Tiny Tina's Wonderlands

Last Updated: Aug 7, 2022
SDHQ BUILD SCORE: 
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Works Flawlessly
Loading Area Spikes

Review

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is the newest entry in the Borderlands series, but with a unique DND twist. The game retains its looter shooter DNA and rolls in some stat building and a full overworld with random encounters and secrets to explore. This kind of one-off encounters and dungeons are a perfect fit for the Steam Deck’s pick-up and put-down style. Coupled with the Borderlands charm, this is one of the best Borderlands yet!

Configuring Tiny Tina's Wonderlands on Steam Deck

Gameplay aside, I was astounded by the ease of configuring the game. Due to the graphical style, upscaling through SteamOS FSR brought the 1024x640 resolution looking close to native, while saving a significant chunk on performance and battery.

To change resolution, go to the cog wheel for the game and under the general tab, change the resolution to 1024x640. With my test of FSR 2.0 though, I felt it didn't make a significant enough difference for the recommended build, but helped stabilize the 40 FPS build.

Left ImageRight Image

The text is a little blurrier at 1024x640, but the sharpness is noticeably better with a fantastic saving to battery and temps.

30 FPS lock was very stable on Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. I did test 40 FPS a couple times, but my Deck shut itself down from overheating while trying to test it, do not have TDP limit off for 40 FPS.

I also ended up turning the in-game settings to medium, anti-aliasing off, and draw distance to low. I didn’t feel these inhibited the look of the game and ended up saving even more battery while keeping temps to around 65c - 70c.

Proton GE is also required simply due to the videos in the game being broken trying to use regular proton. I also checked DX11 vs DX12 and felt there was minimal difference, so either or can be chosen. Multiplayer did end up increasing battery by 1W, but temps largely remained the same and it still felt stable.

Throughout gameplay, I didn’t really feel any huge bugs or glitches that inhibited my playthrough. I did encounter one bug where when I paused the game and tried to scroll down on the menu, my first button press downwards would bring me back up. I did also have 1 crash trying to go into a mirror in a town, but so far that has been an isolated incident. This is a UE4 game as well, so expect some temp and battery spikes when loading environments in.

Conclusion

Tiny Tina's Wonderlands runs significantly better than I could have expected. For a game that really just came out not long ago, it runs cold and stable most of the time. Other than the spikes from loading the environment in, fights are stable and looking gorgeous. With multiplayer being so easy on the system, this is a perfect fit for a portable device.

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Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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SDHQ's Build Score Breakdown

Queen Butt-Stallion decrees this game is a must play on the Steam Deck!

Build Score

Performance: 
Full StarFull StarFull StarFull StarNo Star
VISUALS: 
Full StarFull StarFull StarFull StarNo Star
Stability: 
Full StarFull StarFull StarFull StarNo Star
Controls: 
Full StarFull StarFull StarFull StarNo Star
Battery: 
Full StarFull StarFull StarNo StarNo Star
Noah Kupetsky
A lover of gaming since 4, Noah has grown up with a love and passion for the industry. From there, he started to travel a lot and develop a joy for handheld and PC gaming. When the Steam Deck released, it just all clicked.
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Current Price: 
$59.99
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Other Builds & Information

40 FPS Settings

SteamOS:

40 FPS Cap with 40 Refresh Rate

Half Rate Shading OFF

TDP Limit 12

 

Proton Version:

Proton GE 7-20

 

Game Settings:

Resolution: 1280x800

Graphics Quality: Low

Anti Aliasing: None

AMD FSR 2: Quality

FSR2 Sharpness: 1.0

 

Projected Battery Life/Temps:

15W - 18W

Around 69c - 75c temps for CPU and GPU Average

Around 1.5-2 hours of gameplay

related Settings

3 comments on “Tiny Tina's Wonderlands”

  1. Thanks for this! Was definitely having a problem with temperature for this game, these settings are helping with that, and they look nicer, too.

  2. I tested this after using Cryoutilities 2.0 and it made a huge difference.

    Settings

    Cryoutilities: recommended settings
    Game: Low preset
    FSR: Neither in game, nor in SD options

    Locked at 50FPS, drops only rarely, looks really good on the small screen.

    1. I’m not surprised! CU2 can help with a lot of games, though our reviews do test vanilla settings. That being said, it has been awhile and we should take a look at the game again now that there’s been updates to SteamOS and the Shader Cache.

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