Warframe

"I didn't come to party or to justify
I hear the same excuses every single night
I'm not some demographic
That's swallowed the pill
Some twisted little cliché humming for cheap thrills"

FC Kahuna - Nothing Is Wrong


At some point early last year I decided to buy one of the newer online games just to see what the kids are into these days. I'd love to do a whole series on it but there's very little to say about Warframe. I'm guessing Digital Extremes' pitch to their investors for this project consisted of exactly one phrase: "we can do it cheaper" - and cheaper they did! No server costs because its co-op matches (with a maximum size of four) are hosted on players' computers, no GMs and little to no customer service of any kind, maps algorithmically generated from modular set pieces, most voice acting obviously relegated to interns, etc. The story's premise is so aggressively stupid it belongs in a 1980s cartoon.

You are a rococo space ninja bouncing at breakneck speed through a nonsensical clutter of rooms (apparently the architecture of the future will consist of nothing but dead ends, red herrings and superfluous corridors) killing space zombies, space cyborgs and space chaos marines, not to infringe on anyone's copyright. Most of its assumptions toe every line of pop culture morality: man bad, woman good; smart people are bad and codependence is good; curiousity always kills the cat; transhumanism = apocalypse. Later on it's revealed you're actually a psychic space teenager space-teleoperating your cyborg space ninja avatar (and no, for once I've got no compunctions against spoiling that reveal; it's too damn stupid.)

Oh, and there's a Mobile Suit Gundam spaceflight mode. Because of course there is.

The basic gameplay can be described as either an old-timey arcade shooter or a 3D version of a Diablo 2/3 co-op (microtransacted) loot grind. Enemies by the thousands constantly jump out of the walls from every direction at you and you keep mowing them down. Lather, rinse, repeat... endlessly. No strategy, all reflex. Amusingly, there are times when the developers seem like they'd prefer to be doing something more interesting, and of course they're well aware that their product stays afloat not due to any objective quality or innovation but due to inducing adrenaline / dopamine addiction in its adolescent target audience. Quoth one of their villains: "Can you feel that coming rush? That cocktail of unflinching violence and pseudo-random rewards? Mmmm, good for business."

However, those pseudo-random rewards deserve special mention.

Every planet or has its own particular resources. Events triggered both globally according to the developers' schedule and individually by players can temporarily add alternate mission types or rewards to most any locations. Given that player characters advance primarily by using said resources to craft new gear to level up, one can cut down on the grind to some extent by waiting to do missions when multiple rewards line up. Though not every location gets the same amount of love, Warframe does a surprisingly good job of "taming the randomizer" and though I'm ashamed of myself for it I'll admit I've enjoyed much of the hundreds of log-ins and hundreds of hours I've put into it over the past year. By emphasizing player choice in harvesting specific resources in specific locations, Warframe is more of an MMO than most games which used to call themselves that with their quasi-persistent maps. At least you won't find every single player farming the same latest instance.

The less said about the degenerate brain-dead little pissants it attracts as an audience, the better. Still, it offers some decent leeway in playing around with damage types while putting together new loadouts, and though it's too florid for my tastes I won't deny the character models' style has had quite a bit of work and even inspiration put into it... and, though the writing is often deliberately bad (sorry, I mean "accessible") even the artistic aspect manages a couple of touching high points.