Parents' Guide to Tiny Tina's Wonderlands

Though it's not a radical reinvention, this fantasy-themed version of the long-running sci-fi shooter series does feel fresh and fun. An offshoot of the Borderlands series, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is also an open-world adventure game, but with fantasy tropes taking the place of the sci-fi ones (the idea being that you're playing a Dungeons & Dragons tabletop role-playing game called Bunkers and Badasses). Not only are your enemies skeletons, wizards, and other fantasy creatures instead of space mutants, and your shields now called wards, but you also now cast magic spells instead of throwing grenades. There are even times when you get to move your figurine around a game board. All of which works well with this series' usual mix of crazy gun battles, nicely varied missions (the ones with the goblins wanting better work conditions are especially entertaining), and snarky humor (augmented here by a voice cast that includes comedian Wanda Sykes; Lego Batman's Dark Knight himself, Will Arnett; and Brooklyn Nine-Nine's Andy Samberg).

Now, admittedly, this never goes full-on Lord of the Rings. You're still using futuristic guns to take out most enemies, and using shields -- sorry, wards -- to protect you when your enemies shoot back. Even switching your melee weapons from the butt of your gun to swords and axes doesn't change this much, since doing this is still, sadly, ineffective. But while the fantasy makeover doesn't make this as different from a normal Borderlands game the way the Dragon Age games are different from Mass Effect ones, it also means that Tiny Tina's Wonderlands has the same kind of frantic firefights, epic exploration, and wide variety of missions that have made the regular Borderlands such excellent shooters.