Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon’s Keep: SHENANIGANS, HOOOO!

The last DLC for Borderlands 2, Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon’s Keep, came out yesterday! Now, everyone knows, I’m a little biased towards this little lady, with her being my second favorite girl in the Borderlands world.. but her DLC definitely puts her at the top!

First, a little tech talk:
→ New compatibility pack download required for online play
→ Download size on XBOX 360 is 1.77GB; PC looks like 1.5GB; PS3 is 1.7GB
→ Cost: $9.99 or 800 Microsoft Points- if you bought the Season Pass, make sure you download this from inside the game! Otherwise you will end up purchasing something you’ve already paid for.

Assault on Dragon’s Keep has a lot of bang for your buck- you’ve got new vending machines that take Eridium for special loot, fantasy-styled old skool vending machines with some new items, Tina Tina slot machines (called Wut-Wuuuuuuut machines, of course), and a new chest, aptly called a Dice Chest, where you roll two D20 die for 5 Eridium to obtain rare/legenday loot. But this stuff isn’t even the best part!

The most special of special gifts you’ll get from this DLC is the story itself. Mordecai, Brick, and Lilith are playing Tiny Tina’s favorite table-top game, Bunkers & Badasses, and *oh boy* Tiny Tina is the Bunkermaster.

You can imagine the types of wildness that ensues from this- everything is fantasy-themed, from the language to costumes to landscape; environments will totally change on the fly; NPCs will come and go; names and maps of areas will change, just because Tina says so.

Moxxi will still keep ya company, Sugar.

The original Vault Hunters and Miss Tiny herself narrate the entire storyline in active time, alla Marcus style, along with your actual character adding in commentary. This. Is. Hilarious. As they state their intentions and next direction/action (D&D style), your world transforms and the next mission becomes clear, at least until a detail doesn’t fit and Tina changes it. SO AWESOME. Now, I’ll leave out the spoilers since this just came out yesterday.. but the secondary idea of this DLC is that Tiny Tina is using the game as a grief mechanism, to help deal with the death of a friend. If you’ve played the main storyline thoroughly and paid attention, you know who this friend is. SAD FACES EVERYWHERE. 😦

This DLC also boasts tons of new enemies- not all recolored/revamped old enemies. These include, but are not limited to, your traditional Orcs, Wizards, Spiders, Skeletons, Treants and Dragons. WHOO, it’s a ride. Take this little guy, for example:

He replaces an impossible-to-kill dragon that Tina placed as the first boss! Yay!

There are also new Class Mods, each pertaining to a classic.. well, class… of Fantasty- Cleric, Monk, Rogue, and the like. And the weapons. OH GAWD, THE WEAPONS. To quote Borderlands 2 writer Anthony Birch,

“We have guns that shoot exploding swords. We’ve got these grenade mods that are reworked into being magic spells. There are these new grenades that wizards drop that are fire balls, magic missiles and lightning blots.”

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?! If not, something is wrong with you that I can’t fix.

Myself and two other mighty mighty Vault Hunters stayed up until the wee hours playing this, until two of us dozed off. Ah, my favorite American Dad quote, “I just picked a whole bouquet of Oopsie-Daisies.” Thankfully we were all in a party on XBL with headsets on, so that Krieg could wake us by talking about opening veins.. Gotta love him. Anyway! The point in all this magicalness is for me to say, THIS. IS. FUCKING. AWESOME. If you have yet to play ANY Borderlands 2 DLC, I won’t be mad as long as you play this first. And pronto. The other DLC, at least in my eyes, pale in comparison (sorry, Captain Scarlet. I loved you, but your DLC was BORING!) Gearbox certainly saved the best for last with Tiny Tina’s Assault of Dragon’s Keep.