{"id":7822,"date":"2022-03-23T14:00:02","date_gmt":"2022-03-23T14:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.xtremeservers.com\/blog\/tiny-tinas-wonderlands-review\/"},"modified":"2022-03-23T14:00:02","modified_gmt":"2022-03-23T14:00:02","slug":"tiny-tinas-wonderlands-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xtremeservers.com\/blog\/tiny-tinas-wonderlands-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Shoot thousands of goblins in the face with a flaming crossbow, throw gigantic meteors at gross anthropomorphic mushrooms, and hang out with a queen horse that\u2019s literally made out of diamonds. That\u2019s Tiny Tina\u2019s Wonderlands in a nutshell, and if that all sounds like a reskinned Borderlands 3, it\u2019s because it is. But that doesn\u2019t end up being such a bad thing! The excellent writing and stellar voice acting performances combine beautifully with the twisted and insane FPS mayhem to create something extremely memorable. This fantasy twist on the Borderlands formula delivers the adventure I dreamt of playing ever since playing the Borderlands 2 DLC that inspired it, and although it very much plays it safe in a lot of ways, it\u2019s been an absolute blast so far.<\/p>\n

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Tiny Tina\u2019s Wonderlands is an outrageous, fantasy-infused spinoff of the OG looter shooter and a direct follow-up to the Borderlands 2: Tiny Tina\u2019s Assault on Dragon Keep DLC<\/a> from 2013. As a game within a game, Wonderlands has you playing through a simulated tabletop roleplaying campaign called Bunkers and Badasses, a sort of alternate-reality Dungeons and Dragons that replaces generic fantasy tropes with absurdity, gratuitous violence, and tons of guns regardless of whether they\u2019re setting-appropriate or not. But that\u2019s the magic of this larger-than-life looter-shooter RPG, which throws caution to the wind and embraces chaos and nonsense in favor of ludicrous and memorable moments.<\/p>\n

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The best thing about a Borderlands game is I know I\u2019m going to laugh as I loot, and Wonderlands is no exception. The excellent, laugh-out-loud writing is elevated by one of the strongest comedy casts of any game, with Ashly Burch returning as the loveably obnoxious Tiny Tina, Will Arnett as the main bad guy, Andy Samberg as the over-eager dumb party member, and Wanda Sykes as the rules-obsessed player. Across the board the voice acting and comedy writing are better than they\u2019ve ever been in this series, and even without all the action-packed looting and shooting the adventure would be worthwhile just for the memorable characters and hilarious moments.<\/p>\n

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The excellent laugh-out-loud writing is elevated by one of the strongest comedy casts of any game.<\/section>\n

There\u2019s a mission where you try to figure out how to remove a character\u2019s impenetrable \u201cplot armor,\u201d another where the characters get way too suspicious about a background character in a blue hat, and another where you straight-up kill a bunch of Smurfs. The shenanigans never cease, and fans of tabletop roleplaying (like myself) will find plenty of references and inside jokes that are catnip for veteran dice-rollers.<\/p>\n

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That said, even while the tomfoolery is ever-amusing, the main story ends up being one of the weaker parts of the package. The pattern in Borderlands games to date has been that the dumb dialogue and silly sidequests obscure an over-arching story that\u2019s actually quite good, with characters we care about and moments of genuine emotion and shocking twists. I kept expecting Wonderlands to follow the same format, but instead it turns into a pretty predictable race towards a big bad guy you need to defeat before the credits roll. The fact that the whole adventure takes place within a game being played by Borderlands characters which has little to no impact on anything leaves the proceedings feeling pretty frivolous rather than innovative or subversive and not quite up to the standards the Borderlands series has set. But man, it\u2019s still so dang funny.<\/p>\n