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TINY TINA’S WONDERLANDS

SHOOTER MULTIPLAYER

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Tiny Tina’sWonderlands is a complete Borderlands game based around the question “What would Dungeons & Dragons be like if the energetic Tiny Tina was the dungeon master?”. If you’ve ever wanted to play a game of D&D,

this may be a good way to introduce you. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands does a wonderful job of walking you through the

idea of D&D by playing its own game called “Bunkers & Badasses”. Everything is beautifully crafted to suit a

you’re tasked with defeating the Dragonlord and freeing the land from his clutches. Along the way you’ll battle skeleton pirates, nuke the whales, and settle grievances between rival bands of dark metal troubadours, in quests and side quests galore which all smoosh together in a chaotic blend of stories and deliciously silly quips. There are numerous combinations of skills and special abilities to try, so much so that you’ll be wanting to create multiple characters to sample the unique abilities to see what fits your personal style. It wouldn’t be a Borderlands game without an overload of loot. There are guns, melee weapons, wards, magical powers, amulets and rings, which are all procedurally generated, so you’ll never have the same piece of kit showing up twice. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is 100 per cent a Borderlands experience that’s sure to please. DN

DREAM CAST! A seriously excellent cast of voice talent features. Ashly Burch is back as Tiny Tina, and joining her are superbly over-the-top stars Will Arnett, Andy Samberg and Wanda Sykes, along with a host of character actors from previous Borderlands games.

stylised experience of a tabletop game, while letting you explosively explore the magical world around you. While it all sounds like an entirely weird premise for a game, at its core TTW brings the solid Borderlands-tinged FPS gunplay that we know and love. Weird and wonderful weaponry, combined with the special abilities of newly created character classes, are fantastically fun to meddle with. The story is a hodgepodge of little pieces of everything. Broadly speaking,

KIRBY AND THE FORGOTTEN LAND

PLATFORMER MULTIPLAYER

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It’s time for fans of all things pink, globular and Nintendo to get excited, for this is possibly Kirby’s greatest outing yet. The aim? Save cutesy Waddle Dees from various bosses dotted throughout assorted levels in a very familiar Nintendo way. You know the drill – a hub world with various

chances to explore, collect, upgrade and play minigames, and miscellaneous themed worlds divided into both sub- levels before an inevitable boss fight, plus challenge rooms, for earning currency to allow eventually much-needed ability upgrades. What’s big and new and different and stuff is that the Kirbster gets to play around in 3D space. This isn’t an open world game - there’s very little in the way of going off the set path - but it does lend more of a sense of space to the little fella’s adventures. Classic Kirby abilities remain, notably inhaling objects and either spitting them

out or absorbing their attributes. Fire, ice, blade hurling, bombs – and a whole more – are all part of the available arsenal. Then there’s the super-fun new ‘Mouthful Mode’…

PINK’S AWAKENING! A co-op mode let’s somebody else get involved, however it isn’t a case of duelling Kirbys, rather the second player takes on the form of a Waddle Dee, with only basic abilities.

Mouthful Mode allows Kirby to inhale generally larger objects, stretching to their shape and utilising them in specific ways to progress. These range from sucking in traffic cones and light bulbs through to the bizarre looking ‘Ring Mouth’ and the super-cool ‘Car Mouth’. Although why they just didn’t call it ‘Karby’ is anybody’s guess. One of the most appealing features of Kirby and the Forgotten Land is that it is - for the most part - a chilled experience, even if opting for the more challenging ‘Wild mode’ over the very relaxed ‘Spring-Breeze mode’. The latter is perfect for new inductees to platform action adventures, of which this Kirby jaunt is a mighty fine example. AF

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