Warframe's 1999 Update is Out, So How Does the Game Perform on Steam Deck?

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Warframe is one of those games that I've seen mentioned here and there, but I've never really looked into it too deeply. But with the highly-anticipated Warframe 1999 update dropping earlier this month, there's been a great deal of hype around the game, so we thought it would be a good idea to drop into the game and see how it performs on the Steam Deck.

It's also worth mentioning that while Warframe can be played solo, it does connect to the internet and cannot be played offline. Despite this, you can still pause solo missions.

What is Warframe?

In Warframe, you play as a warrior in a bio-metal suit which grants you various abilities. It's a reasonably fast-paced action-shooter game that has RPG elements and the option to play solo or with a party of other players.

The game takes place across various expansions/campaigns, of which 1999 is the newest, each with its own main quest line that expands the story and lore of the Warframe universe. As you progress through these quests, you'll be able to upgrade and acquire new weapons, vehicles, and Warframes.

Is Warframe Any Good?

The combat of the game is the highlight, as you'll be engaged in combat almost the entire time you're playing the game. With a mixture of ranged and melee combat, the game keeps things moving and flowing fast, you don't ever really want to stop moving, so flying through the air or sliding along the ground while using your firearm are the order of the day here, and if you need to reload, you can hit a single button to swing your melee weapon. There's no waiting to switch weapons to keep the pace up.

While you can technically play the game in a more stealthy manner, with there being rewards for taking enemies out for being unseen, I tended to play the game more heavy-handed, and simply use movement as my ally to keep me alive.

The storyline of Warframe I found mildly interesting, but I didn't find myself getting quite so into it, as the action took over the focus for me, it's possible the story is a slow-burner and gets more interesting as you progress, but evaluating the story wasn't really my aim with this opinion piece. It certainly doesn't fall down to your usual MMORPG standards of storyline, however, as the quests do feature voice-acting throughout and you aren't relegated to tedious fetch quests during the main questlines.

Some missions do feel kind of strange in their design, however. The game allows you to essentially skip large volumes of enemies, even at the end of one mission, the antagonist calls in a large amount of reinforcements for what the game assumes will be a big battle, but you can simply walk to your ship that's 100 meters away and complete the mission before anyone even arrives, and this is a pretty consistent thing that appears.

It's not even that they expect you to defeat enemies to up your XP so you can keep up to par with enemies in later missions, as the game seems to award you plenty of XP just for playing through and completing missions, keeping you a steady amount above any enemies you face. There are also side missions you can jump into in the hub worlds that let you gain additional XP.

So Warframe is a pretty solid third-person shooter. The gunplay and movement work really well, and the story is serviceable, the mission design is perhaps the weakest part of the game, but it's excusable, especially given that Warframe is free-to-play, so you aren't really losing anything by trying it out.

How Does Warframe Perform on the Steam Deck?

Warframe actually has default settings that run well on the Steam Deck. All I would suggest you change is to adjust the resolution from 1280x720 to 1280x800 to remove the black borders around the screen, I also disabled Depth of Field and Motion Blur for an increase in performance, as I don't really find these effects benefit the game visually either.

Here are the settings I used for reference, you can click the images to enlarge them:

The most intensive area I found in the game, is surprisingly your ship. The GPU pretty much runs at 100% the entire time you're on your ship, likely due to all the lights and reflective surfaces. Thus you can expect dips close to 50 FPS on your ship. But generally, while on missions or on planets, the game runs at a solid 60 FPS, with occasional stutters. Large groupings of players firing off visual effects can also reduce the frame rate, but that doesn't tend to happen in combat situations, just in hub worlds.

Power draw does vary greatly. While on missions, you can expect the power draw to be between 10-15W, but on your ship, it usually stands at around 18W or so. Temperatures vary accordingly between 55-70C range, so you do get some fan noise, usually when you're on your own ship. Expect about 2-2.5 hours of playtime from a Steam Deck LCD and around 3-3.5 hours from a Steam Deck OLED here, depending on where you're spending your time.

The controls work perfectly fine, so you shouldn't have any issues there.

Final Thoughts:

Warframe is a solid third-person shooter, and there's plenty of fun to be had here, especially for a free-to-play game. I can see why it has proved popular, with well-refined gunplay and movement, as well as customizable weapons and characters that let you specialize in whatever field you want. It feels like a looter-shooter crossed with an MMORPG in a way, and it's a pretty neat crossover.

It also performs great on the Steam Deck, with a 60 FPS experience possible without sacrificing visual quality and battery life, so this is definitely a game to check out if you want to try some free games.

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