Warframe on the Switch

The Nintendo Switch has a handful of free to play games. It’s mostly really popular games like Fortnite and Rocket League. But also on that list is a long-term favourite of mine. Yes, I have been playing Warframe on my new Switch. Because, well, I have to, don’t I? I adore Warframe as a game, and I wanted to experience it on a new games console.

Turns out, I have no idea how to play a shooter game on a console…

Yeah, uh, small problem here. Not only is the Switch is my first ever handheld, but, well, Warframe is one of the first shooter games I’ve played on a console. Sure, we had games on the Playstation 2, particularly Ratchet and Clank, but they played a lot more slowly than Warframe does. And had way better aim assist.

Here though? With two sticks, one for camera and one for movement? I have no clue.

To put it another way…

E Prime took me like 5 minutes to complete.

Yeah, that’s… kinda how bad I am at these sorts of controls. Thank heavens that 1. everything was low level and 2. I had my trusty Skana on hand, because it took me forever. Most of my time was spent moving my camera stick to match my movement stick, so I could reliably aim at things. Shooting often requires me to stand still so I can aim better. There is supposedly aim assist but I haven’t seen it in action yet. If anything, being unable to aim is quite a big distraction, that I am kinda forgetting the ninja side of things.

Of course, this is of my doing. Someone else who is used to console controls would probably be fine.

It really doesn’t help that B is the back button for everything. Normally, at least for all the controllers I’ve used, the bottom button is what you use to select things and also what you jump with. While B is Jump in Warframe, it’s also the back button for most menus. I’ve accidentally closed a lot of tabs and stuff because of it. Semi-related, the L1 button is having a hell of a time. It’s roll and crouch at the same time, and it’s messing with my bullet jumps nearly as much as

The UI is tiny!

Another of my peeves about Switch Waframe is that the UI is tiny. In missions, it’s not too bad, and you can scale it up and down as you please. However, if you go into more intricate menus, like, say, the Options menu… Everything is so damn small. And I’ve got to move my finicky cursor over very tiny options and a scroll bar that is insanely small.

In fact, I am having issues with what button does what. The menus are so small and squished that I have to squint to see whether I need to press X or Y. I feel like I’m missing something here, but I’ve combed through the options menu many times and haven’t seen anything.

However, it looks good…

What really amazes me is how smooth Warframe runs. I was expecting semi-long loading times, and the odd FPS drop. But no, nothing. It ran really smoothly. Clearly Digital Extremes hires some sort of genius wizard people to be able to crunch everything down and still be playable.

Unfortunately though, apart from some messing around, I won’t continue on this Switch-only account. I’ve already done the grind as Retvik, and done enough grinding so Phovos gets to MR6. There’s no way I’m going to do it all again. Even if I was good at console-aiming, I still wouldn’t.