The gift that keeps on giving…

It’s not very often a game envelopes me like Warframe has. Since the launch of the game two weeks ago, I’ve already spent 30 hours ninja jumping across the map and shooting hundreds of space enemies. In this review I plan to explain what makes Warframe so good, why is it totally free to play and convince you to download it!

The Story

Much like Destiny, Warframe’s story is left quite vague unless you scratch beneath the surface of the game’s prologue. You play as a Tenno, a sort of ancient space Ninja race that is tasked with bringing balance to the three factions that compete in the universe. To help you do this, you use a Warframe- an Iron Man like suit that grants you armour and special almost-magical powers. Much like Iron Man, the Warframe can be switched at any time and each Warframe has its own stats and powers.

Your Tenno is awoken from its cryosleep by the Lotus, a machine goddess that advises you how to use your Warframe. The Lotus awakens you to protect you from Captain Vor, a Grineer commander who plans to use you for his own evil means. After beating Vor and the prologue of the game, the story is left for you to pursue.

Unlike games like Destiny, I like that Warframe lets you get on with the fun part of the game straight away and leaves it up to the player if they want to pursue the story. Most of the game is spent jumping from planet to planet searching for resources, levelling up your gear and grinding missions. I love the flexibility this offers as you can choose exactly what type of mission you want to play. You’re not funnelled down a six hour story like with Destiny, but are free to choose what you want to do.

The story is delivered via mini-stories, which unlock as you progress. They’re basically a collection of pre-existing missions that have been retasked to tell short, contained stories. What I especially like about them is that they all revolve around one cool piece of gear, so there is always a reward to do them. An example of this is the archwing quest or the Kubrow quest, which are both short distractions that offer a break from the game’s main loot farming gameplay.

The Gameplay

The whole mechanic behind Warframe is grinding and farming for loot. Yes, the game is a third person shooter. However, I’d argue that this comes second to buying or finding weapons and warframe blueprints and grinding levels and resources to build them. Personally, I love this style of gameplay. I always like having something to work towards and Warframe does this extremely well.

The best example of this is building a Warframe. Warframe blueprints can be bought from the game’s marketplace with either premium currency called Platinium or for in game credits. Once you buy a Warframe blueprint you’ll find that you need four other items to build the Warframe. Three of those items will also be blueprints that all need different resources to build. This is where the grind and random number generation (RNG) begins.

To get the three blueprints to build the Warframe you will have to farm a boss level of a planet. So far, I’ve built two Warframes and had two very different experiences farming the blueprints. The first one was for the Rhino warframe, which I had to beat the Jackel for. Against him, I was extremely unfortunate with the RNG as I got the same blueprint three times in row. This meant I had to fight him about 10 times before I got the three pieces I needed.

The second time, when I was building Mag however, I was way luckier. I got the three pieces in three attempts, so didn’t have to farm at all! Most of the game comes down to RNG. I know for some people this can be a turn off but for me I quite enjoy it. I like running the levels over and over. Especially in Warframe because each level doesn’t take that long to complete.

This comes down to the game’s excellent movement system. By spending a few hours perfecting how to control your Warframe’s movement, you can be like a real ninja and leap across the map, slide through doors and climb up walls. Funnily, the game’s epic movement came from a glitch that the developers Digital Extremes left in the game because the community loved it so much. Alongside the game’s satisfying third person gunplay, the movement makes each level a thrill to play, even if I’m running through it for the tenth time!

The levels are also varied enough to keep the game interesting. There’s ten different mission types, as well as Alerts that are higher rewarded, timed mission and void fissures, which let you open up free loot box-like items called Relics. All of these different modes mean you’ll always have something to do to keep you busy, whilst also giving you experience to level up your Warframe and gear.

Leveling up your Warframe and gear is important because it effects your overall account level called a Mastery level. The Mastery level effects what items you can craft and requires you to fulfil a challenge every time you level up. What’s a little bit frustrating is that once you reach level 30 on your items and Warframe you can’t earn any more experience for your Mastery level. This means you need to keep building new weapons and Warframes to efficiently earn experience. However, if you’re lacking on resources you might be stuck with maxed out gear for a long time and therefore, stuck on the same level. It’s not too bad, but it’s a quick way to make you feel like your not progressing. Furthermore, the addition of Mods to your warframe gives you increased health, armour and element affects. Adding mods is a quick way to make your Warframe that much more powerful. However, finding them is down to RNG, so it could be that you get multiple copies of the same mod before you get a rarer, more powerful one.

As I stated in the introduction, Warframe is 100% completely free to play. That means that of course there are micro-transactions in the game (Digital Extremes needs to make money some how). I know this may be a turn off for some people but the micro-transactions are handled in a good and unobtrusive way. There is a marketplace where you can buy Warframes, weapons and cosmetics with real life money, but I feel like it is never in your face. They don’t send you annoying pop ups, they don’t drip feed you platinum to make you feel like you should buy more. I feel like Digital Extremes just wants you to play their game and hey, if you buy something that’s cool but if you don’t then that’s fine too.

All in all, you could play Warframe completely freely and never need to purchase anything in the game. Sure you’d have to spend hundreds, if not thousands of hours grinding and farming, but I believe the game is totally fair. Digital Extremes has made the game boring to play. They make you grind, but just long enough to make you feel satisfied when you get a new Warframe and not spiteful. Personally, I’ll be buying something from the store to show the devs my support and say thank you for making such a great game, but you don’t have to.

Art and Music

I can’t believe how well and how good Warframe looks on the Switch, in both docked and handheld mode! Panic Button have done another amazing port to the Switch. Sure, there are times when it does get a little bit framey and the city of Cetus, really doesn’t look good but the overall performance is fantastic. It’s arguably the most beautiful and realistic looking game on the Switch. The mechanical but insect like look of the warframes makes them both striking and interesting to look at. Plus, the fact that you can change your warframe’s paint job means I am always flying around the environments taking screenshots of it!

The music is so-so but the sound design behind the weapons sounds so awesome! The thunk of my shotgun and the pin noise that happens when you shoot off a Corvus’s helmet provides satisfying audio feedback, which when paired with the unbelievable graphics, makes for a fantastic shooter.

Problems

So far the only technical problem I’ve had with the game is the connectivity. Sometimes it feels like I’m in the game but the enemies aren’t. One second I’ll be shooting an enemy across the map and then the next the enemy skips to being right in front of me.

Usually the game is good at recognising the lag and pulling you out of the server you were in and putting you into a new one that is running better. I’ve noticed that since launch this is happening less and less, so perhaps Digital Extremes has been working to fix it. However, it is quite annoying when you realise that the lag is happening and know that you’re about to enter a loading screen.

In addition, when you first start Warframe it can be a little overwhelming. There’s so many flashing lights and pop ups with so much information that it’s a little bit hard to know where to start. Luckily for me, I had Age of Boredom to help who’s a Warframe connoisseur, so my experience wasn’t so bad. However, for someone going into the game alone I know it’ll be hard for you. I suggest you just take the game one planet at a time. First is Earth, so start by completing every blue diamond on the map and eventually you’ll gain access to Mercury and then the rest of the solar system.

However, if you need more help I suggest a youtuber called iFlynn who has an excellent Warframe beginners guide. Or you could join the Switch Indie Fix Discord and come ask me personally for help!

Summary

All in all, Warframe is one of the best indie games on the Nintendo Switch. It’s free, so I’d highly recommend that you download it and give it a chance. The gameplay is triple A quality with a rewarding loop and satisfying gunplay. Arguably it’s the best looking game on the Switch too, with expert porters Panic Button outdoing themselves yet again. There’s always something to do and to work towards in Warframe, which I appreciate in my ‘games-as-a-service’ games.

I have experienced some technical difficulties and the game itself can be overbearing when you first boot it up. Nevertheless, because of the awesome movement system, the depth of unlockable and moddable weapons and the fun and rewarding gameplay, I think Warframe should be a staple of every Switch owner and indie game fan’s library!

That’s why I give Warframe by Digital Extremes my rating of

Have you downloaded Warframe? If so what do you think of the game and which Warframe are you rocking? Let me know down in the comments our hit me up on Twitter or join the Switch Indie Fix Discord server.

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