Impressions after 5 Days of Enjoyment (Caution! may induce TL:DR)

[CitizenFresh]

First off, mad props to DE for making a great FTP game. After playing for awhile I remembered drooling over the original Dark Sector concept vid what feels like ages ago. Now I am going to give my thoughts thus far, forgive me as after shadowing these forums for awhile I know I am going to beat a dead horse or two.

Initial thoughts:

Controls- DE did right by me with very responsive movement and aiming. Responsive aiming is very important to me when playing shooters and Warframe nails it. Conversely inventory item usage breaks the flow when I have to stop and mouse over the item I wish to use. As has been suggested, hotkeys would be a great fix.

Visuals- Great graphics both technically, artistically, and atmospherically. My only thought here would be to have multiple color correction presets. I enjoy the default, but being able to switch from say, Payback (with Mel Gibson) blue, to a Matrixish green would be bad***. I don't necessarily think the bloom is over done, but there have been a few instances where my big shiny Scindo looked like a giant axe shaped flashlight in my eyes.

Art Direction- Gotta say I love the style of the Warframes. I am a sucker for techno-ninja/samurai/whatever. I feel that there are some inconsistencies with certain designs. For example the Aklatos pistols have a neo-oldtimey feel that fits well with the blade weilding and somewhat organic feel of the Warframes. On the other hand some of the weapons just seem very generic ie. the Braton. The Fragor is a great futuristic take on a warhammer, while some of the shotguns are off-putting to me due to them looking non-functional. This is coming from a firearms/hunting enthusiest though, so take that with grain of salt.

Audio- Good meaty feel to most of the weapons. The ambient music really jives with the dark moody look and feel as well. Ol' Lotus is a bit of a chatty cathy sometimes though, and we still haven't formally met.

Gameplay- I have got an Excalibur to rank 30 and leveled up several weapons well past 15, some still lack the items to expand the upgrade tree. I am loving the gameplay so far, and can't wait to see what DE rolls at as far as mission, objective, and environment variety goes in the future. I feel like melee is overshadowed by effective guns so far, which is unfortunate because I really enjoy the melee combat. I am going to hold my thoughts on weapon/warframe variety and balance for now. There are plenty of good topics for it already.

Accessibility- I haven't partaken in a closed beta in a long time, but I couldn't resist trying out Warframe. Most of the things that I think to myself could be improved stem from the menus and UI. What are my WF's total shields, health and armor ratings? What damage does the first skill do? Is its damage based on a set value or is it affected in any way by what melee weapon I have equipped. Why is the Artifact menu popping up why try to accept a clan invite (I figured that one out)?

These are just a few of the things that I am used to finding pretty easily in a shooter with RPG elements. If there is place to view such statistical information without doing the math myself, which I have been doing, I missed it. There is a great deal of information I was hoping to find ingame that I had to peruse the forums for. I think the games accessibility suffers a great deal for it. I didn't even know I could sell unwanted items for the first hour or so before I stumbled upon that option in the inventory screen.

Exposition- I will say that exposition isn't that important to me in a game like this, despite the fact that I love a good story in my games, but I was left a with a lot of questions after the intro/tutorial section with the Narrator popping out of nowhere. i feel a little more in game exposition would be nice, even if there was just a text based explanation of what was going on, who the characters/factions are, etc. in a help menu or intro cinematic.

That's all I got for now. I am going to hit some baddies in the face with bullets and blades (maybe a blunt weapon too). Thanks, DE. Good hunting, Tenno.

[Sikab]

So many to read o_0

But it was a nice read :)

[FirstToLast]

Was a decent read, I say that because I'm jaded.