Darkness 2 developer making Warframe, a free to player co-op shooter

Warframe! It's a name that calls to mind angry portraits battling together in a brutal yet artistic conflict. Sadly that isn't what the game is about. Warframe is actually a free to play, third person shooter being made by the developers of the Darkness 2. On the plus side that means there's still time for me to trademark Art Shooter 2020: Da Vinci's Revenge.

Warframe (not to be confused with Crytek's free to play shooter Warface ) is being made by Digital Extremes. The Darkness 2 was their most recent project, but those with longer memories may remember them as as the guys who helped Epic create Unreal and Unreal tournament back in the '90s.

You play as members of an alien species called the Tenno that has been enslaved by another, meaner and nastier alien alien species called the Grineer. Like many oppressed people throughout the centuries, the Tenno plan to win their freedom by donning cybernetic ninja-style exo-skeletons and completing four player randomly generated co-op missions. As depicted (very slowly) in this announcement trailer.

Over on Eurogamer , Digital Extremes CEO Jason Schmalz spoke about his happiness in returning to PC development, saying: "In many ways, we're going back to our PC action-based roots. Free-to-play is like shareware 2.0! Once again, we're connected directly to our end-user. They decide whether or not to pay for their experience and we listen to their feedback and continually improve the experience to make it worth paying for."

Warframe will enter beta this Autumn. If you're interested you can sign up right away on the Warframe website . Alternatively you can read our The Darkness 2 review to see what we thought of Digital Extremes' latest outing.