Epic

I'm going to go against the current here, but I'm also going to agree with Nintendo. If it weren't for nostalgia I wouldn't have much respect for them :x I feel they butchered most of they're franchises during the gamecube era, (Fox going on foot, Mario Kart turning lame as hell, Metroid becoming a first person shooter, Link becoming a cartoon, mario attempting story, etc etc etc)

I used to really get into Nintendo games, but then I started playing similar titles from other companies and it really hit me hard. I started playing games like Ratchet and clank, Jak and Daxter, and just recently Beyond: good and evil. They follow a similar premise as some of my favorite Nintendo titles, but it just seems like they connect better with more of an audience range. Nintendo just seems entirely too geared for young people. I KNOW I KNOW /receive hell for saying that, but it's like Disney and Dreamworks/Pixar for me. Disney was all about fantasy magic and the enchanted disney kingdom blah blah blah (Nintendo), but when Toy Story came out, it had the whole appeal of animated magic, but it was FUNNY, they had plenty of material that children just wouldn't understand, yet still appealed to them. Pixar films and the Shrek series are movies that I can enjoy and not feel "kiddish" for watching. 

I feel Nintendo (usually) gets it right with the gameplay, but every other aspect of they're games are a literal drill to the brain, anytime anything story/character related comes up in a Nintendo game I just want to skip it, I have no literal care for what they're attempting to tell me, it's not going to be funny, it's not going to be immersible, it's not going to apply to me at all :/. They're games play fine, but every other appeal to Nintendo is lost to me, I'd rather play games from company's that get every aspect right, and not just have a single appeal. 

And sorry SC >< But the Metroid Prime series is a massive knife to my back and that series can go suck it ;/

SEGA~

Forget about sonic, after Sonic 2 (which to be honest I never quite saw the appeal of), Sega has been a company that just always seems to be missing something. The whole Grandia series was pretty good, but for a story driven game, they're ability to tell a story was awful  >< Even the text felt out of place... I dunno, Shenmue... I have no idea why people love this series so much :x I tried to get into them but just laughed out how lame I thought they were >< (did anyone else accidentally let out a laugh when they show flashbacks of his father getting killed?), Virtua fighter, I'm not sure what it is about this series that makes me feel empty, but I find the characters to be a snooze fest, the game animations to be lame as hell, the overall flow of a fighting game to be non-existent :/

They've made a few MASSIVE strides this generation and I will admit I'm rather impressed. Condemned looked friggin awesome and I'm really interested in Valryrie of the battlefield, but I find almost all of they're past games disastrously flawed :x

YOU SON OF A BITCH CAPCOM.

Breath of Fire. 1st and ESP the Second were fantastic games! Everything after went to ass >_> 

I'm sorry VGChartz, some of the following you may find offensive.

Megaman (good, not great, got pretty damn lame once we hit X(insert random numbers followed by letters), and they 3D onces are almost painful.

Resident Evil ALL OF THEM. Can go suck it and die.

Onimusha, Swords and martial weapons = cool. BULLSHIT resident evil controls = DIE AND GO JOIN THE SUCK IT PILE.

Monster Hunter = God what does Japan see in this game? I will admit, I've only EVER played the first one on the PS2, but man did that game blow ass :/

Street Fighter = The first time I laid eyes on this game, it was Destiny. I was born, to hate this series. I'm not sure why I hate it so much, but man I just find it tacky beyond belief, I think the anime's were ok (they're anime artist draws some pretty hot stuff) but everything else can go to hell >_>

Lost Planet = Meh.

Devil May Cry! What's this? No resident evil controls?! Swords?! Guns!?! Over the top acting?! My god Capcom's finally done something right!

@Nintendo part: Nintendo comes from a time where people would plug the game into the system and play. Games didn't need complicated stories back then, they needed to be fun to play. I think it's interesting to see the attitude of a lot of people these days as they literally need a reason to play a game. I agree that you're not going to find heavily narative works among the majority of Nintendo games (save maybe Fire Emblem...etc), but what ever happened to the concept of playing a game because it was fun. Too many games seem to only motivate the player with promises of pretty cutscenes or "more story" rather than simple fun. There are movies for the former and books for the latter, but games are the place to go for fun. Nintendo gets that; even if some people don't.

@Sega part: Sega seems to only put out maybe a gem or two every so often. Right now I'm playing through Skies of Arcadia and I'm leaning toward calling it the best RPG on the Gamecube and maybe the best one I've played in the last generation. Maybe it's the fact that the main character isn't an idiot or angsty or maybe it's the feeling of adventure, but Sega managed to nail something just right in that game to make me very happy.

@Capcom: Megaman was one of the best franchises around in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. Megaman X, X2, and X3 were awesome as were every Megaman game that came before them. Heck, even Megaman Soccer was freaking awesome and it was a soccer game. I think the transition changes to the PS such as the voice acting and several more things killed the series for a long time. I was unimpressed with X4 and never finished X5/X6.

Also... I hate the Battle Network games. It was like Capcom suddenly said "Let's take a concept completely different than Megaman and then shoehorn the Megaman franchise name into it somehow for a cashin." Disgusting.

Agree with BoF. Great series that has gone downhill. Also... my only problem with Street Fighter is that after Street Fighter 2 Turbo, the series never changed too drastically. Whereas other fighting games are evolving, improving, and defining their niches... Street Fighter has remained unchanging with the times. Some will undoubtedly love that, but I expect a bit more...

I get what your saying WoW, and it's not that I need a reason to play a game at all :P I ENJOY the way video games can toss stories out there, you can go see a movie, and dump "x" amount of money to see it , but you don't quite understand the characters, you only see them. In a video game you get to live the experiences and I think that's pretty damn cool. So where I'm coming from, is that I ENJOY the game play, but I also enjoy the stories, I just have little reason to play a game that only meets one of my needs when I can find plenty out there that do both :P

I'd have been much happier with Mario as a series if they just went back to the original scope of it, wander level to level and not ever even need a reason to do so. Story in Mario games literally makes me feel stupid. Sometimes I don't even want to return said item because I just hate that character that much xD (I do because I can be quite the completionist, but I think the point gets across)

I guess I just really miss the days of Super Mario World :P No bullshit story, just Mario, 1up's, and Stages with time limits :P

But like I mentioned it's not a "need" to have them from video games, it's just I've seen the light at the other end so to say, and I have little reason to look back :x
I am quite the fan of Movies and what not, but I just believe there is a world where video games can take you that movies just can't :P And I kinda like it ^^ I've always been a big story driven gamer, and for my tastes Nintendo just doesn't do it for me :P In my opinion I've played better. But that doesn't stop Ocarina of Time from being the highest rated game ever, which I feel is severely over-rated :P

I do agree with Sky's of Arcadia, it was pretty cool ^^ I wouldn't say best of the generation :D But good for sure :P And your points on Capcom were dead on xD Battle Network was terrible >

I kind of agree with you.  Except for maybe SM-RPG, the stories in Mario games are mediocre at best.  But then again, for example no one buys Soul Calibur or DoA for the stories either.  They buy them for the gameplay.  ^_^

Maybe best is going a bit far, but it easily crushes everything else on the gamecube (Baten Kaitos, Tales of Symphonia...etc). 

Team ICO: I never really 'got' the ICO series and why they were so amazing.

I think that Rockstar is the most over-rated developer by a wide margin ...

They have really only had one game series which has been a major success, and a large portion of that success is related to the massive ammount of free marketing that the 'outrage' over the game provided them; they have tried to reuse this strategy with other series (Bully, Manhunt) but it hasn't worked because these games have been fairly low quality. Being that (pretty much) every publisher is trying to emulate the sandbox quality of Grand Theft Auto that made it enjoyable, and the fact that they have had very limited success in anything else they have tried, I'm not too sure people will care who Rockstar is in 5 years.

*head explodes for the second time*

Team ICO made Shadow of the colossus didn't they?

I loved that game, too bad i only had it for one night. Lol

Yeah I'll totally agree with you on like Mario RPG, or the Paper Mario series, I do find those interesting enough for me to play through :P I just think Mario Sunshine walked a road that Mario should have been forbidden from >_>;; Saving villagers, talking bowser, ug... it was a nightmare xD I just think the best times I've ever had with Mario and the wavelength it should have stayed on were all in the 2D side scrollers. Those massive levels with the tubes that seemed to go nowhere, the stages where 8 million cannons were firing at you, where getting to the end of the stage simply meant advancing to the next one. I'm not sure I even like this whole "the goal is to collect stars!" out look that the series has now. I dunno, maybe I'm just too old school with my Mario's :P

Absolutely agreed with about the Story in Soul caliber, I'm not sure how they do it though, it never feels like the emphasis of the game, maybe because that's only in the single player and the real meat of the experience is the Multi, whereas Nintendo first party blockbusters tend to be the single player thats the dull aspect for me :/  I LOVE they're party games.  They're fantastic amounts of fun and require zero commitment to understanding and immersing one's self.