Consider this the first brick laid of some long intended plans... I love reading the news in the morning... I love reading gaming news....I thought we could use more content that wasn't just 30 different rehashings of whatever nintendo decided to mess up this week (JKJKILOVEYOUnintendo)...Starting with blogs....moving to reviews (that will be wayyy late)...and we might even touch on BIG topics...wow....Can't wait.

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Howdy y'all. Just jumping right in here. Gotta "move fast and break things" y'know?

I'm a tad late to Tiny Tina's Wonderland. But I'm also not late to it at all. My partner and I snagged copies of this day one because Borderlands 3 was among the first games that we played together that felt like a "hardcore" gaming experience.

I am here to tell you that Tina's is perhaps one of the more perfect "get your nonvideo gaming friends to play a shooter and fall in love with gaming" games out there. Or.... at least that was released this past March.

I imagine most of my readers are at least familiar with the idea of Borderlands—runnin', gunnin', lootin', and tootin'. It's got a very classic dopamine response feedback system. You got guns to blow stuff up. The explosion is colorful loot. Now you have better guns to make bigger explosions. It's simple, but damn does it work.

Why is this an incredible "starter game"?

First: It's fun. The plot, the style, the customizations, the emotes, the combat mechanics.

Second: It has so many options to fine tune your experience for all levels of play and familiarity to join your party. I mean, really! I can play on badass hard mode while my partner plays on regular. AND we just had a "total noob" to really any modern gaming join our party, and they are having a blast blasting skellies on easy mode. I am totally impressed with their coop options that allow for cohesive and appropriate gameplay across many different skill levels. I did not feel that the enemies were nerfed simply because of our team makeup. Nope! Still had to death save just as much as usual.

Third: This is a big one for me. I feel weird about shooters these days. I AM NOT starting a political debate. I am simply stating that, sometimes it's really hard for me to disconnect from a world with so much gun violence into a world with so much gun violence.

I recently started up COD WWII because i was missing a shooter type game in my rotation and I have fond memories of booting up WWII shooters back in my highschool bedroom. I know it's "killing nazis", but I've come to understand the world and war in a different way than I did as a kid.

I actually really enjoyed what I played of COD WWII, but I did reach a point where the conflict felt a bit too real given the current circumstances. The game was still fun, but I couldn't do it.

Listen, you absolutely shoot and kill humanoids in Tina's. You even kill fully fledged, not even disguised as zombies, humans. I don't know if it's the framing—a "bunkers and badasses" game to pass the time in a post apocalyptic world—or if it's the goofy nature of just about every character that brings the game to a cartoony place for me (hey cell shading!).

You are also constantly faced with non-humanoid creatures. This is where the game shines for me. Not just because my tender heart can't help but hurt for those pixels. It's also because Gearbox did an awesome job designing these villains. They constantly feel fresh and not recycled. They make sense theme-wise with the different areas you explore. They often elicit a laugh either through their voiceover, their animation, or just straight up character design.

Also, I think there's blood. But we all know we show up for the blues, the purples, the oranges in those loot splosions.

Also, the guns are super fun. Super varied. In Borderlands 3, I reached a point where I was only really looking for a better version of whatever my favorite gun was. In Tina's, my backpack looks completely refreshed every few levels and there is something....refreshing about that.

Play in a group if you can! I've done both solo and group play. Let me tell you, it's better with a partner, incredible with an orgy (?).

VOICE ACTING> Wow, I hope this cast becomes the bar for video games. I've noticed more and more "household names" show up in video games over the years. But this has got to be one of the more impressive rosters. Not only that, but they recorded sooooo muuuuuch dialogue. I'm literally playing Borderlands with Will Arnett, Wanda Sykes, and Andy Samberg. It's lit.

One last thing before I decide this has been enough writing...

This is my favorite Borderlands game. I have played all of them. Some of them multiple times and multiple NG+'s. B2 was my jam back in the day. Until Tina's, it was still my favorite—although I fully admit and would scream from the rooftops that the combat adjustments they made in 3 were needed and incredible.

Borderlands has always had the kind of humor that is typically assosciated with young men in second grade. I believe it's referred to as "potty humor". We've watched the developers eye the times and make slight adjustments along the way. The series has been in existence for well over a decade and as a certain singer/songwriter you've never heard of says "times, they are a changing".

I could feel the push and pull in the script of 3 where they knew they had to make adjustments to maintain their humorous up and up, but I felt like they didn't quite know how to do it without losing their identity.

Tinas: They did it. This is THE BEST that the humor has ever read to me. Still very irreverent. Many jokes are still from the toilet. However, this time around it's just funny. If it's not funny, it's funny because of how not funny it is—a groaner here and there for sure.

I don't want to get to deep in the weeds here on moral issues. But, in 2009 Borderlands referred to their "smaller targets" as midgets. They moved on from that term and called them "tinks" in 3. But, you were still marginalizing a section of the human population, Gearbox!!! I think they knew this. The small targets are now goblins. I don't mean that they call smaller than average humans goblins. No, they are goblins.

This Borderlands doesn't feel the need to marginalize somebody for a laugh. This Borderlands knows it's funny and knows you want to watch green goblins pop into orange loot.

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Thanks for reading! The above was written free form with no previous drafts. I gave it a once-over, but hey! it's a blog. At a minimum, I am committing to maintaining this blog for the next few months (once a week updates). If I stick with it, I've got big plans for more (and more planned out) content. But, y'all....let's take some babysteps.

Much Love,

WayLateGaming