Do Men Still Make Better Heroes?

With a few choice exceptions in most video games, men are still the driving force of most major heroes (and villains) of games, both online and off. With World of Warcraft, you have the King of Stormwind, Thrall, Illidan, the Lich King, and many other heroes and bad guys that are, well, guys.

Sure, you have Jane Proudmoore, the wife of Thrall that no one cares about and a few other females, but let's be honest here. You're not playing the game, especially for lore's sake, because of them.

That trend follows in other games as well, both old and new. Outside of the shining examples made in Portal and perhaps Metroid, there are very few female figures to be looked up too that aren't basically stereotypes in pink (sorry Princess Toadstool) and/or your overtly sexual, bossy and annoying types.

Still, would some games be better with a strong female lead instead? Would WoW be more interesting with a Queen of Stormwind instead of the King? Should default Shepard be a woman in Mass Effect after all?

What about the other way around? Would Link be more interesting as a lady elf or would you find Max Payne more interesting if Max was short for Maxine instead?

Consider the 'controversial' scene in recent media of the new Tomb Raider game, as Lara defends herself from possibly getting violated by sexually deprived men in the middle of nowhere. While the general outrage was, "How dare nasty looking men who probably haven't seen an attractive woman in months or years with no sense of moral obligation want to force a hand on the cute woman. That's not right." On the other hand, would it be less realistic to say that men who kill and kidnap people wouldn't try to force a young woman, when rape is a very real threat for many women in jungle and third world areas.

Does her being a woman show a sign of weakness that we don't see in typical male heroes, or does it bring out a sense of heroism because a male hero normally wouldn't have to deal with that sort of thing?

Though, men getting violated does happen often and typical in the same sort of situation of being held against their will.

What games, both older and recent, do you believe would have benefited from a default female lead and why? What games do you think suffered before of a female hero over a male one?