Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands review: Bunkers, badasses, Borderlands again

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Booting up Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, I found myself wondering why it’s not called Bunkers & Badasses. That’s the name of the in-universe game that the characters are playing. And it’s much more indicative of what you’re getting than “Wonderlands.” Include Tiny Tina’s name if you really must have the branding, but calling it “Wonderlands” implies a level of fantasy influence that this game doesn’t really possess.

If that sounds like a condemnation, it’s not intended to be. Wonderlands is essentially a tabletop RPG campaign thrown together by the unusual titular character. It has a lot of good, light-hearted humor, and it’s fun to play — that’s all it really needs to cut it as a new entry in the Borderlands series. What it doesn’t have is any distinctive flavor of its own, despite its best efforts.

Let’s clear something up right away: If you liked Borderlands, then you have a strong chance of liking Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. The gameplay is similar — virtually identical — to that of the main Gearbox series. It also retains the series’ trademark humor, in that the jokes don’t always land, but they’re always told with conviction and at max volume.

I primarily played a Spellshot, the Wonderlands equivalent of a magic class. I naively thought that would be the class least likely to play the way the typical Borderlands game does — not sure why, in retrospect. But when my character picked up an assault rifle, I dispensed with the notion that this was going to be anything but another Borderlands.

In fact, it’s been a struggle to even get my thoughts in order on this game because every way I can think to describe it goes