Dreamcast

I've learned a few things after reading about what's happened during the DICE Summit and Awards event that's taken place this past week. The industry seems to be crying out desperately for maturity. David Cage (Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls) says that games need to grow up. Warren Spector (Epic Mickey) says that games like Lollipop Chainsaw shouldn't be made. The industry wants more Journey and The Walking Dead experiences, as evidenced by these games winning 99.5% of the awards given out. The definition of "fun" is changing.

With this console generation coming to a close, and with the strong likelihood that this will mark the end of buying modern consoles for me, I thought I'd look back and rank my top five consoles of all time. These are my rankings, my criteria, and my words. Your mileage can and will certainly vary.

It took nearly a decade, three console generations, and some "epic" help for gamers to get their hands on Too Human. This flawed gem from developer Silicon Knights was anything but a watershed moment for the developer. I believe this game failed with the core gaming demographic is because of two things: Denis Dyack and combat controlled by the right stick.

Folklore received heavily mixed reviews upon its release back in 2007. Though it was praised by many for its dark atmosphere and emphasis on lore, it was hit hard by some for its incessant back-tracking, messy storytelling, and hit-or-miss Sixaxis controls. Though it was never deemed a complete failure (and surprisingly, got more than a couple 9/10's) there was something about it that doomed it for the bargain bin.

Dynasty Warriors wouldn't generally be considered broken, but it has been negatively seen by a large portion of critics out there. This series saw its best ratings early on, but as time passed, the ratings continued to drop. Warriors (as a whole) isn't safe from the ire of the gaming masses, but it's still a game that I love to call my guilty pleasure.

If you play games with any regularity, it's inevitable that you'll eventually come across a roughly-made, unbalanced, unpopular, or straight-up broken title that you grow attached to regardless of how low the score on Metacritic drops. Whatever the reason, I'm betting that every gamer out there has at least one of these awkward, ugly ducklings that they hold dear—and I've invited a group of guest writers to kiss and tell.

Game Description: If you love Japanese anime films featuring giant, crushing robots, here's your chance to control a massive mechanoid of your own. Tech Romancer brings larger-than-life robot fighting to the Dreamcast with slick 3-D animated characters set in beautifully rendered three-dimensional worlds. Graphically stimulating and insanely whimsical, this fighting game features an original animation movie, multiple hidden characters, and VMU minigames.

While I didn't grow up in a culture like Ryo's (or Gene's), I have lived in places with many similarities. I can definitely relate to elements in the game that are signatures of non-Western cultures, and appreciate their genuineness. Gene's comment stating "This is a foreign game with foreign concepts" has legitimacy and weight, and it would be wise to keep this in mind before entering the world of Shenmue II.

I grew up in a collectivist society, which stresses community effort and family over the dog-eat-dog individualist philosophy. Both terms are extremely generalized and say little about each culture, but there are subtle things that are the key in determining which is which. I never had much use for directions or street names. Growing up on the small island of Guam, directions were given by indicating landmarks of everyday things, like a tree, blue trimmings on a house or strange looking stones. We had street names, just like they do in Shenmue and its Xbox sequel, but apparently the entire community found that they were more of an inconvenience.