Tiny Tina's Wonderlands always seemed like an odd idea for a video game. I, like most people, loved the Tiny Tina DLC for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Borderlands 2, but I enjoyed it precisely because it was a fresh idea and a break from the regular chaos of Borderlands. It's one of the best DLC packs ever, but 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Mass Effect did not make a Citadel spin-off title. Rockstar has never given us a full-blown Red Dead UndeadNightmare. But Gearbox has sensed an opportunity and taken it. Time will tell whether the concept can sustain itself across an entire game, but as far as the preview goes, the experiment appears to have been a success - though one that will likely fa💖il to convince doubters.
The best way to think of Wonderlands is like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Miles Morales or 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. I won't know how beefy the full experience is until next month, but this feels like a spin-off to tide fans over until Borderlands 4, whenever or whatever that may be. For those coming into this without the experience of Borderlands behind you, you won't be as lost as noobs playing Elden Ring (like me!) have been. It's way less complicated. It's just Borderlands but with a Dungeons & Dragons skin on it. Instead of Psychos, you shoot Goblins. Et cetera. It was an idea that worked the first time, and I enjoyed my brief dalliance in the preview, but I worry it may lead to diminishing returns.
The problem is it's still too Borderlands. I like Borderlands, but the next Borderlands game I want to play is Borderlands 4 - I expected Wonderlands to be a bit more wonderful. A great example of the game doing this wonder well is the grenades; these have now been replaced by magic spells. In Borderlands, grenades are mostly there to do one big chunk of damage, occasionally with some elemental effects. In Wonderlands, they can be a whole array of things, and I've only seen a sliver of the potential so far. I opted for magic knives, which swirl around their chosen target and cause death by a thousand cuts, damaging anyone who gathers near them. The guns, however, are just... guns. They're just machine guns and sniper rifles and pistols. In the DLC, this made sense, since it needed to build upon the foundations of Borderlands 2, which used guns. This is a new experience though, and yeah, it's again stylised as a D&D campaign with meta voice over reminding us that we're controlling characters who in turn are controlled by characters, but why does it need to so obviously be a gun? I'm not expecting the game to completely change the formula and combat - though this is a spin-off, so it should have more leeway - but even just an aesthetic change that makes the machine gun look like Ye Olde Metal Ballistic Exploder instead of a very modern machine gun with a laser dot scope would have gone a long way.
Other D&D references are hit and miss. The character builder now has the classic D&D six categories (Dexterity, Charisma, and so on), but the preview didn't give enough room to see how they impact the game. The skill tree feels like classic Borderlands, but there was space there to unlock a few decent tricks, even if most of it is the boring but seemingly necessary incremental boosts to damage/health/speed. I play D&D occasionally, and often have to ask what's going on, so I'm by no means an expert, but there were no gags that seemed tailored for D&D or written by fans for fans. It's just Borderlands humour with dragons. That makes sense, since this is just a Borderlands game with dragons.
I was confined to a single area in the preview, unlike the swathe of colourful locales in the trailer. As a dull and drab cavern, I'm willing to bet it's boring by design so as to reward players who stick with it with the bountiful horizons and lush landscapes the trailers have teased. I was able to sweep up most of the area without ever feeling like I needed to move on, but I was just about at my limit. If all the areas remain that size, or at least ask to stay there for the six hours or so it took me to wander through all the accessible areas and take out all my foes, then the game should have steady pacing. Any more though, especially if the game forces you to remain with busywork or grinding, and it would become a little boring and self-indulgent. Worse, the humour might become grating, and once Borderlands starts to annoy you, it's game over. I'm confident that I'll like Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, but I'm less confident it will be an across the board smash hit.
I haven't spoken too much about the general play, because it's just Borderlands. Please don't expect anything else. There are a range of (read: far too many) weapons, you frequently fight hordes with one bulky tank in there, and the game rewards positive play apart from the odd occasion when it punishes it in frustratingly unfair ways. Quests are 'go here, kill these things, listen to some jokes'. Babe, it's 4pm, time for your Borderlands spin-off! That's a dated reference, and Tiny Tina's Wonderlands' humour is even less of the moment, but it's Borderlands. I don't know what you expected.
I played through the preview the weekend before last, and spent last weekend dipping into it again to try out new weapons and such, making sure I had seen as much of the game as could be reasonably expected in the preview period. I did this final sweep while listening to the new Avril Lavigne album Love Sux. I realised the two were very similar - though there's 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:no Machine Gun Kelly cameo to look out for like there is in Jackass Forever and WWE 2K22. An Avril Lavigne album in 2022 shouldn't be any good, and I'm not sure it is, but I love it anyway. Tiny Tina's Wonderlands won't be going head-to-head with Elden Ring and Horizon Forbidden West at the end of the year, but I love it anyway. I just hope the joke doesn't get old.