Tales of Warframe

Warframe is a free-to-play co-op third person shooter developed by Digital Extremes. Warframe was first released on March 25, 2013 for the PC. The community of the game was later notified that Warframe would also be released for the Playstation 4. Digital Extremes has also released a trailer for the future release on the PS4.

The game takes place in a massive world, allowing the player to travel to different planets and galaxies. The player controls warriors called the Tenno who use advanced armor with special properties, also known as Warframes. The Tenno are at war with the Grineer, the Corpus, and an alien race named the Infested.

The Grineer are human, though they may not look like it. Over many years of cloning, their bodies have decayed and have started to look more like a promitive species. The Corpus are heavily into machinery, using mechs and smaller robots to do most of their fighting. Infested were human at some point, but were changed by a virus or parasite. The Tenno are descendants of an ancient civilization of warriors from Earth.

The player is immediately immersed in the game from the moment they pick their first Warframe. The player is given the option of Excalibur, a melee Warframe, Mag, a ranged Warframe, and Loki, a stealth Warframe. After selecting which they would like to use, they are introduced to some of the basic controls by someone called Lotus.

The immediate story doesn't reveal itself, and research has to be done to understand what exactly is happening. The world is vast, but the information is just not there. Warframe's graphics are spectacular, an option to increase the graphics is also given to the players in the Options menu.

While it's partially true the player doesn't have to spend a penny on Warframe to access everything, there is a slight catch. Each player has a limited amount of weapons or Warframe slots that, once filled, stop them from making another weapon or Warframe. This can be remedied by either buying a slot or selling one of the items.

The game also introduces an interesting way of increasing the power of your weapons, Warframe, and skills. During a play through of any mission a player gains experience for both their weapons and their current Warframe. Also during a mission, a player may encounter and pick up an item known as a Fusion Core. These cores provide special skills or abilities that can be equipped to increase the overall power of the weapons or Warframe. To increase the power of the skills, a player needs to fuse skills together or with a Fusion Core, to level up the skill. This mechanic leads to a lot of grinding, so the player can obtain skills and Credits, in-game money, in order to increase their strength.

There are also beings called Sentinels that follow the Tenno around, once bought or crafted, that act as a secondary weapon or utility power. As of now, three different Sentinels can be built giving the player a sort of variety.

There are also currently thirteen Warframes, not including the Prime Warframes that certain players were

able to obtain during special events or donating a certain amount of money. These Warframes all have different special abilities that separate them from each other, and give the player a different play style depending on the Warframe selected.

All items in the game can be found or built with a blueprint that requires, sometimes rare, items, credits, and time. Because of this, it's a very attractive game for players who don't wish to spend money on a game, or just occasionally.

An interesting aspect about the developers, is that they stay really close with their community. Almost once every month they provide a Live Stream where the developers talk about the future of Warframe and even respond to questions or concerns the players have. All this week there will be official Warframe streams from E3, be sure to tune in if you are interested.

Monday's Live Stream 5:30 P.M. PDT / 8:30 P.M. EDT: Warframe and Spike TV allaccess.spike.com
Tuesday's Live Stream 3:20 P.M. PDT / 6:20 P.M. EDT: Warframe and Gamespot http://www.gamespot.com/e3/stage-2-day-1/
Wesnesday's Live Stream 11:35 P.M. PDT / 2:35 P.M. EDT: Warframe and Playstation Blog Livecast playstation.com
Wednesday's second Live Stream 5:10 P.M. PDT / 8:10 P.M. EDT Warframe and Machinima http://www.youtube.com/user/machinima
Thursday's Live Stream 1:00 P.M. PDT / 4:00 P.M. EDT Warframe and Twitch www.twitch.tv/twitch

Warframe can be a little confusing to start, as the game doesn't tell you all of the controls, but is fun regardless. It allows the player full customization, from weapons, to colors, to Warframes, and even helmets. Thankfully the publishers are working on bringing forth a better tutorial and a better way to tell the story of Warframe, to attract new players, so all we need to do is wait. As it stands, Warframe earns an 7/10 being highly addictive for a time, but unless you enjoy grinding this game may or may not be for you. Hopefully the changes that lie on the horizon will change things up a bit, making the game more interesting.