Game Title: Warframe
Company: Digital Extremes, Panic Button
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Availability: Digital Download
Battery Life: 2 – 3 hours
Cloud Save Support: Yes
Download: 16.5 GB

Few and far between are MMOs on the NIntendo Switch and some of the ones that are there, aren’t exactly optimized well. As much as I really enjoyed playing Onigiri, it was poorly optimized and had a huge number of technical problems holding it back extremely far.

Although many people don’t give it the term “MMO”, but one Online game has flourished on the Switch, both in terms of optimization and its own sense of quality. That game is the sci-fi co-op game known as Warframe.

Having been optimized by Panic Button (the people who brought Doom 2016 to the Switch), themselves, here is my review of the free-to-play Online Action game, Warframe!

Story

Warframe’s story takes place in the solar system during an age of war between different species of aliens. The story centers around the Tenno, a species that uses special armor called Warframes for combat. You are awakened by motherly figure Lotus, when a Grineer attempts to abduct and use you for war. You then are given a ship by Lotus to rid yourself of your abductor and join your own side of the war.

The story in Warframe takes place in arcs and has a lot of lore to it. It’s also ongoing, as it just recently got a new expansion in the form of Warframe: Fortuna.

I would say the story of Warframe is interesting and when it pops up, it gives a lot of meaning to the missions since you’re not just doing a mission for nothing like in non-story segments. Some of them aren’t nearly as exciting as others (the Once Awake story really felt like it wasn’t much on its own), but there’s quite a bit of story here for a free game.

Gameplay

Warframe is an online-based third person action game with a heavy emphasis on character customization and co-op play. Across all of its missions, you’ll be trekking through 3D areas and fighting enemies in hack n slash and shooting combat.

Personally, I would call this game an “MMO” as it’s an online-oriented game and everything about it is built around that online aspect. In fact, you can’t play Warframe is you’re not connected to the internet. You can opt to solo missions, but there is no true “Offline” mode to the game.

Next, let’s get to the free-to-play model. You can play all of this game without paying a cent pretty comfortably. Real-Money is basically used for cosmetics and special character skins, which can also be bought in-game with the premium currency Platinum. Platinum can be bought on the eShop or earned by selling equipment to other players once you reach a certain Level/Rank in-game. Most things you buy with Platinum outside of cosmetics can also be found in missions, so nothing you need to progress is hidden behind a paywall.

Progression in Warframe works like a typical mission-based game. After the intro levels are done, you have a Star-map with different missions you can do on each planet of the Solar System. They run in a grid, so to get to new areas, missions, and planets, you do missions on a certain path towards new ones. It also means you’re stuck on a singular planet until you go to its Junction and fulfill conditions to open the path to the next planet and repeat the process to slowly unlock the entire system map.

Then it starts feeling like a mission game, where you go on a mission and then come back to your hub/ship where you can customize your character, develop upgrades for your weapons and armor, craft new items, or go to The Market to trade with other players or buy cosmetics with Platinum.

When you go into missions you start either by yourself or with a number of people helping you, whom can join anytime between accepting the mission and it loading. You normally have a task like capturing a target, rescuing a prisoner, or eliminating all enemies. You then proceed through the area and fulfill that mission, sneaking past or eliminating enemies and opening chests and other shining objects to collect money and materials along the way.

The unique thing about Warframe’s combat is that it combines hack n slash gameplay with shooting gameplay. You can equip melee weapons to attack enemies up-close but also a variety of firearms from pistols and shotguns to rifles and machineguns. Many enemies are made with one or the other in mind, letting you have a mixup of slashing some enemies with swords and shooting down drones and others with your guns.

It’s also an extremely fast-paced game, especially when you are in the middle of co-op. All missions are designed to be capable of being done solo when done carefully, but when you’re got a couple people with you, you can fly through them so quickly that it feels like a rush as you slice through enemies, grab what you need, and get to Extraction to get out. It’s quite satisfying to have that feeling of speed all leading up to your weapons leveling up to get more powerful and have more capabilities for the next mission.

But what doesn’t feel fast is the one thing I do not like about it. Many mission types have cooldown times. If you have a Story Mission where you have to complete 3 special Void missions before it unlocks, you might successfully do a single mission and have to wait several hours for the next one to unlock, and then again for the next, having spent over an entire day, if not two by the time you actually get those pre-requisites done to unlock that next story mission.

This also applies for crafting items and leveling up your rank to do more stuff. When you craft an item, it takes time to craft and you can only advance one rank every 24 hours. That means if you really get into the game and want to get a bunch done in one day, what you get done depends on what you want to do. If you want to do ranks, you have to wait 24 hours to do another or a few hours or more between Void Missions.

Now let’s get into content and legnth. This is a free game, but also one that has a lot of game to it. Warframe currently has around 10 Story Arcs and you’ve gotta do missions and fulfill requirements to unlock the next arc once you complete one. In terms of time, if you focus on story arcs, it should take you no less than 50+ hours to get through the game’s current story quests, if not more. There’s a ton of game here.

Controls

Controlling the game is pretty simple. No touch controls here, but you can enable motion controls both for looking around and when aiming down your sights.

The Left Analog Stick is used for moving around and the camera is moved with the Right Analog Stick. The D-Pad is used for setting waypoints and cycling through skills. The L and R triggers are used for crouching/rolling and unleashing skills. The ZL trigger is used to aim down the sights and ZR is used for firing your equipped weapons.

Then, the face buttons. A is used for melee attacks and B for jumping. Y is used for reloading firearms and X for switching between your Primary and Sub weapons.

Presentation

Graphically, this game looks exceptional. There aren’t many jagged edges around and things look quite nicely. The biggest issue here is that the game is a bit blurry when you look close upon the character models in many areas. You can lower this by turning off Motion Blur, though there is still a bit there even after.

Performance is pretty good, overall. The load times aren’t too long and the frame-rate is silky-smooth. It runs at a constant 30 fps during missions. Though it’s worth noting that this changes when you have a party of 4 rather than 1-3. Once there are 4 players on-screen, the frames start dipping a good bit, but if you keep that down lower, there’s nothing to get those frames down.

Battery Life

I wasn’t expecting too much out of this game’s battery life, but here is its range:

Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 31 minutes

Low Brightness + Wi-Fi – 2 hours, 56 minutes

A decent amount of Battery Life. About what I expected.

In conclusion, Warframe comes to the handheld world in a highly-optimized form that adds more success to Panic Button’s ongoing work with Nintendo’s new handheld. On the downside, the cooldown system and minor blurriness and frame drops in 4-player missions give blemishes to this game. But if you like sci-fi and co-op action games, this is a good one to get into.

Final Score: 8.5/10