Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands – Review

GameUtha April 21, 2022

Chaotic, humorous and fun. These are the three words that best describe Gearboxes’ latest entry in the Borderlands series. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands nails pretty much every aspect of the looter shooter genre while also bringing in fun new mechanics in an ageing franchise. Featuring some of the strongest voice acting and writing the series has ever seen, the game remains an absolute blast even after putting in several hours.  

Bunkers and Badasses

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a spin off based on the character of Tiny Tina in the borderlands games. The game is the direct follow-up to Borderland 2’s “Tiny Tina’s assault on Dragon Keep” DLC which was a major hit amongst fans. The game essentially takes place within the Borderlands universe through the game “bunkers and badasses” (which is based on Dungeons and Dragons) which in turn is being controlled by Tina. The player assumes the role of the “Fatemaker” and is destined to save the world from evil. The player chooses from a number of classes each having their own unique abilities and perks, later down the game you can pick a secondary class which allows you to do multiple playthroughs with several different combinations. The game does away with grenades and introduces spells to fit in with the game’s high fantasy setting.

Cast and Narrative

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands features an all-star cast comprised of Ashley Burch, who reprises her role as the eccentric Tiny Tina. Burch turns in an incredible performance by delivering an over the top performance without being overbearing which is difficult to do in roles like these. The game also features Will Arnett as the villainous Dragon Lord, the game’s main antagonist, Arnett delivers line after line of pure comedy and does it with incredible prowess. The Dragon Lord and Tiny Tina narrate the adventure as you play which I found to be very unique. Often times both characters turn the tides of the game completely when you’re least expecting it and that’s what keeps me coming back to the game.

Writing and narrative has never been Borderlands strongest attributes and Wonderlands is no different when it comes to this area. What the game does manage to do however is deliver “clever” writing, while not narratively sound the game features hilarious often times over the top missions and story beats which is unlike anything, we’ve seen in a Borderlands game before. There is a mission early on where the Fatemaker has to figure out how to remove a character’s plot armor and another one where the player helps a goblin fall in love with an NPC. The quests and dialogues are dumb and hilarious in the best possible way and more than make up for the shortcomings of the narrative.

Familiarity and Novelty

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands features Borderlands’ signature cell shaded graphics and an update to the open world formula by featuring vast playable area’s that the player has to make their way towards in a top-down board game like setting as compared to the traditional open world, it offers a nice break from the formula and is in keeping with the board game/high fantasy theme of the game. At its core Wonderlands is a looter shooter and as such features a sleuth of different gun types, spells and melee weapons each offering different stats and bonuses. It offers all the bells and whistles those fans of the genre are expecting, much has remained unchanged however coming from Borderlands which is both a good and bad thing the familiarity is good but some form of iteration on the system would have been nice.

Endgame Content

The player progresses through a total of 40 levels across the roughly 15-16 hours of the campaign which is rather short given the games $70 price tag but the end game more than makes up for it. Once you reach level 40 you unlock the myth rank which is another form of progression that allows the player to increase their power and acquire new abilities. The main endgame content comes in the form of Chaos Chambers which are repayable randomized dungeons featuring enemies, bosses and challenges. Chaos Chambers allow the player to earn legendary loot and level up, they are often times challenging requiring you to team up with other players but they are also so incredibly fun and chaotic.

Performance and Shortcomings

The game runs at a native 4K at 60FPS on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and also offers a 120FPS mode at a dynamic 4k. On PS4 the game runs at 1080p at 30FPS.

In my time with the game, I didn’t encounter any major bugs or glitches but SWIFT, Gearbox’s cross play service was consistently down during launch weak which made teaming up with friends very hard.

Verdict

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