Video Gamers Podcast - Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

Join the millions of gamers optimizing their setup with the Opera GX browser. Throw resource-hungry browsers away, and click with confidence with Opera GX: https://operagx.gg/MultiplayerGamingPodcast Thanks to Opera for sponsoring this episode! Gaming Vault Hunters Paul, Michael and Josh are back in the Borderlands universe as we Deep Dive the recent gaming release of Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. A unique Overworld and some minor changes to gameplay refresh the title, but is this worth your gaming dollar? Check out this awesome episode to find out! Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the year 2022, gamers everywhere are in despair, with no good gaming podcast to listen to. Until out of the ashes arose the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast, with its funny hosts, incredible gaming content, and phenomenal community. You too can be the hero the world needs by heading over to MultiplayerSquad.com and helping support the show. Now, let's hear from our champions in this incredible episode. Roll for initiative, suckers! Hello, squadmates! Welcome back to another episode of the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. We are so excited to have you all with us here today. We are three dads that get together to chat about gaming, and today is a Deep Dive Monday where we will be spending our entire episode talking about Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, a spinoff game from the Borderlands universe. Please rate our show five stars and leave a written review, and a very special thank you

to everyone who has already done so. And then if you like what we do and you want to help support our show, come check out our Patreon page at MultiplayerSquad.com. Support starts at five bucks a month, and you'll get some sweet perks like two extra Quick Take episodes every week and all of our podcasts a day early. All right, time to knock out our introductions. I am your host, Paul, the bunker master of today's pod. I'm joined here, as always, by two of my best friends. First up, we have our Mr. Torg, sporting a sweet 70s stache. With no regard for whales or nature, he's too busy blowing up the freaking ocean.

It's Josh. I, Torg fits my part, yes. It's just a monster gun, explode everything. No finesse, no nothing. Yeah, just. No political correctness. Yeah, just... No political correctness. Yeah, just kaboom.

And that's it. Full disclosure, legendary supporter Jake might have DM'd me and said, you're going to make Josh Mr. Torg, right? Of course. Yes, absolutely. All right, and then we have our Claptrap. Always bring in that positive and optimistic attitude while on the search for the sword extra caliber it's michael hello everybody i can't breathe because i'm thinking about

josh's intro right now actually yep you gotta love it all right so the last couple of weeks we have been playing tiny tina's wonder. Although before we jump into our full deep dive content, we do have a little bit of housekeeping to do. And you guys know what my favorite thing is to do on the show, right? I believe. Make fun of me. Well, yes. Okay, fair enough. Number one is to make fun of Josh.

He's old. He's bald. You guys know the drill by now. No, we have a new Patreon supporter. Not only did they join Patreon, they are a legendary supporter. Cream of the crop, top level, you know, Patreon support here. And it's from Michelle Butler, which sounds an awful lot like Michael Butler. In fact, for a minute, thought maybe michael signed up for legendary

status uh you want to tell the people who that is michael uh michelle is a wonderful sweet human being who is responsible for the most amazing human being which is the best video game player ever yours truly and for those who don't know that's me my mom so humble you know you got to keep it humble the funniest thing is the one for a second you said cream of the crop but i was like does cream corn grow in a crop like that and then i was like well we're talking about my mom yeah i'm so excited guys i need my mom to listen to the podcast because paul your mom used to support the show michael your mom supports the show my mom does not support the podcast because Paul, your mom used to support the show. Michael, your mom supports the show. My mom does not support the show. And I think there's something wrong with that. Mom, come on. Josh's mom. Yes. So yeah. Well, thank you, Mrs. Butler.

We really appreciate the support. Thank you for the support. It's a good show of love, though. By the way, Josh. It really is. It makes me smile. Like, I laugh. I'm like, also, I'm happy because your mom is giving us money now, which is great. I got no shame in taking parents' money. You know, but it is a very, very sweet gesture. So thank you, Mrs. Butler. Well, and the funniest thing is my parents don't play video games. The last game my dad played, I think, was NBA Jam 1993.

They really don't play games like that. I mean, he'll play some stuff on his computer every once in a while, but nothing we've ever talked about. But they just love the show because they like to listen to us talk to each other. And I'm like,

that's kind of a cool compliment. They listen to every episode. And it's just, thanks, mom and dad, from the bottom of my heart. It's very cool. It's very cool. It's very sweet. We really do appreciate the support.

And we also want to give a shout out to other legendary supporter, Red Letter. And of course, we owe shout outs to Epic supporters Yoda and Michael the Butler. So let's just call this the Butler cast at this point, because you guys, I'm pretty sure, are funding like a quarter of our podcast by this point all right and then josh i think you've got a review to read before we hop into tiny tina's i do they keep rolling in but i know this episode is going to be chock full of stuff so i just have one for you this time this one comes in from a longtime listener super cool guy pops into the discord every now and then he says he's shy but i've actually chatted with this guy a little bit

in the past and uh mad props to dark shaggy 06 who wrote this review and it's titled 90s music and it says best gaming podcast definitely i started listening to them a few months before my daughter was born, and right when the previous third host moved to my state. Even though I'm very silent and don't interact much in the community due to anxiety, I love hopping in from time to time to ask questions and give feedback. I am always made to feel welcome, and I can't wait till my daughter's old enough that I get more gaming time and can hopefully get on with some discord members love y'all ps waffles are good too this is such a wholesome episode what a nice review thank you dark shaggy you are always free

to lurk as much as you want in the discord nobody will judge you if you don't even want to chime in i know for me i'm definitely one of those people that love to sit in the back of classrooms and not one to normally speak up. So we totally get it. But you are certainly always welcome whenever you want to pop up. But yeah, what a great review. We really love it. Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you so much for writing the review. You're wrong about the Waffles piece, but we really do appreciate the love and the fandom and we appreciate you very much. All right. Well, I think that's all we have by way of housekeeping. Now, before we hop into Tiny Tina's, we're going to hear a quick word from today's sponsor.

And then we'll jump into our deep dive. You know, a lot of people ask us where we get our video game news stories from. And we've got to share a great tip with our listeners that like to stay up to date on everything in the gaming world we find a lot of our articles through the opera gx browser who we'd like to thank for being the exclusive sponsor of today's episode with the help of the amazing gx corner which is a special section inside the browser we easily locate and find articles on up-to-date gaming news, information, and perhaps coolest of all, free games. I like free games a lot. I don't know about Paul and Michael, but the only thing I like better than gaming is free gaming.

And the Opera GX's corner feature in their browser does the work for me in finding awesome free games to play. Check it out for free at Opera gx.gg slash multiplayer gaming podcast. You know, we know that there are a lot of different PC configurations out there. And one of the coolest features of opera gx is that it gives you 100% control over your RAM and CPU usage. In fact, I bet if you went into your task manager right now and took a look at the stats, your browser is probably using way more of your resources than you think. I love the fact that this will allow you to kill your CPU draining tabs, free up network space, and divert resources where you need them without needing a technical degree in Windows or risking messing something up. You can do all of it from right within the Opera GX browser. And I love being able to put my PC's power exactly where I want it,

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Let's get back into it. Shazam! All right, guys. Here's Epic Games Store's description of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. Which, by the way, I'm not going to say the full name anymore. Let's just call it Tiny Tina's. Are we all cool with that? Deal.

I don't know, Paul. I kind of like the Wonderlands part. It makes it feel magical. What if we just call it Wonderlands instead? No, that's kind of weird. That will confuse me. Tiny Tina's. Yeah, so here's what Epic Games Store has as the description. call it wonderlands instead no that's kind of weird i will confuse you yeah yeah tiny tina's uh yeah so here's what epic game store has as the description embark on an epic adventure full of

whimsy wonder and high-powered weaponry roll your own multi-class hero then shoot loot slash and cast on a quest to stop the dragon lord all right now for anybody who may not know, Tiny Tina is actually a long-running character in the Borderlands series. Tiny Tina has been around since 2013. Borderlands 2 was the first time that had a DLC called Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep, which was beloved by players and critics. And now Tiny Tina gets her own installment here in the spinoff series. And I know that I played the first three Borderlands games. The only one that I skipped was the pre-sequel. Josh, I know you and I played Borderlands 2 and 3 together. Did you play any of the others? I played Borderlands 1, 2, and 3, and now Tiny

Tina. So I've not played the DLCs. I don't remember a lot of Tiny Tina, to be honest with you. I didn't play the DLC for that. So I wasn't super familiar with her character going into this one. Yeah. But she's hilarious. Yeah, I'm exactly the same way. I did not play any of the DLCs, only the base games. Michael, I have no idea what your history is with Borderlands. Have you played any of the prior games? Or was this your first one? No, I have played two of them. I've played a little tiny bit of one. And I've played an oddly large amount of the same bit of two. Because for some reason, a bunch of my buddies and I've played an oddly large amount of the same bit of two because for some reason, a bunch of my buddies and I, we used to always want to get together

and play a game that was together. We could play on the same PlayStation. It was like, let's throw Borderlands in and just play around for the Borderlands 2 and play for a little bit. And then we play for a couple hours and then a couple of years later, we do it again and then do it again.

So I've never played all the way through the campaign or anything, but I played enough to be fairly familiar with the lore and the gameplay and how awesome it again. So I've never played all the way through the campaign or anything, but I played it enough to be fairly familiar with the lore and the gameplay and how awesome it is. So you're just super familiar with that first chunk of Borderlands 2. Yeah, the first two hours. That's like when I worked at Harkins Movie Theater, where I would have to do theater checks, where I'd have to walk through every movie during the first half hour.

And so I knew, I still to this day, basically know every movie that came out 2001 to 2002, the first half hour, I've basically got memorized of everything that came out at that time. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. And actually, thinking about it, I've actually probably played about halfway through Borderlands 2, to be honest with you. Yeah, now I'm a huge fan of the series.

And those of you out there listening, I assume you're at least, most of you are somewhat familiar with Borderlands. We actually did a deep dive on Borderlands 3 back in December 2020. So if you want to go back, you can definitely check that out. You can just scroll back and find that one from December of 2020. Now, Josh, if anyone out there has no idea what Borderlands is, what would you say sets apart a Borderlands game? Two things, in my opinion.

Number one, the graphics. Borderlands is famously cel-shaded, and so it has a very, very distinct look to it. I feel like if you gave me a screenshot of any Borderlands game anywhere in the gameplay, I'd be like, oh yeah, that's Borderlands. Yeah, very recognizable. Right. So it has a very, very prominent art style. And then the second thing is guns. It is... I mean, I think they said something like there's some kind of weird generator thing, but it has millions of weapon combinations that can kind of pop up.

So when I think Borderlands as a series, I think the art style, and I think the fact that you're going to obtain lots and lots of guns. I think that's what I liked so much about it, too, just to throw out at the end there, is I love the art style, but as a non-first-person shooter FPS player, I just liked how many different guns there were. And also, I just... One extra thing. I always feel like Junkrat from Overwatch kind of feels like he was lifted out of Borderlands.

I could totally see why you would say that. Yeah. I get that 100%, actually. The over-the-top character, his look. Even his gun, really. Yeah, exactly. That's kind of fit. that's a really good call i feel like that's why i liked him when i was playing and back when we played overwatch

i'm familiar with this a little bit and there's no reinhardt so yeah i've always kind of felt like junkrat could have come out of borderlands or the mad max movies i feel like there's a little bit of overlap there but yeah for borderlands it's definitely the looter shooter. And then I think also larger-than-life characters. So characters that have super strong personalities. They're very funny. It's very extra and over-the-top. I remember in Borderlands 3, there's a character who runs around in his underwear and a cape the entire game and stuff like that. So I think the humor is definitely central to it all as well.

Now, Tiny Tina's just released a couple weeks ago on March 25th, and I think one of the reservations that we had was, is this just a reskinned Borderlands game that does not really offer anything new? Like, is it just a reskin that's a cash grab or is it actually something that's new and different now that we've all had a chance to play it for the last two weeks? What do you guys think? We actually talked about this because we hyped it a little bit because we got excited about the news that Tiny Tina's was going to be releasing soon. And then we actually did talk about this on a previous episode where we said, hey, it looks fun. It's got the Dungeons and Dragons feel to it. So they've gone a slightly different route.

But we did talk about the, man, is this just a reskin? Is it just going to be Borderlands all over again, but with a D&D type theme? And having put probably 20 hours into that maybe 15 20 hours into this game i think it is 100 a reskin cash grab do you i was i really i really had no idea what you guys would think what about you michael uh no mine's the opposite now granted that i only my limit my limited my limited piece with borderlands obviously is obviously, it's a little bit older. I just think, here's the thing. A reskin cash grab, to me, is basically just cut and paste, same thing. Transformers 3, Transformers 4, it doesn't offer anything new.

It's the same thing, right? To me, this, I think, is more of a faithful, fun sequel than a reskinned cash grab, because I think there's enough unique elements about it, especially one of the pieces we'll get to talking about later on, that just kind of makes it, to me, feel more like a Western space type of game, this is instead you playing as a character who is sitting down at a tabletop game playing with Tiny Tina and two other characters, Valentine and Fret. And so you get to create your own character, and then you are basically carrying out this dnd type of campaign and i think the major difference because that's like the difference story-wise and then gameplay wise the biggest difference is that they got rid of grenades which were really an important part of borderlands and instead they give you one spell slot or maybe two depending on your class and they added melee weapons so So I think gameplay-wise, I would agree with Josh. It basically plays identical to every other Borderlands, but I do

think that the story and the context and the overworld, which we'll talk about later, does make it feel quite a bit different. So I could totally understand the argument either way. I feel like in some ways it is very new, and in some ways if you've already played a lot of borderlands and if you're not itching for a borderlands game i don't think this game is going to do very much for you but if you're a huge fan i think this is different enough that it'll kind of suck you in yeah and i don't i won't go into like you know the class system yet because we're going to talk about that later on but perhaps this is why i didn't feel so much like it was reskin is because of how I played this game. Yeah.

I mean, Borderlands 3 had the class system too. Actually, I think all the Borderlands have had different classes. Now, they do mix it up a little bit with the ability to multi-class. We'll talk about that a little bit later as well. I just – I mean, I know I'm a little cynical with lazy game making, and I'm not, that's not to say that there's not a lot to enjoy about Tiny Tina's, but playing the game confirmed my thought that this is a cash grab. Like, are they just going to reskin? They didn't even reskin some stuff, man. The vending machines are exactly the same. the safes that you find cash in are exactly the same like there is so much about this game that

is unchanged at all from borderlands 3 and borderlands 2 that it's hard to ignore is the story different and is the story great yes it is is the humor ramped up to a 13, whereas Borderlands has always been a 12? In my opinion, yes, it is. So there are definitely differences. But man, for me, they got lazy in making this game, in my opinion. Oh, man. So here, again, and I love to argue with you sometimes. I agree with you in a lot of those respects.

But I think if it's just a reskin cash grab, I think they're not going to put a lot of those respects. But I think where the not late, like if it's just a reskin cash grab, I think they're not going to put a lot of effort into making the story so creative and so humorous and so funny. I think they just said, hey, we have a working game. We have something that works. We know it's going to sell. And they probably made a choice back then on, do we just lazy it up all the way? And they said, no, we're going to make it a different story, different funny, and make it feel a little bit different, I guess. I don't know. I'm kind of going in circles here for a little bit, but I think there was so much effort put into the creative side of it that wasn't just the graphics and the gunplay, if that makes sense. Yeah, I think it's a tough job making a spinoff like this because you want it to feel similar to

Borderlands, and you don't want to change too much where it's completely different, but you don't want to leave too much the same. And the fact that we're kind of falling on both sides tells me that maybe they actually kind of did a good job in that regard. But I think since Michael brought up the classes, let's talk about that for a little bit. So in the prior Borderlands games, there are different classes, but you play as a pre-built Vault Hunter, right? So they have like a name and a class and that's kind of how that works. In this game instead, you create a character, you create how they look, you pick their gender, you do all these things, and then you get to pick

the class. And so the classes that are available in tiny tinas are spore warden spell shot burr zerker not not ber zerker but brr zerker graveborn stabomancer and clawbringer so you know just the basic classes that you can play in any game, right? Standard, standard fare. So I'm very curious to know, you know, we did a little bit of multiplayer, but not a whole lot. Our schedules didn't line up terribly well the last couple weeks. Michael, what class did you pick? And can you tell us a little bit about how it works? Absolutely. And this is the part where I was saying earlier when I was saying that I didn't think it felt as much like a Borderlands, because I picked a class that really is almost more melee-based than anything else. I picked the Berserker. Oh, nice. as far as overall the game, but not yet. The spoilers. But it's more melee-based. I started there, right? Really, the Berserker, as the name implies,

is kind of a frost-based. You kind of see where we're going here, right? It's cold outside. So a lot of the things that it focuses on is slow through ice, stuff like that. So your weapons, even, what you do with them is I'm using my gun actually more to slow something down so that I can go whack it with this giant axe a little bit more. And that's kind of the whole

point of it. It's just having fun freezing things and stuff like that. Also, you have your typical berserker. It's funny because it's called the berserker, but you have the typical berserker every single game spinning attack where you go and just you whirlwind around um and then it also has abilities like where if you uh kill things consecutively you get to keep doing more and more damage so even though it's a funny planet it really is your typical berserker but with the frost piece of the slowing and stuff like that j, what class did you play? I thought that this game, and I remember talking to you guys about this, I thought that with the D&D aspect, it being Borderlands, that they were really going to heavily move away from the guns and more into the melee aspect with this. And

they kind of touted that a little bit in some of the trailers and stuff. And I went, well, if this game is going to be more melee focused, I've got to go with the Stabomancer. I just want to run around stabbing people. It's the best name out of all the classes, I think. Stabomancer really sticks out. It's very funny. Completely agree. And I was like, well, this is totally me because I just want to run around stabbing things. And the Stabomancer, because it does tell you there's's two main skill trees and one of them was that you can turn

invisible and i'm thinking like oh like stealthy stabbo rogue guy sounds great let me roll with that um and it you know it it did feel a little unique like his ability like every class has two main abilities depending on which tree you pick. And you unlock the second tree after a few levels. But like the Stabomancer's main thing was that I can shoot out my melee weapon and it'll sit there and spin in place in like a decent sized AoE and just wreck house with wherever it's spinning around. You know, the skill trees in Borderlands kind of remain what they were before in that you can really kind of cater, do I want to make that really, really strong? Or do I want to make that trigger a lot of status effects on my guns and really amplify those? So there is a decent bit

of build diversity there. But yeah, I enjoyed the Stabomancer. I didn't think there was anything wrong with it. So neither of you had a companion, right? It's just you and your weapons. No, I did not. Okay. Well, not yet. So this kind of sets me apart a little bit than you guys, because I picked the Spore Warden, because I read the descriptions and Spore Warden was the one that sounded the most out of left field. And so, of course, with my personality, that's what I had to pick. So the Spore Warden runs around with a mushroom, which is your companion, and it spreads poison everywhere it goes. I guess like spores coming off of a mushroom. And not only that, but after you level up a couple of times, I was able to put a point into my mushroom that he would run around and fart poison clouds everywhere that we go and not only that my character amazing would make comments

about my mushrooms farts the entire time and so this was actually maybe my favorite part of tiny tina's which you guys would not have even experienced, my character would yell things like, give me a warning next time! Because you would hear the effect, and you get the green clouds everywhere. And my hero would also, I remember the first time I heard it, it actually made me laugh out loud. My character yelled, oh, what am I feeding you? Am I supposed to be feeding you? So that, I thought that was really funny. The only downside is that there were only like five voice lines that were unique to this.

And pretty soon within an hour, you've heard the same voice lines eight or nine times. And it actually got kind of stale pretty quick. But that did actually make me laugh. Wait, is that a fart joke? It was not, but unintentional. but unintentional i didn't pick that one up good job dusting crops again i see that was another one that my character would yell uh yeah and one thing that i liked with my character is i put all of my early points and abilities into critical hits because with the spore warden one of the abilities is that if you get a critical

hit your bullets from your guns will ricochet to another character and so i put everything into crits and i'm rolling entirely with guns while my mushroom runs around and kills stuff and also i don't know why but the spore warden can summon three tornadoes that home in on enemies and hit them and cause freeze damage. So that was my spore warden. I bet we've heard of Sharknado. Are these Fartnadoes? They are Fartnadoes. I think that would be fair to call them. Sure, why not? So in addition to the three that we played, just to give you a little bit of an idea of what the other classes are, the spell shot has a focus on using the spells. And so they allow you to equip two spells,

which you can use back and forth while also using your guns. The grave born is a magic class. They have a lich companion. And with that character, you can actually sacrifice your health in order to do more damage, which is kind of clever. And then the last one is the clawlawbringer, where you have a Wyvern companion, and you focus entirely on fire and lightning damage.

So that is a little bit of a rundown. I actually thought that the classes were very clever and very different from the other Borderlands games. I really did appreciate the different play style that the classes brought. Well, and actually, that's kind of what, what actually when i first started out playing this game i struggled with a little bit is i started playing my berserker more like you would play a borderlands game a lot more shooting first far away i actually even had a sniper rifle for the first couple of levels and then i figured out later on that you know just kind of through trial and error the berserker is actually supposed to be close combat a lot more and they say that if you're levels and then i figured out later on that you know just kind of through trial and error the

berserker is actually supposed to be close combat a lot more and they say that if you're actually kind of had to look up a guide a little bit they say if you're standing too far back you actually have a really hard time doing damage and you can't gain as much of those abilities like when you get multiple kills back to back and start doing more damage and so that's kind of where the class got unique for me is it wasn't just a normal shooter. It was like I needed to be in the action all the time. Yeah. The classes definitely affect the gameplay if you care about that. I mean, you can just go around running gun and shoot everything and not care about class abilities at all. Yeah. But for me with the Stabomancer, I went with this interesting mix because the class tree kind of focuses on the,

if you melee something, you shoot 20% faster for like six seconds after that. And if you kill something by shooting it, your next melee will be a guaranteed critical hit. Oh, so you gotta bounce them. So yeah, so I was bouncing back and forth between the two. And it's like, you can actually go down that tree, which is what I did to get very strong. And you can feel like 20% fire rate is a lot. So if I melee'd something and I had an SMG, it was just like after that. And I was like, oh, this feels really good. And then I'd build up these meters almost. You get stacks is what it is. But then I'd get 10

stacks. And then I'd nail something with a big broadsword, and it would just obliterate that thing at that point. So there was a neat kind of aspect in how the class you pick can affect the gameplay if you want. If you want to maximize that, that's definitely there, which I did appreciate a lot. Yeah. And one thing that should be noted is that once you hit a certain point in the story, it does allow you to select a secondary class. Now, I got really excited when I saw that, because I thought that meant I could switch back and forth and have a different set of skill points and all of that. But that's not exactly how it works. You still have your primary

class, and the secondary class just gives you their skill tree and you can start pumping points into that so i wasn't really thinking and i just immediately picked berserker which did not really align terribly well with my gun focused class but it does also give you the ability to use their skills so i screwed around a little bit with like the whirlwind ability and it made no sense for my class so it is in there It adds a little bit of an option to use some of another class's abilities. For me, it's funny because I went Berserker as well, but that's because the skills for the Berserker comboed very well with the skills of the Stabomancer. Because while the Stabomancer has a very long class ability, it lasts for like 16 seconds.

And the Berserker's class ability is like while you're using an ability, you're enraged. So you're doing a lot more damage. So I got a lot of bonus out of having the Berserker as my second class on that. So I did actually notice a difference from the multi-class aspect. And that's something that they've never done before in any Borderlands game. So that was actually a really neat add-on there. And I did notice it too. Yeah. So it's three classes, but since you can't have a secondary class, it's technically much more than that for how you want it to be. For me, I ended up putting still all of my points

into Spore Warden. And once I ran out of anything useful, then I started putting some in Berserker is kind of how it worked for me. So Josh, you were a little smarter about it. Now let's talk a little bit about story and the structure of the game. And I think it's fair to say that we're not going to share any major spoilers, but more in a general sense as we're talking about the game. You do have some famous voice actors that worked in this game famously valentine is voiced by andy samberg and fret is voiced by wanda sykes they are the other people playing the campaign with you and then you have tina who is voiced by ashley birch who by the way i don't know if you guys know this, she is also the voice actor of Aloy from the Horizon Zero Dawn games. Which, yeah, I was really shocked when I saw that, but...

I didn't pick that up at all. Yeah, same voice actor. Who'd have thought, right? And then the big bad of the game is the Dragon Lord, who is voiced by Will Arnett. And what I really appreciated about Tiny Tina's is, similar to Borderlands, the game is very self-aware, and they're not afraid to poke fun at things that are like, you know, there's a lot of meta humor. The Dragonlord, which is the big bad, actually says that he knows he's in your tabletop game that you're playing, and he's tired of being used as a prop, and he's actually pushing back against that. And so that kind of tells you a little bit about what the story and the structure is like.

Highly self-aware, very humorous, very funny, and it's definitely full of a lot of twists. The story was my favorite part of this game. And I don't mean strictly from a plot standpoint. This is not going to win Oscars as far as the depth of the story goes. But when this game starts and you realize Tiny Tina is explaining, you get the gist that your character's playing this tabletop Dungeons & Dragons game. And I guess they couldn't call it Dungeons & Dragons, but let's be honest, that's what it is. Exactly. And you meet the queen of the first town. What's her name? And the queen comes out and she's this diamond unicorn. And Tiny Tina's like, Hail Queen Butt Stallion! And it's like, wait, did she just say Butt Stallion?

I was dying. That's when I'm just like, okay. I love, like, I have very childish humor. I love the humor in this game. I was instantly laughing. The quests, the side quests, there are so many actual laugh out loud moments that happen. The dialogue makes you chuckle. Like, that part of this game is honestly second to none. So the whole plot about you're trying to get the Dragon Lord and the Sword of Souls or something like that, and the interactions there,

okay, that part of the story is all right. But man, the dialogue and the one-liners and just the hilariousness that they incorporate into this game is what really sets it apart for me. Yeah, that was kind of where I was at, too, when you just said, like, oh, Sword of Souls, whatever that is. You know, a lot of this kind of stuff in the game, as far as, like, your main plot line, is honestly something that probably one of your buddies came up with when you were actually playing tabletop, you know, Dungeons and Dragons. You're not going to be seeing anyone winning an Oscar or an Emmy off the story. But the dialogue, just the hilariousness of it, just the banter between the characters, too. That was one of the best parts was how they how they speak to each other. And I am definitely not spoiling this because you have to play this game for this one reason. But somewhere about, I don't know, probably about nine, 10 hours in, there is a little musical piece that I may or may not have

pulled up on YouTube, and I've been watching it all day long. Oh, that part's great. Oh, yeah. And then I think the major difference structure-wise compared to Borderlands is the whole overworld system. So Michael, do you want to tell the people a little bit about how the overworld works? Yeah, so the overworld really is a Dungeons and Dragons table, essentially, with a little bobblehead guy that moves around. But essentially, if you want to go into it, it's a way for you to kind of quickly move around to different parts of the world. It looks very different from the rest of the game because you're pulled out of first person into a third person perspective um but it acts just like a dungeons and dragons like if you were nerdy enough to have

like a big cardboard square with a bunch of little grids on it and you walk into this one little area you're gonna have a random encounter there and you're gonna have to fight these random guys um but it also kind of worked as a fast travel system, things like that. I think that pretty much really covers it. There's nothing too crazy about it, but it's just a giant game board and it just kind of adds that extra perspective to the game. I like that it had quests that were unique to the overworld itself that you would have to solve or kind of go into if you wanted to. None of them were necessary, but I did like the fact that there were characters in the overworld to talk to that would give you quests in the overworld apart from the actual game. So there was almost this mini third-person game within the first-person game that is Borderlands. And it was a nice, refreshing

change of pace. I found myself actually really enjoying the overworld quests and stuff like that and wanting to go do those, which tells me that I actually enjoyed that a pretty good bit. I did think that was a cool addition that they've not had in any of the other games either. Yeah, the artistic piece of it was kind of nice too, because it was actually scaled. When you're walking by, you walk next to a soda bottle cap, and it's like twice the size of your character so you actually felt like you were in a dungeons and dragons like you know like just map but you're right though the quests they were a lot more fun than than i think i originally gave

them credit for at first i thought it would be kind of annoying i'm like nah i'm coming out of a first person shooter i want to go back into that but then after a while i kind of found it a refreshing reprieve where i was actually looking forward to the next time I got there. It did add a little bit to the board. Sorry, Paul. But at one point, you have to make it to this area, but it's blocked by a Cheeto that Tiny Tina dropped on the board. Yeah. And so you're like, hey, there's a Cheeto in the way. And she's like, that's not a Cheeto. That's a magical barrier. And then all of a sudden, this lock appears on a Cheeto in the way. And she's like, that's not a Cheeto. That's a magical barrier.

And then all of a sudden, this lock appears on the Cheeto. And so there was a lot of that. I think it really helped to kind of tie in the fact that, oh, you are characters playing this board game. And the overworld really kind of helped to serve that and add another layer to the humor of the game. Yeah, you can kind of picture that behind the scenes, the four characters are just sitting at a table with props, but you get to play the game with the imagination in mind. And that's how you're playing. I thought that was a very clever idea. I did think that some of the quests were almost like a little underbaked. It was almost like they threw in some ideas like, well, we're not just going to walk between areas, so let's give them some quests like, hey, just go melee these nine things to get ore and just walk it back to someone.

That left me wanting a little bit, but it was a very clever idea to bring in the overworld, and I thought that was actually really cool. So just a couple last things about story, and then we'll jump into combat, because I think that's probably what we all want to talk about the most. But what did you guys think of the voice acting? Oh, I thought it was top-notch, man. Yeah, no, it was fantastic. And not just, like, I know we talked about the banter between different people. It was good acting. These are the kind of people that you really want, if you're watching a cartoon or something like that to actually give you some feeling behind it.

I got feeling from these characters a lot more than I get in a lot of video game voice dialogue, you know? Yeah, I thought it was really good. I thought Andy Samberg was really funny. I mean, I love anything he does anyway. But I got to say, despite the big names, I thought Ashley Burch completely stole the show. I thought she was by far the most interesting, the funniest character. And I thought that Wanda Sykes' character, they didn't give her a whole lot to work with, because she can be really funny in the right setting. But yeah, I was very impressed by the voice acting. It really does, I think, elevate the material to a little bit of a higher level because it brings a little bit of more notoriety with who's in it. Anytime Tiny Tina was the main focus was the best part, in my opinion. What she was saying, she gets upset every now and then because as your characters, you're not really taking this

Dungeons & Dragons campaign very seriously. She gets super mad at you. There's one part where she forbids you from saying anything or a certain word. Not anything, but she forbids you from saying a certain word. And then this character that she created that she loves says the word. I won't spoil anything there because it's a really, really funny quest. But I agree with you 100%. She absolutely ran the show, was the most interesting character. Anytime she was saying something, I was completely enthralled with what was going on or just laughing myself silly.

You're 100% right, though, about Ashley Burch. I did not believe you just now that she was Aloy at all. It's crazy. I did not. It is not the same actress i had to just check it out again and that's that says a lot though but the character was so good as far as just the she just it was just so inflected and so much uh rhythm behind like just the excitement all the time and then when she gets mad the little furl you know and it just i just loved it it's yeah she's very much a character that belongs in the Borderlands universe. Yeah, 100%.

There is nothing that she says or does. The inflection of her voice is so over the top. Every time she opens her mouth, it's absolutely hysterical. And so Will Arnett as Dragon Lord, I kind of still heard Batman from Lego. You know what I mean? He did a good job. And I love him as an actor, but couldn't hold a candle to Ashley Burch in this. So before jumping into combat, were there any, whether it's like side quests or certain elements of the main story without giving major spoilers, anything in particular you guys wanted to talk about?

Dude, the side quests. Oh, my goodness. The side quests in this game rival The Witcher 3 in the sense that it that it's like sure you can do the main story and it's fine but whatever you do do the side quests it's the best game because they really are man absolutely like the main story fine but you want absolute hilarity you want over the top questing you have got to do the side quests in this game man like i don't one side quest and you get it fairly early on so no spoilers is you talk to this farmer that's outside the main castle yes the farmer i love this and the farmer like has this thing for goblins so you're like oh okay well i'll help you like lure this goblin and then you do and then it's like

then this other person comes along and scares the goblin away or something like that. And now you're trying to set up this romance between this character and this goblin, but you have to go get stinky underwear. And it's like, no, that's not stinky enough. So you're fighting all these goblins and you're stealing their dirty underwear. It's absolutely bananas, man. So the farmer is pining for one of her neighbors. And the neighbor says, I would not date that person until there is a polka-dotted wearing goblin that recites poetry. And the farmer takes that literally and says, okay, well, we got to go find polka-dotted clothes, throw them on a goblin, and make them recite poetry.

And that's your entire side quest. And like you said, part of it is with attracting a female goblin, which you do by finding the stinkiest underwear in the lands. And so you're killing all these goblins and looting all of their underwear. There's just so much humor in the side quests. Like, one thing that made me chuckle as well is you're killing characters and you're looting their teeth. And then you go to return the quest and they're like, why are you holding all of their teeth? And my character's like, I don't know. It just felt right. But then later in the game,

there is a side quest where you collect teeth off of characters. So it's like this game just hits you with jokes left and right. The side quests I absolutely thought were so much better than the main story. I remember at one point, I was kind of shotgunning the main story, and I just stopped. And I just started doing all side quests. And I was like, oh, this is actually where the game shines. These are my favorite parts that I'm going to remember. I am with you 100%. The main quest, fine, that's the main game. But the side quests

are where this game absolutely excels. I mean, there's a lot of them. We could talk about the side quests forever. I was thrilled to see Claptrap in this game. Yes. The whole quest for Extra Caliber and Merlin and all that hilarity that goes on there. I mean, there's so many Easter eggs in this game. That was one of my favorite things. We just talked about in this last Twig episode about the return of Monkey Island and LeChuck's revenge and the pirate LeChuck and all that. And then we mentioned, here you go. Here's a complete main quest line Easter egg that pays homage to that game with a hilarious payoff at the very end that's referencing LeChuck.

And the pirate's name is LeChance instead. And there's all that stuff going on. But yeah, I mean, they do that so well in this game that the side quests are where it's at. So if you ever see an exclamation mark and you're playing this, go do it because you will not be sorry that you spent the time doing that. See, this unfortunately was very bad news for me because we talked about how it is impossible for me to get through a game without trying to get through all the side quests first. And I'm not doing it because the side quests are fun in most games because most games they're fine but in a lot of them it's like hey go in this guy's basement go kill these rats with your sword go get your money back and stuff

like that and so with this game i actually tried not to i was like i'm not gonna do side quests and now i will never know what to do for the rest of my life. I'm never going to know, like, do I have to do the side quests or not? Because they were so good. And to be fair, you did have a four-day camping trip. So you had a truncated time where Josh and I did have a full two weeks. You only had less than a week and a half. So you probably felt a little bit of pressure also to get through the story. Yeah, I did.

And I chewed through a lot of the story pretty early on. But there was a little bit of pressure there. That might have been a little bit of the motivating factor. But it was also kind of like, I don't play a lot of games that aren't really open world. And I was actually kind of excited to be in a shooter that I enjoyed. And I'm like, I want to see if I can get through the story. And then the side quests, of course, said, no, you're an idiot. You need to do side quests.

Yeah, I think the last thing that I'll mention in vague terms, it is part of the main story. But I do love that they build in jokes with playing Dungeons and Dragons in real life. So there's like an introduction of a certain character. And you and your teammates are absolutely convinced of what this character is going to do. It was so great. And you're voicing it. Yeah. And you're voicing it out loud.

And so, of course, Tina is like, oh, well, and she starts changing the story and giving you extra details about this character to try to change your opinion. And you're not really sure because you of course know playing it this game is going for the ultimate comedy so is this like where they're actually right and there's gonna be like a joke about that or is it actually gonna be that we're all wrong and i won't spoil of course the end of that quest but it's very very funny and it definitely plays off of dnd jokes if you've ever played it in real life, which I thought was absolutely great.

Yeah, it does a lot of that. I like that aspect of like, it's self-aware in that sense. It's also playing on the whole Dungeons & Dragons thing. So you've got these characters that are arguing with their bunker master, which is the DM basically. She's trying to keep everybody on track.

You guys are arguing or going separate directions. You're messing up her story. that quest that you were talking about you're kind of going off the rails and she's getting upset by that you know or you're you know you think something about this character and she's like wait i created this character and you're like no no no no no that character is gonna do something bad she's like no no yeah she's like you've got to love him and you're like no no we don't trust him at all and then starts to get a little vindictive and starts like then kind of getting mad at you and then almost like getting revenge back with what she starts doing with the story

so that that stuff's really very cleverly written very funny this just made me think of one thing um is the idea behind you know of most gamers game, not just video games. But, you know, there's a lot of people out there that probably have not played D&D who picked up this game as a Borderlands game. And I just wonder if that would take a lot away from the experience, not getting a lot of those references. Oh, yeah. Well, especially even the Monkey Island stuff. I mean, there's a whole, probably a good two-hour chunk of this game where all the Monkey Island references are going to go over your head. So it's not only just like LaChance versus LaChuck, but there is a pirate whose name is Bones Threewood. And in Monkey Island, the main character is Guybrush Threepwood. So they literally just took out one character in the name. They even make jokes about using insults during fights, which is the entire fight system in Monkey Island. And yeah, it's incredibly meta with a lot of inside jokes. I am sure there are tons of jokes that went over my head that I did not get. And I still absolutely loved it because it's funny enough

on its own merit. But if you get the inside jokes, then it really just takes it to a whole another level. That does make sense because I didn't remember I didn't play. I didn't play Monkey Island. Those went over my head and I still was laughing the whole part. So yeah, it's still clever. Answer my own question. All right. So let's talk about combat and weapons. Because when you talk about Borderlands, I think most people think about some of the hilarious weapons that you end up with, whether it's designed by the developer, or if just by chance, the game puts together the funniest combination with a weapon. Because like Josh said, there's millions that you can potentially get in this game.

Were there any particular weapons that you guys liked? Anything you ran across that was really surprising? Anything you want to talk about? I, it's weird. They, they definitely changed the weapons up a little bit. Like they still use the whole like Torg and,

and, and the different manufacturers determine the weapons. Now they have different names like Worm Weaver and stuff like that instead. But your pistols are basically cross, like little handheld crossbows. So they do try to make them a little bit more fantastical and mythical in that regard.

Like you're not walking around with necessarily like an M16 or something like that. So they do try to give it a little bit of magical quality. Like your shotguns have these magical crystals that you sprinkle salt over to reload them. I don't know where that comes from. But so they do try to keep the Dungeons & Dragons mythical theme going throughout the game.

But let's be honest, these are still Borderlands guns. And they're dropping at an insane pace. They all do something different. Sometimes it's a lightning gun. Sometimes it's an acid gun. Sometimes it lobs a big ball of lightning. Sometimes it shoots out a continuous Ghostbusters beam of lightning, you know, or something like that.

So the sky is the limit when it comes to the weapons in this game. And it is a Borderlands game. The gunplay is phenomenal. Like, honestly, I don't know how anybody complains about the shooting in a Borderlands game. Itplay is phenomenal like honestly i don't know how anybody complains about the shooting in a borderlands game it's fast paced it's hectic it's on point it's chaotic like it's everything that you could want for a game like that you know unless you're looking for like a precision shooter or something which you know you wouldn't be playing borderlands if you were or you just run around with just the sniper rifle all the time yeah yeah no you're right though i i do like the fast pace that i found myself trying

to get tricky with a bunch of shots like you know running over the building jumping seeing if i could like look and you know hit something from overhead and then pull my axe out and land on top of it like i could do things like that with it which i thought was really really cool and refreshing for someone like myself who does not really ever gravitate towards a shooter, I did have to aim still. Not as much. Like Josh was saying, it's not precision shooter. But I found that it was just a nice mix of just ridiculousness with speed. And also, let's be honest, my gun did a lot of spreading with stuff with my ice, so I didn't have to aim as much. But I just thought it was really, really cool the way that worked.

If anything, though, like you were saying earlier, I sometimes wished that the guns would drop at a less fast rate. Because there's so many. I felt myself stopping all the time to look and be like, is this gun better than one? Is this gun better than one? And then you've got to do inventory management. A lot of inventory. Because I got to the point where i would just stop picking things up and i would just look at it on the ground and if it didn't blow me away right away i just left

it there because you wind up spending so much time in your inventory screen and you either have to like hold g to drop it you know or it's like you have to find a vending machine and the vending machines are fairly sparse in this game yeah there was a part actually in the game where I have never been overjoyed in any game ever. And it was a part where, because I did the same thing. I'm done looking at this. I don't think this is a spoiler, really, but there's a part in the game where you come across a machine and basically it says, Oh, if you didn't pick something up that was important, it'll just show up here now. And I was like,

I don't have to look anymore. Oh my goodness. I don't have to. Oh. And also it's just, you know, there's, there's a spot when you're given a choice of like, Hey,

do you want to buy something that's going to do 20% more damage on your weapon? Or do you want 20 more spots in your inventory bag? And I was like, I want 20 more spots in my inventory bag. Cause I'm going to come across. I spent all my money maxing out my inventory space like instantly. Yeah, I there are a lot of effects that are straight out of the other Borderlands games that they just used in this one.

So it's not only having like fire weapons, frost weapons, acid weapons. Those are all in other Borderlands games. Even certain abilities like anytime you hit reload reload you throw the gun and it explodes on impact and i always said that was the worst weapon for me because i continually hit reload between every character that i kill and so i run out of ammo like immediately if i have that kind of weapon one of the ones i really loved was an SMG that would freeze enemies. But what's funny is the more full the magazine was, the faster it would fire. And so I don't remember what my ammo capacity was.

Let's say it was like 50 bullets. The first 20 would go... So you would have to strategically reload at the right time. time like am i better reloading or finishing off this character so there's like a lot of weapons that are really clever i loved the ghostbusters style weapon it was almost like reminiscent of uh symmetra back in overwatch 1.0 where her weapon would lock on all you'd have to do is hit an enemy a little bit and it would stay locked, and you're just doing tons of damage. I will say I really missed the grenades as much as I loved having the abilities. One of the really cool abilities I thought, a lot of the spells are actually really underwhelming.

They're kind of lackluster. There's a few that are great, but most of them as a whole, I felt were pretty lackluster. I think one of my biggest complaints is you can't tell what they do until you equip them. It'll tell you cast on yourself or press and hold and release to fire, but they don't really explain what it does. And so you kind of have to test them all out. The one I liked the most was I would call down a giant meteor, which would just kind of like materialize out of thin air and then crush something and then shoot little meteors all around it. That was pretty neat. But some of them are absolutely terrible. Like one, I could call in three wyverns that would fly and hit something, but it would do like as much damage as one bullet from my gun. So you really just have

to kind of play around with it all and figure out what works best for you. Yeah. The other thing that I found with the spells instead of the grenades was that when you chuck a grenade, it's going to carry a certain arc. You can kind of tell where it's going to go. And a lot of the spells, it was kind of hard to aim. I got something similar like what you had, Paul, but it was multiple meteors. So it was like the shower of meteors that would come down but it's like how do how does the game tell how far out i'm trying to to send these meteors so seven out of ten times it they would just completely whiff because it would take a second to materialize and then it would materialize like at the wrong distance

and then i was just like, this spells pointless. So yeah, I, I like what they went for to try to mix it up. I just don't think they executed it really well. Yeah. I thought it was perfectly fine. It's different, but I missed my old grenades in borderlands that would yell out every time

they'd bounce on the ground. Ow, ow, ow. Stuff like that was a lot funnier where the spells are all, more or less, they're just very serious. It's just a straight up ability. It does what it does. It's not as fun as the grenades. All right. Well, we're going to do our best to try to keep this one under an hour and a half. So those are our thoughts about Tiny Tina's Wonderlands.

Josh, you've got some community reviews to read for us. I do. Now, this game is not on Steam. It is exclusive to the Epic Games Store, and they don't do reviews. They only do critic reviews on the Epic Games Store. So I went to our second trusted source, which is Metacritic. We have done these for a few games from time to time. Metacritic uses for user reviews uses a zero to 10, uh, rating.

So, um, so this first one is a four and it says tiny Tina's wonderlands would have been perfectly acceptable about seven years ago as a paid DLC, maybe for about $15. But as a game, I paid $55 for it. It was just not worth that kind of money.

The original borderlands formula worked thanks to the looter shoot dynamic and placing it in a world of great characters and fantastic locations. Well, it still has the loot and shoot part, but now it feels outdated and dull. Borderlands 1 and 2 will still be two of my all-time favorite games. In fact, I love the second game so much, I clocked over 300 hours on Steam playing different modes, characters, and through all the DLC. But with this game, I felt bored and unchallenged. One new thing it adds is the addition of an RPG-style overworld where you move an icon around a field map. Well, it simply didn't work for me, especially as it adds random battles to the mix, which in an FPS is a failed experiment in my opinion. Overall, really disappointed. It

feels like the devs just want to keep milking the same cash cow. They're not wrong. They're not. I don't really completely agree, but I don't fully disagree either. There's some valid points in there, I think. All right, this next one is an eight, and it says, it's basically Borderlands 2 Dragon Keep, but with borderlands 3's gameplay the story is just whatever tiny tina wants it to be which is obviously a goofy mess most of the weapons are very unique and enjoyable but it's a shame that the new arrow guns are pretty useless as of this review the classes are all fairly balanced from what i've played with some are of course better than others but it's not a very noticeable difference the

server issues are only a problem if you plan on playing with a friend otherwise you're more than good to go i personally enjoyed most of my time on this game solo and i recommend it to anyone who enjoyed dragons keep from borderlands 2 okay fair enough all right and then this person gave it a 10 so they think it's a perfect game. And it says this. The game offers a good 30 hours of gameplay with an in-depth end game, the possibility to have multiple classes and to explore the game world. The writing is good and the characters are certainly more convincing than those of Borderlands 3. Unfortunately, the villain does not hold a candle to Handsome Jack, but it was predictable. Although it doesn't beat Borderlands 2, it's still a great game.

I agree with a lot of that as well. This game is not anywhere as good as Borderlands 2. Borderlands 2 is by far the peak. Borderlands 2 is the best in the entire series. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. And then this last one, this person gave it a zero and said, don't buy this game. It's a lazy cash grab. The content doesn't justify the price this should have been a dlc instead i guess they could have made it a lot shorter and made it a dlc i i can appreciate them trying to blow it out into a full game i do wonder if we'll see any more in the future i mean we know there's going to be dlc for this game but i i do wonder whether or not we'll have a tiny tina's too yeah all right so that is the

user reviews on metacritic i intentionally picked ones that were all over the place to not give you guys any kind of help whatsoever in guessing the actual score on this one i think paul was our winner last time right did i win did i win the red dead redemption yeah i think you did because i seem to remember saying you're back with your intro you might be right uh i win did i win the red dead redemption yeah i think you did because i seem to remember saying you're back with your intro you might be right uh i feel like the metacritic community is a little grumpier than steam so boy i i think this is gonna be somewhere like in the seven range i'm gonna say 7.3 is 7.3 from paul michael oh i was gonna go last all right i'm just kidding no i'm just um i i think it's gonna be below that because there's gonna be a lot of people who picked it up and were like all about is it a cash grab? I don't even think it is. I'm going to pull up prices right here and go

at 7.2. 7.2? You went one... But you realize I'm last, right, Michael? I did this last time, too, didn't I? Guess what I'm going, guys? I'm going 7.1.

I book in the wrong side every time, don't I? I got a 50-50 chance at this. Poor Michael. I think Michael's only won one of these, but he does keep getting directly countered. I will say, because I know you guys won't believe me, but I actually wrote down 7.1. So it's just hilarious that you went 7.3, Michael went 7.2, and my actual guess that I pre-wrote before this was 7.1. Tell you what, if Michael wins wins that's like that's like

winning 10 different you win the hundred dollars right whatever it is all right the actual score is a 5.5 i told you they were grumpy don't mess with me i mean metacritic's tough yeah they really are that's the actual is a 5.5 on that. A lot of... So I'll say this in reading, because I always read more of the reviews, but a lot of the negative reviews had to do with server issues, multiplayer disconnects and stuff like that. Oh, okay. The other majority of the complaints were it felt like it was just a cash grab rescan of Borderlands.

And even though they tried to add some content it was it was obvious that it was just to say it was different enough for them to release like as a full game versus a paid dlc i hear you so maybe if this game was like a 20 dlc that's probably going to push the rating to be a lot higher i feel like that would have really satisfied a lot of the people that left negative reviews for it probably would have been one of the best DLCs ever. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, probably. All right, well, Josh, you get the honors.

Let's hit that music, and you get to take us into the next segment. Hey, Tiny Tina. You want to go down to the docks and blow up the ocean with me? That was perfect. Oh, man. You ever just want to fire a bunch of missiles into the ocean with me. That was perfect. Oh, man. You ever just want to fire a bunch of missiles into the ocean?

Oh, you know. And then call it the notion? It's so stupid. I love it, though, man. It makes me laugh every time. All right. So this is where we rate the game, according to our very top secret patented, I guess it's not top secret if we're telling everybody in the world.

Right. But our patented system of make love, marry, or murder. We're going to tell you what we think. If we think it's a make love, it's a good, fun game that's probably worth the money, but maybe you're not going to play it for a long period of time. Mary means this is absolutely top-notch. You should run out and buy this game right away, in my opinion. It's got a ton of replay value. You're going to stick with it for a long time. Murder is, hey, you probably don't want to play this game unless you just like terrible things.

Just a glutton for punishment. Right. All right. How about Michael? I want to know your thoughts on this. Why don't you go first? I don't think I've gone first yet, actually. So this is perfect.

I'm just going to say it. I'm going to make love to this game. The reason being is because... He said that so seductive. Michael, you got to tone it down, man. He's got some confidence. So here's the thing. I actually really like this game a lot. I had a lot of fun playing it.

I will finish it, which is rare for me to finish a game. I just think that after an initial replay, I think that the dialogue won't mean as much to me it won't be as funny later on and so then i'm just left with a borderlands game that's not as good as borderlands and so that's kind of the fine line i think between where we're at and that's why i didn't marry it i think is because i'm like you know let's say later on down the road if i if i didn't need my borderlands fix i'm probably picking up borderlands too you know so there you go short and sweet and simple makes perfect sense kind of uh for me i am kind of on the borderline between make love and murder and my biggest issue is the price. This is a pretty expensive game. And if I have $60, I would very highly recommend that you spend that money on something else like Elden Ring.

The bang for your buck is so much higher with something like that. I will also say that Tiny Tina's has the disadvantage of coming along where we just did deep dives of red dead redemption 2 god of war elden ring these are like all-time greats yeah we've been a little spoiled yeah but every time i sat down to play tiny tinas it's the first deep dive in a long time where i i was like i would just rather play hearthstone right now like i had i had to force myself to play it at times and so i i don't know i don't even know which side to fall on i i think i'm gonna say murder but i feel like that's unfair i i think the game is fun is it like a guilty murder yeah it's a guilty i'm covering my eyes while while while stabbing the you know stab stabbing tiny Tina, I would say it's worth playing

down the road. Play it when it goes eventually to steam and it's on steam sale or something. I think it's worth playing, but my goodness for $60, I think you should spend your money elsewhere. Paul, you kind of waffled there. I wasn't sure where you were going. I understand completely why you're on the fence with it. I'm going to not waffle and I'm just going to straight up murder this game.

If you like, I love Borderlands. And I was about to say, if you like Borderlands, then you'll enjoy this because it's just Borderlands. But the problem is, I like Borderlands and I didn't enjoy this game. You know why? Because there's better Borderlands out there. And there's nothing unique about Tiny Tina's Wonderlands that makes it worth a $60 price tag. It is hands down a cash grab. You can tell me, oh, well, they added the overworld. Dude, I'm no programmer, but that overworld sucks like it doesn't take very much to add an overworld they didn't even like they barely put effort into re-skinning everything

they use the exact same formula for the different gun manufacturers i was really really optimistic that this game was going to really focus on melee and make melee combat something really fun and enjoyable in a borderland setting, because that would be new. And I was super disappointed to find out that melee in this game sucks, dude. Dude, the melee weapons, they're all the same. They're all the same. You swing so fast that you can't even see your weapon, to be honest. There's no feeling of impact. I won't even get into it because I'll be on the soapbox a long time. They completely missed the mark on this game unless the mark was to just take $60 of your money and feed you the same old food that they've been feeding you.

And so for me, you're getting murdered for that reason alone. Josh is friends with the Metacritic crowd. Yeah. Right. Right. uh josh is is friends with the metacritic crowd yeah right right it's funny because i i always forget to consider price in in my rating and 60 bucks for this game is insane i'm not changing my rating i'm sticking with it for sure and i think also one of the things that kind of made me gravitate towards it because it's my rating not your ratings you know what i mean like this

is my opinion is i found an fps that i appreciated and i wanted to really like it probably a little bit more you know what i mean because it's just i'm not i just don't like playing them and i like this and i'm like all right come out let me make love with this game this is not bad but then like what's for 60 bucks ouch the thing is if if this was the first Borderlands game you ever played, you'd probably think it was phenomenal. True. You'd be like, dude, this game's amazing. All these guns, the humor, the art style. Wow.

So if you've never played a Borderlands, I think there's a ton to enjoy about Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. But if you've ever played a Borderlands, this game sucks. They're just taking your money. Speaking of the art style, did you guys feel like it wasn't as artsy as the other ones? In other Borderlands games, you always remember that you're in that cartoonish world. This one, it felt like they didn't put as much development into making it look like that. I think it was just that the fantasy setting didn't stand out as much as the space setting that you would get with the other Borderlands or the deserts and stuff like that.

So I think it's just that it kind of... The style almost defaults to that, like the colors and stuff. So I get what you're saying because it doesn't stand out as much, but I think it's just because of the setting. Gotcha. Okay. It could be, but I did think the same thing as you michael and i tried looking up a little bit about animation and i couldn't find a whole lot the only thing that i

could find is that the animation style of borderlands uh while it is very similar in appearance to cell shading it technically is fully realized hand-drawn textures with noticeable outlines to make it look like a comic book. And I did wonder if they used a different system in Tiny Tina's because it did not really stand out and pop in the same way I thought the others did. So I had the same question. So I don't know if it's the fantasy setting or maybe they did do more like computer animation shortcuts to do it cheaper or something i just don't know uh yeah i think tiny tina's is perfectly it's a perfectly good game there is nothing about it that stands out there is nothing about it to make me want to spend 60 that's that's the thing all right well i think it's time for our last segment guys

let's go the leaderboard and see where this game stacks up all right so our leaderboard you can see at multiplayerpodcast.com it's right there on the front page anytime we do a deep dive we take a look at the game. And as a consensus three-man team, we have to decide where does this game belong on our overall list, which is currently made up of 69 games. We've got all the way at the top, Red Dead Redemption 2, which was our last deep dive. We've got all the way at the bottom, Battlefield 2042, which was certainly worse than Tiny Tina's, in my opinion. I don't know where Josh stands. And then kind of like in the middle, we've got some games like Far Cry 5, Raft, Operation Tango. We have Borderlands 3 coming in at number 41 i think that's the first test that was what i

was gonna say that's that's your first benchmark right there would you rather play borderlands 3 or tiny tina borderlands 3 i haven't played borderlands 3 so i don't know i i feel like they're pretty close i would give a slight edge to borderlands 3 but i think they're actually pretty darn close so uh maybe let's just read a couple of the games around borderlands 3 and i think that'll help we've got coming in at 38 keep talking and nobody explodes then operation tango a way out borderlands 3 rimworld little nightmares 2, Knockout City, and then 46 Star Wars Squadrons. So are you thinking it's below all of those, Josh? Or do you think we're in the right territory? I would rank it lower, to be honest. I'm looking at our leaderboard and it's like,

you know, I use the would I rather play Payday 2, would I rather play Human Fall Flat. And the cutoff for me, I would put it, the perfect spot for me would be at 55. Well, maybe 54. I think I'd rather play Tiny Tina's over 12 minutes. But I'd rather play Payday 2 over Tiny Tina's, you know. And so for me, it's down in like the mid 50s. So early to mid 50s. Yeah. Michael, what about you? i know some of our deep

dive games you didn't play since you joined us not too long ago but like roughly where are you looking there's a there's it for me it kind of falls and again i know we're gonna have to split the difference i would much rather play this than star wars squadrons i think star wars squadrons just got boring really fast and i think that I could play this game all the way through just for the comedy and the fun pieces of it. However, I would much rather play Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, A Way Out, and so I'm in between that range is where I feel like I'm at.

But you would put it under Borderlands 3 or above Borderlands 3? He said he hasn't played it. I don't know. I still haven't played it. Oh, that's right. In the last 36 seconds, I haven't had a chance to play it. Sorry. I forgot you said that. Yeah, I remember I played Borderlands 1 and lots of 2. By the way, is Borderlands 3, is that the pre-sequel or was that

something different? No. Okay, that's a different entry. Let's just pause the podcast. Michael, go beat Borderlands 3. We'll wait for you and then you can come back and tell us all right so all right i got it guys that was fast forward mode so michael's kind of thinking mid 40s josh is thinking mid 50s so i think we're looking at something in the middle i think i would rather play tiny tinas than gtfo the cave and cuphead so i'm a little more toward michael's side so i'm thinking maybe somewhere in the late 40s that's fine or maybe at 50 maybe something

like that yeah uh i would put it under death loop i know that we weren't huge fans of Deathloop, but Deathloop I feel like is a better video game. And it was unique at least, whereas Tiny Tina's is just... You might as well call it Madden 23 in my opinion. I think I'm with you. I did... I was not the biggest Deathloop fan, but I think the highs of Deathloop

were higher than the highs of Tiny Tina's. So, Michael, would you be okay putting it in at 45 between Deathloop and Knockout City? I think it's perfect to me because I did say that I'd rather play at the Star Wars Squadrons, and so we put it right above that. We're good. Yeah, I'm fine with that. Perfect. We'll lock it in. We'll have it at number 45 out of now 70 games. I think that's fair. I thought it would be somewhere in the middle, and I think that's where it belongs. If this game was very cheap or if someone gifts it to you, it's perfectly fine to play. I just wouldn't go out of my way to buy it at full price. Any closing thoughts or anything else that we might have missed? Anything else you want to add i'm still gonna finish this game because i had a blast with it but i i get where it's not quite you know worth that money but i'll probably never replay it it's a goofy thing because the gameplay is enjoyable i never hated playing like that's the good like some games i have hated to play i'm just like oh i don't want to do this like this job sucks it's like but i never minded playing tiny teen. It's just that it was disappointing. I felt like

it was a lazy... I've said it 100 times, but I felt like it was a lazy cash grab. And that doesn't sit well with me. But it's not bad. So I think right in the middle of the leaderboard is probably a good fair spot for it. I think the last thing I would add is I feel like it has not been enough time since Borderlands 3 came out where I wanted to play this kind of game. I almost felt like they gave it to me too soon. Maybe if it came out a year later, I would have a different opinion about it, but I still kind of feel like it wasn't that long ago that I went through Borderlands 3, so I think that's kind of my closing thought on it. Well, that's all that

we got, guys. We are still not yet 100% sure on our next deep dive. We're going to figure that out here within the next day since we have to start playing it. It might be Weird West, might be something else. We do need to check in with Michelle Butler, our new legendary supporter, and see if she has any games that she would like us to play. And then we will let you guys know. If you want the earliest announcement about that, come join us on Discord. There's a link in the episode description. Our Discord's totally free. Come join it. It's family-friendly. It has other listeners of the show. All three of us are active in there. We would love to have you as as well or you can also follow us on social

media at multiplayer pod and we just want to give one last uh thank you to everyone who's already a patreon supporter or an apple subscriber and we'll see you guys on thursday for this week in gaming happy gaming everybody cheers all right see you everybody See you, everybody.