The long awaited over-the-top action game Bayonetta is finally here and while it was rumoured that the PS3 version was suffering from some performance issues, it looks like it’s much worse than the usual differences we see in multi-platform titles.

The recent announcement by ActiVision to up the price for Modern Warfare 2 a notch in the United Kingdom has angered many gamers. Microsoft, quickly following suit with Forza Motorsport 3, didn’t do anything to stop the usual “don’t support this” and “I will pirate that” posts flooding popular gaming forums.

One simple word can describe the state of Piracy within the free market: Sealand. In 2007 founding members of the BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay started a campaign to free themselves of the ‘tyrannical’ international and domestic copyright laws by simply circumventing the whole issue in it’s entirety by buying its own sovereign nation.

The internet is ablaze today with rumors that the new Resident Evil 5 DLC is already on the disc, and that all you’re downloading is an unlock code. Turns out that, despite some larger news outlets fanning the flames, this may not be the case after all.

For Music Monday this week I was lucky enough to interview the creator of the genius remix album, Ocarina of Rhyme, in which some of the most memorable music of the N64 era is smashed together with rhymes from some of the best MC’s around. The mind behind the album, TeamTeamwork, was nice enough to answer my questions, as well as providing an exclusive track not heard on the original album.

There have been quite a few interesting, and exciting announcements to come out of this week’s GDC, but none so mind-blowing as the announcement of OnLive. For those that haven’t heard about it yet, OnLive is a service that will allow gamers to stream current, high profile video games to just about any PC or Mac, as well as a tiny microconsole that you can connect to a TV. If you’ve got the bandwidth, then games will stream down to you in 1280×720 resolution at 60 fps. This could have a drastic impact on the face of the gaming industry over the course of the coming years.

In today’s failing economy, my high-powered two figure income as a blogger just isn’t enough, so I fix various electronics on the side. I have a lot of experience with the Xbox 360, and I can say with confidence that something stinks about the official MS response to Joystiq’s poll on the topic.

In case you don’t know the story, Microsoft suspended Teresa, an Xbox Live user for identifying herself as a lesbian in her profile. She was harassed by other users who claimed that her profile was offensive, and her account was later suspended. Microsoft’s policy has always been to ban any expression of sexual orientation in a gamertag or profile. Even still, Teresa, feels as though Microsoft sided with the very same users harassing her. Microsoft isn’t really addressing the issue head on and their stance on this policy is that it’s fair because it extends to anyone of any orientation. They also claim that their censorship policies are intended to protect users from derogatory uses of words like “gay”.

“So you can’t say that you’re straight either, that’s fair right?”

The problem with Microsoft’s policy is that it alienates gay users. Claiming that the policy is fair because it restricts any user from stating their sexual orientation “be that hetero or other” still singles out anyone who falls into “other.”

When I started World of Warcraft in August of last year, the daunting task of getting to the level cap of 80 in the soon to be released expansion Wrath of the Lich King was set before me. Having a roommate that is a day one subscriber to the popular MMORPG set the bar high as to how fast this task was supposed to be accomplished, but between school as well as wanting to play other games it has actually taken me quite awhile to reach this goal.

With 20 years of Street Fighter, the game that defined the fighting game genre, there’s got to be thousands of peices of Street Fighter merchandise, memorabilia, figures, comics, posters, and collectibles out there in the wild… here is a small sampling of some of the best, worst, and everything in between.