Tiny Tina's Wonderlands

Even with one of Borderlands' most loved characters leading the charge, this experience feels like the start of something new: a rare spinout from an existing series that deserves just as much of the spotlight. As someone who has played plenty of Dungeons & Dragons, I adored how often Wonderlands reminded me of rolling a 20-sided die with friends. It’s a love letter to on-the-spot creativity and friends enjoying each other’s company in a make-believe world.

The characters are once again at the center of the game’s comedy, and the performances are great (when the actors are actually committing to their roles). But, because this is more Borderlands, a lot of the same annoyances with the series persist, especially when it comes to inventory management and the sheer amount of meaningless loot. Really, Wonderlands’ worst offense is that it can’t get over the series’ legacy of looting and shooting, and misses the opportunity to take real inspiration from the tabletop worlds that it parodies.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a fantastic fantasy take on Borderlands’ tried-and-true looter shooter formula. As spin-offs go, it sticks dangerously close to its past successes which at times felt a bit unoriginal and some of the new stuff it tries, like procedurally generated combat encounters, didn’t pan out terribly well. Luckily, the excellent writing, hilarious performances from an all-star cast, and ridiculous combat continue to shine brightly and make this tabletop-inspired explosion-fest absolutely worth your time.

Tiny Tina's Wonderlands takes the classic Borderlands formula and puts its own spin on it in a mostly successful attempt to blend fantasy and sci-fi. Though the ending didn't land as well as it could have, the entire journey is well worth playing.

While other looter-shooters bolt on crafting systems or try to make you care about gear levels and repeatable activities and collecting 15 different kinds of shards (why is it always shards?), Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is simply another game of shooting bad guys with ridiculous guns so you can take even more ridiculous guns off their corpses. And sometimes, in-between that, it delivers a gag about what a mess the average game of D&D is that hits me like a knife in the heart.