Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands
Developer Gearbox Software
Publisher 2K Games
Format PC (tested), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Release Out now
BOXED IN
The greatest foe you face in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is, as ever, the dreaded Borderlands inventory limit. We’ve heard the arguments for capping inventories: working out what to keep is part of the challenge, if not the fun. But in a game defined by its indiscriminate loot drops, capping the inventory has always felt rather meanspirited. It’s past time that Gearbox found another way of motivating players to keep their enormous arsenals in order. As in previous games, any dropped rare items you miss are invisibly transported to a lostand-found locker in the world’s hub area, but this also has a cap. Adding insult to injury are the game’s cosmetic outfits, which have to be stored in your inventory before you can actually unlock them.
You don’t have to be a comedian to know that jokes are less funny the second time around, especially if you pad them out. So it proves with Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, which builds a full game around the “what if your shooter happened inside a D&D game?” premise of Borderlands 2 DLC Assault On Dragon Keep. Playing as a nameless custom protagonist (among the first things you do is paint the model), you once again join Ashly Burch’s wasteland brat Tiny Tina for a round of Bunkers And Badasses after crash-landing near her lair. Your garrulous friends Frette and Valentine are relegated to the status of co-narrators after filling out their character creation sheets incorrectly. The result is a passable, sporadically heartfelt, often abrasive fantasy shooter that takes Borderlands nowhere we haven’t been before.