The Walking Dead Season 10 will be the last to feature Michonne. Actress Danai Gurira announced she would be leaving AMC’s post-apocalyptic zombie TV series after the upcoming season during a panel held at San Diego Comic-Con.
The news confirms reports from February stating Season 10 would be Gurira’s last. At the time, it was also reported that she had only signed on for a handful of episodes. “This has been one of the purest joys in my life,” she said during the panel, as reported by EW. “I am very very thankful for the experience I’ve had in ways that I can’t even express right now. My heart does not leave … the connection between us never ends.
“It was a very difficult decision. It was about my calling and other things I feel called to… as a creator of work. All I’m filled with is a lot of pain about leaving and a lot of gratitude and to all of you. I love you guys. TWD family is forever.”
The Hall H crowd responded to the heartfelt speech by giving Gurira a standing ovation.
This is the third major departure for The Walking Dead, having already lost Andrew Lincoln and Lauren Cohan after Season 9. Gurira, and her character Michonne, was one of the few main faces of the series. However, this may not be the last time we see Michonne, as there are The Walking Dead movies that could have her return to the role. Andrew Lincoln will reportedly reprise his role as Rick Grimes for one of these films, so the door is open for Gurira too, provided she doesn’t meet a gruesome end in Season 10.
Outside The Walking Dead, Gurira is a frequent face in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, appearing in Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame as Okoye. It’s likely she’ll return for the inevitable sequel to Black Panther, too.
Twitch Prime, which is included with any Amazon Prime membership, has been ramping up its efforts to offer benefits for gamers recently. The premium service already offers free monthly PC games, in-game loot for games like Apex Legends and FIFA 19, 12 months of Nintendo Switch Online, and other free benefits for its members. Now, you can even earn money back on select purchases with a new, limited-time offer for Twitch Prime members. From now through July 26, you can get $15 Amazon credit on a select offering of games, including:
You can also see each game’s current price on Amazon above. As you’ll notice, all of the above games are $15 or less with a Prime discount, which means you’ll essentially get any of them for free with the $15 reward credit dropped back into your account.
Your Twitch account must be linked to your Amazon Prime account to receive the reward credit. Once you connect your Twitch and Amazon accounts and purchase one of the above eligible games, $15 credit will arrive in your account within seven days of purchase.
This offer comes just after Amazon Prime Day, which ran a full 48 hours this year on July 15 and 16. While Amazon’s Prime Day deals have since ended, you can still take advantage of some of the best competing deals at places like Walmart, GameStop, and other retailers that ran their own sales. Be sure to check out all the best Nintendo Switch, PS4, and Xbox One deals from Prime Day that are still available, including some great Xbox One console bundles.
Rick and Morty creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland debuted the first Season 4 clip during the Rick and Morty panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2019, and it includes a fantastic surprise: A new character who debuts in the footage is voiced by Thor Ragnarok and Thor 4 director Taika Waititi.
“He’s a new character, and he’s fun, and we’re excited to be able to introduce him to you here at Comic-Con, because there’s all kinds of merch and stuff,” Roiland joked before the clip played.
The official Rick and Morty Twitter account published the clip online as it aired during the panel, so you can watch it for yourself below.
In the clip, Jerry and Morty implore Waititi’s character, a pink fish-like alien, to take down an app, but he claims the controls are on his mothership. As Morty shakes him violently, a red light starts beeping in the new character’s pocket. Morty and Jerry dive for cover, but as they turn back, they realize Waititi’s character is trying to escape through a window. They grab him and fish into his pocket, where they pull out a smartphone with on “ominous beeping noise” app open.
A second clip (in unfinished animatic form) showed Rick and Morty leaving on an adventure–though not before Rick makes Jerry float through the air out of annoyance. “I wasn’t born into the god business,” Rick utters. “I f***ing earned it.”
Up in space, Rick and Morty get a flat tire on their ship (somehow). They get out to change the tire, and Morty gets bit by a “space snake”–to Rick’s chagrin.
The Rick and Morty Comic-Con panel included Harmon and Roiland, as well as Spencer Grammer (Summer), Chris Parnell (Jerry), and Sarah Chalke (Beth), and it was hosted by comedian and actor Rob Schrab, who also writes on the show.
There’s been a long gap between Seasons 3 and 4, but although Season 4 has yet to premiere, Schrab revealed that he’s already “working on Season 5.” Harmon and Roiland took the opportunity to explain some of what’s been going on, though not in very great detail.
“There was a lot of stuff that had to happen between Seasons 3 and 4 that won’t ever have to happen again,” Roiland explained.
“We’re just finishing Season 4 while we’re starting Season 5,” Harmon added, explaining that they could start airing Season 5 before Season 4 begins if they wanted to.
Schrab directed several questions at the cast members throughout the panel, asking Parnell why it’s so fun to watch Jerry fail constantly. “Jerry has an innate patheticness about him that I tap into really well,” Parnell joked. “He’s very easy to laugh at and to mock. He’s not a great human being. He doesn’t have a strong moral core. He does love his family, he tries, but he’s so misguided most of the time. He’s not the brightest guy.”
Speaking to Chalke, Schrab asked whether it’s hard to be so mean all the time as Beth. “She’s not mean,” Chalke replied. “She’s just correct. She’s just right.”
Morty’s sister, Summer, has changed a lot over the course of the series, which Schrab asked actress Spencer Grammer about. She said Summer’s role can sometimes change frequently throughout production. “The first episode [of Season 4], I’ve recorded her storyline about six times I think,” Grammer said. “It’s changed that much.” Specifically, the amount Summer is involved in the episode’s plot has oscillated. “I love watching her transition and grow and she has grown a lot over these years,” Grammer added.
She revealed her biggest guilty pleasure working on the show: listening to Dan Harmon do rough voiceover passes to fill in Summer’s dialogue before Grammer records it. “So I’ll have to listen to his temp and copy it directly, but like, it might be my most guilty pleasure, listening to Dan do Summer impressions,” the actress said.
AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead has been renewed for a sixth season. The announcement of its return was made during the show’s panel at San Diego Comic-Con, and it doesn’t come as much of a surprise considering it is one of AMC’s most-watched shows.
As a prequel series to The Walking Dead, it follows the exploits of a series of dysfunctional characters as the world begins to crumble around them as part of what will end up becoming the full-on undead apocalypse depicted in the main Walking Dead series. The show stars Alycia Debnam-Carey as Alicia Clark, one of the few remaining characters from earlier seasons.
Fear the Walking Dead has had a number of fresh faces added to its cast lately, including Maggie Grace, Jenna Elfman, and Garret Dillahunt as Althia, June, and John Dorie respectively. Lennie James has also reprised his role as Morgan, who he played in the main Walking Dead series.
The Walking Dead comic series, from which the TV shows are inspired, came to a surprise ending on July 2, ending its 15-year run. Creator Robert Kirkman, who also works on both TV shows, said the comic’s conclusion won’t impact the series.
“I hate knowing what’s coming,” he said in a letter to fans. “As a fan, I hate it when I realize I’m in the third act of a movie and the story is winding down. I hate that I can count commercial breaks and know I’m nearing the end of a TV show. I hate that you can feel when you’re getting to the end of a book, or a graphic novel. Some of the best episodes of Game of Thrones are when they’re structured in such a way and paced to perfection so your brain can’t tell if it’s been watching for 15 minutes or 50 minutes … and when the end comes … you’re stunned.
“I love long movies for that very reason. You lose track of time because you went in convinced that you’re going to be there for a long time, but the story moves at such an entertaining and engaging pace that by the time the movie’s wrapping up … you can’t believe it’s already over. Surprise, it’s over! All I’ve ever done, all a creator can really do … is tailor-make stories to entertain themselves, and hope the audience feels the same way. That’s all I’ve ever been doing … and it seems to work most of the time.”
Last month, Hot Wheels revealed new cars and tracks inspired by Mario Kart. At San Diego Comic-Con, we got a closer look at these cars and tracks which are available currently at Target and will be released at other retailers later this year.
The Mario Kart racers are 1:64 scale replicas, costing $5 a piece, and Hot Wheels is releasing three tracks as well, which can all be combined into one mega track. The Thwomp and Piranha Plant tracks are $20 each, and the much larger Mario Kart Circuit Track Set is $80.
Additionally, Hot Wheels revealed its new Street Fighter-inspired cars as well, and without a doubt, the M. Bison one is the best of the lot. At the time of this writing, there wasn’t information about the release date of the Street Fighter sets.
Check out some close-up images at Comic-Con of these cars and the race tracks you can pick up at a Target near you.
Avengers: Endgame could have been a very different movie, and in some ways a much darker one. Writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely took the stage at San Diego Comic-Con to reveal some of their ideas during the various drafting phases that didn’t make the cut, and some of them are downright wild.
Io9 reports that in one iteration, Thanos returned to 2023 with the decapitated head of Captain America circa 2014, in order to intimidate the Avengers. That particular dark turn will be explained in more detail in the commentary track on the home release.
Another cut scene included Rocket explaining the Quantum Realm to Jane Foster. The writers also considered having a reunion of sorts between Cap and Red Skull when he returned the stone, but that idea never got off the ground. One cut scene from Infinity War had Dr. Strange sending Thanos into his own mind to face a tribunal for his litany of crimes, but it slowed down the pace of the fight scene too much.
The writers declined to comment if the ending suggests there are two Captain Americas on Earth at the same time, but Markus did say he’s “entertained” by the theory. The two also declined to speculate on where Gamora went, or if the MCU will further explore the multiverse. It seems like those decisions are being left up to other writers and Marvel story heads, respectively.
As for the film we did see in theaters, the “five years later” jump had a huge impact on all of the story decisions going forward. It gave them more space to explore complex character developments that would have developed over time, and it helped paper over a mistake they had made. “Smart Hulk” was originally set to emerge at the end of Infinity War. That moment was cut, but Endgame scenes with Smart Hulk had already been shot. The five-year jump gave space for Banner to plausibly reconcile with the Hulk persona.
Thor’s story arc in Endgame was similarly in flux for a long time. The writers said that his story “sucked rocks” and wasn’t character-focused. The eventual Thor story came out of an emergency all-hands meeting meant to get the character’s trajectory back on-track.
Lots more is coming from Comic-Con this weekend, including plenty of Marvel events, so keep an eye out for more in the days to come.
Editor’s note:GameSpot originally reviewed Warframe in 2013 and gave it a 6. Due to substantial revisions and new content since its debut, we have re-examined Warframe as it is in 2019 and produced a new review to reflect its current state.
To play Warframe is to reconcile yourself with the sensation that you’re always a bit in over your head. Even six years after its debut, it’s still something of an oddity within the realm of online action-RPGs. With an expanding universe housing a wealth of content, the free-to-play game offers a stellar amount of freedom to explore, uncover loot, and take on missions with its cast of stylish space ninjas. It takes a decidedly unorthodox approach with its non-linear adventure–sometimes frustratingly so–yet journeying across Warframe’s massive universe is as satisfying as it is endearing.
In GameSpot’s original 2013 review, we praised the game’s agile and hard-hitting combat but criticized the lack of meaningful features that effectively took advantage of those strengths. In the broader sense, the Warframe of old was a promising sketch of an idea that lacked reasons for investment. The Warframe of today, however, has filled out the bigger picture. Its vision is clearer, and it’s now so much more than just space ninjas brawling in corridors. Some of Warframe’s best moments involve venturing into the realms of deep space, exploring open worlds and, yes, engaging in combat to power up and take on greater challenges.
When it comes to its gameplay and narrative, Warframe always seems to chuck you into the deep end. The larger story focuses on an interstellar clan of warriors known as the Tenno as they reacquaint themselves with a grander universe in perpetual conflict. You take control of a reawakened Frame–revitalized Tenno fighters from the distant past–to engage in missions against a myriad of enemy factions. This conceit of spacefaring ninjas slashing and shooting across the universe holds the loose narrative together while also giving you an impressive amount of freedom. Several cinematic quests shed light on the history of the Tenno, leading up to some profound moments that reveal a surprising depth for your character and their place in the galaxy.
Warframe is a massive game with numerous, complex systems to dive into–but therein lies the rub. It’s a challenging game to crack; even with hundreds of hours under my belt, I can still feel overwhelmed by how much game there is to unpack. However, the trick to understanding this game lies within finding your own focus in the nebulous grind–whether that’s taking on a variety of side-activities and missions on a series of planets or investing time to customize, experiment, and tweak your favorite Frames.
It can often feel like playing catch-up, considering there is six years’ worth of content in the package, but it’s a game that rewards taking the time to soak it all in, instead of rushing through. How you get accustomed to this surprisingly sink-or-swim structure will determine the mileage you get out of it. Most missions are singular, discrete encounters across the solar system. This piecemeal structure ultimately makes the massive game more digestible. There’s a staggering amount of activities to dive into, and with over 40 hyper-stylized Frames to utilize, there’s a constant sense of fun and surprise when discovering how deep it all runs. However, while the opening missions do well to get you into the basic swing of things when it comes to its core gameplay, the more in-depth systems are left for you to decipher on your own.
The overall speed and flexibility in its action is something that it continually excels at, and there’s a constant sense of grace and finesse that can make even the ordinary missions thrilling.
This mostly hands-off approach in getting you acclimated can sometimes manifest feelings of aimlessness. And it’s magnified when it becomes apparent that there isn’t a traditional endgame to work up to. There are higher-end missions and stories designed for more experienced players, some focusing on endless fights against waves of enemies, but there isn’t anything like raids to unlock later on. In many ways, you’re introduced to that familiar endgame grind from the onset, and that often entails fine-tuning your suite of Frames to tackle many of the game’s tougher challenges.
The true star of Warframe are the various Frames, with each possessing their own unique designs and abilities. The pursuit of new characters to play as is one of the many constants in your journey, often dictating where you should invest your time. It always feels rewarding when you find a new Frame, especially when it’s one that stands apart from the others. Some are highly specialized, such as the stealth-oriented Ash or the aquatic, alien-tentacle-summoning Hydroid. Another standout is Octavia, a Bard-like Frame that lets you craft custom music to amplify your abilities and attack enemies. One time, a squadmate of mine used Octavia’s skills to effortlessly clear a hallway full of enemies–all to the tune of Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It.”
There is a ridiculous amount of room to experiment, and it can be especially fun strengthening one of the beginner Frames with powerful mods and armaments that can melt through enemies. It’s also impressive how in-depth customization and personalization is in Warframe–you can apply different shaders, accessories, and even alter their particular animation set, and it’s rare to find another player who has the same style and loadout.
It’s a necessity to get your Frame to reach its potential for them to be viable for more advanced activities. If you don’t apply the correct mods and buffs to your character, it can often stop you in your tracks at some inconvenient moments in your progression. If you’re committed to figuring out the intricacies of the game, then using online guides to understand these advanced mechanics, much like with other aspects of the game, is a must. These resources are a big help, but it’s disappointing how often you have to use them, as opposed to the game teaching you the same information. Without them, learning these systems on your own can be a significant test of patience.
You’ll quickly find yourself in a rhythm of cutting down mobs of enemies and boosting your Frame’s strength by collecting mods and earning experience as new gameplay systems and events open up. While the core gameplay is often satisfying, it’s still common to see a streak of highly repetitive missions, most of which re-use tile-sets for procedurally-generated levels and objective types. This repetition can create a recurring feeling of déjà vu throughout, and there were times when this left me feeling exhausted after an extended play session with the game.
To help ease this sense of repetition, Warframe does inject a number of variations on standard missions, as well as adding in new activities. Along with Nightmare challenges, harder versions of previously completed levels, several missions even remix past stages by including multiple enemy factions within one level, making some standard objectives far more hectic. Some objectives feature totally different gameplay modes, in particular incorporating the Archwing, which switches up the familiar action sequences with Wing Commander-style shooter levels. There’s even a set of PvP game types, such as the Conclave and Duel modes, with the latter letting you invite another player to a player-made clan dojo to engage in a solo fight. Unfortunately, the PvP activities come across as exceedingly basic and clunky compared to the core PvE experience.
Despite how much the game has grown over the years by adding in game-changing features, Waframe’s roots are still planted firmly in its fast-paced and satisfying core combat. The overall speed and flexibility in its action is something that it continually excels at, and there’s a constant sense of grace and finesse that can make even the ordinary missions thrilling. It often shows similar shades to a fast-paced corridor shooter by way of a stunning character-action game, with your squad tearing through enemies using myriad skills and armaments.
The core combat and general traversal of Warframe can move at a blistering pace. Despite how complex they can get, they’re still intuitive enough to dive into, and you can pull off Warframe’s advanced acrobatics like gliding, wall-runs, and the appropriately named “Bullet Jump”–which darts your character in any direction–reasonably quickly. Melee combat also features its own complexities, allowing you to use an assortment of combos and aerial abilities to cut through legions of foes in flashy display. Over time, chaining together slick parkour leaps into fast strikes with your weapons can become second nature, resulting in Warframe’s most gratifying and stylish encounters.
Warframe can be daunting for newcomers, yet it can also prove a challenge for players–like myself–who take an extended break and have to learn the basics of new features while simultaneously unlearning outdated ones. Such is the case for online games, and fortunately, Warframe does have an active and open community to trade with and seek assistance from, and you can directly interact with others at various social spaces across different planets. It’s common that you might have to consult outside resources in order to figure out what to do next, or else your progress might come to a halt abruptly.
Stick with the game long enough, and you’ll unlock access to the more involved cinematic story missions and open-world settings that best show the game’s considerable growth. Unlike the fragmented storytelling in most of the game, these two pillars present a more guided plot that offers memorable narrative and character moments. Some of these missions even include the surprising addition of a dialogue system, which can result in some slightly different events in questlines.
In the open-world settings of the Plains of Eidolon and the Orb Vallis, which open after you reach the planets they’re located on, you can take in the sights of the large-scale worlds, take on dynamic bounties and events with squads, and even learn more about the brewing conflict within each setting. The Vallis’ story is especially engaging, dealing with workers’ rights and the perils of late-stage capitalism in the interstellar age. Though these main stories set in the open worlds tend to end far too quickly, the amount of nuance and narrative packed in was impressive, which left me wanting to spend more time in the settings to continue interacting with its characters.
I’m continually pleased with the flexibility of Warframe’s many systems, and how it allows for you to attain a variety of rewards and unlocks at your own pace. Of course, there is an assortment of items, weapons, and even Frames to purchase with real money or with Platinum, Warframe’s premium currency. Fortunately, most items in the game are attainable through gameplay, allowing you to get into the nitty-gritty of the game’s content mostly unabated. The in-game economy of Warframe is very active, and if you’re resourceful enough, you can even trade some of your own gear and blueprints with other players for Platinum as well.
When new content is introduced, the pathway to experiencing the quests or acquiring the next Frame is available to all players. This relaxed approach is reassuring, especially for a game of this magnitude. I generally find acquiring gear and new classes to be quite manageable. However, there are still some time-sinks that feel mostly arbitrary, resulting in the expected and sometimes lengthy grind that’s commonplace in free-to-play games. To that end, the primary intent of Platinum is to circumvent both investments of time and resources.
Thinking back to GameSpot’s original review, it’s interesting how much the game has improved, yet also how much has stayed the same. The game still has issues with repetition and lack of explanations for its more complex systems, but it’s managed to overcome their severity by introducing so many events and revisions that continue to elevate it. While there are inevitable bouts of frustration here and there, I always manage to center myself once I move on to other opportunities. In a lot of ways, that’s what Warframe manages to do best. One moment you’re taking part in a random spy mission on Saturn, and the next, you’re partnered up with a powerful squad of players that help you through several void fissures. Just when you feel like you’ve hit a lull, a better, and more fulfilling opportunity will likely present itself. Perhaps most importantly, Warframe makes sure that the time spent in its world is almost always well rewarded.
Editor’s note:GameSpot originally reviewed Warframe in 2013 and gave it a 6. Due to substantial revisions and new content since its debut, we have re-examined Warframe as it is in 2019 and produced a new review to reflect its current state.
To play Warframe is to reconcile yourself with the sensation that you’re always a bit in over your head. Even six years after its debut, it’s still something of an oddity within the realm of online action-RPGs. With an expanding universe housing a wealth of content, the free-to-play game offers a stellar amount of freedom to explore, uncover loot, and take on missions with its cast of stylish space ninjas. It takes a decidedly unorthodox approach with its non-linear adventure–sometimes frustratingly so–yet journeying across Warframe’s massive universe is as satisfying as it is endearing.
In GameSpot’s original 2013 review, we praised the game’s agile and hard-hitting combat but criticized the lack of meaningful features that effectively took advantage of those strengths. In the broader sense, the Warframe of old was a promising sketch of an idea that lacked reasons for investment. The Warframe of today, however, has filled out the bigger picture. Its vision is clearer, and it’s now so much more than just space ninjas brawling in corridors. Some of Warframe’s best moments involve venturing into the realms of deep space, exploring open worlds and, yes, engaging in combat to power up and take on greater challenges.
When it comes to its gameplay and narrative, Warframe always seems to chuck you into the deep end. The larger story focuses on an interstellar clan of warriors known as the Tenno as they reacquaint themselves with a grander universe in perpetual conflict. You take control of a reawakened Frame–revitalized Tenno fighters from the distant past–to engage in missions against a myriad of enemy factions. This conceit of spacefaring ninjas slashing and shooting across the universe holds the loose narrative together while also giving you an impressive amount of freedom. Several cinematic quests shed light on the history of the Tenno, leading up to some profound moments that reveal a surprising depth for your character and their place in the galaxy.
Warframe is a massive game with numerous, complex systems to dive into–but therein lies the rub. It’s a challenging game to crack; even with hundreds of hours under my belt, I can still feel overwhelmed by how much game there is to unpack. However, the trick to understanding this game lies within finding your own focus in the nebulous grind–whether that’s taking on a variety of side-activities and missions on a series of planets or investing time to customize, experiment, and tweak your favorite Frames.
It can often feel like playing catch-up, considering there is six years’ worth of content in the package, but it’s a game that rewards taking the time to soak it all in, instead of rushing through. How you get accustomed to this surprisingly sink-or-swim structure will determine the mileage you get out of it. Most missions are singular, discrete encounters across the solar system. This piecemeal structure ultimately makes the massive game more digestible. There’s a staggering amount of activities to dive into, and with over 40 hyper-stylized Frames to utilize, there’s a constant sense of fun and surprise when discovering how deep it all runs. However, while the opening missions do well to get you into the basic swing of things when it comes to its core gameplay, the more in-depth systems are left for you to decipher on your own.
The overall speed and flexibility in its action is something that it continually excels at, and there’s a constant sense of grace and finesse that can make even the ordinary missions thrilling.
This mostly hands-off approach in getting you acclimated can sometimes manifest feelings of aimlessness. And it’s magnified when it becomes apparent that there isn’t a traditional endgame to work up to. There are higher-end missions and stories designed for more experienced players, some focusing on endless fights against waves of enemies, but there isn’t anything like raids to unlock later on. In many ways, you’re introduced to that familiar endgame grind from the onset, and that often entails fine-tuning your suite of Frames to tackle many of the game’s tougher challenges.
The true star of Warframe are the various Frames, with each possessing their own unique designs and abilities. The pursuit of new characters to play as is one of the many constants in your journey, often dictating where you should invest your time. It always feels rewarding when you find a new Frame, especially when it’s one that stands apart from the others. Some are highly specialized, such as the stealth-oriented Ash or the aquatic, alien-tentacle-summoning Hydroid. Another standout is Octavia, a Bard-like Frame that lets you craft custom music to amplify your abilities and attack enemies. One time, a squadmate of mine used Octavia’s skills to effortlessly clear a hallway full of enemies–all to the tune of Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It.”
There is a ridiculous amount of room to experiment, and it can be especially fun strengthening one of the beginner Frames with powerful mods and armaments that can melt through enemies. It’s also impressive how in-depth customization and personalization is in Warframe–you can apply different shaders, accessories, and even alter their particular animation set, and it’s rare to find another player who has the same style and loadout.
It’s a necessity to get your Frame to reach its potential for them to be viable for more advanced activities. If you don’t apply the correct mods and buffs to your character, it can often stop you in your tracks at some inconvenient moments in your progression. If you’re committed to figuring out the intricacies of the game, then using online guides to understand these advanced mechanics, much like with other aspects of the game, is a must. These resources are a big help, but it’s disappointing how often you have to use them, as opposed to the game teaching you the same information. Without them, learning these systems on your own can be a significant test of patience.
You’ll quickly find yourself in a rhythm of cutting down mobs of enemies and boosting your Frame’s strength by collecting mods and earning experience as new gameplay systems and events open up. While the core gameplay is often satisfying, it’s still common to see a streak of highly repetitive missions, most of which re-use tile-sets for procedurally-generated levels and objective types. This repetition can create a recurring feeling of déjà vu throughout, and there were times when this left me feeling exhausted after an extended play session with the game.
To help ease this sense of repetition, Warframe does inject a number of variations on standard missions, as well as adding in new activities. Along with Nightmare challenges, harder versions of previously completed levels, several missions even remix past stages by including multiple enemy factions within one level, making some standard objectives far more hectic. Some objectives feature totally different gameplay modes, in particular incorporating the Archwing, which switches up the familiar action sequences with Wing Commander-style shooter levels. There’s even a set of PvP game types, such as the Conclave and Duel modes, with the latter letting you invite another player to a player-made clan dojo to engage in a solo fight. Unfortunately, the PvP activities come across as exceedingly basic and clunky compared to the core PvE experience.
Despite how much the game has grown over the years by adding in game-changing features, Waframe’s roots are still planted firmly in its fast-paced and satisfying core combat. The overall speed and flexibility in its action is something that it continually excels at, and there’s a constant sense of grace and finesse that can make even the ordinary missions thrilling. It often shows similar shades to a fast-paced corridor shooter by way of a stunning character-action game, with your squad tearing through enemies using myriad skills and armaments.
The core combat and general traversal of Warframe can move at a blistering pace. Despite how complex they can get, they’re still intuitive enough to dive into, and you can pull off Warframe’s advanced acrobatics like gliding, wall-runs, and the appropriately named “Bullet Jump”–which darts your character in any direction–reasonably quickly. Melee combat also features its own complexities, allowing you to use an assortment of combos and aerial abilities to cut through legions of foes in flashy display. Over time, chaining together slick parkour leaps into fast strikes with your weapons can become second nature, resulting in Warframe’s most gratifying and stylish encounters.
Warframe can be daunting for newcomers, yet it can also prove a challenge for players–like myself–who take an extended break and have to learn the basics of new features while simultaneously unlearning outdated ones. Such is the case for online games, and fortunately, Warframe does have an active and open community to trade with and seek assistance from, and you can directly interact with others at various social spaces across different planets. It’s common that you might have to consult outside resources in order to figure out what to do next, or else your progress might come to a halt abruptly.
Stick with the game long enough, and you’ll unlock access to the more involved cinematic story missions and open-world settings that best show the game’s considerable growth. Unlike the fragmented storytelling in most of the game, these two pillars present a more guided plot that offers memorable narrative and character moments. Some of these missions even include the surprising addition of a dialogue system, which can result in some slightly different events in questlines.
In the open-world settings of the Plains of Eidolon and the Orb Vallis, which open after you reach the planets they’re located on, you can take in the sights of the large-scale worlds, take on dynamic bounties and events with squads, and even learn more about the brewing conflict within each setting. The Vallis’ story is especially engaging, dealing with workers’ rights and the perils of late-stage capitalism in the interstellar age. Though these main stories set in the open worlds tend to end far too quickly, the amount of nuance and narrative packed in was impressive, which left me wanting to spend more time in the settings to continue interacting with its characters.
I’m continually pleased with the flexibility of Warframe’s many systems, and how it allows for you to attain a variety of rewards and unlocks at your own pace. Of course, there is an assortment of items, weapons, and even Frames to purchase with real money or with Platinum, Warframe’s premium currency. Fortunately, most items in the game are attainable through gameplay, allowing you to get into the nitty-gritty of the game’s content mostly unabated. The in-game economy of Warframe is very active, and if you’re resourceful enough, you can even trade some of your own gear and blueprints with other players for Platinum as well.
When new content is introduced, the pathway to experiencing the quests or acquiring the next Frame is available to all players. This relaxed approach is reassuring, especially for a game of this magnitude. I generally find acquiring gear and new classes to be quite manageable. However, there are still some time-sinks that feel mostly arbitrary, resulting in the expected and sometimes lengthy grind that’s commonplace in free-to-play games. To that end, the primary intent of Platinum is to circumvent both investments of time and resources.
Thinking back to GameSpot’s original review, it’s interesting how much the game has improved, yet also how much has stayed the same. The game still has issues with repetition and lack of explanations for its more complex systems, but it’s managed to overcome their severity by introducing so many events and revisions that continue to elevate it. While there are inevitable bouts of frustration here and there, I always manage to center myself once I move on to other opportunities. In a lot of ways, that’s what Warframe manages to do best. One moment you’re taking part in a random spy mission on Saturn, and the next, you’re partnered up with a powerful squad of players that help you through several void fissures. Just when you feel like you’ve hit a lull, a better, and more fulfilling opportunity will likely present itself. Perhaps most importantly, Warframe makes sure that the time spent in its world is almost always well rewarded.
