Two releases, different games, similar subject: honor. Unfortunately neither game escapes with their honor intact.

Creative Assembly's wonderful, colorful, only slightly shallow samurai wargame/empire builder Shogun: Total War is without honor due to a slim, next-to-useless manual, the inclusion of one full page showing errors in this pathetic manual and more than a few bugs and crash problems. It's a great game provided you buy the strategy guide and wait for the patch.

Meanwhile, despite amazingly stoic scenery chewing provided by Christopher Plummer, Klingon Academy is a derelict floating in a sea of mediocrity. The gameplay is as lifeless as Wolf 359. It's blood wine gone sour and like eating Ghak worms cold and dead. It's like dueling with a rusty Bat'lelth. It's like dating a smooth headed female who does not hurl heavy objects when you recite poetry. The designers belong to Fek'lar and should be fed to a blind and addled Targ. Kahless is spinning in his grave even as we speak. The design team are all worthless ptaQs. No honor here.

Recently Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan boldly used taxpayer money to finance a sting operation to catch dastardly criminals performing criminal actions... or, maybe not. He actually set up a sting to catch retailers selling Mature rated titles to minors in the city of Chicago.

Now, I'm not exactly in favor of little kids being exposed to violent, mature or traumatic games like Kingpin, Soldier of Fortune or Who Wants to be a Millionaire, but its fairly important to note that selling these games is not illegal. Bills to make it illegal either stalled or were killed in Congress. What this means is that Mr. Ryan boldly used taxpayer money to catch people doing legal things! Gasp! Ryan sent a stern letter urging retailers to not sell games to minors. Just something to think about, your tax dollars at work, folks.