I consider myself to be a very open-minded person. I'm not picky when it comes to food, I'm always willing to try anything once and when it comes to games, the more unique or out-of-bounds a game is conceptually, the more excited I am to check it out. I also consider myself to be something of an advocate for the role of women in games, whether its celebrating respectable female leads (Beyond Good & Evil's Jade and Mass Effect's Shepard come to mind) or bringing awareness to the second-class nature of playing as a female character in a game, if a game with customizable protagonists even allows for it. So you can imagine the inner turmoil that occurs when something like Bayonetta becomes one of my favorite action titles in recent times.

I'm actually thankful that something as extreme as Bayonetta came into fruition because the game itself is so undeniably provocative that its bringing a lot of interesting discussions on the matter to the table, especially those from Tiff and Leigh. And to be perfectly honest, I can't help but get myself into horribly awkward debates regarding gender politics with my girlfriend, who is soundly disgusted by the world of Bayonetta.

While Leigh Alexander argued on behalf of empowerment by pole dancing and Tiff the opposite, my opinion falls somewhere in the middle as, unlike a lot of games, the fiction and overall design of the game supports a character as ridiculous and yucky as Bayonetta.

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