Tone it down
The comedy ofBorderlandsis like a high-recoil submachine gun.
For Borderlikers, the gun compulsion and farty japes will be enough.
As that, Tinalands is fine.
It is also 100% not for me.
The big hurdle first: I find Tiny Tina hard to stomach.
It takes patience to get past how baseline annoying she can be.
It is low brow, high tempo.
One character is described as a “half-bard”, a solid joke at the fantasy genre’s expense.
Enemies blurt some great lines on death (the catch being you will hear them a hundred times).
The superior script-flips got me laughing.
But there are a lot of duds and nose-whistlers in between.
And there’s a spell slot as well, with randomly generated spell tomes any class can equip.
Arcane tricks include ice spikes, fire blooms and vampiric area attacks.
My favourite spell summons a large meteor that slowly crushes and burns everything beneath it.
He fulfils a similar function as the insectoid pet thatso pleased Nate in Borderlands 3.
I’d soon learn my character is officiallyTiny Tina’s Wonderlands' best class.
But it’s worth checking that link if you want to see what others are capable of.
You trade points for small percentage boosts, pumping up gun damage or elemental damage or shield strength.
This is still Borderlands after all, no matter how many medieval cobblestones you stain with goblin blood.
Loot pinatas burst out of the heads of minibosses or pop out of spinning bonus dice in hidden alcoves.
Borderlands is heuristics writ silly.
I only find Tiny Tina’s brand of it a little too transparent and overwrought.
Enemies blorp into existence with equal magicality.
But for my tastes these are further marks of transparency.
Signals, intentionally meta or not, that you are grinding up the loot ladder in a video game.
Or the feeling of movement and blasting inDestiny 2, nigh-unsurpassable.
Borderlands popularised the numberblood shooter but I’ve always leaned towards others for their less chaotic pace.
And that’s the case here.
But this is the kind of tune-in/tune-out blastabout Borderlands has always been.
Or you might live in the same lootworld and divvy out shotguns like a merry band.
Either way, it’s all very functional.
That was a nice surprise.
No, this is for bingeing.
In some quests, I could feel myself meeting the game on its own fractal-brained level.
But it doesn’t last.
I’ve bounced off Borderlands in the past because it lacks some underlying motivation.
These games often feel okay moment to moment.
The deeper issue is that comedy is about upending expectation.
Yet Borderlands games are built to a rigid formula, often the butt of its own metafictional jokes.
So I won’t consider myself a late Borderlands convert, chalk up another bounce.
