Warframe – Impressions from the closed beta

At it’s adrenaline-fueled heart, Warframe is an intense 3rd person co-op shooter. Since I’m completely rubbish at PvP, I was on board the minute I heard I wasn’t going to get destroyed by other players. As a free to play (currently in closed beta) entry into the genre, it is an exceptionally rare gem; there is a dark beauty present in the fast paced sci-fi violence it offers that rivals anything currently available on the market. On top of that, Digital Extremes brings so much more than just an action game to the table. The leveling and customization features are compelling and easy to understand. Warframe even boasts a crafting feature for those that love to find and create the most powerful gear. Warframe should be at the top of any action gamer’s list of most anticipated titles of the year.

The story

You play a member of the Tenno race. As one of the few surviving members of your race in the system after the old war, you have been hiding in cryosleep from the marauding Grineer. You awaken, receive a refresher (orientation training) in the use of warframes, choose your play style, and then it’s off to take back the system one world at a time. The game is a bit story light, though there is info to dig into over at the official web site if you need more motivation in your action gaming. Personally, I just like the assurance that the guys I’m shooting and chopping up with my wicked future-sword are of the villainous variety.

Get to the action!

Having guns is no reason not to hack and slash.

Warframe offers three ways to jump into the action: solo, private, or online. Solo lets you take on missions on your own, while private means that only your friends can join you in multiplayer. If you’re feeling lucky, just switch to online, join a group of strangers from the internet and live dangerously. Intuitive controls, good objective mapping, and straight forward play style makes this one easily accessible game. You bring two guns, your futuristic space sword, and a set of frame specific powers when you first set off on missions. That’s all you need to be a Guyver-looking space ninja badass! Once in a level, Lotus will guide you toward your objective and give you useful advice about proceeding. Not every mission is a simple “shoot everything that moves”, though you should still probably shoot everything that moves while you make your way toward your objectives as a matter of principle.

The majority of missions in the first section of the game can be handled solo by skilled players. After that, I seriously recommend teaming up with a friend or two when continuing your battle. Besides the increasing difficulty and sheer number of enemies that the missons start throwing at you, I find the game to simply be more rewarding when enjoyed as a group. This works especially well when players are using different types of warframes for maximum results and utility. Besides, it’s also great to let someone else see just how awesome you are in combat.

Between battles

Warframe individually tracks experience for each weapon and frame used during a mission. As each item levels up, it gains points to be spent for upgrades between missions. Of course, with enough gameplay and specialization you can unlock all of the upgrades for a particular weapon or frame, but it’s nice to have some options on the way there. One of the better aspects of this customization is the use of mod slots. Various mods drop randomly drop during combat and can be applied to the appropriate item type between matches to further customize and improve your gear.

Do you like crafting? Welcome to your new favorite action game. Warframe lets you craft items not even available in the cash shop using the foundry. Blueprints can be found in various ways and then taken to the foundry where you will see the material requirements to craft. Each area provides a specific list or materials that can be found as random drops, so it’s easy to figure out where you need to go next to build your new weapons.

Best of all, it’s free to play

Warframe is a properly done (in my opinion anyway) free to play game. There is a cash shop present, but boosts and aesthetic items are the only things available that can’t also be crafted or purchased through in game credits. New warframes and weapons are available for cash if you want to save yourself the time and effort of grinding out the credits to purchase the blueprints for those same items and then tracking down the materials. Personally, I find the game highly entertaining and I’m happy to give over some cash to the developers to show my support for what they built.

If you want to play a game that focuses on co-op instead of pvp, you like graphics that are both shiny and dark, and rushing at a bad guy with a sword in the middle of a firefight sounds like fun, then Warframe is for you. With a variety of frames tailored to any number of play styles (I have been using the Volt frame personally), an ever expanding arsenal of awesome and sometimes bizarre (they seriously have an ax made of daggers) weapons, and a range of mission types, I cannot possibly recommend this game highly enough. Warframe is the perfect example to showcase what PC gaming is capable of in the fight for next gen superiority.