Warframe is a free to play Sci-fi themed MMO RPG by developers Digital Extremes. It has been around for over 4 years. It has been widely regarded as the standard for free to play games.

I have personally never played it before. I have often preferred MOBAs and RTS games. The game simply popped up as a recommended game to me by Steam. I saw it was free to play so why not? What could possible go wrong with a free to play game? Worse case scenario, I simply uninstall it.

GAMEPLAY

The easiest way to describe the gameplay is that you're basically a space ninja fighting bad guys. I mean just look at this:

If that isn't a space ninja then I don't know what is.

At the start of the game you get to choose between 3 basic Warframes, each with their own unique abilities, strengths and weaknesses. As you progress throughout the game you get to unlock more Warframes.

The entire Warframe world is located in an alternate version of our solar system with new players starting out on Earth. You unlock new planets as you play various types of missions and progressively grow stronger as you kill more enemies.

Every Warframe and weapon can be customized by what the game calls as Mods which you acquire as loot drops of enemies you've killed. These mods give unique power ups which slowly turn you into the space ninja you were always meant to be.

One thing I noticed during my first few hours of playing was that although the game had a great way of teaching new players, there was just so much information for new players to comprehend. I've spent countless hours reading through their wiki page and public forums just to get myself up to speed. I know for a fact that several people hate this, but to me this is a sign of a good RPG. You wouldn't want to play a game that held your hand every step of the way. Learning things on your own gives so much satisfaction.

PROGRESSION

As the case with most MMOs, there is a lot of grind involved in the game. And I mean A LOT. However, even though I found myself repeating the same missions over and over to get that rare loot drop, for some reason it never felt boring. Probably because at the end of every run you always get rewarded.

The bane of all free to play games is that in order to progress you would have to spend a lot on your character. Warframe offers the same but more efficiently and in a completely fair manner. With their in-game currency called Platinum, you can buy more powerful Warframes and more advanced weaponry. However, the unique thing about Warframe's economy is the fact that you can earn Platinum WITHOUT paying a single cent. You can earn it by simply trading rare items to other players. The entire Warframe economy is player driven. I have personally earned around $100 worth of Platinum by simply playing and trading with other players.

COMMUNITY

In every forum I've read people always said that Warframe has one of the best communities among any video games. I was skeptical though, since some of the stories were too good to be true. There was one who said that when he first started, a veteran player gave him a bunch of rare items and gave him an end game Warframe to get him started. These sounded like stories someone made up while they were drunk.

I have, however, experienced this on several occasions. Not to that extent but still pretty remarkable. There was a time that I was farming for an extremely rare resource called Tellurium that only had a small chance of dropping. I joined a random squad on a mission that spawned Tellurium. About 20 minutes into the run I typed in chat "Damn still no tellurium." After a couple of minutes one of my teammates marked on the map the location of a Tellurium that dropped from one of the enemies he killed. Not only that, but since he noticed I was knew, he also marked the location of a rare Warframe part that also dropped. The best part was that the rest of our teammates didn't take the items but instead waited for me to get them. In my over 15 years as a gamer, this is one of the most generous things I've experienced. Especially since I know how hard it was to obtain these items.

OVERALL REVIEW

Warframe is definitely one of the best games I've played. And to think that it's entirely free to play. I have no idea why Steam recommended it to me, but I'm sure glad it did. It isn't perfect though, the grinding aspect of the game might turnoff a lot of players, but if you wanna live your dream of being a space ninja then this game is for you.

"Welcome home Tenno"