- Game A: Sci-fi third-person RPG/action/shooter hybrid aimed at co-op online play where levels are spread across the planets and moons of our own Solar System.
- Game B: Sci-fi first-person RPG/action/shooter hybrid aimed at co-op online play where levels are spread across the planets and moons of our own Solar System.
Game A is a fair description of Warframe, a free-to-play game out now on PC and PS4.
Game B is a fair description of Destiny, probably among the top two or three most anticipated AAA releases of 2014.
This is obviously where the comparisons have to stop. The amount of investment into Destiny is on a totally different level. The production value in level design, art assets, and gameplay mechanics will almost certainly blow Warframe out of the water. But for now, Warframe, has a unique and highly entertaining package to offer.
Gameplay
Guns, melee, and powers. These are your tools available from the outset of Warframe with which you dispose of countless enemies. The guns are fairly standard, but highly customizable. The melee combat is exciting, and deeper than it first appears. The tutorial only highlights standard and power attacks, but you also have defensive capabilities like dodging and blocking, and hugely under-rated jump and sliding attacks which can be used to knock enemies down. The action is very fast paced, and the game is engineered to make you feel like a badass space ninja.
The missions take place on procedurally-generated maps and offer some decent variety, ranging from simple "kill all the things" to trickier mobile defense modes. Each planet or moon has a tree of missions: follow straight up the trunk to unlock the next planet or chase all the branches for extra goodies. Each planet has a theme; for example all the missions on Venus are icy and the enemies are robotic. In my first 4-6 hours of play, all the missions have taken place in same-y looking bases, but the backdrops, color pallets, and enemy types keep it from being totally stale.
The game can be played in solo mode, but it's a slog. It works best with one or more friends (up to 4 players only), and pretty well with randomly grouped players.
RPG Elements
The level-up hook is key in this type of game. The different character classes (unsurprisingly called Warframes) have distinct abilities, weapons, and stats. These obviously level up during play. Weapons (primary, secondary, and melee) all level up as well, and do so more as you use them.
Gaining a level opens up one modification point. Modification cards are gained as loot drops and have a variable number of points associated with them depending on how powerful they are. Mods include things like adding elemental damage, increasing crit chance, faster reloads, things like that. The class-specific powers are also a type of mod card. Mod cards can be upgraded to improve their effects, which often ups their point requirement.
This sounds complicated, and it is. It's actually not very well explained, and it takes some tinkering to figure out which combinations are allowed. But once you get the hang of it, it's pretty fun. You have a lot of control in how you build out your character, and even though each level only opens up one more point, that one extra point often allows you to swap things out and shoehorn in a different combination you couldn't use before.
The downside of this is that it's best to stick with one weapon, and level it up. Mod cards can be moved around at any time, but switching to a new weapon puts you back at square one in terms of mod card slots. There is an in-game crafting system, which allows you to build weapons and Warframes from various materials. Some of the mats are either late-game or pay only, so it's rare to actually get all the stuff you need to make a new item without paying (more on that later).
Free-to-play issues
All free-to-play games are designed to get money out of your pocket through microtransactions (or ads), and Warframe is no different. Playing for free, you get access to one Warframe (your choice of several basic models), and a small number of weapons. It costs real money to unlock other Warframes and weapons (and cosmetic options). Some items, especially Warframes, are laughably expensive.
The good news is that if you choose your Warframe carefully (I enjoy my Mag!), you can ignore all the paid stuff and just go shoot things. The game is 100% playable without spending a dime. After playing maybe 4-6 hours and having fun with it, I decided to buy $15 of in-game currency (the entry amount). I've spent ~$5 on materials which, along with mats and credits obtained through normal play, allowed me to build a new Warframe and a new primary weapon, which is a much better deal than paying for the suit outright.
