# (7)Shulk vs (10)Sub-Zero 2018 _source: (7)Shulk vs (10)Sub-Zero 2018 (revid 83715)_ ## Ulti's Analysis Remember when there was a debate on contest strength between Sub-Zero and Scorpion? Yeah me either. As the ultimate casual, I am proud to report Sub-Zero was always cooler. I would actually be shocked if people's reasoning for it wasn't similar to mine: blue is just a better color than yellow is, and when you're a kid things like that matter a ton when picking characters, sports teams, and so forth. Laugh all you want, but I bring science! These are the things I dig up for predictable 63-37 blowouts. Favorite color science translating to character tastes. Just for fun, let's plug Auron v Shulk from 2013 into the LOL x stats calculator. Auron gets 75%. In the actual match here, he got 63%. During the Ryu Hayabusa v Simon Belmont match, I asked how much a Smash appearance is worth. I legitimately think the right number is about 5-10%, depending on how strong you were to start off. We've seen these insane boosts from Smash for years, and even though Shulk got blown out here I imagine it would have been far worse without Sm4sh and Ultimate backing him. This match also all but cemented we would see a fourth match between Sub-Zero and Auron. We've never gotten Mario vs Sonic, Sub-Zero vs Scorpion, Dark Link or Dark Samus into a contest, Blastoise into a contest, or a host of other obvious stuff, but we can get Auron vs Sub-Zero four times. Okay. Sure. ## Lightning_Strikes 's Analysis **What happened?:** Shulk is a character a lot of people expected to boost a lot because of Smash Bros. and the growth of the Xenoblade franchise. So of course get gets put up against Sub-Zero, a near elite (and make no mistake, Sub-Zero is well stronger than Scorpion). He had no chance of winning this match, and then did not. Oh well. **What could this mean?:** Shulk clearly got a lot stronger, he did roughly as well on Sub-Zero now as he did on Altair. This was just bad bracket placement and my one real issue with the bracket. ## Safer777's Analysis I always liked Sub-Zero. From the first time I played a MK game which was MK 2 to a friend of mine he was always my favorite MK character. Anyways of course SZ here won. Nobody expected anything else. Even though Shulk is in Smash! Like almost every video game character ever it seems! Still it is not that he scored a really big win. But Sub-Zero is so cool! Did you see what I did there? Did you? Yeah I know. I am stupid. Sub-Zero seems to do good even after all these years and this site's apathy for fighting games that aren't Smash. Smash is a fighting game right? ## Tsunami's Analysis Xenoblade Chronicles was originally meant to be Japan-only, but the rest of the world made a stink and the developers caved. It was hugely acclaimed and beloved, and...as a result, it was hard to get a copy at all. From what I can tell it really *was* interesting, but the battle mechanics were so awful that I eventually gave up on it. Even with the character you're directly controlling, your basic attacks are automatic, so it boils down to "dart in, hope that you actually get an attack off, dart away to avoid enemy attacks. Then somehow manage to build up your special meter because the bosses aren't actually vulnerable to anything other than the specials that are really hard to pull off." Xenoblade is the one entry in the Xeno series that has yet to do anything in contests, with Xenogears having once managed to beat a Pokémon game in a Games Contest (seriously, *huh?*) and KOS-MOS being something resembling a reliable midcarder. The game itself was a 3-seed in 2015 and got upset by Donkey Kong Country 2, which was by no means the only reason that I was the only one to get all eight Round 1 matches in Division 6 correct (three of them had Guru prediction percentages inside of 60-40, with the slight favorites only going 2-1), but was definitely the biggest deterrent. Sub-Zero has a history of pulling seeding upsets, so this was a pretty easy pick. The casuals weren't terribly fooled, either, with Subby coming just shy of a 2-1 advantage in brackets.