Last week the body of 19 year old Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado was found on the side of a road in central Puerto Rico. The body had been decapitated, dismembered and partially burned. Both of his arms and legs had been severed, an attempt had been made to do the same with his torso, and the entirety of his body had been dumped off of an isolated street. Jorge was openly gay, well liked and very popular.

BioWare is a developer with an extensive history in roleplaying games. One of their earliest titles, Baldur's Gate, is often lauded as revitalizing the computer RPG genre entirely as well as introducing the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons ruleset to an audience that had never been exposed to it. When their 2007 sci-fi RPG Mass Effect was released on the Xbox 360, it had amassed a million in worldwide sales in its first three weeks. Dragon Age: Origins is BioWare's latest release, returning to their roots as fantasy aficionados after their forays into science fiction.

A new political party has been formed in Australia with the goal of ousting South Australia Attorney-General Michael Atkinson and finally getting an R18+ classification for video games passed in the country. While this is commonly (and incorrectly) attributed as being a moral judgement on the part of the Australian population, most Australians are for such a classification and Atkinson is the sole opponent in government to getting one implemented.

Dragon Age: Origins was rather unique in the fact that at its launch not only one but two pieces of downloadable content were available; The Stone Prisoner and Warden's Keep were two addons that added extra quests and content to the base game. While The Stone Prisoner was available to everyone who bought the game, Warden's Keep was only included with the digital deluxe version of the title. Anyone else wanting to play it has to purchase it for an additional seven dollars.

In a surprising move, online game distributor Direct2Drive has come out saying they don't intend to carry the Activision and Infinity Ward title Modern Warfare 2 when it's released next week. Though the game has been the source of controversy in a variety of ways, this new development appears to be because Modern Warfare 2 requires the use of Steam to be installed.

In a previous entry I talked about the way many games implement "moral choices" these days and how lackluster I generally find that implementation to be. One of the things Bioware has advertised about regarding Dragon Age is that their story will be much more nuanced and realistic, not pigeonholing players into these sock-puppets of emotions. While I'm no where near far along enough in the campaign to make a qualified statement on things, I wanted to break for a moment and explore my previous point a bit further using this game as an example.

ngmoco, the developer responsible for extremely popular iPhone apps like Topple and Rolando, has released Eliminate Pro at long last. What they're billing as the "the first online FPS that fits in your pocket," Eliminate Pro is a free, micro-transaction supported FPS that allows you to compete against other players over 3G or Wi-Fi in deathmatch style arenas.