First Impression: Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands (PC – Steam) ~ Role playing With Guns

Official microsite – Steam page – Wikipedia

Something that is on my bucket list for a while now, is playing a round of Dungeons and Dragons. Currently, I haven’t made the time to actually do it. But, when I saw that there was a shooter with a lot of dungeon and dragons elements, I got quite interested. I mean, I love unique shooters, so I gave it a shot. I didn’t know that this game was a spin-off of the Borderlands series, another series that is on my bucket list but… you guessed it, I haven’t played yet. But, is this game any good? I mean, I placed it on the 9th spot of best game I played in 2023, so you would think it’s good. But perhaps it’s a “me thing” and if I look with a critical eye, this game might be full of flaws. There is only one way to find that out, and that’s taking a good look at it, while I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the content of the article in the comment section down below.

Role playing with guns

In this game, we play as a new character joining a group of D&D players who are about to wrap up a game. At the start of the game, you can customize your character. The amount of customization options you get are quite overwhelming. The amount of control you have in this game to fine tune your character is possibly a game in itself. Now, it’s a shame you don’t see your character yourself outside the pause menu or some cutscenes.

The pacing of this game fully depends on if you do any side quests or just want to explore the world. Overall, the writing of this game is charming. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, and you really feel that the main characters are a group of friends who welcome a new player into their world. During the game, the personalities of the characters really shine through in the world building and through the voice acting.

We get quite the diverse cast of voice actors lending their voice to this game. I have to say, they did an amazing job bringing this world to life. The personality and the emotions of the characters really shine through, giving this game even more of a Saturday morning cartoon vibe. While the story is predictable and silly sometimes, it’s written in such a way that you always want to know what’s going to happen next or how they are going to resolve the current crisis.

The silly puns of the enemies, the charming world, the over the top writing… It’s like I said earlier, this game’s story feels like you are watching a Saturday morning cartoon. There are also various different builds you make, so I think that the replay value of this game is going to be quite high. It wouldn’t surprise me that all the different builds play quite different from each other.

Now there is a whole multiplayer section to this game. Personally, I don’t play a lot of multiplayers. So, I’m not going to talk about it in this article. But, it sounds interesting. I wonder how they balanced this game, since overall this game feels a bit easy to me. Maybe I got quite used to keep moving and prioritizing enemies after playing games like Metal: HellSigner and Doom Eternal. But, if you balance your weapons and equipment to your playstyle, this game isn’t too much of a problem on normal difficulty.

On the fly polish

Visually, this game goes for the Borderlands style. This game uses a lot of shell shading and comic book style to present their world. It has quite realistic environments, but I do have some complaints.

The first complaint is that after fast traveling or traveling between zones, the game took quite some time to load in the high resolution textures. If I compare my computer specs to the recommended specs for this game, I shouldn’t have any problem. Thankfully, this is something that quickly fixes itself. After max 5 seconds in an area, the whole area loads.

The second complaint I have about the visuals is that in some houses, their front door is open. Yet, it’s a complete black hole with an invisible wall. You can’t even enter the houses. I can totally understand that modeling a lot of houses and balancing the loot and such inside of them is a lot of work, but this is just bad. It feels unfinished. You would think that there is only one of these houses like this, but oh no. There are several. Even some side quests have an NPC exit a house and, behind the front door, it goes completely black. Why?

But my biggest complaint is how quest markers aren’t visible enough on the mini map. In the screenshot I placed a bit higher, you can see that small blue marker above my ammo count in the right corner. Guess what, that’s a main quest marker. Now, you also notice that same marker on the mini map on the top right. But, if the area isn’t on your mini map, you don’t see it. You don’t get a hint in which direction you should go. So, we start playing a game where we have to open the pause menu to look at the map.

Overall, this game looks and runs amazingly fine. Just like the options to create your character, there are a lot of options you can tweak to your liking. There is even in a built-in benchmarking feature. I raised every setting to the highest it can go, and let me tell you, the game looks amazing. The vibrant colors and the smooth animations of this game are really great. Apart from the complaints I talked about above this paragraph, I don’t have anything really that I didn’t like about the visual presentation.

Now, let’s talk about the gameplay. In this game, you go from area to arena to finish battle arena’s. Honestly, I call it Doom in a Medieval fantasy setting. That’s one of the core gameplay loops in this game. Now, this loop has one negative, the risk of the game becoming repetitive. Let me tell you, this game can be quite repetitive. Outside the battles, there isn’t a lot to do in this game, and the fact that the enemies respawn in certain area’s for you to grind isn’t doing the game any favors.

Now, you also have the overworld sections of this game. This is nothing more than a fancy level select. Now, you do have these wild Pokémon encounters… Well, I call them Pokémon encounters because they spawn randomly, and you go into a small arena to battle for weapons amongst other things. The biggest difference is that you can’t really run from these battles and don’t really have a clear indication on how many enemies are left in the encounter. Apart from that, you have some minor environment puzzles where you have to go through a dungeon to get a key to open a gate, or a cheese chip. Yeah, a cheese chip.

Overwhelming

Now, there is a lot that this game does right. The amusing story, the amount of depth are just two examples. Visually, this game is also quite good.

Now, something I don’t really like is how many stats there are in this game. It didn’t take very long before my inventory was filled with various items like weapons and armor that I didn’t know what to do with. Also, the amount of ammo creates in the area is just too much. I rarely ran out of ammo. To a point that I that the ammo that the enemies dropped fill the floor.

You also have a helpful dragon that attacks enemies for you on the battlefield and saved my skin several times. You have a whole tree to upgrade your companion. And on top of that, you also have a melee attack you can preform. But, that melee attack is quite risky, since the animation takes quite some time… more than enough time for the enemies to gang up on you and do some serious damage.

The game feels a bit overwhelming sometimes. Especially for loot goblins like myself, who don’t throw any loot away and think that we can use them to craft or upgrade them for stronger ones. And this game is also hell for somebody who wants to open all chests in this game, since your inventory is anything but big enough to hold all that loot.

You’ll need to make decisions and adapt to the environment. Thankfully, we can run around the environment with responsive and easy to learn controls. I only have two complaints about the controls. The first one is that in certain menu’s like the blacksmith menu, the way to move left/right/up and down isn’t changed with the controls in the options’ menu. That menu uses WSAD to move, and I use an AZERTY keyboard here in Belgium… So, I have to set my fingers quite unnatural to move in that menu.

The other complaint I have about the controls is that you need to hold some keys to preform an action. In general, this isn’t a bad thing, since now we don’t have to deal with silly “are you sure” boxes. But, if your inventory is full, and you are fighting, and you are standing on top of some junk… the pickup key turns into an equip key. Sadly, the communication to the player that your inventory is full isn’t strong enough and I equipped weaker weapons and armor so many times. Just pay attention to that.

This brings me to the music and sound effects for this game. The sound effects in this game are overall very impactful. You really feel the impact of the guns you shoot and projectiles hitting you. I don’t have any complaints about that part, apart from sometimes not having a clear enough sound effect when you pick up health or when your inventory is full. I mostly had this problem in hectic battle situations. Thankfully, the visual effects sometimes helped to solve this.

The music in this game is amazing. I didn’t hesitate to buy the soundtrack of this game to add to my playlist. It’s very bombastic and orchestral. It’s loud and proud. Furthermore, it fits the game writing like a glove. I tried to play this game without music and the impact of some scenes really was lost. The battles also became a bit boring.

While, I’m currently midway into the main campaign and I haven’t touched any of the DLC’s yet… I’m quite enjoying myself with this game. This game isn’t perfect, it has some flaws. But, the positives far outweigh the negatives in my opinion. I actually had a hard time finishing this article because I kept playing this game while taking notes to finish this article. While I said that the gameplay loop might be somewhat repetitive earlier in this article, I still enjoy it. I also enjoy that you can get a second chance in a battle and revive yourself. The frequent saving in this game and the fact you can have multiple characters in this game is another cherry on this cake.

Personally, I recommend this game to everybody who enjoys playing shooter games and don’t mind having a bit of fantasy in their shooters. It’s an unique RPG where your main weapon isn’t a sword but it’s a gun. It’s a great game and if this is what the Borderlands series is about, I’m quite interested to give the whole series a chance. If I would give this game a score, I would give it a 70/100 for now. But, I haven’t finished the game, so I’ll leave my final score up for when I write a review of this game or fully finished it.

And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I want to thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to welcome you in another one, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.

First Impression: Terraria (PC – Steam) ~ The Adventure Of Digging

Steam store – Official website

I know I was going to write another article this week, but I felt that I was pushing myself creatively too much so I decided to let my readers decide on which game I was going to write next. Twitter polls only give me 4 options and Terraria won. So, Terraria. A game that quite recently got it’s “final content update” not too long ago. So, in it’s “final form” is this game (still) worth playing? Let’s take a look at the game together in this article while I talk about my own opinion on the game and invite you to leave a comment with your opinion on this content of this article and/or the game. 

Editorial note: Review written while playing v1.4.1.2

The Adventure of Digging

There is no real story in this game. This game is an open world sandbox game. This game gets compared to games like Minecraft. Some even call(ed) it Minecraft 2D. But let me tell you, there is a lot more to this game than just a “simple Minecraft clone in 2D”.

The amount of differences in gameplay mechanics is so huge you can’t really compare Minecraft and Terraria a whole lot. I only use the comparison to say things like: “If you don’t know what Terraria is, think of Minecraft in 2D with some extremely interesting mechanics, richer combat, more bosses…”

I think it’s high time to talk about the “story” that exists in this game. Since there is some sort of a story in this game. I’m not going to talk too much in-depth about it, but if you want to know more… then I invite you to read the lore page on the Terraria Wiki. While in-game, you won’t really encounter this story so it’s an interesting additional piece of content for this game.

I’m going to apologize in advance if I compare this game a lot to Minecraft since this article comes from somebody who has been playing Minecraft for years upon years (since Beta 1.4 in 2011) and only recently got into Terraria. I have played it with some friends in the past but rarely on my own.

Now, I think this puts me in an position where I can take an interesting angle while reviewing/talking about this game. I think that’s it’s going to be very clear as soon as you read the following paragraphs. Now, this might mean that some things won’t get reviewed too in-depth to keep true to the theme of the article.

Terraria outdigs Minecraft

I honestly enjoy Terraria more in the music department. While Minecraft has an amazing soundtrack, I feel that Terraria uses it’s music in a better way. Honestly, it has been quite some time since I played Minecraft with the in-game music simply I find Minecraft a bit too silent. But it’s quite rare to have a silent moment in Terraria. Also, it has a lot of unique music for each type of biome, boss and if you are underground or above ground…

Something I adore Terraria for is the fact it solves the issue a lot of players have with the early game grind. So, it works like this. When creating a character and when you create a world, you have to choose if you either play on Journey, Easy, Medium or Hardcore. If the world and character matches, you can enter the game. And here is the thing, you take your items and inventory with you.

So this means that you can take your strongest gear to a new world if you want to. That also means you can skip over the whole early game grind and directly get into the good stuff if you want. The only thing I could complain about this mechanic is that the menu UI is a bit clunky in that regard. I would have loved if the character selection screen and the world selection screen where combined. That would help switching between Classic and Journey mode so much easier. It also means you can play both Crimson and Corruption worlds with the same gear and character.

If you use a character created in the “Journey” difficult, you can even duplicate items when you have collected enough of a certain material. For example, if you collect roughly 400 pieces of a certain wood type, you can duplicate it. And guess what, this mechanic also transfers over to other worlds with the same character. You also have more control with this duplication mechanic like controlling time, weather, strength of the enemies among other things. Compare it a bit to commands in Minecraft with the duplication mechanic as an additional mechanic.

At first, I was afraid that this duplication mechanic was going to be overpowered. But I enjoy trying to collect every single variant that there is. There are a lot, but I mean a lot of items in Terraria, it’s not even funny.

Exploring and adventuring in Minecraft can be a lot of fun. Yet, at the moment of writing I feel that Terraria has a lot more to explore and do. Don’t get me wrong here, since it’s only by a slim margin. I feel that the dungeons and the progression is just a bit better implemented in this game than in Minecraft. But, I’m afraid that more big content updates like the Nether Update and Cave & Cliffs might give this point to Minecraft.

Now, something that Terraria nails over Minecraft is the combat. I find that the flow of the Terraria combat mechanics are a lot better than Minecraft’s. Also, there are much more way to fight your enemies than in Minecraft. From swords, throwing knifes, bows, morning star… In combat I love to use my sword for close by enemies and my bow for enemies further away.

There are also more bosses and enemies to fight in this game than in Minecraft. So, you can experiment with the different weapons that you can collect. Some weapons even have a special effect where you can spawn an ally and/or a pet. And then I haven’t started talking about the special armor that allows you to double jump, fly, climb walls….

Since that changes the gameplay quite a lot. There are various items that give you additional movement options and they all are unique and fun to play with. There is nothing to compare it with, since the enchantments in Minecraft compare more to stronger pickaxes or pickaxes of a certain material. Things like a double jump, wings, rocket boots… You have to juggle these items since you have a limited amount of slots to use. You also have the “social slots” that can also change your character’s appearance without showing your armor. The downside to it is that the effects of those items aren’t applied to you during gameplay.

One of the biggest advantages in my opinion is the fact that Terraria is on Steam and can use the Steam Cloud feature. This means that you can easily back-up your saves to the cloud and you don’t have to move files around when you play on another computer. I can only wish Minecraft had a similar system. I’m toying around with saving my worlds in my Dropbox folder but I don’t know how stable that will be.

Both reach the end

Of course, there are things where I can’t pick a precise winner. There are things were I can’t say which game does it better. One of these things are the controls. Both games have amazingly solid controls. I’m purely talking about the PC versions since I haven’t played one second of Terraria on a console platform and I find Minecraft’s interface on console like the PS4 and Switch extremely clunky to use. But that’s my opinion and beyond the scope of this article.

The only minor nitpick I have with the Terraria controls is that I have a bit of trouble getting the grappling hook to work the way I want. But, I rarely use it so I haven’t given myself time to get used to it so yeah, that’s nitpicking.

If we would talk about difficulty, then you could either ask which one is the easier game but I rather ask the balance and progression. Both games have different mechanics and punishments. Both games have amazing difficulty settings so you can play the game at your own pace and difficulty. Both games have very different ways of punishing the player. Both games use beds to skip time and set spawn points of the player. The “biggest” difference is that there are items in Terraria that allows to warp to your spawn points when things get to hairy or your inventory is full. But this is only a one-way trip.

Minecraft has it’s hunger system to juggle while you have to juggle your mana use in Terraria. So picking a winner for who has the best difficulty system and things like that is impossible. Even when you are geared out the nose in both games, there are still things that can ruin your day so yeah.

Also, both games have a sort of achievement system where they teach you the game and nudge you in the right direction.

The next things were I can’t decide a winner is the visuals. While Terraria has a lot more items and animations than Minecraft, I feel that the smaller block pallet in Minecraft pushes the players to be a bit more creative with the items you have.

On one hand, the fact you can dress up your character to whatever you want in Terraria is an amazing feature but the skin layers in Minecraft is something that I have found something amazing to play around with too.

Also, I think it’s not even possible to pick a clear winner in terms of visuals and animations since both games aren’t even played on the same plain. Minecraft’s art needs to look good from every single angle while Terraria’s art “only needs to look good up front”. And both games pull it off extremely well. Biomes feel give the right feeling and the color pallet used in both games give them their own unique feel.

The villager system is something that I can’t find a winner for. Since Minecraft’s Village & Pillage update, the villager trading system is completely reworked with profession blocks and them having to restock. This makes trading now quite interesting since you need to level up your villagers by trading with them. In Terraria, there is this social system. You need to build houses for NPC’s to come and you have to puzzle them together. If you place certain NPC’s close together, it’s possible that you get locked out of certain items. And it also depends on your biome you build the house in. So, yeah. It’s a puzzle on it’s own.

Minecraft outdigs Terraria

Now, there are somethings I prefer Minecraft’s way of doing over Terraria. Also, let me be clear here. The things that, in my opinion, Minecraft does better don’t mean that Terraria’s way of doing it is bad or broken perse. In terms of certain mechanics, there are things where I prefer Minecraft’s way of doing things over Terraria.

One of these things it the fact there is an infinite world in Minecraft and not in Terraria. Terraria’s world is large but when I created five different worlds, I found structures that weren’t there in my other worlds. Maybe it’s just me but I enjoy the fact that everything in the game can be found in the same world. Well, Terraria does have a more enjoyable map-system since you can more easily see everything you have explored so you can easily find your way back to a certain place…

Also, I miss some information from the F3 menu in Minecraft. Things like my coordinates, which biome I’m in… Those aren’t really present in Terraria. There are a few items in the game that give some information like your depth, but it takes up a slot in my inventory… So yeah.

Earlier I said that Terraria has a lot of items. I can also mention that Terraria also uses a ton of crafting stations. Now, if only there was some sort of recipe book like in Minecraft that would tell you which items you can craft and what the recipe is and which crafting station you need to use… That would have been great. I’m so glad that I have a second monitor attached to my PC so I can have the Wiki open when I quickly want to look up something.

But I find that Minecraft teaches the players a bit better with some landmarks and the recipe book on how the game works. For example, when you touch the water, you get the recipe for a boat. Or when you punch down a tree, you get the recipes for the wooden tools.

In Terraria, you have the guide explaining some of the recipes but I find that interface quite clunky to use. Especially since you can’t place workstations to see which items you can craft with them and the text can be barely readable since it’s one color. This UI isn’t the best.

Now there are three nitpicks I have with Terraria. The first is that when you press “esc”, you don’t pause the game. You don’t pause the game when you loose focus either. This let to some deaths, and even one while I was writing this article. But hey, this isn’t such a big deal when you get used to open the settings menu.

The second nitpick is that when you exit the game in Minecraft, you enter at the exact same location when you click the continue button. This isn’t true in Terraria. You enter at your spawn point.

And the 3rd and final one is that I would love to see or hear some drowning damage when you are drowning. Since now it simply slowly costs you health until you go above the water to breathe.

So, I think it’s high time for a conclusion since this article is getting rather long don’t you think?

Is Terraria a good game? 

To answer your question, yes. Terraria is a VERY good game. Is it better or worse then Minecraft? That’s a wrong question in my opinion. If you would ask: “if people who enjoy Minecraft will enjoy Terraria”. That would be a better question. The answer is yes by the way since I’m a great example and I know that there are a few other examples in my friend group as well.

Terraria and Minecraft are two very different games but they have some similar elements. Exploring their world and adventuring in it is an amazingly rewarding experience to play through.

Terraria is an addictive game with it’s amazing visuals and it’s freedom. I have sunken quite a few hours into it before I decided to write this review but I feel that a lot more time will be spent in this game before I decide to give the game a break.

I highly recommend this game to everybody who enjoys sandbox, adventure, RPG-games like Minecraft or Starbound. If even anything sounded remotely interesting to you, I encourage you to give this game a shot. Since I find that the negatives heavily outweigh the positives for Terraria.

So, with that said I think it’s time to wrap up this article. It was certainly an unique experience to review a game while comparing it to another one. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I would love it if I would be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!