Hello the ptizamis! I tested for you Warframe, a futuristic MMOFPS, developed by the Canadian studio Digital Extremes, who collaborated with Epic for Unreal, Dark Sector and Bioshock. A rather interesting CV, in short.
You are a Tenno, sort of space ninja crossed with a shark. Well, that doesn't sound glamorous like that, but the characters are quite classy. You are part of a race that has been enslaved by the Grineer and which finds itself on the verge of extinction. The only hope of the Tenno lies in the warframe, a kind of exoskeleton giving new capacities to defend against the attackers.
After a brief tutorial explaining the basics of the game, it's time to choose your first warframe. Warframes can be compared to classes in an MMO. The advantage here is that you can change the warframe (with credits of course). At the start of the adventure, we have the choice between 3 warframes:
- Excalibur : recommended for beginners, it combines mobility and offense.
- Loki : more complex to learn, it uses decoy and invisibility to break through enemy defenses.
- Volt : creating and exploiting electric fields, it is a perfect alternative to conventional firearms.
Once the warframe is selected, here we are in front of the map of the Origin system, in fact our own solar system. It is from here that we choose the missions, access our arsenal, the market and the Forge.
Let's start with the map. 9 planets are thus represented, unlockable as the adventure progresses. We start with the Mercury Terminus, which offers 6 missions. Several branches are possible. For example, by completing mission 5, you unlock access to Venus. By finishing the sixth, we reach Saturn. Small note: by lingering on Earth, we see that it is the home of the Grineer ... yes, we are the bad guys this time!
Now is the time to begin the first mission. So direction Mercury. Note that it is possible to choose a solo, private (with contacts) or online game, automatically joining unknown players available. It is thus possible to form groups of 4 players.
We have 3 weapons to defend ourselves: a rifle, a pistol and a saber. The presence of the saber is a very good idea, it really gives a dynamic and varied side to the gameplay. Apart from the saber, nothing new, the gameplay is quite classic: we move forward and we duck the Grineer. Be careful, however, health does not recharge on its own. You will have to pick up red orbs along the way to bring it up. That said, the warframe has shields, which protect us in the event of an attack and which are recharged as they go.
As far as I've seen, for now, the missions consist of advancing through corridors of ships to achieve an objective, and once the objective is reached, heading towards the extraction point to finish. That said, I have only done 6 missions so far, I hope that is not representative of the whole game, or if not, it could be damn repetitive.
Regarding progression, this is done via a talent tree for each warframe and for each weapon. It is also possible in each tree to unlock mod slots, further increasing its power. Each warframe also has 4 specific skills, which must be unlocked via the talent tree.
F2P obliges, the item shop answers the call of course. Most of the items are unlockable with in-game credits, but some are only unlockable with Platinum Points, which I personally find quite expensive.
The game also hosts a crafting system, the Forge. I have not yet had the opportunity to test it, I think that we collect materials a little later in the game. The system however looks classic, it is necessary to recover a plan and the necessary materials in ships to be able to forge the object. It is with the Forge that it will be possible to unlock new warframes.
On the graphics side, the artistic direction is quite fabulous for my taste. It's rare now to see MMOs (especially f2p) with a real identity, and Warframe is one of them. The design of the Tenno is quite successful, the Grineer a little less, more like Warhammer Space Marines with goatee legs. The textures are quite fine pushing the graphics to the max, but the game offers a lot of options, no need to have the latest PC to run it properly.
On the environment side, as I said, most of the missions at the start are in ships that offer a succession of corridors. Nothing very varied, but I remind you, these are only the first missions. That said, the developer promises an automatic generation of missions, in other words the architecture of the levels will change each time you redo a mission. I didn't see this during my testing, hopefully this is something they will implement later.
Nothing particular in terms of sound, the music is quite discreet, the ambient sounds relatively well done, but nothing transcendent.
In conclusion, I really have a very, very good feeling with this game. Of course, there are still a lot of points to improve, but the original atmosphere is a very big asset for this f2p, which, I remind you, is in closed beta for the moment, and therefore still subject to many changes, such as the translation, which is still in progress, some sentences are still more than approximate, but nothing too confusing.
