Who else plays games to "be" female?

Sort of following up on my "Avatars" post a week or so ago, I was thinking about how many games I specifically buy because it allows me to play as a female, and how many I decide not to buy specifically because they don't. Obviously, most role-playing games (ones I've recently played are Mass Effect and Dragon Age) do let you choose the gender of your character.  Outside of that genre though, I still favor games in which I can lose myself as a girl.  Maybe that's one of the reasons I didn't like Halo as much as some other shooters.  Similarly, while I didn't really get into the Grand Theft Auto series, I got Saint's Row 2, which is a similar sandbox shooter, but with a main character that could not only be female but potentially sort of trans!

Anyway, what got me thinking about this is that there are rumors of the old Wing Commander games being re-released.  These space-flight combat simulator games were easily my favorite games when I started graduate school back in the early 90s.  Between this and X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, this was definitely the heyday of space combat.  As a sci-fi geek, I do wish they would make a comeback.  Anyway, the protagonist/player-character of Wing Commander was hard-coded as male.  However, there was a female comrade-in-arms that you would fly missions with, callsign "Angel", and very soon I just sort of mentally transferred the focus of the story to her.  Sounds weird, I know, but I lose myself in games (or movies) pretty easily - I guess I have high empathy - so sort of like a spirit moving from person to person, when I thought about the game outside of actually playing it (i.e. imagining missions, etc... yes just like a little kid :-) the missions would be ones flown by Angel.

Hmm, this is a really horrendous rambling post, isn't it?  I apologize.  And now I'm feeling like playing hooky from my work for a little bit to go do some gaming!  Oh yeah, I almost forgot, I also use female-vocalist songs in Guitar Hero to work on my feminine voice.

p.s. in case you've seen the not-exactly-classic Wing Commander movie based on the game, Mr. Buffy (Freddie Prinze Jr) plays the main character, and Saffron Burrows (recently on Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and The Bank Job) as Angel.