The game that inspired Warframe is free on Steam until Saturday
The multiplayer third-person shooter Warframe has been around for more than a decade, and by any measure it's a major success. It's sometimes compared to Destiny, but its roots actually go back much further, to a third-person shooter called Dark Sector that was announced in 2000 and eventually released in 2008. If you missed it back then, you can pick it up right now for free on Steam.
Digital Extremes is making Dark Sector free—for keeps—for no particular reason that I can detect except that it's a holiday, also Black Friday, and that it wants to remind everyone about the big Warframe: 1999 update that's coming out in December. It promises to be the game's "wildest update yet," taking players out of Warframe's far-future setting and dropping them into the end of an alternate 20th century, complete with '90s instant messenger clients, motorcycle stunts, an Infested space mutant boy band, and even—thanks to Baldur's Gate 3—Warframe's first-ever romance system.
As for Dark Sector itself, players will take on the role of covert operative Hayden Tenno, who is infected by the Technocyte Virus while on a mission and ends up with "powerful, inhuman abilities unlike anything he has ever seen. Now, he must evolve with his powers, survive, and become a hero." It's dated now but more than just a historical curiosity: Dark Sector was pretty well regarded when it was new and remains "a legit great 7/10" game, according to PC Gamer's Rich Stanton: "Wanging that death-frisbee off of goons really did not get old." Also, it's literally free. You're not going to beat that.
Dark Sector is yours for the taking on Steam until 12 pm ET on November 30.