Everybody Should Try Warframe
Warframe is a weird game. I won’t get too deep into its baffling development history — though I highly recommend everybody check out Noclip’s documentary series on the game — but everything from Warframe’s art style, to story, to gameplay structure, to business model, to its ever-growing success, is weird. It’s a weirdness that might scare people away, or prove too daunting at first glance. But it’s also a weirdness a hell of a lot of people are on-board with, as is evident by its #4 position for concurrent players on Steam. Warframe is weird as hell — and everybody should give it a shot.
My experience with Warframe probably mirrors that of a lot of others out there. I first heard of it while exploring the PlayStation 4’s launch offerings. The reputation for free-to-play games then was even worse than it is now, so I had very low expectations when I downloaded it, and even then just to see what the PS4 was capable of.
What I was treated to was a game that looked like H.R. Giger doing a design pass on the Big Bad Beetleborgs.
The bug-like, robo-organic hybridized look was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. There’s been creatures in other games that drew similar inspiration from insect exoskeletons and the like, but I’d never seen protagonists that looked like that. It was initially off-putting and weird. I wasn’t sure what to think of it.
The gameplay confused me too. While slashing and shooting my way through waves of (gross looking) enemies felt great, I wasn’t sure to what end I was doing it. I was only more confused the more I played, and eventually abandoned it before really giving it a fair shake. It was free-to-play, and many games like it would come and go, so I wasn’t too eager to invest much into it, expecting it to shut down at anytime.
But unlike its competition, Warframe stuck around. The developers kept adding to the game, and improving upon it, and listening to their fans in the process. My initial thoughts after learning as much were, “people are still playing that weird-ass bug game?” I was assured it was much different now, and a much bigger game. I was still playing Destiny at the time, so “it’s different now” didn’t mean very much to me. For us Guardians, “different” meant an adjustment to the RNG on a raid. For the Tenno, though, it was stuff like story quests, open worlds, archwings, and more.
I eventually came to accept that Warframe really was doing incredible things with itself, even if the game still wasn’t for me. I could appreciate the game and celebrate Digital Extremes’ community-focused design philosophy from a distance. It wasn’t until a group of friends coerced me to play with them last year that I even considered coming back to it. Of course my few hours of a game’s beta 4 years prior wouldn’t give me an accurate representation of the game today, and I had no excuse not to give in (the game is free, after all). I downloaded it again — on PC this time — and I am very glad that I did.
Warframe today is still weird. It still looks like a French comic book, and it’s still bloated with a lot of systems that can be very daunting at first, but it’s also incredibly rewarding. Darting through levels, tearing through enemies, and playing with different Frames is a ton of fun, even if you don’t know what you’re doing. And I assure you, you won’t know what you’re doing. Few games rely so heavily on fan-made wikis than this one, but fortunately Warframe is also buoyed by one of the most helpful fanbases of any game I’ve ever played. And as you continue to push forward through the wiki-assisted charms of the game, getting a feel for the game’s deeper and deeper layers, you’ll quickly find even more incentive to engage in the game’s exhilarating combat, and better excuses to mix things up in the process.
I am far from an expert in this game. I generally measure my time playing any particular game in the dozens of hours category, and not the hundreds or even thousands that a game like Warframe can effortlessly soak up. I haven’t even gotten to what many of the game’s biggest fans call its best content, and that’s very encouraging. I also haven’t yet spent a dime in the game, and haven’t felt limited by that decision. But I wouldn’t feel bad about doing so, either, because Digital Extremes has injected so much content into the game without literally strangling your character until you pay for more energy that I feel they’ve more than earned my money.
Warframe is a game everybody should try. Whether you like playing your games solo or with friends, there’s something almost anybody will enjoy about the game. It’s an experience that gets more rewarding the more time you spend in it. It’s a rare “games as service” game that actually lives up to the promises of an ever-evolving experience.
The team is just about to launch a massive new expansion that adds a ton of new content to the game, and you don’t have to drop $40 plus the cost of all previous DLC to see what it’s all about (I’m looking at you, Destiny 2). Warframe is a weird-ass game, and it’s also awesome. I encourage you to give it a shot.
