Steve Sinclair, CEO of Warframe studio Digital Extremes, reckons publishers should give live service games more time to find their footing, and not see dodgy release periods as a "make or break" indicator of a game’s success. "It comes out, doesn’t work and they throw it away," Sinclair told VGC.
]]>Greetings, Tenno! This message comes to you from that primeval epoch known as "Last Wednesday", when Digital Extremes treated RPS to a preview screening of the Warframe update announcements planned for this year's Tennocon - a special Tennocon indeed, coinciding as it does with the game's 10th anniversary and the studio's 30th. Alas, "Last Wednesday" was a regular Dark Age, and we dusty ancients were granted only a partial glimpse of the promised new areas, weapons, cosmetics and story content, Digital Extremes having reserved some of the key reveals for a happier period, "Today" - which, according to our most trusted seers, will be an era of understanding and transparency. Fickle are the winds of history! Still, even with the limited insight of our time, we grasped at some sense of the offering's magnitude. Read on, if you dare.
]]>Long-running sci-fi MMO Warframe has just released its biggest update yet, The Duviri Paradox, for free. Jumping into any 10-year-old game can be intimidating, especially an MMO, but developer Digital Extremes say this is the first story-driven update that’s not progression-locked based on skill level or experience with the game. In other words, this is a new experience within Warframe that’s immediately available to newcomers, while also adding weird cool stuff for old-timers.
]]>A new free-to-play game from the studio behind online sci-fi ARPG Warframe was teased during the TennoCon 2022 livestream today, taking the action MMORPG shenanigans into the realm of fantasy. Called Soulframe, we don’t know a lot about it yet, but developers Digital Extremes showed off some early footage. Replace your space pantaloons with your wizard robe before you watch the very first trailer below.
]]>More of online sci-fi action RPG Warframe’s upcoming The Duviri Paradox expansion was shown off at today’s TennoCon 2022 event. We got to take a look at some of the roguelite flavour that’s been injected into the expansion’s mostly monochrome open-world. Dress like a mime when you watch the trailer below, so you can silently ooh, ahh and quizzically scratch your head.
]]>Warframe is getting a surprise next expansion called Veilbreaker, today’s TennoCon 2022 livestream has revealed. It’ll be reviving heroes from last year's The New War expansion, and bringing back some old villains, too. Suit up and watch the announcement trailer below.
]]>Games are increasingly expensive, but there are still plenty of great experiences to be had without paying a single penny for them, just like the ones you'll find below in our list of the best free PC games you can play right now. From newer releases to old-timey classics, our unordered list is packed with the best free PC games available.
]]>Digital Extremes have announced the release date for Warframe's hefty new expansion, The New War. On December 15th, players will be able to jump into a fresh set of campaign missions in the looter shooter, but instead of playing as your usual Warframe, you'll hop into the shoes of a bunch of different characters. The devs call it a "cinematic expansion" that's chock-full of story stuff answering "long-standing questions" about the game's universe.
]]>Warframe fan event Tennocon has just come to an end. It culminated in a 30-minute gameplay video for The New War, Warframe's next major expansion, which you can watch below.
]]>Warframe celebration event TennoCon is online again this year and kicking off this weekend. Along with other Warframe-related reveals and news, Digital Extremes say they'll be properly showing off The New War expansion for the first time. The long-teased expansion is getting debuted through an "interactive preview event". That'll be going down this Saturday, July 17th, but you can snag an early peek at the expansion in a new trailer today.
]]>The Warframe fan event, TennoCon, is returning on July 17th. It'll be digital-only again for the second year in a row, but as per usual Digital Extremes are promising that there'll be glimpses of new things coming to the eight-year-old shooter. Usually that means the game's next major expansion.
]]>Chinese media conglomerate Tencent have bought Leyou, a name which might not mean much to you but you'll know some of their subsidiaries: Warframe developers Digital Extremes, and Dirty Bomb devs Splash Damage. Both those studios have issued statements saying hey, don't sweat it, this will be fine.
]]>Ultrawide gaming monitors can seem excessive compared to regular 16:9 gaming screens, especially when their demanding resolutions often require powerful and expensive graphics cards to make the most of them. Once you try one, though, there's no going back. I've been a big fan of ultrawide gaming monitors for years now, as their extra screen space not only makes them great for juggling multiple desktop windows, but supported PC games also look uttery fantastic on them - and to prove it, I've put together this list of the best ultrawide games on PC.
]]>If you're finding your PC has become overloaded with gigantic game files, the Warframe devs have a nice plan in store for you to free up some space on your hard drives. Next week, Digital Extremes are kicking off a series of updates for the spacefaring shoot-em-up that will eventually reduce the size of Warframe by a very polite 15GB.
Ah, I don't even need to say it, do I? We're all thinking it. If only Call Of Duty: Warzone and its monstrous drive space demands would follow suit.
]]>Digital Extremes' MMO shoot-em-up Warframe gets a meaty and, well, pretty gross-looking expansion today. It's called The Heart Of Deimos, and it plops you Tennos onto the titular Martian moon to kill some Infested aliens and figure out what they're up to (you know, aside from making everything look plague-ridden).
This expansion is introducing a big new open world area, as well as Warframe power customisation, new K-Drives (which you'll be able to shoot from!), new story missions, and loads more good stuff.
]]>You could accuse Digital Extremes of being a bit on the nose with their latest Warframe expansion. The world is in the grip of a pandemic and up they pop at their annual TennoCon convention (now streamed, for full social distancing) with Heart Of Deimos: a gooey, pulsating update revolving around a trip to a moon in the grip of a parasitic infestation. But unlike real life, on Deimos you can distract yourself from lockdown woes by riding a giant dragonfly. Imagine steering one of those bad boys to Durham Castle.
]]>Warframe's gone and infested an entire moon with creepy crawlies for its Heart Of Deimos expansion. Shown properly for the first time during today's Waframe fan event livestream, the expansion also includes other cool stuff, like customisable Warframe powers and a huge new open world area. But I'm more interested in the pair of gigantic worms endlessly warring to take control of the moon. At least, that's what I think they're doing. Guess we'll find out when the expansion releases on August 25th.
]]>Digital Extremes' fifth annual Warframe event, TennoCon, kicks off next week on August 1st (albeit digitally this year thanks to that pandemic). They'll be revealing the details of the game's next expansion, Heart Of Deimos, and to pique players' interest, they've released a tidbit of info and a cheeky teaser for said expansion already. It'll all revolve around the Infested - an alien faction taken over by techno-organic parasites (sounds painful). And, actually that's about it for now.
Here's the teaser trailer - complete with dramatic choral music, freaky alien beasts, and a peek at some shiny new items.
]]>Well, as pretty much every event has gone online and been delayed at least once this year, this comes as no surprise. Warframe's TennoCon fan event already went online-only for this year, in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, and has now moved back its date. Previously planned for July 11th, TennoCon 2020 is now coming on August 1st.
]]>When Warframe set up shop in 2012, it was a simple thing. A few rooms, a few baddies, and a good helping of backflips. But with each update bringing increasingly fanciful new designs, the free-to-play slasher's oldest hallways are starting to look rather dusty. That's why the devs are unpacking their toolkits for a little bit of D.I.Y - re-imagining the game's ancient Corpus environments to meet modern Warframe's lavish expectations.
]]>A new threat is preparing to take on Warframe's interstellar ninjas. Operation Scarlet Spear kicks off next month, pushing the sci-fi stakes higher as The Sentient begin their system-wide invasion. Wait, we're having visitors? Oh gosh, but the place is a mess. Before the next battle can begin in earnest, developers Digital Extremes have decided to put together a doozy of a housekeeping update, bringing dozens of quality-of-life changes to Warframe early next week.
]]>Australia is still burning, but over the last couple of days they've actually had some rain! While this is a big help to certain areas, there are still 83 fires blazing around the country, and there's a lot of people and wildlife still in trouble. It's good job then that there are even more game devs, companies, and communities banding together to help out our friends down under.
A new Humble Bundle, a donation from the makers of Warframe, and a charity initiative run by Eve Online players are just three more ways the games industry is raising money, and you can get involved to show your support too.
]]>While most announcements at The Game Awards focus on games months and years away, this one relates to something you can play right now: Warframe just launched its latest expansion, live on stage during the show. Empyrean is the expansion which lets crabmen pilot their own spaceship together with up to three pals, blasting through new spaceship missions. It is wild how much Warframe has grown from its humble beginnings as a third-person shooter.
]]>Empyrean will add space battles to third-person slice 'em up Warframe. We've known that for good while now. But where do a rag-tag band of high-concept fashion ninjas get their hands on a massive spaceship anyway? Incoming free update Rising Tides answers that question, preparing for the galactic warfare to come by setting loot-hungry players loose across the solar system in a stellar smash n' grab for starship parts.
]]>This weekend was TennoCon, the annual Warframe fan event, and as is tradition Digital Extremes showed swathes of new updates coming to their free-to-play space ninja game. Matthew was there and has already written his impressions of Warframe Empyrean, which is adding spaceship combat to the game, but there were other announcements, reveals and releases. Those include: a new Warframe Prime release, a trailer for the second season of the game's free Battle Pass equivalent called Nightwave, a cinematic trailer from the director of 10 Cloverfield Lane, and some other things.
All the trailers are below, and I'll try to explain what those proper nouns mean.
]]>“It’s not a fucking expansion.” On this Steve Sinclair, creative director on Warframe, is clear. He’s talking to us a few hours before the formal reveal of the ‘it’ in question: Empyrean, the Warframe add-on formally known as Railjack that is adding spaceships, throwing them together in huge space battles and using them to explore previously unseen corners of the Origin System. So if not an expansion - and Empyrean expands Warframe, no doubt about it - what is it? Sinclair thinks of it as a ‘connection’: the means of tying together locations and missions. On a less poetic level, it’s also about what happens when a Tenno (your hero) connects with a giant space slingshot. Spoilers: you should get out the Tenno’s way.
]]>The next big update for space-ninja looty shooter Warframe is just over the horizon. The Jovian Concord, previously known as the Gas City Remaster update, is due out next week, although Digital Extremes are a bit fuzzy on what day exactly. It'll bring a complete story-driven rework to one of the free-to-play shooter's earliest environment types (Corpus gas-mining platforms on Jupiter), a new set of enemies, a big honkin' flying monster boss (above) and a new Warframe. Below, trailers looking at the overhauled industrial zones and a peek at the new Warframe's powers.
]]>With the first season of Nightwave challenges in Warframe coming to a close, there's only a short amount of time you have left to kill the Wolf of Saturn Six. If you're unprepared, he will find you and he kill annihilate you where you stand. To stand a chance, you need to be prepared on every level.
]]>Nightwave challenges were recently introduced to Warframe and the first series of them end in the next few days. Since you only have a short amount of time, you'll likely not have time to obtain every single rank if you're just starting now, but we will be going over the principles of completing challenges in order to obtain standing for those ranking upgrades.
]]>As one of the biggest and most ambitious updates since its inception, Warframe's Plains of Eidolon update introduced an open-world area in a free-to-play game that's otherwise entirely populated by procedurally generated levels. In this guide, you'll find information on what was included, such as bounties, fishing, mining, and even hunting things called Eidolons.
]]>The Fortuna update for Warframe came with a host of new features and a second open world to explore. Also included at the same time, but not intrinsically linked, is the 37th Warframe: "Garuda". Named after the legendary bird-like creature in various mythologies, it is described as a "kite-like figure" that serves as a mount of the Hindu god Vishnu or a dharma-protector/Astasena in Buddhism, and an important figure in Jain mythology. The similarities end with its name however, so this guide will tell you how to make the Garuda frame, as well as detail Garuda's abilities.
]]>With Warframe seeing so many updates, and the bulk of the updates being documented only in the official forums, we've put together a list the latest updates for Warframe whenever they appear from the source. This will give you an easy-to-access source for the latest Warframe updates on PC.
If any of the new stuff sounds tempting for you to get back into Warframe, head to our Warframe guide hub to find some tips to get you up-to-speed, as well as more in-depth guides for Warframe's more complex bits.
]]>Update: We've now got the first video showing The Jovian Concord's changes to Gas City, with some before-and-after comparison footage. You can find it embedded below.
While Warframe's next major expansion, Empyrean, is still a way off, players of the free-to-play space-ninja shooter won't have long to wait for new toys, as the Jovian Concord update hits "very soon", according to developers Digital Extremes.
Much like April's remaster of the game's Plains of Eidolon environment, the Jovian Concord will spruce up the Gas City tileset used for Warframe's Jupiter maps, providing both a visual touch-up, and larger environments more suited to parkour. Also included will be a new set of baddies: cyber-mutants called Amalgams, who will bother you in regular play, as well as in a new endless survival mode. The update will also introduce a new Warframe, Wisp, with support and stealth chracteristics, as well as a boss fight with an airborne Eidolon known as the Ropalolyst.
I got to have a chat with Ron Davey, art director at Digital Extremes and art lead on the Jovian Concord, about revamping one of Warframe's oldest environments:
]]>Warframe is almost impressively obtuse; to the outside observer rather impenetrable. The free-to-play loot shooter has over five years of additions since its launch, layering system upon system upon system. All of which have an impressive amount of depth to them, but it is also almost aggressively uninterested in making sure newer players understand any of it.
There’s Warframes to mod, guns and swords and crossbows to craft in the Foundry, Dojo rooms to build, Endo and Mutagen Samples and Argon Crystals and, well, a whole bunch of other stuff. Like, a lot of other stuff, so be ready to grind, a lot. To help you on your journey into one of the biggest free-to-play loot games out there, we’ve got a bunch of tips and tricks for making your Tenno the best Tenno that it can be.
]]>Each of the frames in Warframe aren’t massively complex to understand. There are many different frame types, which are basically character classes that you can swap between them at any point; assuming you’ve unlocked them first, but they can also be tweaked further with mods. Aside from that, they all move in basically the same way but have four unique abilities.
There's certainly a lot more to Warframe itself that's worth delving into, but it may be somewhat intimidating going in blind. If you get stuck, you can always head back over to our main Warframe guide for everything else you need to know about Digital Extreme's loot shooter.
]]>It's easy to forget to that you need stuff to splash out on all the good gear in Warframe. Suddenly you may find yourself glassy eyed, wondering just how this could ever have happened. You'll likely want to know right now where to get more stuff to make the weapons, frames, and gear of your dreams.
But perhaps you do have enough credits and materials, just that you don't know what to spend it on? If so, you can go to our Warframe guide hub for guides on what to spend it on, before coming back here to know how to get more materials for your frame construction.
]]>Starting out in Warframe, you don’t need to fret too much about different damage types, as you can just shoot guys until they’re dead. But as time goes by, you'll begin to face more and more difficult enemies. You’re going to have to learn how to slay them with maximum efficiency. In this guide, we will walk you through the damage types in Warframe, how it all works, and what enemy types are weak against.
As you're likely reading this because you're starting out, there are plenty of other guides available. Head to our Warframe guide hub to find some tips to get you started, as well as more in-depth guides for Warframe's more complex bits.
]]>Did you ever get the feeling that your regular Warframe gear is lacking that bit of oomph? Mutterings throughout the solar system about coveted "Primes" You've probably heard about some more epic equipment that everyone else is hunting for called "Primes". But just what are Primes? In this guide to Warframe Prime Relics, we will show you how to get the best gear, as well as the conditions for crafting them and even a list of the currently available Primes - because we're really nice like that!
"But hang on," you may be thinking, "I still need more information about the basics!" Well we have you covered there too - just go to our main Warframe guide for everything else you need to know about this surprisingly complex free-to-play shooter.
]]>Warframe's prime vault unlocks occasionally and there's plenty of opportunities to grab the necessary gear needed to make the two Frames. This requires grinding, mainly repeating certain missions to acquire Void Relics that you'll then need to open up in other missions, and even then there's no guarantee that you'll get the blueprints needed. We'll go over the farming locations for the Void Relics, as well as the crafting ingredients you need once you have the blueprints.
Starting out and don't know where to go? Our Warframe guide will get you started and contains other guides for some of the more complicated things about this gargantuan game.
]]>Despite having around five years worth of stuff, Digital Extremes is certainly not done adding even more to Warframe. Fortuna introduces the game's second open world hub, as well as various new features and tweaks to the game such as a brand new hoverboard - the K-Drive, to Kick Flip into the stratosphere. Accessing this new hub world is going to take a little bit of work if you've not got much experience with Warframe under your belt, so this guide will go over how to access the new update and what you can find there.
]]>Spring is in the air in Warframe, and so are a bunch of bouncing Grineer tanks. A major overhaul update has revitalised the Plains Of Eidolon, the free-to-play shooter's original open-world zone. Digital Extremes have returned to Earth to polish up the environment, bringing it more in line with the scenic Venusian landscapes of Fortuna. That means more greenery, some new boss fights, more animals to rescue, and some new grinding opportunities for those who have brought their hoverboard back home. The devs even reckon it'll run smoother, too. Below, an update trailer.
]]>Time flies when you're having fun, and six years have just whizzed past playing space-ninja loot n' shooter Warframe. I can't think of many other games that have changed as drastically since launch, either. What was once a scrappy last-ditch attempt to keep the lights on at Digital Extremes is now a sprawling free-to-play monster with its own annual convention. To celebrate this endurance, for the next two weeks players will get a few cosmetic goodies just for logging in, and a complete matching set of gear for hacking and slashing through some low-level bonus missions.
]]>Not to be outdone by Dante and co, space-ninja loot n' shooter Warframe has finally rolled out the first part of its long-awaited melee overhaul. Digital Extremes have banished the dedicated melee stance, replaced by having full access to all your combos through your melee quick-button. You can even combo into and out of ranged attacks, punctuating a series of swings with a shotgun blast, then resuming your beatdown exactly where you left off. The update includes a new story quest digging deeper into Fortuna's past and powerful new tank-frame Hildryn. See some videos below.
]]>The big melee revamp for space-ninja loot n' shooter Warframe might be late, but Digital Extremes just rolled out an overhaul of one of its older, clunkier core parts. Alerts - time-limited side missions, rewarding players with money, crafting blueprints and the occasional bit of rare crafting gear - are out. In their place comes Nightwave, seasons of new story-driven missions delivered by pirate radio host Nora Night, with a progression track and less capricious reward store. This season, Tenno are hunting an escaped convict; The Wolf Of Saturn Six. The update is live - see the trailer below.
]]>Warframe's space-travel update might not be here until the new year, but Digital Extremes are ending 2018 with a bang and a very large boss to fight. Fleshing out the frozen Venusian landscape introduced in the Fortuna expansion, today's update - The Profit-Taker - finally lets players take on the giant robot spider seen in Fortuna's introductory missions. There's also a new Warframe (reluctant warrior-monk Baruuk), some new weapons and the unlockable ability to call down heavy anti-spacecraft Archwing guns for use on foot. The patch notes are here, and a trailer below.
]]>A group of hardcore number fans have kept Warframe's Fortuna 69 instance alive for over a month now, and developers Digital Extremes are lending a hand. Instance 69 of the Fortuna hub area has become a bit of a party zone with dedicated digitheads loitering round the clock to prevent the free-to-play action-RPG's server instance from automatically shutting down. Digital Extremes even guided players through keeping the instance alive after a patch launch. Though I admire their commitment, I don't 'get' the fad. As kids we all liked the number 7 best, then we got calculators in maths lessons and suddenly everyone was thrilled with 58008, then they were into 420, and now they can't stop it with the 69... I can't keep up.
]]>Warframe's new Fortuna expansion is finally here, providing the perfect excuse for players old and new to dust off their Tenno armour and head out into the never-before-seen frozen wastes of Venus' Orb Vallis region. It's the second open world map that's been added to the game since last year's Plains of Eidolon update, but given the number of performance issues people encountered the first time they ventured into out onto those titular plains, there's been much consternation over whether Fortuna will also be too much for some PCs to handle.
Fortunately (sorry), I'm here to help, as I've been chucking a bunch of today's best graphics cards at it, as well as a handful of older ones I've got knocking around, to see how it fares. Below, you'll find everything you need to know on how to get the best settings for Warframe's Fortuna update, as well as what you need to do in order to squeeze every last drop of performance out of your trusty graphics card.
]]>Free-to-play acrobatic shooter Warframe just dropped its second expansion, bringing a whole lot of new stuff to the game. It was doubtlessly a lot of work for developers Digital Extremes – but, say some of its players, hopefully not too much. In a positive step, they’ve encouraged the team to avoid overwork and crunch, even if that means the game gets slower updates.
]]>Warframe's second open-world expansion, Fortuna, is out, free and available to download, taking Digital Extremes's third-person free-to-play ninja shooter to the icy terraformed surface of Venus. Fortuna adds a slew of new features including stunt-capable hoverboards, a wildlife preservation mini-game, customisable kit-guns, buildable robot buddies and more. It's easily the biggest expansion for the game yet, its new map dwarfing the previous open-world offering Plains Of Eidolon. The update clocks in at a hefty ~4gb in size. Ogle the trailer below while you wait.
]]>From threadbare arena shooter to sprawling space opera, Digital Extremes have grand ambitions for their free-to-play space ninja shooter Warframe. In their latest development livestream, they gave us our first peek at a few changes due in or near their upcoming expansion, Fortuna, tentatively due for release this autumn.
Hoverboard races rewarding stunt combos are on the way, along with a new faction organising these events. We also get a brief peek at some major changes coming to melee combat and a look at some new and remastered environments on the way. Below, the full devstream recording and some thoughts on what they're showing.
]]>Free-to-play space ninja sim Warframe has always had an 'anything goes' attitude to new content. While we wait for the Fortuna and Railjack expansions (adding a new open world planet and capital-class space combat respectively), idle Tenno now have a new option for whiling away the hours. Frame Fighter is a goofy little fighting game assembled from the main game's characters and animations. It's is the debut 'ROM' for the Ludoplex, an in-universe games console that you can install on your ship, with more characters and two more minigames unlockable.
]]>Warframe isn’t the best game I’ve ever played, but it sure is one of the best supported. What began as a relatively simplistic third-person shooter with acrobatics and corridor shooting now includes dozens of classes, an arsenal of hundreds of weapons, jetpack battles, and fights with 60-foot ghost bugs. The updates keep getting bigger, too. Warframe once mainly took place in corridors, and then they added an open world. It didn’t have much of a story, and then it got some of the weirdest, most intricate science-fantasy plot I’ve seen this side of Destiny - minus having to read the good bits on my smartphone. Now the game’s next steps, announced at the game's official fan event, TennoCon 2018, sound more ambitious than ever.
]]>Warframe, the cooperative shoot-and-loot space ninja game, is about to get more of all of the above. Developer Digital Extremes announced an all-new open-world zone - purportedly five times bigger than the Plains of Eidolon - at the third annual TennoCon. But the most exciting announcement came at the end of the Warframe-centric convention. Code named "Railjack," the free expansion will let 1-4 players pile into a spaceship and seamlessly take their battle to the stars.
]]>Update: Digital Extremes have confirmed that everyone can get Ash Prime (that handsome fella above) for free. Just link your Twitch account to your Warframe account - details here.
Weird to think that Warframe - that little space-ninja shooter that started out as a struggling developer's last chance - has an official convention now, but it does. TennoCon 2018 kicks off tomorrow, and they'll be wrapping up their first day's festivities with TennoLive, an hour-long developer stream/press conference.
While Digital Extremes will likely announce some new Warframe content, they're also sweetening the deal by giving away Ash Prime (one of the fancy, gold-trimmed Prime Warframes) to anyone with a linked Twitch account that tunes in for at least half of the show.
]]>We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.
2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets.
]]>Free-to-play space ninja sim Warframe has slowly evolved into the weird space opera that it always wanted to be. In-between the procedurally generated missions and resource farming, there are some genuinely dramatic scenes, some likeable characters and even a few bold, game-changing twists. Today marks the release of The Sacrifice, a new chapter in the story that developers Digital Extremes has been teasing for the past year.
]]>While it's primarily known for its space-ninja action, hideously compelling grind and a vast number of suits of space-armour to collect, Warframe's fans speak of its central story arc with hushed reverence, which features a rich Dune-like universe and one of my favourite plot-twists in any game. The story has been dangling on a cliffhanger for a while, but this month it's all wrapping up. Within, an ominous teaser trailer and plenty of spoilers if you've not played through at least the Second Dream quest.
]]>Warframe has implemented a new free update in Beasts of the Sanctuary; a one-two punch of changes for the free-to-play cooperative shooter. First up is Sanctuary Onslaught, a survival mode that pits players, either solo or in squads of up to four, against increasingly difficult waves of opponents in order to pass from portal to portal and recover the missing Khora Blueprints. The other addition is the latest warframe: the aforementioned Khora, who is a futuristic whipmaster that would put the Belmonts to shame. And, of course, some fantastic new toys.
]]>If you were to look at Warframe now, it's hard to even imagine that Digital Extremes' free-to-play mega-hit ever had humbler origins. Even harder to believe that its very existence was a desperate last-ditch plan to keep the lights on at a struggling studio that had been turned away by every major publisher.
In the latest in their oft-excellent series of candid interview-heavy documentaries, YouTube outfit NoClip went and pinned down the core staff behind Warframe's success, and have managed to extract an hour of surprisingly candid history from them, equally educational and emotionally resonant. Worth a watch.
]]>I've been watching the evolution of free-to-play space-ninja shooter Warframe on and off for thirteen years now. Back at E3, 2005, it first saw the light of day as Dark Sector, a high-concept sci-fi action RPG years before its time. Rejected by publishers, Digital Extremes settled on reworking it into a Gears of War clone while they kept the dream alive.
When the concept later resurfaced as Warframe, many wrote it off. Admittedly, it was threadbare in those early days, with limited depth and only a single environment to play in, but it grew. Oh my, how it grew. Five years from its original Steam debut, it's celebrating by showering players with goodies, including a complete set of mid-tier weaponry, with a themed character skin to match.
]]>We've already seen which games sold best on Steam last year, but a perhaps more meaningful insight into movin' and a-shakin' in PC-land is the games that people feel warmest and snuggliest about. To that end, Valve have announced the winners of the 2017 Steam Awards, a fully community-voted affair which names the most-loved games across categories including best post-launch support, most player agency, exceeding pre-release expectations and most head-messing-with. Vintage cartoon-themed reflex-tester Cuphead leads the charge with two gongs, but ol' Plunkbat and The Witcher series also do rather well - as do a host of other games from 2017's great and good.
Full winners and runners-up below, with links to our previous coverage of each game if you're so-minded. Plus: I reveal which game I'd have gone for in each category.
]]>Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol' breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months.
Below is the full, hundred-strong roster, complete with links to our coverage if you want to find out more about any of the games, or simply to marvel at how much seemed to happen in the space of 52 short weeks.
]]>Update: To clarify, there is an actual festive event running in-game at the moment - Tennobaum, as mentioned after the jump. It just seems to have been somewhat sidelined by the ghoul uprising.
While every other online game worth mentioning is packing its world to the gills with seasonal cliches - snowball fights, gingerbread cookies, gaudily wrapped presents and the like - Warframe is bucking the trend and giving you a big ol' mess of angry cyborg zombie mutant clones to murder across the increasingly toxic and inhospitable plains of Cetus.
Santa Claus may want to just tick off this whole region as Too Naughty To Bother, unless the Tenno can't clean thing up over the next few weeks.
]]>I played a little bit of Warframe [official site] a long time ago, when it was in a much more limited form. I quickly bounced off it.
Several years of updates later, at first glance Warframe looks like a very different beast. I jumped back in for the Plains of Eidolon expansion, which adds an open-world zone for players to fly, shoot, fish and mine their way around. It’s a major divergence from the corridor brawls the game has offered up to this point, but it's not an escape from the relentless grind.
]]>I remain delighted that a sci-fi game looking like Warframe [official site] has become so popular. In a genre dominated by robots and spacemen, Warframe stars pearlescent crustaceanfolk fighting bulging turgid baddies who remind me of sea cucumbers. It is a strong look. This style continues in the free-to-play action-RPG's latest expansion, Plains of Eidolon, which developers Digital Extremes launched overnight. It adds an open-world zone where, after dark, the ghosts of giant meatbots rise from the water to wander. That's the sort of sci-fi I want. Ta, Warframe.
]]>The 'Plains of Eidolon' expansion for Warframe [official site] will launch on PC next week, developers Digital Extremes announced today, taking the fine free-to-play action-RPG from the confines of dungeons and missions into a new open-world zone. The Plains are big land to explore (and fly over, if you want), with baddies to fight and fishing to do. They follow a day/night cycle too, with dreadful beasties and ghosties (the eponymous Eidolons) from an ancient war awakening once the sun goes down. Hey, no one said the outside world was safe.
]]>After adventures into space combat and under the sea, the next Warframe [official site] expansion taking the free-to-play action-RPG to rolling plains seems a little mundane. But Plains of Eidolon is more than a setting, as it will introduce an MMORPG-ish open world with a day-and-night cycle and everything. Those nights will be a problem, as vast and terrible creatures will rise to pummel everyone in their path. This evening, devs Digital Extremes showed a little more of those troublesome behemoths, revealing a fight against some sort of colossal meatbot wielding a cannon and a tree club.
]]>The makers of free-to-play hit Warframe have unveiled their next game, The Amazing Eternals [official site]. Announced in May under the name Keystone, The Amazing Eternals is a first-person 'hero' shooter with a splash of deck-building thrown in for cards giving power-ups and abilities. Yup, it's a bit like Overwatch meets Paladins, or Titanfall, or Battlefront, or... you know, it's smooshing together several concepts in the air tonight. Oh lord. And I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh lord. Can you feel it coming in the air tonight? Oh lord. Oh lord.
]]>Warframe [official site] is touting an ambitious expansion which adds an open zone more akin to what you'd find in a open world game like Skyrim or the patrol zones of Destiny. The Plains of Eidolon expansion will add this new area to Earth with NPCs, vistas, day/night cycles, and so on. As per the official announcement: "players will set foot in a natural landscape with the freedom to explore it on their own terms."
]]>Remember how a dark priest is due to show up in Warframe [official site] this week? Apparently that's happening today and it brings with it a graphical overhaul of Earth. There are also some more details of the Chains of Harrow questline - I'll plonk them after the jump in case people are concerned about spoilers!
]]>This week sees the release of the new Warframe [official site] update - Chains of Harrow - plus the dark priest-themed Harrow Warframe. Warframes are the exo-armour suits you can swap out in the game. They each have unique powers and thus let you switch to different playstyles and so on. They're somewhere between a loadout and a character.
]]>Digital Extremes, the developers behind wildly popular free-to-play robocrustacean action-RPG Warframe, have announced a new F2P first-person shooter. Keystone [official site] is its name and blending FPS with deck-building is its game. Players will get to journey around a mystical board game, shooting baddies with the help of abilities and weapons from their decks. Quite how it works is a mystery for now but this is pre-E3: we don't need no stinking details, only pure hype injected right into our eyeballs, baby! Ah. Well. All I can really show you is that ↑ artwork. It'll have to do.
]]>"I never thought I’d be doing this in Warframe," says George Spanos, audio director on Digital Extreme's free to play online third-person shooter. All of a sudden, a shooting game is a music game too - a music game in which you create your own soundtrack, then use it as a weapon. The game's Octavia's Anthem update, which adds essentially a bard class to the game, is out today and very different to anything they've done with it before.
]]>Warframe [official site], the free-to-play co-op third-person shooter-o-stabber where you play as some sort of robotic sealife, has launched another big update. 'The War Within' has added a new cinematic quest, new enemies, new weapons, a new type of mission, new tilesets, and other odds and ends. To get away from technical terms: the update lets you fight big squishy fellas who look like anemones or perhaps sea cucumbers, and you'll get to make your lobstersmen, oysterfolk, and crabgals fancier than ever. Having the coolest crab is what really matters.
]]>Warframe is a free-to-play third person online shooter/stabber, in which you customise and upgrade a sort of spiritual robo-guy and battle hordes of AI-controlled foes, usually with the help of other players, and always in the pursuit of more loot. Yes, much like Destiny, although Warframe was released some 18 months earlier. This is my first time with it, and I was curious as to its ongoing popularity.
"Just let me die," he called forlornly, as he was swamped for the third consecutive time by a horde of silent, rectangular-helmeted evildoers. Hey buddy, I thought, I feel dirty for spending so much time jogging on this infinite loot wheel too, but it's not that bad, is it?
]]>SPORTSBALL is coming to Warframe. More specifically "Lunaro" is coming to Warframe, Lunaro being both the name of the arena sport mode the developers, Digital Extremes, are adding AND the name of the ball itself.
]]>Warframe [official site] already looks like a game about sealife thank to its exotic power armour designs - with hammerhead helmets, lobster armour, unspeakable many-eyed horrors from the depths, and pearly nacre coating everything. Actual underwater combat was inevitable, I suppose, or all those watery warframes would get crabby. Crabby. Like a crab. That's a joke.
The latest expansion, Echoes of the Sentient, has added underwater action in new levels and, for land-lubbers, new parkour moves. It's all out in the free-to-play co-op shooty dungeon crawler now.
]]>Hello, hello, hello!
It's time for the monthly recap of what the RPS community have been up to. June saw action in ARK: Survival Evolved [official site] (dinosaurs!), Guild Wars 2 [official site] (crowds!), Hearthstone [official site] (cards!) and Warframe [official site] (ninjas!). Oh, and a reminder about our Steam group too.
]]>Get ready for the nine words you've been waiting for: "The New Protocols is here with six new tilesets!" Warframe [official site], or that game what have Space ninjas, just got a new batch of DLC that will give you a load of additional ability mods, weapons and a couple of helmets.
]]>Oooh – looks like Warframe [official site] developers, Digital Extremes, have made good on their promise of Deep Space 9-esque hub areas with the addition of Relays to the game.
]]>When I last played Warframe it was very much a vanilla space ninjas game. Just over a year later and there are still space ninjas but they sit alongside extras like tradeable space puppies. The player activity has been extensive too - there are user-created clan dojos so big the developers have had to add teleport functions to the game to make them navigable. As I write this it's at number ten in the Steam top games list with 16,382 people playing right now. It's also about to get wings.
In Warframe you play as one of the Tenno, an ancient warrior race who must don exo-armour (the titular warframes) to fight militarised clones called the Grineer. In the latest update, Archwing, players will be able to use new augments to allow their warframes to fly and fight in the vacuum of space. To find out how the Archwing update will work I spoke to Steve Sinclair – creative director of Warframe developer Digital Extremes.
]]>Digital Extremes, developers of The Darkness 2 and Warframe (about which we have an interview later today), is now majority owned by a chicken meat manufacturer.
...
No, really.
]]>Sure, running around in power armour blowing things up is great and all, but don't all mecha big and small truly long to be among the stars? Free-to-play power armour 'em up Warframe is releasing its mecha from the bonds of the ground and setting them free to frolick in zero-gravity and blow each other to pieces. The free-to-play co-op shooter's fifteenth big update, named Archwing, will bring a whole new mode dedicated to the joys of space.
]]>By which I mean: I've played Warframe over the past couple of weeks and will now write about it, for your possible edification.
Warframe is a sci-fi over-the-shoulder shooter where space ninjas have upgradeable sharkfin heads. Sadly that doesn't quite clinch the deal, because the free-to-play beast of Digital Extremes has been in beta for a year now, and still hasn't quite driven home the wakizashi of success. But has that journey delivered it from the hollow purgatory of its early release? Or will it determine to be a footnote in the history of free-to-play experimentation?
I donned my impossible fish helmet to find out.
]]>This is a shout-out to the chaps of ROCK PAPER SKANA, the small but dedicated part of the RPS community that slips into their Warframe ninja-bots and slices through the procedurally generated levels. 'Sup? With that social pleasantry out the way, I'm here to tell you about Update 10 of Digital Extremes' popular free-to-play online brawler. Shadows of the Dead introduces two new Warframes for players to purchase, as well as new mission types and other space-ninja accoutrements
]]>Just like The Rock, it looks like the free-to-play shooter Warframe has millions of fans. Unlike The Rock, who vaguely claims "millions and millions", Warframe has a number for us. Three million. That is a big number, particularly when you realise they grabbed over a million in the last eight weeks. It's a claim that's substantiated by Warframe's continual presence in the top twenty most populated games on Steam. I have occasionally spotted it popping into the top ten as well. To celebrate this fact, though I'd imagine it was more of a coincidence, there's a new update out.
]]>UPDATED: Fresh keys added.
Exciting-looking sci-fi combat game Warframe (which seems to feature strange-helmeted space ninjas) is currently being smoothed over at the home of action-veterans Digital Extremes. It is also in beta. This beta can be accessed, like a secret club, by getting the keys from a hidden vault in the depths of RPS.
The most recent video of the game in action, framed by the creative director doing the chat, is below for your visual interrogation.
]]>Valentine's Day occurred recently. You probably spent it adrift in a mushy sea of rose petals, composing romantic ballads and/or making out with complete strangers. But let's be honest here: there's only so much affection one can spread before it just gets to be a little too much. Fortunately, Digital Extremes is making Warframe, not Loveframe. Better still, you can give the co-op space ninja hack/slash/shoot/burn/boil/mash/stick-'em-in-a-stew-'em-up a go over the weekend, starting at 12pm EST today. Eat that, most powerful of all human emotions. Eat that while I go eat more chocolate.
]]>Warframe continues to look like that combination of Mass Effect 3 multiplayer and space mutant ninja turtles rhinos that I never knew I wanted, but I'm certainly not complaining. Sure, I'm getting a bit burnt out on variations of horde mode, but not quite enough to turn down Warframe's seemingly bounteous array of versatile powers. For all the promise it's shown so far, though, the third-person shooter/slasher's actually still fairly early. It just rounded the corner into closed beta, where it will remain for all of time. Or until it's ready for full release in a few months. For now, though, Digital Extremes has put out a new dev diary to celebrate. Send your eyeballs past the break in an aesthetically pleasing series of neon-lit flips to view it. Hopefully the rest of your body will follow.
What, Shakespeare was once to paraphrased to have asked, is in a [Warframe]? It's a question that's stumped scholars for hundreds of years, but - with the upcoming release of Digital Extremes' probably coincidentally titled Warframe - we have a pretty good shot at finding out. For now, though, we'll have to settle for a few tantalizing morsels of information that, well, actually have me quite interested in finding out more. So far, I've seen nothing to suggest that Warframe will reinvent the wheel, but Dishonored-esque figure-out-tricks-the-developers-hadn't-even-thought-of antics might just give it some legs. Wheel legs.
]]>A Warframe could be anything from the estranged twin cousin of Firefall's "battleframes" to a homicidal portrait well-versed in the art of large-scale military combat, but you know what? The F2P videogame called Warframe doesn't look half-bad. Digital Extremes has finally seen fit to show off some real (read: not paused in a state of dramatic tension) gameplay, and there's definite potential here. I mean, yeah, it looks like Mass Effect 3 meets Metal Gear Solid's Gray Fox, but wait, let me re-read that thing I just wrote. Oh my.
]]>War. What - some of the greatest scholars of our time have asked - is it good for? "Absolutely nothing" is the traditionally arrived upon conclusion after miles of mind-boggling chalkboard math, but the gaming industry begs to differ. "Naming things," it posits, resulting in an immediate surge of shocked whispers and "harumphs" all around the lecture hall. "Modern Warfare, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, Warface, Gears of War, God of War, World of Warcraft, World of Warplanes. And that's just the beginning." Which is technically correct, because now there's also Warframe, an F2P "fast-action PvE shooter set in an evolving sci-fi world" from Digital Extremes - they of BioShock 2's multiplayer, The Darkness 2, and, er, something called Warpath. So then, what exactly is a Warframe, anyway?
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