Warframe is set far in the future, with the Tenno waking from cryosleep into a broken solar system ruled by rival factions — Grineer, Corpus, Infested, and more. You pilot Warframes, each with a distinct kit, from raw damage nukers to crowd control, stealth, support, or melee bruisers. It’s space opera told through missions, quests, and slow-burn reveals rather than one straight corridor campaign.

The core loop is mission-based PvE: exterminate, capture, survival, defence, sabotage, spy, etc. You drop into tilesets, sprint and slide your way through, complete objectives, and extract with whatever loot you grabbed — mods, resources, blueprints, relics. The game is built around movement first: bullet jumps, wall latches, slides, aim glides, and melee combos that let you tear through maps at speed while still making micro decisions about positioning.

Progression is all about gear and mods. Weapons, companions, and Warframes rank up as you use them, unlocking mod capacity that lets you slot damage, utility, and ability-altering effects. Forma, Catalysts, and Reactors let you push builds even further, bending base gear into late-game monsters. It’s less about “one best gun” and more about building a stable of tools that cover different mission types and moods.

Warframe runs as a live service, but mostly on its own wavelength: periodic story quests, cinematic arcs, open-world zones (Plains of Eidolon, Orb Vallis, Deimos), new Warframes, new weapons, and big mechanical updates like Railjack and the Helminth system. Cross-play and cross-save support mean you can bounce between platforms without fully restarting, which keeps long-term investment from feeling like a trap.

In the Vault, Warframe sits as the reference for “free-to-play done right-ish”: aggressive, grindy, but dense with systems and movement tech in a way that very few games even try to match.