Monday 26 August 2013

Warframe (PC Open Beta)

Gamespot Score: 6.0 (Fair)

My Score: 7.0


(+)Pros: - Great first impressions and starting few hours, - Maneuvering your Warframe around the maps with creative ways is fun and entertaining, - Plenty of weapons that you can add to your arsenal, - Mod customization is addictive and can power up your Warframe in many ways, - Diverse variety of select-able Warframes, each with their cool looks, abilities and specialties, - 4 player co-op is thrilling for some of the more challenging maps.

(-)Cons: - Severe lack of map and enemy types, - Lack of PvP mode is a huge wasted potential, - Hunting for ingredients to craft better items is highly repetitive. 


Gameplay time: - 






Ever want to run around walls like a badass space ninja? Wield katanas, hammers, great swords and kunais in space? Shoot at your enemies with dual sub machine guns, shotguns and snipers? Or how about conjuring forth elemental powers to scorch, freeze or electrify your enemies? Warframe seems like a really cool game to have all this things in them, and in reality, it actually is. You get to do all those things and more, this is a game PACKED with content. There's a lot to do, a lot to craft and there's sure as hell a lot of things to kill to satisfy your lust for battle as a badass space ninja. Warframe makes players feel badass by infiltrating massive enemy ships with just their lonesome selves, taking out every single enemy in their path with their skills alone. As a co-op game, having your fellow space ninja join you makes the experience all the more rewarding, and Warframe brings out the best of its arsenal to please its players there.


In Warframe, you play as the Tenno, a group of descendants of an ancient mystical art. The Tenno have great ability in each and everyone of them, using those abilities they complete all missions given to them with unmatched precision. They have been asleep for centuries, only to awaken to fight against warring factions that pose a threat to them. The Tenno, being the strong, self centered group they are, fight to repel all their enemies, trusting only each other, they work as a powerful, coherent force that can destroy anything in their path, to bring an end to their opponents.


Space ninjas use guns too, because f**k you

When you first step into the game...you're going to be wowed, that's for sure. When you first take control of your Warframe, everything feels just right. You're going to be shooting enemies, killing them with your katana, and blasting them away with your Tenno abilities. Your mobility feels off the charts and you feel like you can do everything. That's just the wonderful first impressions that you're having. The first few hours of the game feel great, exploring everything you can do as a Warframe and executing all these tiny little maneuvers and abilities just makes you feel like a badass. You're going to have a very fun first few hours into the game.


The best part about playing Warframe is feeling the insane mobility you have for yourself. All Warframe types have different speeds, but their methods of maneuver still feel ridiculously good. You can sprint, jump, do back flips, jump on walls, climb UP walls, run ON walls, do a jump kick and much more. On many occasions when you're running through hallways without enemies, you can't resist but do a trick or two, to earn style points and get to places quicker. Creative maneuvers will quickly reveal many shortcuts around maps, and you'll feel like a badass on top of everything. Feels like a parkour game at times.



Customize your load-out to make yourself feel like a boss

You may be a space ninja, but even space ninjas need weapons. Fortunately, there are a ton of them available for your selection. There are 4 weapon types available for each and every Warframe. Your primary weapon branches out to stuff like shotguns, assault rifles, snipers or even bows. Your secondary weapons are your pistols, your third weapons are melee weapons, which come in a variety as well. Katanas, swords, fists, hammers or pole sticks....take your pick. You also have a sentinel to take along, a little floating robot that acts as your ally, either helping your defensively, or attack enemies offensively.   You can take 4 weapons to the field at once, and using them grants them EXP, helping them level up. Leveled weapons get stronger and gain more mod slots.


Mod slots are the capacity which your weapons can store....I'm talking mods of course (this sentence made no sense). The higher your capacity, the more mods you can store. Mods are little cards that you pick up throughout stages, they drop as you beat enemies. Different weapons have different mod types, and each weapon can be equipped with their own set of mods. Some mods increase damage, others bullet capacity, firing rate or even armor piercing to deal damage to armored enemies. Some mods even grant elemental damage to your weapons (fire, ice etc), while others let you shoot THROUGH enemies to hit enemies behind. Since there are tons of different mods for each sub category, you can easily spend a lot of time on this. And what if you can upgrade mods by fusing it with other mods? It adds a whole new level to the depth of mod management and customization.



Mod time bitches!

Throughout the game there are plenty of Warframes for you to pick from, and this is easily my favorite part of the game. Each and every Warframe looks incredibly different from one another, and all are cool as f**k. You can choose one of three Warframes from the start, Excalibur (a melee, tank focused Warframe with powerful melee abilities), Loki (a fast, balanced Warframe with stealth and deception abilities) and Mag (a weak, shield focused Warframe with a mix of defensive and offensive abilities). Each Warframe you choose plays differently from one another, and they have their own unique skills. There are other Warframes that you may also choose to craft after getting sufficient ingredients from elsewhere. 


I described the 3 starter Warframes up above, but there's so much more you can make! Ember is a fire elemental based Warframe that comes with tons of fire abilities to burn up enemies. Volt is a lighting based Warframe with tons of supercharging self buff and offensive abilities. Rhino is a super tank Warframe with the ability to stun lock enemies (great against bosses). Nyx is a Warframe that thrives on disruption of regular enemies, using mind control. Ash is a stealthy, assassin type Warframe specializing in taking out single targets and getting out fast. Trinity is a support Warframe with plenty of healing and defensive traits. Frost is a tanky, ice based Warframe with frost abilities and huge scale disruption. Saryn is poison based, with skills that inflict damage over time on enemies (great against bosses as well). 


An example of the bosses you will be facing in game.

What Warframe you choose affects how you play, and if also affects your role in a team. There are more Warframes than the ones I mentioned above (Banshee, Nova and others), but it means the same thing. What different types of Warframe you bring to a team changes how you take on missions. Embers are great against infested enemies, Rhinos are great against bosses. Things like this can always change how a mission can go, and the possible combination of Warframes in a team make co-op missions with others a thrill to play. Like weapons, your Warframes level up, and have their own set of mods, boosting health, speed and jump distance...among others.


The game lets you team up with up to 4 players, and its safe to say that co-op is the way to go for this game. Playing alone is fine, but some missions are incredibly difficult to tackle alone (you can still do it, you just have to be a f**king genius at the game). And when you do tackle these maps as 4, it becomes way more fun and has more structure to it. Sure some players are just scumbags overall, but if you play with friends the game quickly becomes more enjoyable, and you can see that Warframe was meant to be a team game. Tackling on bosses as a team makes you feel badass, as you flank him and hit from from different directions at once, plummeting him with an array of different skills.


Here, have some space zombies!

With so much content, how can I only rate the game as decent (7.0-7.4 is decent in my books)? Well, to put it bluntly, the game is just a huge mindf**k of repetition. Throughout the game you'll be fighting 3 factions of enemies, the grineer, corpus and infested. Each faction of enemy has about 3-4 enemy types....that means that there are less than 15 enemy types TOTAL in this game. If you combine all the explorable areas in every solar system...there are easily over 90 stages in the game. 90 stages...spread out across 15 enemy types. Also, there are 90 stages and by the time I quit the game, there were only THREE stage types. F**KING, THREE. A cave, a spaceship and an ice map....AND NO, THE DARKENED SPACESHIP DOES NOT COUNT AS A SEPARATE MAP TYPE.


So you'll be seeing the same maps and same enemies throughout your entire journey through the game, that enough is BAD. The lack of a PvP mode is also a wasted potential. I mean you look at the game, and you think of the mechanics....PvP would be perfect here. A 16 player deathmatch would be f**king beast....and f**king chaotic at the same time. Also, when you go ingredient hunting, you will absolutely HATE yourself. It is soooo repetitive....SO repetitive. Visiting the same map 20 times to get f**king rubido is the worst shit ever, or having to kill the same boss 10 times to get all 3 ingredients to craft a Warframe can get INFURIATING.


SLASH!

So that's Warframe guys. It has tons of things that other FREE MMOs do not provide, but its also what we call "Repetition at its finest". Its one of the most repetitive games I have ever played, and also one of the most creative ones at the same time. There's a lot to like about Warframe, but at the same times there's a lot to hate as well. Its currently still in open beta, so you can go check it out, but if I were you I'd wait for the full actual release. The game is getting its own release for the PS4, which I will be looking forward to when it comes. The game has a good deal of potential to be good, but currently, the game really needs some diversity in its enemies and map types. Still a good experience for those looking for something different.







Enjoy some would be female faces of the female Warframes!

Happy gaming!