Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands – Review
To fully appreciate the experience of playing Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, you must realize that you will be using a magical assault rifle to shoot numbers out of a shark with legs, all the while watching Will Arnett and Andy Samberg have a good time. Wonderlands’ cast, which includes Ashly ‘Aloy’ Burch as Tina and comedian Wanda Sykes as Frette, a robot, explains why sharks are walking by saying they “kill the ocean.” As a result of the fantastic cast, which effortlessly pulls off the completely absurd premise, I laughed out loud quite a few times during the course of this game.
Pros:
Clever writing
Gorgeous visuals
Varied levels and weapons
Fun story telling structure
Memorable characters
Cons:
Some minor pacing issues
Score – 9/10
At its core, this is a game that knows it is a game, and it’s being played in a game that knows it is also a game. This character is aware that it is a character in the DnD game. You’ll see Tina and her friends playing around on a tabletop board while talking about their “real lives” from time to time. A figure piece is slammed on the table when a new boss is introduced. As the bread and the filling, it’s just a meta sandwich. The lettuce, on the other hand, is meta in its own way. Metalettuce.
Your surroundings shift and change as cast members argue over rules, set up and location while you’re playing. Giant mushrooms take over the forest at one point due to a disagreement over how dank it needs to be. It’s a high point of the entire game when the cast is arguing in the sky above you about what you’re doing and everything changes to accommodate them. Everything is brought to life by the fast-paced, funny dialogue, even if it is just basic commentary or chat picking apart the action, plot, or characters. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that Tiny Tina is lonely and is playing the game to meet new people. When the other players don’t like the game, she’s pleading with them to stick around and not leave her on her own. In some ways, it’s a bleak contrast to the overall hilarity of the film.
Because the structured comedic moments are so good, I almost prefer a more linear game to this one’s more open-world setting. Looter shooter with a twist: the Overworld is a playable version of a tabletop setup, complete with push pins, bottle caps, soda cans, and other garbage. When Tina is confronted with the discarded Cheese Puff, she has to pretend that it is a magical barrier and not a forgotten snack. With your actual player character reimagined as a giant head, you explore the littered map in search of locations where you can engage in the shooter’s core gameplay. As a result, it’s possible to leave the rest of the cast behind and only hear your own character repeating his or her own dialogue. Until now, I’ve only heard a few lines, so I’ll let you know how it goes. Innumerable times).
Adding a little more structure could have also added a greater sense of surprise or variety. The game’s core mechanic is a never-ending cycle of shooting everything in sight until the counters run out. Despite the fact that activities such as dungeons and bandit camps exist, there won’t be much variety. The story, the side missions, and the little dungeon and loot areas all revolve around entering an area and shooting everything, and you get the picture. That being said, if you have any reservations about spending 20-40 hours listening to a one-note song with very little variation in texture, you should know that is your due warning.
Half the fun is finding and trying out different guns; you’ll settle on a favourite and think it’s irreplaceable, only to throw it away without a second thought the moment you find a new favourite. The shooting does feel good, though. As I progressed through the game, I became attached to a wide variety of gun children. It could be anything from a crossbow that shot a burst of explosive bolts that only exploded when the magazine was empty, to a vampire rifle that healed me by converting the damage it caused.
In addition to that, there are the classes and abilities that they bring to the table. A magic user, I used flaming rocks and magic missiles to attack my enemies in this role-playing game. After a short while, you’ll be able to choose a second class, which in my case gave me a mushroom companion to aid me in combat. Depending on how you level up, there are some interesting interplays between all of this: for example, buffs that stack as you use your abilities. In other words, the elemental damage done by my spells was multiplied by the damage done by my weapons. It adds just the right amount of complexity to the otherwise unchanging gameplay so that it doesn’t become boring after a few hours of playing.
After about 25-30 hours of playing, I finished the main storyline, which included a lot of side missions and grindy challenges like the shrine pieces you can find for permanent buffs. And that’s not even counting everything else that needs to be done. Side missions, bits, and a grind through a challenge mode called the Chaos Chamber await me in the end game. Arena clearing rounds can be made more difficult in exchange for better rewards. It goes without saying that playing in co-op with friends adds yet another dimension to the experience.
There isn’t much going on, but it’s all kept interesting by a great cast who make even the most ridiculous lines work. One mission asks you to find the “essence of pure snot,” which I found a little too childish for my taste. However, it’s still a lot of fun. In most cases, the tone is just fine. To begin with, there are some hilarious foes to face (like sharks with legs and mushrooms with teeth), as well as an unusually beautiful world to explore. Some lovely fantasy landscapes and a refined Borderlands cel-shaded look combine to create a stunningly beautiful game at times. Lighthearted fun may be exactly what you need after spending a lot of time grinding on Elden Ring, or if you’ve just been going through the motions in general.
