe you want can only be found on temporary bosses or drops form special alert missions (limited duration missions with a bonus, usually active for under an hour or so). Still, you might get lucky. In my case, the next three characters I wanted to make – Rhino (a high health and crowd controlling tank), Ember (a glass cannon character without the proper upgrades), and Trinity (a support class that can heal, reduce incoming damage, and restore energy) all dropped off of earlier bosses, so I was able to get them within a few weeks of starting the game. The characters my friends were going for are found much deeper into the game, so it’ll be a while before they could find what they want.

Vauban is perhaps the hardest warframe to obtain, since the blueprints only come up rarely as alert rewards. Yet he's a great support character. As seen here he's built to create a small stasis field around a defensive target, which is the perfect size for that grenade launcher he's holding.

The key with Warframe is to find a warframe that suits your style. If you want stealth, go with Loki, Ash, or Banshee. If you want high DPS, try Ember, Nova, Nyx, Hydroid, or Saryn. Tanking will be done with Rhino or Frost. Healing will come from Trinity, Oberon, or a certain Neckros’ ability. That barely covers half the warframes that are out there. Even then, you get into questions about how you build your character. Every warframe has 10 equipment slots and one aura slot that you can use to hold mods that customize your character. I’ll cover mods in more detail after I talk about weapons, since they impact both things, but they range from increases to your shields, health, armor (in other words, basic stats), to your abilities, to altering your ability efficiency, duration, power, and range, to miscellaneous bonuses that do things like make you take less damage while airborne or deal massive impact damage when you hit the ground. The first Rhino you see may have 1100 shields and near as much health, but he only uses his Iron Skin shield and Rhino Stop AoE stun/slow abilities because he’s opted to not include the damage dealing Rhino Charge or group damage buffing Roar, which could be a completely different build from every other Rhino you ever run into.

Just a “quick” extra bit here. I’ve managed to build and level all of the available warframes. Some I’ve even leveled multiple times as I’ve tweaked the character to my exact play style. While I could go into detail about each warframe, giving you the pros and cons and generally trying to be extremely thorough, with 19 characters to cover that would take up a bit too much space. Instead, I’ll just cover things a bit more generally here. I’ve found that different warframes are better in different scenarios, depending on mission and enemy type. For example, the Mag warframe is fantastic against shielded enemies, which limits her to Corpus, as they are the only ones with shields. Vauban, which has two excellent crowd control abilities provided enemies enter the area, is great on defense missions with melee only enemies, such as the Infested, while Frost with his (now sadly nerfed) area shield ability is a better choice the rest of the time. If you’re farming materials or want to do a long duration survival mission, it be best to bring a Nekros for his ability to reroll the drop table on enemies. Others, mostly DPS, quickly become useless at higher levels, where enemies’ health outstrips damaging abilities. Your best bet in this game are utility characters or ones that provide some type of crowd control. Rhino (AoE stun, high damage resistance), Loki (Invisibility, a Radial Disarm, and a Decoy), Nova (AoE ability that slows movement speed and increases damage taken by 200%, followed by an explosion on death that can chain), Valkyr (ability to go invincible for a long duration, though limited to melee in this state) and Nekros (the aforementioned ability to reroll the loot table) stand out in my mind as some of the best all-rounders, though in every case, I’m picking characters for ~2 of their 4 abilities. The closest I’ve gotten to a character with 4 acceptable abilities is Loki. However, your results may vary.

In this Loki build it's all about duration and speed. Invisibility will last 30.8 seconds (default 12) and Decoy will last 64.3 seconds (default 25), make stealth runs quite literal.

While warframes impact your survivability and unique ability loadout, your weapon choice is going to impact how well you actually kill things. Weapons break down into three categories: Primary, Secondary, and Melee. Everything functions pretty much as you expect it would, with primary weapons covering rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles, flame throwers, lasers, rocket launchers, etc. Secondary weapons are all the smaller firearms and thrown weapons, from throwing knives to pocket shotguns and weapons that are strangely akin to modern day .357 magnums or .50 Desert Eagles. Since this is an RPG you’ll find several stats on each weapon, from predictable categories like fire rate or reload time, to nitty gritty damage types that cover puncture, impact, and slash damage. Those last three categories are all part of the recently revamped damage system for this game, known as Damage 2.0. It’s a bit complicated, having to deal with effective damage versus armor, shields, flesh, robotics, and infested, and includes things like elemental damage or elemental combinations (i.e. fire, ice, or blast (fire+ice)), but then again, most RPGs are a bit complicated when it comes to this sort of thing. The key is picking the right weapon for both your style and the enemies you’re fighting.

The weapons themselves are much like the warframes – there are certain ones you’ll want to skip altogether, while there are others that can be a blast to play with. Most of the generic rifles are pretty “meh,” but things like mini guns, rocket launchers, a couple of different grenade launcher weapons, jet powered hammers, thrown explosives, and bows are pretty fun. Again, it’s all a matter of finding something that suits your style, and with the number of options, there’s sure to be something there for you.

The Soma is one of my favorite, with it's rapid fire rate and 100 round clip. While it's pretty low damage by itself, properly moding it turns into a beast with a high crit chance and a huge critical multiplier.

Earlier I mentioned mods as a way of customizing your warframe. The same thing applies to weapons and sentinels (companion pets that deal damage and have unique abilities). Mods are incredibly powerful, and having the right ones upgraded the right ways can often make or break your warframe in terms of the damage you do or can survive. A maxed level warframe/weapon/sentinel has 30 power points (1 per level), though an item can be utilized to double that, and, in the case of a warframe or melee weapon, an aura mod or stance mod can add additional power points. Those power points matter because each mod, abilities included, has a cost associated with it. The most potent ability every warframe has requires 10 power minimum, and an additional power point every time you upgrade that mod (from rank 0 to rank 3 in this case), which is done by fusing mods together, choosing one to upgrade and others, including Fusion Cores designed specifically to do this, to be destroyed. The best mods seem to always have a high cost, such as ones that add a high multishot chance, which are particularly good given that no additional ammo is consumed. For example, the rifle multishot mod gives a 90% chance of firing double at max rank, but requires 15 points, half of a basic weapon’s max points. In this way power management becomes a very important part of the balance that goes into crafting the warframe and weapon you ultimately want. Polarities on mod slots can either halve the cost of a mod if the type of mod (offensive, defensive, tactical, or ability) matches the polarized slot, or increase it if it doesn’t, allowing you to fine tune things a bit more. These can be added/changed on max level items, but doing so resets the item's rank to 0, meaning you'll have to level it all over again.

By utilizing Formas, you can properly polarize an item and subsequently fit in more powerful mods.

Man, this is a big game. I’ve gone on for pages already and not even covered anything as basic as the mission types. There are several of those, ranging from exterminating all enemies on a ship/asteroid/base/etc. (Extermination), to capturing a VIP (Capture), to rescuing a target (Rescue), to securing information (Spy), to planting false information (Deception), to destroying a reactor (Sabotage), to defending multiple points as you take an object to that point (Mobile Defense),  to a king of the hill style game mode (Interception), to a mode where you escort a payload that depletes your shields to move (Hijack), to defending a stationary point from waves of enemies where you are only allowed to quit every 5 waves (think carefully there, about if you want the reward offered or you think you can survive another 5 waves of increasingly difficult enemies) which can be either endless or a set number (Defense/Endless Defense), to killing bosses (Assassination), to Survival, which is a mode where your goal is to live as long as possible, but that task is made a bit more difficult since the life support has been shut off and the only way to keep going is to find periodic drops or life support or obtain occasional drops off of enemies, all the while more and tougher enemies keep flooding you. That last one is probably my favorite, as it’s worth it to see if you can last as long as possible, given that every 5 minutes you gain a reward. Sometimes you’ll be in the middle of a mission, about to complete your objective, when things change and suddenly you’re given a second objective. At other times you'll gain a second object after completing first, which was quite funny when once I was told to resucue a target, who happened to be located in the next room over. There are enough options that it keeps things interesting, though there is a consensus among the people I play with that Capture really sucks, though I’m no fan of Spy/Deception (both have you carrying an item that limits you to your pistol), while Endless Defense or Survival are great for farming mods and materials.

Speaking of materials, and because it’s an excellent means of segueing to the next topic, this game involves a lot of crafting. The solar map in this game is a slightly different version of our solar system (same planets are there, plus a few more), and each planet drops four different crafting materials. Materials are common, uncommon, or rare, and you’ll generally only find yourself lacking the rare ones when it comes to making things. To make an item, you must first obtain that item’s blueprint, which can either be awarded for completing a mission or purchased using an in game (not real money) currency called credits. Then it’s simply a matter of going to your crafting screen, scrolling through the list of all the things you can make, confirming you can make the item you want (it will have a red X by it if you’re missing materials), and clicking build. You’ll have to confirm you’re willing to spend additional credits and wait for your new item to be ready, which ranges from1 minute for a group healing item to 3 days for a warframe. Crafting is simple, aside from needing a few specific rare mats, but takes enough time that you might be tempted to speed up the process by spending a bit of platinum.

Warframes take the longest to craft, though they aren't necessarily the hardest things to craft. A recently added rare material disappears from you inventory after a day, making any item that requires it a pain.

Usually with Free-to-Play games there is a catch. Sometimes it’s reduced access to the game, such as only being allowed two characters in an MMO, or leveling limits. Sometimes game become Pay-to-Win, and only those willing to shell out boatloads of real money will have access to the best items, which they usually use to devastate the competition. I’ve heard this game referred to in an entirely differently manner: Pay-to-Rush. There seems to be nothing in this game that you cannot acquire through time, dedication, and patience. However, waiting three days for the warframe you just started to build, after waiting 12 hours for each part to build, after farming the materials, after farming the blueprints, might make you a bit anxious to be done with everything, and that bit about spending platinum to rush completion could become awful tempting. Each account currently comes with 50 starter platinum, but anything beyond that must either be awarded from a competition, traded for, or purchased with real money. In addition to rushing the building of items, you can purchase materials, such as those rare materials you’ll really want, purchase complete weapons, purchase complete warframes, or get your hands on cosmetic goodies. Purchasing completed weapons and warframes comes with certain advantages, besides just saving time waiting. The first is that the items usually come upgraded already, meaning they’ll have more energy for mods to begin with, but not more than any other player could get. The second is that they’ll come with additional weapon or warframe slots in your inventory. This is where the game got me, as I’ve found there are just too many warframes and weapons I’d like to keep on hand, rather than training one, deleting it, and buying another. The default is 8 weapon slots and 2 warframe slots, but you can buy new warframe slots at 20 plat each, and 2 weapon slots at 12 plat for the pair. The smallest increment you can buy is 75 plat for $5, though sometimes you’ll be granted a discount through login rewards (1 reward every day, with better rewards the longer you’ve been on) that can go up to 75% off (in 7 months I’ve received several 20% discounts and 1 50% discount). It’s not at all necessary to pay to play this game, but at least a token amount unlocks some basic things you may want. Even if you do pay to get certain things faster, that doesn’t impact your mods, which are in many ways the heart of the game.

The final thing I’d like to touch on is the mastery system. Mastery is a form of XP, which, as your level increases, grants you access to special weapons and blueprints. The thing about mastery is that you don’t level it up by simply killing enemies. Rather, you level it up by leveling up your items. Every time you level up a warframe you gain 200 master points (so 6000 for a full warframe), while you gain 100 points per weapon level (or 3000 points when maxed out). That means to gain the levels that matter, you’ll constantly be making new items and giving them a try. I suppose this is all an elaborate attempt to convince you to spend more money. It’s kind of a cool system, since it does force you to try new items out, rather than simply going for the godmode rifle and being done with it.

When you're ready to rank up you must pass some sort of test. They range from using stealth to eliminte a number of enemies (seen here), to parkour challenges, to weapon challenges. Failure locks you out of the test for 24 hours.

Nearly 6 full pages in and I've only covered the game without criticizing its content. In general I've found the game very addicting (563 hours so far), but a lot of that might be my tendency to strive for completion, and the inability to ever really accomplish that in a game like this. It's the same reason I've invested so much time in MMOs in the past, or a particular game that fits this one's repetitive-yet-always-more-to-do feel: Phantasy Star Online. Running levels over and over again can get boring, and there is no question that there is a farming component to this game that makes it a huge time sink. The addition of new title sets (i.e. maps) and game modes help, but it doesn't carry you to 500 hours alone. There is the issue of this being a terrible game to try in most single player scenarios, from some of the game modes punishing you, such as any of the ones the force you to pick up a datamass (Spy, Deception, and Moblie Defense), because running a level of endlessly spawning enemies with just your pistol and a distinct lack of ammo is not a good idea. There are certainly issues with some warframes feeling useless, but that's part of the ongoing balancing challenge. Likewise, many weapons seem like something you only keep long enough to contribute to your mastery, then you junk them for the slots. The game also has it's share of bugs, some of which you can write off due it's beta status, but include things that I've seen fixed in one patch and broken in a following, and another that wiped certain achievements, including two where you had to perform an action like hacking a console or reviving another player 1000 times. I've spawned outside of maps, found holes in maps where you fall for eternity, and have had the game freeze or crash in plenty of cases. There is one bug during invasion missions, where you complete it by eliminating all of a specific faction, where not enough enemies spawn (eventually they will, but it takes another minute or two of sitting around at the exit to kick it in). The codex, which provides you information about vulnerabilities and mod drops, requires you to scan enemies, which wasn't too bad when I started, but now requires an equal number of scans for an enemy's rare counterpart. Scanning 30 rare versions of a rare spawn is kind of a dumb idea. One of the 3 special bosses that stalk you after you complete certain prerequisites gives no hint about who they have targeted when they spawn in, meaning you can't be sure if they are still targeting you until you go run 5 more invasion missions and support their enemy. Bonus objects, which award some extra XP if you complete the randomly selected one you got for that mission, all to often seem to land on something impossible to complete in that mission type, such as getting stealth kills in Survival or Defense missions, or hacking a console during an invasion. The parkour can be buggy, such as your character refusing to run up a wall, or running up a wall so hard you completely jump over the air vent you were supposed to enter. There is no option to kick someone from a game, which would be really nice when someone is AFK and you're waiting at a door that requires 2 people to unlock. So yes, the game has plenty of issues, but myself, being the completionist I am, am willing to give Warframe the benefit of the doubt as it makes it's way through the development process.

The game is a certain kind of beautiful though, particularly the newer, much more open environments.

Okay, so that’s Warframe as it stands at the writing/publishing of this review. So far I’ve had a pretty good time in the game, helped by the fact that I’ve had some friends playing, though they only lasted a month or so. Yes, it gets repetitive and very grindy, but in a way I oddly enjoy, perhaps because new items add just enough freshness to keep things going. Since it is Free-to-Play, I can’t really put a price on it, but only recommend you at least give it a try. If it turns out you’d rather not play it, you’re really out nothing more than a bit of your time, because it is pretty fun once you’ve found some good gear, mods, and warframes that compliment your natural playstyle. Also, space ninjas – 8 out of 10.

So, the final breakdown:
Score: 8/10
Suggested Price: Free! (But expect to kick in $5-10 minimum if you really get into the game)




*****

For more Warframe, check out this collection of screenshots otherwise unused in this review. Click on any one for a large image.