WeView Verdict: Warframe

Today, we’re tackling something completely new with WeView Verdict: a free to play game. Since there’s no purchase required, we’ve tweaked the scoring system, and we’ll work out how much the game is worth. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves… let’s see what you all thought about the game first.

Tonycawley seems to be one of our main spokespeople for Warframe, and jumped straight in by saying it’s his most played PS4 game to date, with 120 hours and counting. He said it’s akin to Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, and “one of the most in-depth gaming experiences” he’s had. “It’s very intricate yet none of these intricacies are explained at all, so unless you have someone to explain it all to you, or you take the time to figure it out for yourself it can be baffling and somewhat overwhelming” continued Tony.

With over double the playtime of Tony, Radboud has spent around €60 on the game, and is willing to do so “as long as it is fun with friends”. But TSBonyman didn’t really enjoy it, saying “levels were horribly generic-looking and the melee seemed useless without a lock-on option, leaving you facing the wrong direction and flailing at empty air”.

Tuffcub had problems with the update system, and couldn’t get it to work so deleted it “a few weeks back”. Meanwhile Bilbo_bobbins said “it looked nice, but the levels were so generic and boring that I just couldn’t be bothered to pick it up after a few hours.”

“I could not get into it” stated Nylon_Angel, pointing out bad controls and repetitive gameplay. But bigchrissyc said that he thinks “everyone should at least give it a go, as its free, yes most of the levels look generic, but all worlds have multiple mission types and enemy types”. F4rgo also said “there’s a ‘just one more go’ element to it, at a particular level or boss fight, that often pushes play into the early hours.”

“It was a free to play game, and the best thing I could say for it was that I got what I paid for.” said colmshan1990 who didn’t really enjoy his experience with the PC version. But that’s true for many shooters, he continued, and games in that genre “have to be special, special games” for him to find them enjoyable.

GTOWN highlighted a possible issue for many new players: “It’s awful as a single player experience” he said, before stating that it’s “brilliant with a few mates”. Another problem, at least for Kennykazey, was that he “found the controls to be clunky and unnatural on console.”

On the free-to-play aspect, NotSmartEnough said that there’s “nothing you have to pay for that can’t be unlocked by grinding”, which sounds quite good and makes me realise why some people have played so much! “There’s a lot of depth to the game and the regular updates add value to something which is essentially free” continued NSE.

“I only started playing recently, but both me and my brother are hooked” spoke Shadow_lawless, who also spoke of the titular exoskeletons of the game: “Each warframe acts like a different class specialised for different types of combat but you aren’t forced to stick to any, as you progress through the game you can build new warframes and use them according to the type of mission.”

Salvodaze said “I played only around 5-6 hours and it was hard to understand the mods (not sure I correctly did anyway) but each time I had good fun, even though I played with complete strangers.”

“I just love this game” said Vandix, and pointed out that the game is very different now to how it was, and that people who weren’t pleased might change their mind now. Greg also said this, summing up with:

It has evolved massively since the PS4′s launch with aspects of the mechanics having been overhauled, tilesets updated (the Earth tileset being probably the most dramatically changed) a steady stream of new weapons and Warframes and the core game engine itself much improved. The frame rate could be dire in the early days when the screen got busy but that’s effectively history now. The level of graphical polish has been improved all round.

Warframe has been an odd one. Those who have picked it up without really getting too far have said that you should Avoid It, which means that there were a total of six votes for that, but those who have put the time in have said that they’d happily spend quite a lot on the game, which shows that it’s really about whether you can get past those first few hours. That meant ten people suggested you should Try It, and their prices averaged out at about £33.

Back to normality tomorrow then, after an interesting WeView departure this week. It’s Resogun coming up, which seems like a good choice from the TSA community, and then we’ve changed the poll around a bit too, by adding Super Mario 3D World in there.