Bordering on addicted

by ERIK LEIJON

The video game realm is one of few circles where the term “addictive” is used in an almost entirely positive light. Alright, so there are incidences in China where half-decomposed bodies are being peeled off seats at Internet cafes from excessive World of Warcraft playing, and the Call of Duty-obsessed teenager in Barrie who ran away from home last year and was found dead a month later brought a sobering light to game addiction. But let’s face reality—from gamerscores to play timers, gamers pride themselves on the dangerous amounts of hours they put into their favourite titles, and brag about levels reached and trophies achieved is a major (and in some cases the only) component of gaming culture.

Borderlands (Multi/2K Games, Gearbox) is a first-person shooter set on a desolate, lawless alien planet during a quasi-gold rush phase, with millions of randomly generated weapons and role-playing-game-style level building. Borderlands is also a dangerously addictive game. I’m not entirely sure it’s a great game in the artistic sense—the cel-shaded cartoony graphics are slightly outdated and thematically it feels like a goofy parody of Fallout 3.

But as a series of short missions with constant rewards within striking distance, it’s the type of game where the next endorphin rush is minutes away, to the point where minutes give way to hours, and eventually you’re the hapless Chinese fellow melted into his chair.

Add to that an easy breezy multiplayer campaign where your hard-earned avatar (the one you poured hours into) can quickly jump in and collect booty and three buddies, and you have a game that’s almost too easy to get lost in.

Better games have and will be released in 2009, so why is Borderlands possibly the most addictive of all? For one thing, it’s a role-playing game with trigger finger first-person shooter gameplay, and you’re always one new weapon away from temporary omnipotence. It’s an unholy combination of Call of Duty, Fallout 3 with simple item retrieval/assassination-based missions. If you die, you re-spawn instantly nearby with your mission progress intact. There are always multiple missions available, including tantalizing ones dangled on the job board despite being recommended for a level above your avatar’s.

Borderlands’ mission selection largely taunts you, showing the types of weapons and cool battles you can partake in if you devote just one more hour to levelling up your character. Borderlands is deceptively fun, and perhaps even overly devious.

Tekken goes hi-tech

As a longtime fighting game fan, the familiar fast-paced, combo-trading combat of Tekken 6 (PS3, X360/Namco Bandai) is reassuring. As a fan of games in general, the unadventurous Tekken 6 seems like another lost opportunity to bring fighting games into the 21st century. The brawler line-up is the series’ most impressive yet, the HD graphics impeccable and the inclusion of online fighting and scoring (à la Soul Calibur 4, Street Fighter 4 and Virtua Fighter 5) makes it as complete a fighting game package as one gets.

Like the aforementioned fighters in their fourth and fifth incarnations, plenty has been added in Tekken’s 15 years of existence. New characters aside, if you’ve been in a coma since the first Tekken, you could wake up tomorrow and not embarrass yourself playing this newest entry. At this point, the Tekken brand is too sacred to be excessively tampered with, but it wouldn’t hurt to create a game mode that properly teaches the nuances of air juggling and chaining attacks rather than a sterile sparring mode. The new scenario campaign, a Streets of Rage-style beat ’em up, is forgettable and counter-intuitive for anyone serious about learning the tools of the Iron Fist trade.