Hello there my friend, were you like me and never played Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep because you owned a Wii when you were younger? Well Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands was released a decade later so you can play that instead of getting Borderlands 2 and the DLC in its bundle.

For those who have been living under a rock, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a stand-alone game and not a DLC. That being said, though, this game could have probably been a DLC for Borderlands 3, but we get to pay $80 CDN for, at best, 16 hours of gameplay if you only focus on the main objectives.

Pros

• A character creator option
  
• Fantastic looter shooter gameplay with lots of loot to collect
  
• Six different classes for you to utilize with powerful abilities
  
• Lots of side quests and content

Cons

• The writing for the story is very bad
  
• End-game content is very lacking
  
• Crosshair is not centered

The story is set after the events of Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep, you are playing the game with Tiny Tina and her two friends Frette the Robot and Caption Valentine. The story is your typical DnD setting and then you slowly realize that this game's writing is awful.

Nothing interesting ever happens in this game in terms of story, the characters are all just there. While fine and interesting, the setting could have been written much better, and the fantasy element was not taken advantage of. Why just DnD though? You’re telling me that you couldn’t fit in a Magic The Gathering reference, LOTR, etc. The genre has evolved outside of just DnD. You can make DnD the focus of the game but only just having DnD is leaving a big hole in something. There are references in the game, one of the side quests pays homage to the Witcher and there is a side quest where you take out these small blue enemies that’s a reference to The Smurfs. The Witcher is a fantasy series, so it does fit very well here. There are a few others, but I just felt they could have taken advantage of this, just my thoughts.

It’s not like the characters are even any better either, there is pretty much no one in the story that is even remotely interesting besides Tiny Tina but that is because she has been part of the Borderlands story since B2. The only character I actually liked, was the main villain, The Dragon Lord because he was a parody of a main antagonist. Besides that, Valentine is also a character that I liked and was fun but that’s really it. Everyone else is poorly written and I am just waiting to move on from that character, for the game to only introduce me, to another character that I will not care about.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3381227161
The good news for Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is that the gameplay is actually really good and pretty much saves the game as a whole. It is a looter shooter and there are a lot of guns for you to collect and there are a few different rarities for them as well. Since this is based on a DnD campaigning, you do have access to magic spells that you can use to help take out enemies. The spells have a variety of effects that can help you in combat, by either damaging your enemies or activating a passive ability that your character has.

There is a character creator and there are a ton of customization options for your character, and you can even change your character mid-game. You can change anything at any point in the game too, your gender, voice, or even appearance, the options that the game gives you for your character are fantastic.

There are six classes for you to choose from in the game, I played as the Graveborn, who has a demi-lich fiend campaign and can deal dark magic attacks. The class pretty much has a built-in nuke that just deals a ton of damage. Since it’s one of its special moves, it allows it to release a burst of dark magic at the cost of some of your health, however, you will be healed for the total life you have lost. At level 20, you will unlock an ability to have a subclass with you, I choose the Clawbringer as they get a wryvn campaign that deals elemental damage. All of it just really depends on how you want to play the game.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3381225609

There are also lots of side content for you to do, like side quests, exploring dungeons, or fighting hidden bosses. It’s really interesting what you can find or come across in the world you are in, there is also an overworld too, which does have a few things you can do but nothing too big.

Overall, the gameplay is really fun and enjoyable, it’s a basic FPS at its core and that’s really it at the end of it. Although I do have two issues with the game, the end-game content for the game is very lackluster. There are these Chaos Gate Challenges you can do but it’s just you fighting waves of enemies until the meter fills up. You can of course get better loot and enchant or reenchant weapons but that’s it.

Other than that, the crosshair is not centered, and I did not find out about this until 30 hours into the game and it has bothered me ever since I found out about it. The good news is, that you can change it to be centered in the options menu.

The graphics are pretty nice, the areas all look colorful and give off this fantasy-like feel. I tested the game on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core Processor 3.50, and 16 GB of RAM, I had no issues with the game's performance, and it ran very well.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3381227322
Overall, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, is a good game but not a good good game, if you are looking for some mindless fun or are a fan of the Borderlands series. This game is a good purchase if you get it on sale. Paying full price for this game is just not worth it and there are better games that can give you more for your money. It’s a good game, like I said before, just not a good game that you would only maybe play once and that’s it.

What do you want? Chop-chop, I'm a very important and busy man with my own name and reviews to do at Life Needs a Little Sin

I am going to start off by saying that this review is going to hurt me while writing this, as I do think there is a great game here. However, in its current state, I can’t recommend Atomic Picnic, and this is coming from someone who has played a lot of shooters in their time. When I received a free copy for review of this game, I was hyped, the game looked fantastic and fun to play but a bunch of problems held it back from me enjoying it.

Pros

• Gameplay is fun
  
• The visuals are nice to look at

Cons

• The game’s balance is a mess, enemies will kill you in two or three hits sometimes
  
• There are too many projectiles for you to dodge sometimes
  
• Upgrades are very lackluster to use
  
• Enemies will spawn right next to you
  
• The game will not explain certain things and give little info

The one thing I will say that is good about Atomic Picnic's gameplay is that it’s good, the shooting is fluid, and your character moves very well. There are multiple characters for you to play as but I have been only able to play as one and I’ll explain why in a bit.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3384053794
All the characters have abilities that they can utilize in combat, you have a dash that you can use to get the move on enemies. When an enemy dies, they will drop experience points, which you can use to level up, from there, you can select from three different upgrades. These help you out in combat, slightly, while useful, a large majority of them are underwhelming and certain upgrades are just straight-up better or are required to even get decently far in the level you are in. I’ll get back to this sort of thing later on in the review.

The balancing in this game is terrible, enemies can pretty much kill you in a few hits and you don’t do enough damage to help take out the tanky ones. The enemies have attacks that can kill you in two or three hits if you are not careful. There are also way too many projectiles for you to avoid sometimes or too many enemies for you to really deal with at a time, due to you only having a single-shot weapon. You don’t have access to a secondary at all and are only left with one gun, grenades, and a special attack. The other characters may have something different to them but I haven’t had the chance to play them yet.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3384047818
Also, in case anyone wants to say to me that this is a skill issue, I just want to point out that shooters are one of the main genres of games that I play. I have played Team Fortress 2 for at least 13 years, played Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands on hard mode, and completed Warhammer Space Marine (the first game) on hard mode. Warhammer Space Marine is a much more punishing game than this one too. So in case anyone wants to question my legitimacy on this, I have the proof right here and I can show off more examples if necessary. Atomic Picnic advertises itself as a casual shooter, not a hardcore one.

Now I can talk about the upgrades, they are very lackluster, and the good ones, don’t do enough to help you. Some of them are just mandatory for you to get anywhere in this game. You can level up the upgrades to offer more utility, but the problem is that, even then, they don’t do enough to help you. Some of them are also not very interesting or not worthwhile to use either. There isn’t an effective way to heal yourself, there are these green crystals that can heal you and an upgrade that gives you a small chance to heal yourself when taking out an enemy, although it only heals one HP.

There are a select few upgrades that are cused, that offer an extra benefit but at the cost of reducing the stats on your character. The issue with this is that it’s not worth it, if your stats get lowered like damage, you are just shooting yourself in the foot because enemies are pretty tanky. Sometimes enemies will spawn right next to you, the devs did state that they fixed this issue but sometimes I do get some enemies that will still do it. There is also no indicator of where you are taking damage or when enemies are around you. Enemies are so tanky that some require an entire magazine to take out.

There are also zones you can go to but the game won’t explain what to do in them, this game has a bunch of stuff that they don’t explain. There seems to be a lot to this game, but the lack of explanation makes this entire game hard to play. There is one thing that can make this game easier to play and that is having some friends to play with, although I have none that play this game, so I am out of luck.

Atomic Picnic does have some very nice visuals, the colors are very pretty and look good. I tested the game on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, and 16 GB of RAM, I had no issues while I was playing.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3384048051
Atomic Picnic is a fun game, but it’s held back by a bunch of design problems that are preventing me from enjoying it. I do think this game has some clever ideas, but it needs more time in the oven. If you want a game that makes you fight a bunch of enemies with worthwhile upgrades, then Vampire Survivors is the game for you, and it’s priced at 5.99 CDN.

However, I do think this game can be worth it when more updates come out, the devs do seem passionate about it and are still updating it. While I don’t recommend Atomic Picnic now, I do think the game will be much better when it’s worked on more.

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