Warframe - The Heart of Deimos - Video Game Review

For those few who do not know, one of my favorite games ever is Warframe, a 3rd person shooter about space ninjas with super powers fighting alien tyrants, evil corporations, and hordes of mutants to protect the galaxy. It's been over two years since I picked it up and over seven years since the game came out. And yet its still getting continual updates. New characters, new weapons, new missions, new community creations, I can go on and on and on and on an- The point is that Warframe means so much to me and a lot of people and this week we got an exceptionally big update, one that barely anyone saw coming: The Heart of Deimos.

In the Heart of Deimos we discover the origin of the Infested, a faction of mutant creatures bent taking over everything and putting all forms of life under its hive-like control. And where is the origin of the Infested? Deimos, a moon of Mars. This is the game's third open world environment and it has a lot of mysterious things to it, like a pair of monsters that knock out the other and represent the moon and sun of the world, tons of nasty critters, and mysterious beings partially taken over by the Infestation who might be able to keep you and the rest of the galaxy safe. Along with that come a few other features, including a way to swap abilities with other warframes, a new "new player experience" tutorial, pilot-able mechs, and a new character, Xaku.

So Deimos is a new area of the map centered around Mar's moon of the same name. The missions in the area are all missions that were previously the Orokin Derelict stations that were out of the way of the rest of the planets. I like this decision to move them to a single planet, especially since they also removed the keys required to play these missions. With these missions we have not one, but two boss missions or assassinations we can play. First is Lephantis, a multi-headed Infested monstrosity once used long ago in the Old War. The second is the Zealoid Prelate, a dangerous member of the Emissary and determined to spread the Infestation to new victims. Honestly there isn't much to say on these smaller missions other than they're now free to play.

The main feature of Deimos though, the one everyone is talking about and playing, is the open world area, the Cambion Drift. It's full of Infested enemies both new and old, with the old getting new abilities as well. The map feels smaller than the previous two, which is a little disappointing, but there's also a lot of things to do on the Cambion Drift. There's the usual fishing, animal conservation, mining, and straight up hunting of enemies, but they all have new resources to them and a few new tools are needed for some of them. I'll get into it later, but resource collecting is a lot more important than on the previous open world areas because without them you cannot level up your rank with the main faction of Deimos.

There is one new resource though that is infuriating to obtain to the point of table flipping. It's called Scintillant and it's supposed to be similar to the wisps on the Plains of Eidolon or the Toroids from the Orb Vallis. This resource however is ridiculous to find. Worse is that only certain missions have a chance to reward you with this resource and they're not obtainable while exploring the open world. Digital Extremes (DE for short, the developer of the game) has multiple times said and implemented changes that are supposed to make it easier to find these parts, but I almost think they're lying because after days of playing this game I haven't found a single one. I have been playing the same types of missions are supposed to reward me with Scintillant over and over and over again, but not a single drop. What the hell?! Thankfully Scintillant was removed as a resource need to upgrade your rank with the main faction.

So who is this main faction of Deimos? They are called the Entrati Family and they're supposedly ones with the greatest knowledge of the Void, a place of extra-dimensional space where the laws of physics do not apply. To sum up a lot of backstory, the warframes were created by an ancient race called the Orokin with the use of the Infestation, but gained their power from the Void. The Entrati are still living Orokin, but have been heavily affected by the Infestation and so are kind of stuck on Deimos. There are in six all: There's Mother, the genius and cold leader of the family; Father, her husband and a weapons maker; Daughter, a fish enthusiast who also studies the hive mind of the Infestation; Son, the mood child which a strong interest in Infested life; and Grandmother, the wise one who keeps the family together (through some means). There's also a little robot servant of theirs called Otak, but he's a robot and not an Orokin so he doesn't count as much (though he's still a fun character). I thought that Mother was going to be my favorite of the family because I like strong women and she's beautiful, but then I saw daughter and she's insanely cute! I think it's her glasses, she's just... my heart literally feels like it's melting at the sight of Daughter's beauty.

Together, the Entrati are a very dysfunctional family. They're always going at one another and it's kind of sad. I mean Mother sometimes comments on how we (the player) can use her husband's face to wipe our feet on. She treats him like a doormat. Daughter and Son are always at each other throats with their arguments, though Son is the reason the whole family became infected by the Infestation. Even after the main story mission is completed they were not friendly for one another and I think they'll never be a true, happy family again. But oddly I'm fine with that, I like the idea that they can mend a few wounds between each other, but that some wounds will never fully heal. It feels real to me. Plus the dialogue is pretty great.

In order to meet the Entrati family though we must complete the main quest: The Heart of Deimos. We the player are called to Deimos by Otak because its "heart," the mechanism that allows the void's power to spread and power the warframes, is dying. Our task is the find the Entrati family and get their help in order to fix the heart. I enjoyed the mission, it was very fun and I like the stories we got out of it. It also was a good length at just over an hour to complete. It helped to introduce the world, its unique elements from the unique kind of fishing to the new Necramechs (which I will get into later), and had a moment in it that really put me on my A-game, which was a feeling I hadn't had in Warframe for a long while. At that point the game had gone from a crazy 3rd person shooter to a stealth game and I had to do a bit of sneaking to escape my dire situation.

Once the main mission is done a whole new level of possibilities opens up with the main hub on the Cambion Drift: The Necrolisk, the home of the Entrati. Like Deimos it's smaller than the previous two open-world hubs, but in this case that's good and I can easily get to vendors throughout the hub. There is both artificial and organic aesthetics throughout, matching perfectly with what an Infested hub should look like. And along with the completion of the main mission we get our bounties. They're... pretty good. I mean there are some unique ones and some classic ones and they're fun to play. There's also a new type of bounty that can unlock some interesting new gear. But recently there have been some bugs associated with them and they're really bad. Sometimes the whole bounty has to be cancelled because stuff like the markers don't show up or certain items don't appear and that's very bad. Hopefully DE will fixed it up soon.

Now comes a big positive for the Heart of Deimos: The faction rankings. On Cetus and Fortuna you received standing, the currency used to buy items and increase ranking on those hubs, through tasks and selling goods to vendors on those hubs. On the Necralick it's different: When you perform tasks or sell to vendors you get tokens. You can then go to Grandmother and sell the tokens to her for standing. With this system there is basically no limit to how much potential standing you have in stock and can keep amassing tokens for days ahead of schedule. To get these tokens you do need to collect more resources from the Cambion Drift, but that makes it all feel more important and necessary to the player. The resources have more value to them beyond just crafting stuff.

Speaking of resources, another big addition to Warframe with this update is the Helminth system. Originally just a room to remove a certain non-dangerous parasite from players, the Helminth room has evolved with a lot of new things, including a giant mouth in the wall and the way to swap between certain warframe abilities. In order to do this though this mouth in the wall needs to be fed. What do you feed a giant mouth in the wall? Anything actually. Any resource in the game can be fed to the helminth and each resource is a part of a certain type of food the helminth feeds on. You need him pretty full in each category in order to swap out abilities. But more importantly to absorb your warframe and their ability because not only do you need the resources, the warframe itself must be sacrificed to archive their ability.

Now there are rules to absorbing these abilities. Each warframe has one specific ability that can be absorbed by the helminth and none of them are ultimate abilities. The list is very long, so I won't list them all, but popular ones include Rhino's Roar (boosts all damage of you and other warframes close by), Nidus's Larva (pulls all enemies into a single spot), and Ash's Shuriken (throw projecticles at enemies). Also, only one ability can be swapped out at a time for each warframe. With this though you can do so much more customizing for the warframes and their play styles. It's incredible. I have heard though that DE has multiple times nerfed these transferred skills and I'm not liking it.

Now one part of the update I was not able to directly experience is the new tutorial system. I've researched it though and I'm very sad to find out that it's mostly just a new cinematic cutscene and nothing else. That's... that's terrible and against a lot of players were wanting for new players. What we've been wanting is for new players to not feel overwhelmed at the start of the game and be more in depth on the main game mechanics and modding your gear, abilities, resources, and combat. If all you gave it is a shiny new paint job, then you've failed!

Another big addition to Warframe with this update is the Necramech, a new pilot-able mech for warframes that can also be found wandering Deimos, lost without a master and following their programming to destroy the Infestation. It's only available after unlocking the operator mode later in the game and is basically a suit of armor capable of wielding archguns. Additionally they are immune to knockdowns, staggers, and energy-draining status effects. On the downside though they are a lot harder to heal. I haven't gotten to test out these suits of armor much, but my experience so far is that they're pretty and I hope to be able to use them in certain non-open world missions, like on the Sentient ships.

On a final note, we must talk about the newest warframe, Xaku. They are the second community created warframe, the first being Nova, and they're a combination of other warframes and are all about the void. They can add void damage to their weapons, turn enemies guns of their owns, a combination of three unique attacks, and... can stripped naked. That last one increases your dodging power with a few other unique effects and it's pretty neat. Similar to the Necramech I haven't gotten to try much of Xaku since I only recently unlocked him. From what I've heard it's currently underpowered, but this is just the start of the community feedback, so only time will tell.

The Heart of Deimos update for Warframe is pretty neat. There are still some bugs to fix and some balancing to get right, but the Helminth system is fascinating, the Entrati family have unique gear and dialogue, and Deimos is a fun new area to explore. I've still got more to explore with this update, but so far I'm definitely enjoying it.

Tentative score: 7.5/10

Definitive Score: 7/10

I still got to get those new pets... Though I don't want abandon my precious Morbus and cute little sporey body.