How many others enter a room and chuck down a turret with a lofty shout of "Meet mah girlfriend"? And how many others fight through the scrum until their bullets are all gone and their quad-barrelled shotgun is click-click-clicking on empty chambers, yet can still look like they're having the best time of their ever-lovin' lives?
With eight to 10 hours of brand-new enemies and locations that have been built from the ground up to look like nothing else in all of Borderlands, it offers a great value, especially to those who can appreciate the cavalcade of nerd culture references it makes. Sure, the loot rewards are a bit light, but the chance to give a virtual King Joffrey...
Assault on Dragon Keep is a playful nod to tired fantasy tropes permeating the world of RPGs, simultaneously playing to them and turning them on their head. It's a surrealistic trip through the imagination of a manic little girl who can't quite grasp the fact that for some of her friends, there's no coming back.
As hilarious and on-point as most of the writing in the Borderlands series is, "Dragon Keep" elevates it to surprisingly emotional heights. Or in D&D terms, it rolls for initiative and scores a 20 nearly every time.
There's a deeper meaning in this quest of swords and sorcery, though. Tina is still only a child, dealing with the events of the original Borderlands 2 adventure in her own way.
If you don’t have an irrational love for Tiny Tina, you haven’t played Borderlands 2. If you haven’t played Borderlands 2, you should consider Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep the treasure at the end of your vault-hunting rainbow. Play this. Now.
But it is, unsurprisingly, just the kind of trick one of those special long-running TV shows might try to pull now and then - a bit of heavy-handed schmaltz to break up the glib anarchy, a lunge at tonal variation to bring depth to some increasingly harshly delineated cast members.
Pros:
Cons: