# Game of the Decade 2 (2020) _Board 8 wiki -- CC BY-SA 3.0. Contest overview plus 128 match writeups, in match order. Converted from MediaWiki to Markdown; navigation, image embeds and footnotes stripped. See ATTRIBUTION.md._ --- ## Game of the Decade 2 _source: Game of the Decade 2 (revid 88284)_
Spring 2020 Contest

Announced:

January 10, 2020

Started:

March 27, 2020

Ended:

May 13, 2020

Winner:

Winner: Breath of the Wild Runner-up: The Witcher 3

Contest Winner:

azuarc - 429 points

Notable matches:

Octopath > Undertale, SK > Octopath,

RE2 > Bloodborne, Xenoblade > P4G,

Witcher 3 > Skyrim, LoZ:BotW > Witcher 3
**Spring 2020 Contest** **Game of the Decade 2** is the second Game of the Decade contest GameFAQs has had, and obviously is the first such contest since 2010. Last time, the contest covered games released from the years 2000 - 2009 and was won by Majora's Mask. This time around, the contest will cover games released from 2010 - 2019. A notable quirk from this is that it makes League of Legends ineligible, since that game launched in 2009. A lot of people brought up Minecraft being eligible for this contest, but that game was only in alpha in 2009. It was not officially released until 2011. KamikazePotato was nice enough to take his adjusted x-stats from the 2015 contest and remove every game from before this decade. Here is his work, as a refresher for Game of the Decade 2: The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim : 33.51 Super Smash Bros. for Wii U : 29.70 Grand Theft Auto V : 28.10 Fallout: New Vegas : 26.66 The Witcher 3 : 26.44 Super Mario Galaxy 2 : 26.35 The Last of Us : 26.24 Mass Effect 3 : 25.51 Mass Effect 2 : 24.54 Batman: Arkham City : 24.14 Dark Souls : 24.10 Red Dead Redemption : 23.60 Bioshock Infinite : 23.50 Xenoblade Chronicles : 22.76 Portal 2 : 22.35 Fire Emblem: Awakening : 21.96 Metal Gear Solid V : 21.49 Borderlands 2 : 20.46 Bloodborne : 20.38 Pokemon X/Y : 19.73 Monster Hunter 4U : 18.31 Shovel Knight : 18.04 Undertale : 17.77 Bayonetta 2 : 17.00 Minecraft : 16.14 Mario Kart 8 : 16.07 Civilization V : 16.04 Super Mario Maker : 15.64 The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth : 13.66 Journey : 13.63 Splatoon : 13.05 Animal Crossing: New Leaf : 13.01 Life is Strange : 12.40 Destiny : 12.24 The Walking Dead : 12.01 Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors : 10.72 Virtue's Last Reward : 10.27 Hearthstone : 8.25 ## Ulti's Pre-Contest Analysis After what seemed like *forever*, we finally got a new announcement. To the surprise of no one, and to the delight of everyone, it was Game of the Decade 2! Second verse, same as the first, but this time we'd be looking at the time line from 2010 - 2019 instead of the previous decade. The contest start got delayed twice thanks to coronavirus and server moves, but it did eventually start. And because there are still idiots who need this explained to them, the de facto standard for the first decade AD is 1 through 9, giving us present-day decades that start on the aesthetically pleasing "zero" number instead of "one". No, you are not clever for telling us there was no year zero and that this decade should actually be 2011 - 2020. Now go away. The adults are talking. Try not to eat Tide pods or lick toilet bowls to get likes on Instagram. Nominations and the format was easy enough: 128 games in a 1v1 bracket, no loser's bracket this time (thank god), 4 matches per day for the first few rounds, then 2, then eventually 1 as we got down to the end. Board 8 dominated nominations as usual, leading to some hilarious overseeding -- Mass Effect 2, Super Meat Boy, DOOM, and plenty of others -- and Allen quietly stepped in with rules about critic scores and such to make sure Untitled Goose Game couldn't win the contest as a joke. This basically meant League of Legends wasn't eligible, though that game came out in 2009 anyway. That rule was tossed aside for Minecraft, which was in beta in 2009 just like League but whatever. The bracket itself was very varied, and even though Allen never said it directly it was clear there was a personal rule of his about no more than 2 games per franchise. The snubs list is already posted on the wiki, but some of the games on that list are nuts. Skyward Sword didn't get in. Mario Maker didn't get in. Smash 4 didn't get in. *None* of the Phoenix Wright or Final Fantasy 13 games. Resident Evil 2's remake, Pokemon Gold/Silver's remake, and Persona 4 Golden got in, but not Metroid 2, Xenoblade Chronicles X, or Captain Toad. Yeah I see you, Nick. Total miscarriage! This contest could have benefitted a lot from a few of these games as 14-16 seeds, but the Metacritic stuff was real. How real? Check out this list that user scaryice put together. Metacritic average by seeding: Average Metacritic score by seed \(1\) 94.3 \(2\) 92.3 \(3\) 91.1 \(4\) 92.4 \(5\) 87.1 \(6\) 89.9 \(7\) 90.1 \(8\) 89.3 \(9\) 88.3 \(10\) 86.6 \(11\) 86.8 \(12\) 85.6 \(13\) 86.9 \(14\) 84.8 \(15\) 84.0 \(16\) 85.8 This might explain why A Plague Tale, and other games that got meh ratings didn't make it in despite being hugely popular. Overall though, no real complaints or criticisms about the layout. We got robbed of a Breath of the Wild vs Smash Ultimate final, but it's understandable not to do it. The ridiculous anti-rally measures were back and, uh... "better than ever", if you're the type who hates fun. User votes counted double, the poll start time was 8 PM EST again, and the unbelievably dumb must-vote-in-every-poll stuff was back. "Yay." But hey, it was out first games contest in five years. LFG!! One final note that I wanted to put in the pregame section, since it was a good discussion during the contest itself. I think personally, one of the following games is objectively the game of the decade regardless of how any poll turned out: Skyrim, Dark Souls, Dota 2, Clash of Kings, GTA5, Fortnite, Red Dead Redemption 2, Smash Ultimate, Breath of the Wild, CoD: Black Ops, Witcher 3, Undertale, Bloodborne, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, Mario Odyssey, Super Meat Boy, The Last of Us, Doom 2016, Overwatch, Borderlands 2, Shovel Knight, Hearthstone, Stardew Valley, Persona 5, Dragon Quest 11, Horizon Zero Dawn, Hollow Knight, NieR Automata, God of War 2018, Pokemon GO, and REmake Evil 2. You can pick any game you want subjectively, but any fair "game of the decade" for 2010-2019 has to be one of those games. And trust me, that is not a favorites list. On we go! **"Whatever happens next, it's been an honor F5ing with you all this evening."** -TheCodeIsBosco ## Ulti's Post-Contest Analysis "Good write up, Ulti. It’s honestly just genuinely entertaining to read the crazy, insightful, idiotic, galaxy-brain shit that comes out of your head. See ya next time." -ColZach When the coronavirus turned the world upside-down, the people willing to adapt, overcome, and change got or stayed rich. Rigid Guy went out of business. I understand government executive orders from idiotic blue states played a part in this too, but bear with me. I could come up with endless examples of Rigid Guy falling off and Adaptable Guy succeeding, but I'll go with just one example. WWE continued putting on wrestling shows, but with no fans in the stands for safety reasons. Sure, makes sense. They put on the same trash they've been putting on for the entire PG era, and they hit new record lows for viewership every week. They're now below peak TNA numbers, just FYI. You guys think Fox is regretting that TV deal yet? AEW meanwhile did the same type of shows, but they put their wrestlers in the stands as their "fans" and split them up in the arena between faces and heels. Their shows, despite feeling empty, still have a form of crowd noise and actually feel like a good wrestling show. WWE's stuff is sterile, boring, and flat. It might look like a wrestling show, but it's not one. This might have *looked* like a GameFAQs contest, but the lack of vote totals made it look like a wrestling show with no audience and no innovation. Watch those matches on mute. Aren't they trash with no crowd and no announcer? That's essentially what our contests are without voters. You can set up a good bracket, put all the bells and whistles on it, and all the board contests can fire off, but without voters, without excitement, without the usual new user influx, these contests feel like we're just going through the motions. This contest also had few truly great matches, but that's just bad luck. I can live with that. What I don't enjoy living with is a preventable low voter problem, and I should point out that viewership for everything across the board is way up for the things that are actually good. There are three main causes for the low turnouts: 1 - The site refused to adapt as the gaming world changed. It stayed text-based for way, way, way too long when it was clear that videos and fan wikis were the new hotness. At this point, it's too late to even fix the problem. The only traffic this site gets now are from Google referrals to the Answers sections, with the guides still getting *some* traffic. Trust me here, I have a big contributor page and I can see the page hits. Individual subreddits and message boards for each game or series is still popular, and we have that, but people left the site in favor of better places to offer that service a long time ago. The leads to issue \#2. 2 - **EXTREME** over-moderation. This site is well-known across the internet for this one, and this junk helped chase off many a user over the years. Lip service has been paid to relaxing things, but it's worse than ever. GameFAQs is as bad as ResetEra or anything other extremist far left site you want to name. When you tell users that only far left garbage is allowed on your web site, people are more than willing to leave. Especially gamers. We are not an easy group of people to please, and we will gladly bail for the latest and greatest if we're not treated properly. It's the entire methodology behind how games sell. The fix here is hilariously easy. Allow for diversity of thought and get rid of the moronic dispute system where mods vote on their own rulings. If you want people to vote on disputes, leave it entirely up to high level users who *aren't* moderators. Too many overturns, and the mod loses their job. It's a good system of checks and balances that would get rid of 95% of the biased deletions that happen on here overnight. People like Team Rocket Elite, Raptor, Centurion, spooky, DetroitDJ, and the mods who are actually really good would be fine under that system. It's the bad mods that would all poof, and this site has been in need of checks for a long, long time. Our moderation system being so bad that it's a meme killed our message boards. 3 - Get rid of most of the anti-rally nonsense. This debate is completely settled and over. I've won the argument. Killing the rallies has all but murdered our vote totals. The experiment has failed; get rid of it. I like registered users getting a bonus and I like the poll starting at 8. *Everything* else needs to go. No more forced voting in every match, no more fighting against referral links, and every round after divisional finals needs to be one match per day. Witcher 3 vs Persona 5 and Dark Souls vs Skyrim both happening at the same time was a joke. I saw people suggesting some truly absurd methods that don't address any of the actual problems. These ideas ranged from complete nonsense like hiding seeding in the bracket to total idiocy like completely changing the scoring system based on prediction percentage. There are people on the forum stupid enough to think calling a round one match in a seeded bracket tournament should have the same weight as calling a semifinal upset. I even saw people calling for banning Zelda from contests, which is absurd to do. Why should Breath of the Wild be excluded from a popularity contest when it hadn't won anything before this contest happened? These are the sorts of bad ideas that happen when a contest has no vote totals and a predictable winner. We don't need anything ridiculous. We just need good vote totals, excitement for the web site, and a web site that people actually want to be on because they're treated fairly. I'm not even asking for anything greedy like the crazy vote totals from the late 2000s. I'd be happy with the numbers we got in 2015. It shouldn't take a mega-rally in the finals for **one poll** to break 30,000 votes. That is asinine. There is a real problem here and some of you are way off with how to fix it. "Take out mid contest breaks too. Although I appreciated being top of the leader board in the second chance comp for a day, that contest break made me lose all interest after what had been an entertaining week or so." -Ringworm *Contest Ranking* Fall 2015 (Games) Fall 2010 (Game of the Decade) Spring 2004 (Games) Summer 2002 (Characters) Summer 2013 (Characters) Winter 2010 (Characters) Summer 2003 (Characters) Summer 2005 (Characters) Spring 2009 (4-way Games) Summer 2007 (4-way Characters) Summer 2006 (Female Bracket) **Spring 2020 (Game of the Decade 2)** Spring 2006 (Series) Fall 2018 (Characters) Summer 2004 (Characters) Summer 2008 (4-way Characters) Spring 2005 (Villains) Fall 2011 (Rivalry Rumble) Spring 2017 (Years) Last, but not least... **The Ultimate Loser™!!** The big, um.... "winner" this year was.... Terraria! Breath of the Wild \> Witcher 3 \> Skyrim \> Dark Souls \> The Last of Us \> Batman \> Bioshock Infinite \> Terraria. It's fitting that one of the many, many overhyped, useless indie games would be the big loser this year. Thanks as always and see you next time! I'd like to give a special thanks to my readers, and an extra special thanks to the guys you've never heard of behind the scenes who keep the wiki looking nice. Ngamer and I get all the credit, but without those unknown folks also helping out we could never do it all. Igordebraga, Averiah, MetalmindStats, Bwburke94, and anyone I might have missed, thanks guys! I really appreciate the help! Bottom's up, bros. ## Ctes's Pre-Contest Analysis Pre-Contest Thoughts The first Game of the Decade was a fantastic contest. It was quite possibly the best contest we’ve had, so I was very excited when this one was announced as expected. In fact, I’ve been some level of excited since the previous one ended, but mostly instantly afterwards and the past years. A lot have happened here since then, so it’s a slightly different format. While still 128 entrants in a 1v1 bracket, this time 12-hour matches are no longer a thing, instead we have several matches a day, which I do prefer. Since then we’ve had some large rallies overtaking the contest partly due to the aforementioned low votals, so in 2018 a lot of anti-rally measurements were taken and all of those still apply today. This meant a registered user bonus when voting so that votes count double if you registered an account before the contest began and it also meant you had to vote in every match a day. The former of the two had changed results in the previous contest, so it is worth factoring in. The second thing while smaller likely also makes a difference in earlier matches. There were no losers bracket this time, perhaps partly because most of the field has not been a contest before, so who would you remove? Of course, we could’ve still had the losers bracket when we reached top 16 if we wanted to, but I don’t mind it not being around this time, in particular if it would be constructed like last time where you run into the same entrant again in the losers bracket instead of being thrown into the opposite side. We did still get a second chance bracket that would go up in a week long break after the first three rounds, so there would still be something other than the regular bracket challenge to work on. Last Game of the Decade we had the Battle Challenge contest. I like that we try out some different things, as long as we keep the ordinary challenge. Nominations went on for quite a while this time, there was a few delays for unexplained reasons both during nominations and during bracket creation. It did serve the purpose of pushing the contest into the time where the whole world was closed down to the pandemic and I have personally loved having this during the worst of it. The timing was perfect to me. The most interesting thing we learned during the nomination period was that remakes and remasters were in the database making them eligible for the first time. Allen actively removed Ocarina of Time 3D and Majora’s Mask 3D indicating that it had to be full remakes, but the line ended up being shaky. The database had things such as “Shadow of the Colossus and Ico”, which would be very weird and stupid to have in the contest so perhaps Allen only actively removed the Zelda games because people were actually nominating them. The bracket came out and there’s a lot to talk about there. On the account of remakes, three of them ended up being in and it shows that the line of eligibility is a bit weird. Resident Evil 2 is quite the different game and right after its Game of the Year victory here it was expected to make it in. Then we had Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver and Persona 4 Golden, which were both more debatable. The latter especially is not much more original than the Zelda games, so perhaps Allen just specifically wanted no previous contest winners. Hopefully we’ll still be able to see FFVIIR in a decade from now, that’s a vastly different game! All three remakes were high seeds, so it’s possible Allen were not hugely in favor of remakes in general while these three were too popular to keep out. They made for a lot of discussion about whether or not they would act as proxies for the games they’re a remake of and to what extent. While we’re talking about Pokemon, one of the first things I noticed were how little representation it had. The only entry is a remake of a 90s game which didn’t even release this decade in Japan. It seems odd that Pokemon GO or some other generation didn’t get in especially considering HGSS was seeded 3. Was it really favored that much? I have a hard time believing that no other Pokemon game had no more nominations than some of the things that made it in, perhaps Allen thought one was enough seeing how similar they are. No franchise had more than two games in the bracket and this is clearly a rule that have been said. Mario did have three games in the bracket if you count Mario Kart, but it would perhaps be a bit too extreme to include all spin-off games from Mario. I do still think this is a bit too extreme. I understand that Allen wanted the most representative bracket as possible for a contest titled Game of the Decade and I believe the lack of a second Pokemon game is due to Allen thinking they aren’t different enough. It did however not make for a better contest in my opinion. We had a lot of fodder in this contest. That was always gonna happen when we excluded everything before 2010, but it was more than necessary imo. The bracket became a bit too chalky as a result and round 1 would have a lot of expected blowouts. I think the run Mario Kart 8 ended up doing is exactly what Allen wanted to avoid too much of. Nintendo is by far the most unfortunate when it comes to the bracket. The rule itself prevented stuff like Skyward Sword and a Mario Maker from making it in and I think it’s a real shame. I don’t think a franchise should be punished for being too good. Imagine if a 90s GotY contest only had two of 3, World and 64, everyone would riot! The cap only need to be a little higher than two and we’d have more interesting matches in round 1. It also results in the 3DS, which was a good contender for best console early in the bracket, have almost no games in the bracket, because we slightly prefer console games. Bracket placement was also rough on Nintendo. Allen wanted to avoid Nintendo domination, but I think he went overboard. Ultimate/Odyssey and BotW/the winner of that means that we would get no real read on the other big Switch games and have mostly boring matches. At this point of the contest, everyone was certain Ultimate was winning the former too and while doubt came as we went, and it ended up being true. It doesn’t even stop there though! Big 2015 snub A Link Between Worlds was fed directly to Smash. Xenoblade 2 could’ve been fun elsewhere and if you count them, both Bayonetta games were given completely unwinnable first round matches. After a contest where everything represented in Smash was stronger than expected, only HGSS, Mario Kart 8, Awakening and the winner of Xenoblade/Three Houses had a chance to do that. The biggest shame is definitely not getting a real feel for Odyssey and Ultimate. When that is all said, Allen did succeed at making a very diverse bracket. Not just by the variation in types of games but also in release years. I have forgotten who, but someone made this nice chart showing that there isn’t too much of a difference between how well each year was being represented: Of course, some are a bit more than others and rightfully so, we’d learn, but no year was snubbed. Breath of the Wild was perhaps the most expected winner we have ever had, and for sure for a new entrant unless we count Link/Ganondorf and 1998 as new entrants. All contenders for second were thrown in the opposite half of the bracket. Look at the games seeded 1. I don’t doubt it’s on purpose that the Nintendo game and the two weakest were put into the same half as Breath of the Wild. Except for this however, we knew almost nothing of the field and some of the entries we had seen before like Witcher 3 and Dark Souls were expected to be much stronger due to respect and the contest title. A vast majority of the games were not in the 2015 contest either due to being too weak or just not released. Part of what made Game of the Decade I such a great contest was that most of the big games were left out and it’s the same thing here, only this time we had not had a games contest a small year before so we had much less to base our predictions on, so it was very exciting to get going. ## Ctes's Mid-Contest Analysis Just like Character Battle X had in 2018, this contest featured a weeklong break before the top 16, so that everyone could fill out second chance brackets. Different from last time was that there was no losers bracket and a finals division, we just had a top 16 games. That would mean only 15 matches remained instead of the 30 matches there were left last time. The low amount of matches left made people skeptical, because there would be plenty of people getting all matches correct and it would take very few alt brackets to create every single possible outcome, in the sense of what realistically had a chance to happen. Breath of the Wild was basically guaranteed to win the whole competition and the winner of division 3 was guaranteed to beat the winner of division 4. That’s already four matches out of the way, and those are only the ones where not even a single crazy person took the upset. People recalled back in Rivalry Rumble, when the Battle Challenge had a ton of people going perfect into the final match of the contest and Allen had to create a crazy oracle finish. Would we the see the same now? Not quite, but the oracle kind of challenge would play a part. Allen worked out a second chance challenge in the best possible way in my opinion. You had to not just guess the winner, but guess their final percentage rounded to nearest integer. You would get 50 points for a perfect prediction and then lose a point for every whole percentage, you were away. However, if you guessed the winner wrong, you would get 0 points. That meant if you guessed Resident Evil 2 with 51% but Mass Effect 2 won with 51%, you would not get 48 points, you would get 0. This created a challenge that was bracket challenge first and foremost and oracle to break tiebreaker. Of course, you could theoretically win despite getting a match wrong, but everyone knew you would be out of contention. True enough, the 27 best brackets had more than 700 points, the maximum you could get with one match wrong. If we were to have a second chance bracket, this one was as good as they come, except that the slide bar you made picks on was a bit confusing and it caused a surprisingly high amount of people to pick the winner they didn’t intended. I mean, you should always look more carefully than that, so it’s the smallest complaint possible if it is one. People knew that the most important aspect of the bracket was picking the Breath of the Wild matches correctly. The rest of the matches were all thought to be reasonably close, so if you just picked 55% for your winner in all of those, you’d be really good. Breath of the Wild was different though, people’s opinions often had more than 10% between them in those, sometimes more than 15%. Whether or not we should have had a second chance bracket at all is another discussion though. People liked the format, but a lot of people also found it unnecessary because it would damage contest flow and votals just to give us an extra challenge. It made more sense in 2018. The promotion was also quite terrible. Casual voters really had no idea of knowing what happened. After the division 8 matches ended, there was simply no poll on the front page and initially no way to enter the second chance bracket, this would come a day later. That created a lot of confusion if you missed the part about the second chance bracket beforehand. Votals are higher than number of brackets, so a lot of people did. Considering the amount of second chance brackets weren’t much higher than the number of voters we seemed to initially lose, I believe the concept was unnecessary. Because Allen insists on having multiple matches each day until the semi-finals, we only had nine days left of matches. The break itself was almost that long as it was eight days. I hope this is the last time we had such a break, I appreciate the idea of a second chance bracket and it was fun, but if it can’t be worked without taking that much time off, I fully believe we’re better off without it. Promotion could help. A shorter break could help. Bonus matches could help. Ultimately though, I don’t think even the combination of those would make me prefer this. The Losers Bracket made it seem more reasonable, but that part had issues of its own. I believe it was fun for change but has no real reason to come back. In any case, we had an exciting last part of the contest ahead of us. A top 16 that’s a lot closer to the general opinion than GameFAQs usually is, division 4 being the biggest outlier, but the remakes in general also looking weird. The bracket was made to be quite diverse and respect the whole decade, it shows in our final bracket where likely top 16 games such as Super Mario Galaxy 2 and A Link Between Worlds were fed to top games early. It had not always made for a better bracket, but there was at least some excitement to almost all remaining matches now that the Breath of the Wild matches looked to decide the second chance bracket. ## Ctes's Post-Contest Analysis It’s been another fun ride that’s as always over before we know it despite how impatient we can get with getting matches rolling at times. The contest began right as the whole world was in lockdown and it was perfect timing. It has been very enjoyable to have a contest on GameFAQs to follow while being at home as much, I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling that. The first Game of the Decade was probably the best contest we have had, at least it’s up there. This one was good for a lot of the same reasons. Most of the games being untested and leaving our usual big games out for more interesting matches. This time, our winner was a whole lot more obvious and contests are so far in between that it’s not as necessary to remove our usual big games, but it still made a fun contest. I don’t think it made for as good a contest as the first one though. The bracket was very diverse and very chalky. It makes for “better results” to not have a low tier Nintendo game beat over-seeded games of little strength, but it doesn’t make for a better contest. Despite having four matches a day for the first two rounds, a lot of the days had no exciting matches at all. It’s one thing to not have close matches, they just went as everyone expected most of the time and that’s not just because we’ve been doing these things for a long time. It’s been suggested this should have had 64 entries instead of 128, but I don’t think that’s the main problem. I just think we should have had slightly less diversity and maybe not created so many Nintendo SFF matches. I know the series cap isn’t confirmed and not everyone believes in it, but there’s just no way I can imagine some of the lower seeded games receiving more nominations than some of the snubbed games. It’s also possible Metacritic is having a bit too much of a say in this. The amount of matches a day is also up for debate. In general, multiple matches is a much better solution than the day and night matches we had a decade ago and I like that we’re getting through the contests at a quicker pace, but sometimes it feels too quick. It was a good step in the right direction to only have two matches per day in round 3, but we need to switch to one match sooner than we do. Forcing us to vote in all matches doesn’t help in this regard. In general, despite the impatience, I don’t mind the contest lasting a bit longer than it does. We used to have a good bit longer contests than this and it was fine. The mid-contest break is a huge part of that problem. I know what the purpose of it is, but it does more damage. It felt so weird to have a break that long and then rush through the remaining part of the contest. The big problem is of course our votals. Theoretically, that shouldn’t influence how fun the contest is, but it does without a doubt. Trends disappearing is partly because of smartphones allowing everyone to vote wherever, but it’s also due to a lack of new and younger users and in general less people voting overall. I appreciate all our anti-rally measures for their intent, though I don’t agree that they’re all nice. The registered user bonus is fine even without these votals, but it’s crazy to me that we did that to help votals before many other more obvious things. The average GameFAQs user is not old because we’re on some old site, it’s because we doesn’t move with the times and thus most of the people here and the ones that were here when it wasn’t as outdated. The votals had become a major issue between 2010 and 2013, but Allen assured us site traffic was good, but that it was simply down for the frontpage. I believe that, but if it mostly comes from answer pages and such don’t we need to attract users here to keep having the info they need. Video guides should have become a thing here forever ago. There are lots of improvements than can be done and/or should have been long ago. In regard to our contests though, I don’t understand why we haven’t taken better measures to improve votals and participation. The promotion is very minimal. That’s one thing on other sides due to rallies, but even here it’s very easy to miss. It’s up on the front page for a surprisingly short amount of time and your window for noticing on any page is smaller and it doesn’t look attractive. Then as soon the contest gets going, it’s only visible on the front page. Why? I don’t understand why it’s not visible on every page. When someone googles something and is directed to GameFAQs, they should be able to see the match pictures and vote in the poll regardless of what part of the page they were directed to. I realize not everyone here cares for the contests as much as us, that’s obvious, but it doesn’t really change the experience of being here in any way that there’s a poll at the side of page. There’s plenty of unused room there. Not on mobile, but then put it at top or bottom or whatever, it can still easily be done without annoying anyone. This was a Game of the Decade contest in place of yet another Character Battle, it would have been the perfect time to try it out. Our six-digit votals are long gone, but our five-digit votals are even in danger at times now if not for the registered bonus. I know all this is not first site priority, it just seems like it would take relatively little effort and I’m sure that a bunch of users would help with it for free. I honestly don’t see why not. It sounds like a lot of negativity. Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot of fun this contest, I just think there’s a simple way to make things better. It has been enjoyable though and I’m glad Allen gave us the contest we hoped we would get every since last time. I’m excited for next time too, and speaking of next time, it’s fun to think of what would be. On the day of the bonus match, we also had this fun poll: It’s pretty clear from the results that the more times we’ve seen something, the less interesting in it we appear to be, though at least everyone correctly recalls Rivalry Rumble is bad. I’m open to something completely different, but only if someone actually has a good idea. I doubt it’s that people actually want something different as much as it’s just the stand-in for the usual “I don’t care about them” option. Character Battle is the obvious next one, but it’s not highly requested. Villains doing that well is a bit sad. If we really wanted another Villains contest, couldn’t we just do Character Battle by villainous level or something stupid like that. I don’t think it’d be much fun, even though the winner would be less obvious. Series contest would not be that great either. It’s a shame Best Game Ever has so few votes when the bonus match hyped that, but there’s another option probably stealing its votes. Game of the Decade 1990s is a great idea. It’s a very GameFAQs idea, by why not? It would be a good contest, lots of our strongest games are from that era and it will give us most of the matches we didn’t get in 2015 but hoped we would. Ocarina of Time is an obvious winner there, but I’m sure some people will buy bite and pick Chrono Trigger. I’ll have fun with regular Character Battles and Best Game Evers too, but if we’re to try something new, let’s do this one. ## Safer777's Pre-Contest Analysis I am back baby! Time to do another analysis for a contest! You know the thing that I have done only 1 time before? And everyone loved it? Yeah I am jesting and you all know it. So obviously I am not an expert even though I am here since the 2nd contest but I will try my best because well I just like the contest season. I don't know why, I just like seeing all these familiar names and their passion for the contest even after all these years. You feel like you are in a community of sorts. The contest season is just nice for me. Or something like that. Read the Crew analysis and the Ulti's post contest analysis to find good analysis from the experts. They are much better than me. Something to notice too. Since these analysis will go on as the contest is happening they will not be entirely accurate since we will not have the big picture yet. For example in the previous contest in Round 1 we had Zelda beating Ezio and people saying it was a bad result for Ezio. BUT since we have the big picture we know that it was a good result for Ezio since well Zelda reached the final match! So there you go. Anyway for this contest. It is GOTD one, so games that came out from 2010 to 2019 are fair game. Now in the previous decade we had only ONE games contest strangely enough (I am excluding the first GOTD contest) and few games from that contest are here too now so that makes things exciting since we don't have much info on what will happen. The general consensus is that BOTW will win easily since it is a Zelda game and it is open world too and these 2 things together are perfect. Now IF we have rallies anything can happen BUT I will tell you something. We will not have since nobody cares for these things anymore. Sure in the previous decade we had a few rallies but it will not happen again. Because nobody cares for this site anymore. Sad but that is the truth. We have Reddit to discuss things and Youtube to find help for a game. So in this site we only have old people now. Like me. So what other contenders we have with a chance to win? We have Fortnite which is THE most popular game in the world right now but unless a big streamer is a member of gamefaqs and cares for this contest nothing will happen. Another legitimate contender is Smash Ultimate. Seriously that game has so many characters that everyone has at least 1 character that they like. But since the LAW and Hierarchy exist it will not win too. Also the Guru pick for this contest is Super Meat Boy. Strange pick but fine. We have 24 hour matches and this is good since not all of use are living in USA you know and it gives people more time to vote. Oh my pick to win? I would like either Witcher 3 or Skyrim. After these Smash Ultimate since it has Joker and Sans(okay as a costume but still). So I don't think I want to say anything more right now. I am sure I forget something but eh. Time to write these analysis stuff. Feel free to post anything if you like I guess? I will try to update this topic after every day. Another thing I noticed in this bracket is that we have so many Indie games. I know that with Steam, Xbox Store and PSN developers could publish their games much more easily but still. I don't have anything against Indie games but nothing deserved GOTD. Maybe Minecraft and that is really. Also notable absents were PUBG and Pokemon Go. We do have Fortnite but for a while PUBG was THE biggest game on the planet and is still popular but yeah it has lost it's throne. As for Pokemon Go say whatever you want but for a few months the whole planet was into it. There wasn't a single day wihout hearing some crazy story and it is still popular now, but not as big of course. Still earns a ton of money too. And a final thing. We are currently(27/03/2020) in a pandemic which is going on for around 3 months and around 1/3 of the population is in a lockdown which hasn't ever happened before. What a time to be alive! So why I write this? Not sure. Maybe we will get more votes since people are just sitting on their homes? ## Bracket
Contest Bracket
Division 1 Zelda: Breath of the Wild Dragon Quest XI Zelda: Breath of the Wild Mass Effect 2 Zelda: Breath of the Wild Smash Bros. Ultimate **ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD** The Witcher 3
\(1\) The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (16) The Outer Worlds Zelda: Breath of the Wild Halo: Reach Zelda: Breath of the Wild Final Fantasy XV
\(8\) Halo: Reach (9) Life is Strange
\(5\) Final Fantasy XV (12) What Remains of Edith Finch Final Fantasy XV Hollow Knight
\(4\) Hollow Knight (13) Tales of Berseria
\(3\) Monster Hunter: World (14) Bravely Default: Flying Fairy Monster Hunter: World Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Monster Hunter: World Dragon Quest XI
\(6\) Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (11) Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
\(7\) The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series (10) Bastion Bastion Dragon Quest XI
\(2\) Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age (15) The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC
Division 2 Mass Effect 2 Resident Evil 2
\(1\) Mass Effect 2 (16) Resident Evil 7: biohazard Mass Effect 2 Fallout 4 Mass Effect 2 Horizon Zero Dawn
\(8\) Fallout 4 (9) VVVVVV
\(5\) Borderlands 2 (12) Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Borderlands 2 Horizon Zero Dawn
\(4\) Horizon Zero Dawn (13) Fortnite
\(3\) Resident Evil 2 (14) Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair Resident Evil 2 DOOM Resident Evil 2 Bloodborne
\(6\) DOOM (11) INSIDE
\(7\) Fire Emblem: Awakening (10) Deus Ex: Human Revolution Fire Emblem: Awakening Bloodborne
\(2\) Bloodborne (15) Call of Duty: Black Ops
Division 3 Smash Bros. Ultimate Super Mario Odyssey Smash Bros. Ultimate Xenoblade Chronicles
\(1\) Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (16) Tekken 7 Smash Bros. Ultimate Zelda: A Link Between Worlds Smash Bros. Ultimate Spider-Man
\(8\) The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (9) Bayonetta
\(5\) Marvel's Spider-Man (12) Dead Space 2 Spider-Man Minecraft
\(4\) Minecraft (13) Dota 2
\(3\) Undertale (14) Octopath Traveler Octopath Traveler Shovel Knight Shovel Knight Super Mario Odyssey
\(6\) Shovel Knight (11) Dragon's Dogma
\(7\) Devil May Cry 5 (10) Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze Devil May Cry 5 Super Mario Odyssey
\(2\) Super Mario Odyssey (15) Mortal Kombat 11
Division 4 Persona 4 Golden Xenoblade Chronicles
\(1\) Grand Theft Auto V (16) Baba Is You Grand Theft Auto V Cuphead Grand Theft Auto V Persona 4 Golden
\(8\) Cuphead (9) XCOM 2
\(5\) Persona 4 Golden (12) FTL: Faster Than Light Persona 4 Golden Red Dead Redemption
\(4\) Red Dead Redemption (13) Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
\(3\) Xenoblade Chronicles (14) Splatoon 2 Xenoblade Chronicles Overwatch Xenoblade Chronicles Fire Emblem: Three Houses
\(6\) Overwatch (11) Death Stranding
\(7\) Dragon Age: Inquisition (10) Ori and the Blind Forest Ori and the Blind Forest Fire Emblem: Three Houses
\(2\) Fire Emblem: Three Houses (15) South Park: The Stick of Truth
Division 5 The Witcher 3 God of War The Witcher 3 Persona 5 The Witcher 3 Skyrim
\(1\) The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (16) Assassin's Creed Odyssey The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Mass Effect 3 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Super Mario Galaxy 2
\(8\) Mass Effect 3 (9) Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
\(5\) Stardew Valley (12) Destiny Stardew Valley Super Mario Galaxy 2
\(4\) Super Mario Galaxy 2 (13) Return of the Obra Dinn
\(3\) Fallout: New Vegas (14) The Stanley Parable Fallout: New Vegas Dark Souls III Fallout: New Vegas God of War
\(6\) Dark Souls III (11) Dishonored
\(7\) The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (10) Nioh Nioh God of War
\(2\) God of War (15) The Talos Principle
Division 6 Persona 5 Portal 2
\(1\) Persona 5 (16) Heavy Rain Persona 5 Assassin's Creed IV Persona 5 Sonic Mania
\(8\) Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (9) Sid Meier's Civilization V
\(5\) Sonic Mania (12) Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA Sonic Mania Super Meat Boy
\(4\) Super Meat Boy (13) Slay the Spire
\(3\) Portal 2 (14) Tomb Raider Portal 2 Kingdom Hearts III Portal 2 Red Dead Redemption 2
\(6\) Kingdom Hearts III (11) Disco Elysium
\(7\) Animal Crossing: New Leaf (10) Street Fighter V Animal Crossing: New Leaf Red Dead Redemption 2
\(2\) Red Dead Redemption 2 (15) Dying Light
Division 7 Dark Souls The Last of Us Dark Souls Skyrim
\(1\) Dark Souls (16) Hotline Miami Dark Souls Rocket League Dark Souls Metal Gear Solid V
\(8\) Rocket League (9) Dragon Ball FighterZ
\(5\) Yakuza 0 (12) The Witness Yakuza 0 Metal Gear Solid V
\(4\) Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (13) Dead Cells
\(3\) Batman: Arkham City (14) Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Batman: Arkham City BioShock Infinite Batman: Arkham City The Last of Us
\(6\) BioShock Infinite (11) Terraria
\(7\) Diablo III (10) Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward Diablo III The Last of Us
\(2\) The Last of Us (15) Crusader Kings II
Division 8 Skyrim Pokémon HGSS
\(1\) The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (16) Subnautica Skyrim Journey Skyrim Mario Kart 8
\(8\) Fate / Grand Order (9) Journey
\(5\) Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn (12) Crypt of the NecroDancer Final Fantasy XIV Mario Kart 8
\(4\) Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (13) Mario Kart 8
\(3\) Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version (14) Night in the Woods Pokémon HGSS Rayman Legends Pokémon HGSS NieR: Automata
\(6\) Celeste (11) Rayman Legends
\(7\) Divinity: Original Sin II (10) Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft Divinity: Original Sin II NieR: Automata
\(2\) NieR: Automata (15) Bayonetta 2
Snubs: ## See Also - [GotD 2 Bracket and Standings](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/gotd_20) - [GotD 2 Stats (slightly outdated by necessity)](http://web.archive.org/web/20200508234125/https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/gotd_stats) - Board 8's 2020 Nominations --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (16)The Outer Worlds 2020 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (16)The Outer Worlds 2020 (revid 86480)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, March 27, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 1 - **Match Date:** Friday, March 27, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 83.04% 64 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 96.95% - **User Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 6925 The Outer Worlds - 1168 - **Anonymous Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 5510 The Outer Worlds - 1073 Not to be confused with "Outer Wilds", which did not make the field. We all knew Zelda would smash this entire contest right from the jump, but the difference this year as compared to most is everyone was actually rooting for Zelda to smash this entire contest. It wasn't really the obvious winner catching anti votes until the tail end of the contest, and it started the Zelda Redemption Tour (remember, Zelda got embarrassed by Undertale last games contest) by utterly demolishing The Outer Worlds. There is a sick joy in watching a car crash unfold, and Zelda gave us seven of them this year. Usually with the first writeup I get to comment on how Nintendo has the \#1 overall seed and gets to squish some bug in the first match, but this was actually our first such Nintendo stomping in quite awhile. Dante was the \#1 overall seed in the last character battle, 1995 does not count, and Chrono Trigger had this spot in 2015. You have to go all the way back to 2013 to see the last true Nintendo \#1 overall seed in a contest (Link was the \#1 seed that year, but Draven won the contest), and you have to go back to 2010 to see the last Nintendo \#1 overall seed in a 1v1 contest. I could bring up the Rivalry Rumble, but I won't. I will say that The Outer Worlds deserved better given Obsidian is now doing Bethesda's job better than Bethesda does, but every seeded contest needs their 16s and *someone* had to get fed to Zelda early. It happens. ## Ctes's Analysis For the opening match of the contest, this was actually a pretty interesting one. It was the clear sign of just how beastly Breath of the Wild would be. Of course BotW would win big and of course it would have the biggest prediction percentage of the contest, but breaking 85% is insane. Only three other games failed to break 15% and they all ended up at the bottom of the x-stats too. This also came right after a contest where only a match involving our most hated character, Draven, was such a big blowout. Breath of the Wild is an expected winner, that almost always gives you some number of anti-votes and sure enough, Breath of the Wild did worse in the first 15 minutes, but it’s still incredible. The craziest thing is it didn’t face some of the worst turbofodder we had in this bracket. The Outer Worlds had just finished right behind Sekiro in a GotY poll, a game that was a popular upset pick to make round 3 and neither was that far away from the overall winner, Resident Evil 2. It was clearly ahead of Devil May Cry 5 in that poll. There is a lot of uncertainty in using Game of the Year polls for anything, but they’re a fine indicator. The Outer Worlds could probably win a fair share of matches, but instead it got to be completely obliterated against the contest favorite. Now, The Outer Worlds probably has a less dedicated fanbase than a bunch of our other weak entries, which might help fuel BotW. The game is often confused with Outer Wilds, that says something about it, but even so, Breath of the Wild opened up looking even better than expected and we expected it to roll over the contest, that’s very impressive. ## Safer777's Analysis So first match and we had the strongest game that is expected to win easily this whole thing. And EVERYONE loved this game. I mean once it has 99 on Metacritic! I am surprised that Outer Worlds managed to sneak in in this contest. I know the game is good since it is from the developers that made a good Fallout game(New Vegas)but still I don't think people were blown away and I don't see anyone talking about the game like 1 month after it came out. Eh whatever. So of course BOTW won easily. Now the funny part is that people expected BOTW to score lower than this so yeah we are talking about a monster contest strength game here. And everyone knows it, I mean look at the correct picks! Almost 96%! Damn! So there you go. What else? Oh yeah in the early concepts Link was supposed to ride a REAL life bike dressed as an astronaut! You can't make these things up! ## Tsunami's Analysis Not much to say here since it's the prohibitive favorite destroying some random fodder that I've never heard of, but with arguably the most well-received Zelda game since Ocarina of Time itself making its contest debut...vote totals were *still* down from the previous contest, where our opening match was Dante vs. Cuphead. Okay, yes, with this four-matches-at-once format, technically we also had Legend of Zelda in an opening match in CBX, too, but here's the scary part: when you take out the registered user bonus, not only did BotW-TOW draw fewer voters than Dante-Cuphead, but Breath of the Wild drew fewer votes than Dante! The registered-unregistered ratio was more lopsided here, though; in Dante-Cuphead, registered voters only outnumbered unregistered voters 8819-8756, whereas here it was 8093-6583. Which, uh, is kind of scary given that BotW's winning margin among the registered voters was **6925**-1168. More registered voters voted for BotW than unregistered voters voted period! That's ridiculous. I guess there was a lot to say after all. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7915&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=1) • **No Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Halo: Reach vs (9)Life is Strange 2020 _source: (8)Halo: Reach vs (9)Life is Strange 2020 (revid 86483)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, March 27, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 2 - **Match Date:** Friday, March 27, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Halo: Reach - 55.36% 53 for - 11 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Halo: Reach - 65.82% - **User Votes:** Halo: Reach - 4599 Life is Strange - 3427 - **Anonymous Votes:** Halo: Reach - 3483 Life is Strange - 3049 This match had some debate despite only being one point, believe it or not. Not only did a third of the site think Halo would lose, but a fourth of the gurus picked against it as well. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is the specter of Halo embarrassing itself due to anti-votes is always there. It has a massive history of underperforming or just outright losing winnable matches, and people look it up every contest. Look at this list of choke jobs, some of them wins in debated matches! And who could ever forget the ultimate choke of them all? Halo is so anti-voted on this site that people had open bloodspot debates on whether or not it would lose to the likes of Minecraft and Super Mario Sunshine. Remember the South Park episode where James Cameron was looking for the bar because it had gotten *so* low that it had to be at the bottom of the Mariana Trench? When people are arguing that you can't beat Mario Sunshine, then you win and people are arguing that you might lose to Life is Strange a few years later, it might be time to throw in the towel on nominating Halo games in contests. Can't get much lower than this, folks, and Halo has clearly bottomed out on this site. Now to be completely fair, Life is Strange is a big deal among casual gamer circles so I can understand why some would pick it here. On almost any big site other than GameFAQs, it probably wins this match. The proof is in what happened five years ago. In round one, Life is Strange was up against Fallout 3 and was getting thoroughly demolished. It was at something like 19% and no one thought anything of the game other than it being turbofodder garbage. Well during that day of that contest, a little-known match was happening between Mass Effect 3 and Undertale. You all know the story of that match, so we need not relive it. What lots of people *don't* remember is while Undertale was going godmode, Life is Strange was *also* going godmode. It jumped all the way up to 27% (!!) by the end of that match, and won some updates outright. It all added up to Halo looking like trash in winning, but never actually feeling threatened. Life is Strange is basically bottom of the barrel on this site, and will lose to anything with name recognition. Halo, though gigatrash for contest strength, does still have "name recognition". Sometimes, that's all you need to win. We'll see that theme a lot in this contest, because the field had a ton of fodder that needed to be rooted out in the early rounds. Case in point, here are Leon's 5 minute unadjusted stats from the final, with only games below Life is Strange mentioned: Life is Strange – 13.28% Destiny – 13.27% Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward – 13.08% Assassin’s Creed Odyssey – 12.95% Crypt of the NecroDancer – 12.86% Binding of Isaac: Rebirth – 12.82% XCOM 2 – 12.80% Fate/Grand Order – 12.32% Death Stranding – 12.26% VVVVVV – 11.86% Hotline Miami – 11.73% Call of Duty: Black Ops – 11.69% Subnautica – 11.66% FTL: Faster Than Light – 11.53% The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC – 11.51% Splatoon 2 – 11.23% Dragon’s Dogma – 11.00% Tekken 7 – 10.97% Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft – 10.85% Fortnite – 10.84% Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective – 10.77% The Stanley Parable – 10.64% Night in the Woods – 10.56% Baba Is You – 10.52% Crusader Kings II – 10.44% Dying Light – 10.41% Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair – 10.16% What Remains of Edith Finch – 10.02% Slay the Spire – 9.91% The Witness – 9.78% Dota 2 – 9.65% The Talos Principle – 8.71% Return of the Obra Dinn – 8.17% Mortal Kombat 11 – 7.97% INSIDE – 7.13% That's over 35 games! This site does not play games made after 2001. "But Ulti! What about the usual mention of the second match curse!" Oh we'll get to that. ## Ctes's Analysis The final match of the first day gave us a major blow to board 8 from casuals. This match was hotly debated on board 8 and when something doesn’t even break 40%, that’s on us. Hollow Knight was the guru favorite, so we weren’t completely off, but it was very evenly split. It also serves as our first indicator of indie games being legit, but that didn’t really take off until the next day. While the gurus favored Hollow Knight, the oracles did not and those are the bigger contest nerds. With 61.82%, Black Turtle had by far the best oracle prediction and it lower than the actual result. He sure made us here for it too! Then look at the prediction percentage. This was an embarrassing start for us even if we made up for later on. It was almost over right away, but there were a few minutes of hope for Berseria. It certainly had the board vote to the surprise of no one. A minute into the match, Berseria was doubling Hollow Knight, then suddenly Hollow Knight rose to heaven and was almost doubling Berseria at the freeze. The match had everyone’s attention, but the next update sealed the deal completely. Hollow Knight extended its lead above 200 votes and never looked back. What happened then? Basically everything we could look at indicated the match being even, and in even matches picking the RPG is usually a good call. Hollow Knight lost big time in its two GotY polls. Tales of Berseria had no such polls to make predictions based on, which probably didn’t speak well for it, but means to was untested. Kingdom Hearts III was snubbed from GotY too and that game had decent enough strength to win here. Velvet was in our latest contest and won a match with relative ease before getting almost 30% on Yoshi. Such strength could be enough today. For a long time, Hollow Knight was believed to just be really good. A contender for best indie game, which quickly looked to be a decent title. Also, a crucial thing a lot of people didn’t take into account when making this prediction was Hollow Knight’s Switch exposure coming later than its original release. I had Berseria today and expected it to be close thinking Hollow Knight was of the same strength as in its first GotY poll. Had I realized it wasn’t initially on the Switch, I would have picked it. I would not have felt safe, but I would have picked it. Last contest proved being on Switch is a really good thing. It seems clear now that the result had a lot more to do with Tales of Berseria simply being absurdly weak. Not that anyone thought it wasn’t weak after today, but it’s even worse than anticipated. It looks straight up awful. The Tales series is extremely niche these days, being mostly only cared about in very specific RPG happy circles like board 8. Symphonia looks like it will always be the strongest of these despite being limited to the Gamecube outside of Japan for a long time, and the previous games contest showed us it isn’t even the strongest RPG on the Gamecube as it lost to Paper Mario II. Not that there is any shame in that since Paper Mario II is perfect. A decade after Vesperia did slightly worse than anticipated, we’re taught to have no faith in this franchise in contests and we got a good early reminder that characters =/= games. ## Safer777's Analysis I don't know anything about the Halo series but I do believe that HR is beloved at least from the fanbase? As for LIS is a good game and I have seen playthrough and even though it is based on a ridiculous premise(the main character can reverse time!)it just works and the story is amazing too. This and the WD series brought back the Adventure genre for a while at least. So the match was closer that I expected. Sure we all thought that Halo would win with around the same percentage that it won and it did won but I thought the name would give it more power or something. Guess that doesn't really matter. 1 out of 3 picked LIS to win too. So there you go. Not a clear cut match as I thought. ## Tsunami's Analysis It's hard to have faith in anything Halo here, but Life is Strange was pretty fodderiffic when we saw it before. I thought that maybe with B8's penchant for VNs, Life is Strange could pull off the upset, but I forgot that they hate the game. Either way it was a meaningless 1-point match--and there was at least *some* debate here, a 77.3-22.7 split on the Guru compared to some of the other awful picks I made. Halo really does look pretty bad here, even in victory. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7916&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=2) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Final Fantasy XV vs (12)What Remains of Edith Finch 2020 _source: (5)Final Fantasy XV vs (12)What Remains of Edith Finch 2020 (revid 86489)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, March 27, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 3 - **Match Date:** Friday, March 27, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy XV - 72.70% 64 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy XV - 88.19% - **User Votes:** Final Fantasy XV - 6036 What Remains of Edith Finch - 1990 - **Anonymous Votes:** Final Fantasy XV - 4788 What Remains of Edith Finch - 1744 This was one of the many, many matches in the first two rounds where little-known indie darlings got booted out of this contest in grand style. The methodology behind how this bracket was put together made for a *ton* of indies making the field (I believe the number is around 25?). Some were good. Most were not. Spoilers -- only one indie game made it into round 3, and it isn't one that a lot of people picked. Trust me, we'll get to it in due time. I don't know much about Edith Finch since I haven't played it yet, though I do own it, but I do know that it isn't often a contest entrant gets 25% in a match and doesn't come out looking like a total jobber. Final Fantasy 15 was never going to beat Zelda, we all know this, but Edith Finch was pegged pre-contest as a possibility for dead last in the x-stats. You can't go out and only win 75-25 in a match like this and come out smelling roses, especially with Zelda getting 85% on the same day. The reasons for this are fairly obvious, and we've been over them a million times over the years. No need to rehash them all here. The short of it is the Final Fantasy series has been such bloated, hyper-corporate garbage for so long that people detest these games now. I actually loved Final Fantasy 15, and I have the review to prove it (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/932981-final-fantasy-xv/reviews/163809), but the game was released unfinished. So unfinished, in fact, that Square decided to *never* finish it. Good job, Square. You really know how to make your fans happy, don't you? Fun little anecdote. I bought the game day one and got the platinum fairly quickly, though it wasn't difficult at all. Like it's a literal 1/10 difficulty platinum trophy. I finished the game the day before the free DLC started. If you check my PSN profile, I currently only have 45% of the game's trophies despite having a platinum in the game! If that isn't indicative of a laughably botched game launch, then what is? So.... yeah. I love the game, but I have no ill will toward people who dislike it and helped it have one of the only embarrassing 75% wins we've ever had. This performance was so bad given what Hollow Knight pulled off that FF15 had a whole new problem on its hands in round 2. ## Ctes's Analysis What Remains of Edith Finch looked like a candidate of being the absolute weakest entry in the bracket on paper. Final Fantasy XV is a previous GotY winner and it fell short of a tripling today. That should have been our first warning flag of FFXV struggling to get to round 3. It was mostly credited to Final Fantasy’s inability to score big blowouts, however. FFVII has looked off in so many contests and still managed to get where it should unless its 2013 where to be fair, almost nothing did. At high percentages, it obviously doesn’t take a lot of anti-votes to not score big and Final Fantasy is good at getting such. XV is probably better at it than most of them. It was initially fairly well liked here, as shown by winning GotY, but it still represents a lot of the issues with modern Square and it would not have won GotY most years. Its development was quite a rollercoaster both before release and during DLC phase. The canceled stuff probably doesn’t help it much either. Also, despite it being more stupid every single contest, I’m positive “Final Fantasy always wins” still gives it some anti-votes despite it not being true since Sephiroth won the villains contest 15 years ago. Final Fantasy XV might have benefit slightly from brand name here however, which should have made next round scary as well, but it took a while before some people anticipated a possible Hollow Knight upset since it’s hard to make much of big blowouts and since the indie craze hadn’t really shown itself yet. At this point, we were not paying much attention as other matches stole the spotlight. As for Edith Finch? Well, when you’re never gonna win a match and is just happy to be here, getting Final Fantasy XV is probably among the best you could hope for. Breaking 25% in its only match means it can happily leave the contest! ## Safer777's Analysis So a FF game and it won! Typical for this site am I right? Now even though I am a HUGE FF fan I still haven't played FF 15. I don't know it just doesn't impress me? I am not sure. The general consensus is that it is a good game but for 10 year development not good enough. As for Edith Finch it is a walking simulator game and I still don't understand how these games keep getting made. Sure some have good stories but seriously? These aren't for me so maybe someone that is into them can tell me. So the match got as expected with around the same percentage too. I mean I guess that it is bad for FF 15 because if it can't score a tripling against this game that people say maybe the weakest on the bracket what more can you expect? High prediction percentage too. Guess the name helps. ## Tsunami's Analysis Noctis may have embarrassed himself in 2018, but this was never in doubt. Final Fantasy may be declining as a series, but I *think* the opinion on XV was "it's still not great but it's better than XIII" and besides, What The Hell Is Edith Finch. I've heard it described as a "walking simulator", which I think means it's some sort of casualbait. This match followed the trend of nearly all of the early matches: despite the disparity between the number of registered and unregistered users, the loser's raw votes were very nearly a 50-50 split between registered and unregistered, while the winner's registered votes exceeded their unregistered votes by over 1000. The exact meaning of this, however, would not be clear until we saw a match that broke that trend. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7917&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=3) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Hollow Knight vs (13)Tales of Berseria 2020 _source: (4)Hollow Knight vs (13)Tales of Berseria 2020 (revid 86488)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, March 27, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 4 - **Match Date:** Friday, March 27, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Hollow Knight - 48.62% 21 for - 43 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Hollow Knight - 75.63% - **User Votes:** Hollow Knight - 5136 Tales of Berseria - 2893 - **Anonymous Votes:** Hollow Knight - 3917 Tales of Berseria - 2615 Though Board 8 typically dominates the leaderboard when all is said and done in these contests, the casuals always get some matches where they embarrass us. And they embarrassed the crap out of us on this one, boys: True story -- when I first made a bracket, I picked Hollow Knight to win twice and didn't think about it much at all. Then I made the all too common mistake of reading Board 8 and changed my mind to FF15 \> Tales of Berseria in this fourpack. This ended up in a one point gain overall, and it still annoyed me anyway because this match at first glance was *so* obvious. How obvious? Here is every single match involving a Tales game other than Symphonia: That's it. That's the entire list. Tales fans (and I include myself here) will tell you all day how good these games are, but they never get nominated enough to matter outside of one game that existed on a system with 10 good games on it total -- Melee, Tales of Symphonia, Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2, Resident Evil 4, Eternal Darkness, REmake, Paper Mario: TTYD, Fire Emblem 9, and Pikmin. Don't even try with Twilight Princess or Wind Waker. I don't want to hear it. The Tales characters themselves have a *laughable* contest history, too. Every single one of them, including the ones from Symphonia, have performed like gigatrash. The problem, which is why half the gurus picked Tales of Berseria here, was this poll: People equated Velvet to Berseria for obvious reasons, and people equated Hollow Knight to Silent Hill 2. Loud fanbase, underplayed game. Or so we thought. This match was close for two minutes, and two minutes only. Berseria took the bracket votes, and Hollow Knight then proceeded to beat the holy hell out of it for 23 hours and 59 minutes straight. 63-37 might not look like much, but FF15 only got 75-25 against a garbage can. I'm sure Edith Finch is a fine game, but let's be honest about its strength here. This blowout was so big and so surprising to a lot of Board 8 that the attention rightly turned to round 2. Because how damn funny would it have been had Hollow Knight beaten a main line Final Fantasy game? It would have been Master Hand \> Noctis all over again, only funnier because people care far more about games than characters. As for why this happened, there are two reasons. One, Tales is choke artist trash in these contests. I know we joke a lot about Donkey Kong and Fire Emblem being professional choke artists in contests -- just wait until we get to *those* two losers -- but Tales legitimately enters every contest with two hands around its own neck. It gets hyped up every contest, and every contest it embarrasses itself. We all need to do ourselves a favor moving forward with these Tales entrants. If there is *any* question whether or not Tales can lose, pick against it. The other reason this happened is because Hollow Knight is an incredibly strong game given its indie status. KP put some very good pre-contest stuff out there, and one major point he had was the indie glass ceiling theory and how some games would crack it. His pick was Cuphead, but really you could pick any of the well-performing indie games. To thoroughly simplify this, there is another theme that will pop up a lot in these writeups: "Did this game appear on the Nintendo Switch?". If so, it's probably got good contest strength. Mostly. ## Ctes's Analysis The final match of the first day gave us a major blow to board 8 from casuals. This match was hotly debated on board 8 and when something doesn’t even break 40%, that’s on us. Hollow Knight was the guru favorite, so we weren’t completely off, but it was very evenly split. It also serves as our first indicator of indie games being legit, but that didn’t really take off until the next day. While the gurus favored Hollow Knight, the oracles did not and those are the bigger contest nerds. With 61.82%, Black Turtle had by far the best oracle prediction and it lower than the actual result. He sure made us here for it too! Then look at the prediction percentage. This was an embarrassing start for us even if we made up for later on. It was almost over right away, but there were a few minutes of hope for Berseria. It certainly had the board vote to the surprise of no one. A minute into the match, Berseria was doubling Hollow Knight, then suddenly Hollow Knight rose to heaven and was almost doubling Berseria at the freeze. The match had everyone’s attention, but the next update sealed the deal completely. Hollow Knight extended its lead above 200 votes and never looked back. What happened then? Basically everything we could look at indicated the match being even, and in even matches picking the RPG is usually a good call. Hollow Knight lost big time in its two GotY polls. Tales of Berseria had no such polls to make predictions based on, which probably didn’t speak well for it, but means to was untested. Kingdom Hearts III was snubbed from GotY too and that game had decent enough strength to win here. Velvet was in our latest contest and won a match with relative ease before getting almost 30% on Yoshi. Such strength could be enough today. For a long time, Hollow Knight was believed to just be really good. A contender for best indie game, which quickly looked to be a decent title. Also, a crucial thing a lot of people didn’t take into account when making this prediction was Hollow Knight’s Switch exposure coming later than its original release. I had Berseria today and expected it to be close thinking Hollow Knight was of the same strength as in its first GotY poll. Had I realized it wasn’t initially on the Switch, I would have picked it. I would not have felt safe, but I would have picked it. Last contest proved being on Switch is a really good thing. It seems clear now that the result had a lot more to do with Tales of Berseria simply being absurdly weak. Not that anyone thought it wasn’t weak after today, but it’s even worse than anticipated. It looks straight up awful. The Tales series is extremely niche these days, being mostly only cared about in very specific RPG happy circles like board 8. Symphonia looks like it will always be the strongest of these despite being limited to the Gamecube outside of Japan for a long time, and the previous games contest showed us it isn’t even the strongest RPG on the Gamecube as it lost to Paper Mario II. Not that there is any shame in that since Paper Mario II is perfect. A decade after Vesperia did slightly worse than anticipated, we’re taught to have no faith in this franchise in contests and we got a good early reminder that characters =/= games. ## Safer777's Analysis I don't know why Tales games/characters keep getting nominated. They always do bad. They have fans but man they all are really weak. I don't know anything about Hollow Knight but I guess that people like it, at least more than the Tales series. However it is one of these indie games that the cool kids know. The Crew was split on this match and I don't get it. They should have known that people just don't care for the Tales series/characters here. Seriously. So HK won easily. So yeah. Stop nominating Tales games/characters. People don't care about them on this site. Also the prediction rate was really high for HK. Guess most people have caught on by now ## Tsunami's Analysis This was considered a very debatable match, because Hollow Knight was an indie game, which rarely fared well, while Tales of Berseria was, well, just look at the first two words of that title. The Tales series has a grand total of four wins in contests. Tales of Symphonia has three of those--once with Lloyd winning in Character Battle IV, and twice with the game itself advancing to Round 2, in both the fourway BGE2 in 2009 and in GotD in 2010, though it should be noted that its R2 loss in GotD was literally to one of the two games it beat out in R1 of BGE2. The most recent was in Character Battle IX, where some combination of DAT TOP OPTION (technically left option now, but still, higher seed in a fodder match) and TJF allowed Berseria's protagonist to reach R2. And while the fact that Berseria already had more wins than Tales of the Abyss might have been encouraging, we all knew full well that that was a fodder-vs.-fodder match, and Yoshi proved it by breaking 70% on Velvet in R2. The distrust of all things Tales narrowly won out--in order to avoid the procrastination that plagued my 2018 write-ups, to the point that the final rounds have references to this contest's bracket, I'm doing reactions *during* the Contest this time, so Guru submissions aren't technically closed yet, but at this writing it looks like about 54.6% of Gurus had Hollow Knight. And Hollow Knight won handily, with the casuals beating out the Gurus by 20% on the prediction percentage. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7918&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=4) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Monster Hunter: World vs (14)Bravely Default: Flying Fairy 2020 _source: (3)Monster Hunter: World vs (14)Bravely Default: Flying Fairy 2020 (revid 86487)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, March 28, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 5 - **Match Date:** Saturday, March 28, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Monster Hunter: World - 58.70% 60 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Monster Hunter: World - 88.85% - **User Votes:** Monster Hunter: World - 4833 Bravely Default - 3206 - **Anonymous Votes:** Monster Hunter: World - 3543 Bravely Default - 3173 BATTLE OF THE SUBTITLES!! Given what we know now it would be easy to say these games were both hidden dragons all along and that we should have known Monster Hunter would be a beast, but a lot of people saying that would not be telling the truth. Round 2 was always in debate right up until it happened: When this was all happening live, Monster Hunter v Bravely Default and Sekiro v Ni No Kuni were basically mirror images of each other trends-wise, and the matches were happening at the exact same time. The obvious question to ask here is "Bravely Default or Ni No Kuni, who you got?". The beauty of it is all four games in this fourpack were making their contest debut, and all but Sekiro looked horrible in any poll they had ever been in. This is a round 1 analysis though, so I'll get into more of that in round 2. This match was one of the many, many boring and predictable matches we had in this contest. There simply isn't much to talk about with a 58-42 beating, outside of one small point. I think it's possible Bravely Default may have overperformed by a percentage or three here, because Bravely Default 2 (not to be confused with Bravely Second and the incessant need of JRPGs to use stupid subtitles and numbering systems when naming their games) was announced during the Game Awards in December 2019. Given this is RPGFAQs, it may have had a small effect on the original game's percentage. I haven't played any of these games yet, but I have friends who swear by them. But really the story here is how this match and its sister match had the *exact* same trends and percentage. It was just silly to look at live. ## Ctes's Analysis This match went almost exactly like most of us expected, but unlike most matches that go that way, most appeared to not have a correct read on either game’s strength, just a correct read on the ratio between them. Because even as the games both ended up in the matches where most people expected them to, they look a lot better than we thought at the other side of the contest. Bravely Default appears to be quite legit and it’s a shame it got a completely unwinnable match because it could’ve damaged brackets elsewhere in a similar fashion to Octopath. Being a Square RPG on a Nintendo console is a good thing apparently. As Monster Hunter also ended up being a lot closer to Dragon Quest than expected, we instead of learned of Bravely Default being legit as the contest went on. Hopefully it’s not the last time we see it in the field, although with its low seeding in a Game of the Decade bracket it might very well be. This match set up Monster Hunter as the clear favorite for round 2. It was the guru favorite too, but Sekiro beating it was a fairly popular upset, but everyone had a hard time seeing Ni no Kuni get close to Bravely Default. That had more to do with the following match however. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have an action RPG against a turn based RPG here. But here is the thing MHW is really popular especially the last game. And these games are damn loved by the fans even though they are grindy and you have to keep slaying the same monsters over and over. Still a ton of stuff to do there. As for BD it is basically an old school FF game with just a different name. Seriously. It is loved but since it got released on a portable console you can't expect much. I have played it though along with the sequel and yeah it is amazing. So many job combinations and such. As for the match. It went as expected even with the same percentage that people predicted. So I guess that means that MHW is weak. I mean barelly beating a portable JRPG? Only on this site.The prediction percentage was huge too, I mean the 2nd highest so far. Huge name recognition I guess? Also Bravely Default 2 is getting released this year so that means that it has to be doing well in sales and in reception. And even though it says 2 it is actually the 3rd game. Strange I know. ## Tsunami's Analysis Now this was an interesting match to talk about, if not to watch. It was in the write-up of the Suikoden II-Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate match that "The Flowchart" was introduced: Nintendo \> Squaresoft \> Japanese RPG \> RPG \> Japanese \> old \> new \> contest experience \> top option \> everything else. However, while this did correctly lead to the answer that Suikoden would win because it was older, had contest experience, and was the top option, it was *not*, as stated in that write-up, a JRPG vs. a mere RPG. Monster Hunter is in fact a Capcom franchise, so that was JRPG vs. JRPG. Here, however, it was a bit murkier. Bravely Default was the older game, 2014 vs. 2017, but that probably matters less in Game of the Decade because the gaps are smaller. Monster Hunter: World had the huge seeding advantage, and was released on consoles while Bravely Default was a handheld game. But Bravely Default was *Squaresoft*--Square Enix, technically, but while it was well post-merger it was a throwback to their older games, in the same vein as their earlier spin-off "Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light". Hell, look at those abbreviations again: Bravely Default even had a subtitle with the initials "FF"!--while Monster Hunter: World was, as stated before, *Capcom*, which stunk up the joint like crazy in 2018. Yeah, yeah, "Characters =/= Games", but still, about the only Capcom character to do anything impressive was B8 mascot Phoenix Wright winning one of the three matches that was outright *flipped* by the registered user bonus, and one of the other two resulted in a Mega Man loss so there you go, Capcom sucks. Well okay Chun-Li also seemed to impress in 2018 but nearly every female character in the bracket seemed to be a step up from before. And with unregistered voters, it was indeed pretty close; 3543-3173. But with the registered voters, MH:W was above 60%, so even without the registered voter bonus, this wouldn't have been close. Monster Hunter: World had an 87.66% prediction percentage overall, so this was just a clear case of me overthinking things. Then again, we'd seen enough 15-2 "upsets" that the seedings alone didn't seem like an indicator that MH:W had this on lockdown. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7919&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=5) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice vs (11)Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch 2020 _source: (6)Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice vs (11)Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch 2020 (revid 86490)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, March 28, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 6 - **Match Date:** Saturday, March 28, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sekiro - 61.87% 62 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sekiro - 78.35% - **User Votes:** Sekiro - 4877 Ni no Kuni - 3165 - **Anonymous Votes:** Sekiro - 3599 Ni no Kuni - 3116 CONCURRENT BATTLES OF THE OBNOXIOUSLY LONG SUBTITLES!! We just discussed at length this match's identical trends and percentages vis-a-vis Monster Hunter and Bravely Default, so we need not rehash it too much. But for wiki readers who like to skip around (...*why?*) or for anyone singularly linking to this one, this match and Monster Hunter v Bravely Default had the same trends, same percentage, almost the same prediction percentage, and it was cool because all four were contest newcomers. It was a good, old fashioned, boring 58-42 type beating all around. It was impossible to really project Monster Hunter vs Sekiro based on any of this, and you couldn't really use the Nintendo argument either. Ni no Kuni has a Switch port, while Bravely Default happened on the 3DS. There was however one interesting thing about this match specifically, which was the visceral hatred some people on Board 8 have for Ni no Kuni. Lots of complaints about it being overhyped at launch, generic and predictable on delivery. Stuff like that. Now I haven't played the game yet, so I can't comment on anything specific, but I laugh when I hear people complain about Japanese RPGs being generic and predictable. Bros, you *do* understand this genre has been the same exact thing for 30 years, right? You start every JRPG as a teenager with amnesia looking for your lost cat. You end all of them by killing a mutant. If you're still looking for innovation in the RPG realm, the linear JRPG style doesn't have it anymore. Open world Western RPG styles are what people want now. Go peek ahead to the end of the contest. Half of the final 8 is Western RPGs. The case can be made for Xenoblade and Dark Souls having a WRPG influence, too. Of course JRPGs are predictable and generic. That's why we all like them. ## Ctes's Analysis Sekiro won the match with relative ease as it was supposed to, but for anyone that picked Sekiro to round 3, this was not what you had hoped for. Ni no Kuni is beyond irrelevant at this point and is probably only remember for being animated by Studio Ghibli. While it is a very pretty game indeed, it’s rather forgettable and I would not have been surprised to see it not make the field at all. Let’s stay at the pretty animations part for a bit though. While I switched to Monster Hunter \> Sekiro after this day of matches, I did not think this was as bad as people thought. Because if you have not played either of the two, Ni no Kuni stands out quite a bit. I can see people thinking “Well, it looks nice and I like Studio Ghibli” here. I could’ve done that in some matters myself if I didn’t care for either game. That’s despite having actually attempted to play Ni no Kuni. I just got bored of it and never got around to finishing it. Now, although round 2 certainly did not do that line many favors, I’m about ready to pick it up again on the other side of the contest. Because while Sekiro didn’t get close to winning next round, this whole fourpack ends up looking good, all in the better half of the bracket. It’s hard a bit hard to imagine, but I think it makes the above point good after all. You could argue that it just has the right genre for us to care about it, but there are certain games today and yesterday proving it is not necessarily so. I have a hard time imagining Ni no Kuni put up much of a number on anything, but it seems like the kind of game that’s also hard to blowout entirely. I would not pick it above FFXV or Hollow Knight as the stats suggest, but I still think the stats tell us something. The game is forgettable to many, but rarely ever disliked, and we all remember what it is when seeing it in a poll. Sekiro is also a recent game and here on the other side of the contest, being a year old has not looked to do anything any favors anymore, we’re slow on this site. So it’s a good game for Ni no Kuni to perform well on while going out. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have Sekiro here which is a damn hard game for the hardcore people vs a JRPG that nobody cares about now. And it did bad. Man we do love our JRPG's on this site. And it isn't about name here, everyone knows about Sekiro especially with all these get good memes. Ninokuni had a remaster recently but still I don't think anyone cares enough for the series. I think the 2nd game did bad in sales too. So for the match. Nothing to say. Sekiro just doesn't have power and Ni No Kuni is even weaker. So there you go. I guess we don't care for either game here. ## Tsunami's Analysis And here's where The Flowchart, and everything else I thought I knew about GameFAQs, went completely down the toilet. I wasn't *that* familiar with Ni No Kuni and even less so with Sekiro, but remembering how Yakuza bombed all over the 2018 Contest and being *pretty* sure that Sekiro was an action game and not an RPG, I figured this was a lock. Ni No Kuni was fodder, sure, but Japanese RPG \> Japanese, not to mention I'd probably take a FPS over an Action Game on this site. Just look at how Devil May Cry regularly struggles to even get games into the Games Contests despite Dante being a very good midcarder. It's clear that both he and Kratos are far stronger than their games. And if Yakuza couldn't even do well in a *Character Battle*, how was an action game going to do shit in this contest? And my Oracle was only spared from being in an even bigger world of hurt by my misconception that this was Japanese RPG \> *Japanese*. It's not. Unlike the series I keep comparing it to, Yakuza, which is legitimately Japanese in origin, Sekiro is set in Japan but it's made by Activision, best known in this site's glory days for their *sports games* like the Tony Hawk series, and more recently for *Call of Duty. *When I learned *that*, I said I was glad I didn't know that because I probably would've taken Ni No Kuni to *double* Sekiro if I had. Researching them for this write-up, however, I learned that Activision also managed to acquire some old platformer icons like Crash and Spyro, not that those characters will ever be theirs, and they...*are now known as Activision **Blizzard?!?!?!?!*** Goddamnit, if I'd known *that* I don't think I'd have taken Sekiro to avoid a *tripling* by much! You've got a company that this site hates, in a genre that this site hates...and it's not only *not* challenging for the title of "lowest X-Stat value by something that isn't actively being anti-voted", but comfortably advancing to Round 2? And just like Bravely Default in the previous match, over 49.5% of Ni No Kuni's raw votes came from unregistered users; in fact, the splits are *extremely *similar with both voter groups-- 4833-3206 vs. 4877-3165 with the registered voters, 3543-3173 vs. 3599-3116 with the unregistered (in both cases, this match was the slightly more lopsided one). This was, plain and simple, the site's tastes being far different than what I...oh. I, uh, may not have looked quite close enough. Activision merely *published* the game internationally; it was actually developed by a Japanese developer, FromSoftware, best known for...*the Souls series?!* Well, geez, I feel silly now. The Souls series is one of the few IPs to debut during the contest era that has shown some strength in Games Contests. Dark Souls made Round 3 in 2015, where it nearly broke 30% on A Link to the Past, and managed to double its Round 1 opponent and beat an established franchise in Round 2, while Demon's Souls, the game that started it all...okay it's 0-2, but it looked good in both its losses and both were to quality competition. Probably. They've only had one appearance in a Character Battle and the character was put into a bad situation immediately, but if we ever go back to Character Battles, the series might have enough clout to not completely suck. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7920&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=6) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series vs (10)Bastion 2020 _source: (7)The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series vs (10)Bastion 2020 (revid 86492)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, March 28, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 7 - **Match Date:** Saturday, March 28, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bastion - 41.54% 5 for - 59 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bastion - 33.76% - **User Votes:** The Walking Dead - 3987 Bastion - 4054 - **Anonymous Votes:** The Walking Dead - 2912 Bastion - 3803 Let's get the obvious out of the way -- I absolutely *detest* The Walking Dead. I hate everything about it. The comic blows, the fans are obnoxious, the TV show is overhyped trash that's gone on for far too long, and most importantly given this contest, the video game is gigatrash. Frankly, the entire franchise is gigatrash and I would almost go far enough to say the same about the zombie apocalypse craze. I don't care who defends it or what reason they try to give me. The only good thing to ever happen was the bat scene, because it made those indefensibly obnoxious people *suffer*. I've made a lot of strides in not being as much of a vindictive jackass anymore, but with certain things I cannot help it and The Walking Dead is absolutely on that list. Watching The Walking Dead choke all over itself wasn't quite as satisfying as the internet melting down over season 7, but I'll still take it. Bastion is a *wonderful* video game, but I honestly didn't think anyone had played it. I think in all my time on Board 8, I've seen maybe three people talk about it. It's the entire reason I picked TWD to actually win this match, and I wasn't alone. We all kind of figured people had only heard of one of these poll options, and that TWD would win by default. As luck would have it, and as Dragon Quest 11 would show us in round 2, it was actually Bastion that won by default. Both of these games are weak, but Bastion was slightly *less* weak. I also would love to think I'm not alone in wanting this atrocious zombie franchise to just go away, but who really knows. The added bonus was how good this match was for awhile, which makes Bastion winning it all that much better. When this started, Walking Dead had most of the bracket votes and was well over 60%. It had a lead of 70, and though it lost a few percents and votes by the freeze, that can happen with these low vote totals. We see random cuts all the time that don't mean much. When Walking Dead went back up a little with the first real update, people assumed the match was over. *That*, ladies and gentlemen, is why they *play the games*. Bastion erased the entire miniscule lead in a flash, and after a small fight from Walking Dead, Bastion kicked off its quest to take out the trash with a 62 vote swing. Bastion tried building a lead at this point, but the night time is zombie time after all. This thing stayed stuck at 50-100 votes all the way past midnight, but once midnight hit the night vote went to Bastion. Slightly. After some more stalling, the morning vote came around to bury The Walking Dead for good. And good riddance, too. You won't find many cases where I'm happier to lose a point than this match. Not only that, but Bastion *deserved* the publicity. It is such a beautiful, well-done video game. Not only did I get to watch it win a close contest match as an underdog, but I got to watch it beat a franchise that I just loathe. Sure it was just one point in the grand scheme, but so what. Some things matter more than contest points, and The Walking Dead losing is one of those things. Also notable here is the old Day 2 Curse rearing its head once again! It's insanity how often this happens. Look at this list, all Day 2 Curse upsets, and I'm not even counting the ones that were unexpected close matches: (remember, we didn't know what the hell "LFF" was at the time) (yes I am aware this was actually day 1) That all led up to this silly result. In division one, in about half of our contests, either the 8/9 match or some match from the second batch has some goofy result in it. It never fails! ## Ctes's Analysis Sekiro won the match with relative ease as it was supposed to, but for anyone that picked Sekiro to round 3, this was not what you had hoped for. Ni no Kuni is beyond irrelevant at this point and is probably only remember for being animated by Studio Ghibli. While it is a very pretty game indeed, it’s rather forgettable and I would not have been surprised to see it not make the field at all. Let’s stay at the pretty animations part for a bit though. While I switched to Monster Hunter \> Sekiro after this day of matches, I did not think this was as bad as people thought. Because if you have not played either of the two, Ni no Kuni stands out quite a bit. I can see people thinking “Well, it looks nice and I like Studio Ghibli” here. I could’ve done that in some matters myself if I didn’t care for either game. That’s despite having actually attempted to play Ni no Kuni. I just got bored of it and never got around to finishing it. Now, although round 2 certainly did not do that line many favors, I’m about ready to pick it up again on the other side of the contest. Because while Sekiro didn’t get close to winning next round, this whole fourpack ends up looking good, all in the better half of the bracket. It’s hard a bit hard to imagine, but I think it makes the above point good after all. You could argue that it just has the right genre for us to care about it, but there are certain games today and yesterday proving it is not necessarily so. I have a hard time imagining Ni no Kuni put up much of a number on anything, but it seems like the kind of game that’s also hard to blowout entirely. I would not pick it above FFXV or Hollow Knight as the stats suggest, but I still think the stats tell us something. The game is forgettable to many, but rarely ever disliked, and we all remember what it is when seeing it in a poll. Sekiro is also a recent game and here on the other side of the contest, being a year old has not looked to do anything any favors anymore, we’re slow on this site. So it’s a good game for Ni no Kuni to perform well on while going out. ## Safer777's Analysis An upset on the 2nd day! This contest is good! But in all seriousness this was a big suprise. EVERYONE(on board 8 at least)got this match wrong. And it makes sense. Everyone and their zombie grandmas knows about WD because of the TV series. And when WD Telltale came out it won so many awards that I lost count. It revived the Adventure genre too. As for Bastion it was good when it came out but now it has been surpassed by many games. So the match. It was close for a few hours actually, but eventually Bastion just kept rising and won. Why did this happen? Well the WD Telltale is very weak. That is. Even though 4 games have come out and the last game came out in the previous year too people just don't care I guess? No way Bastion is that popular. I mean it came out 9 years ago and it had no sequel either. The crew got this match completely wrong too and most of this site got this wrong. Look at the correct prediction rate. Only 1 out of 3 managed to get it right. So yeah. Too bad because WD Telltale has an amazing story. And as per tradition we had the Day 2 Curse too! What that is? Well on the 2nd day on the contest, like every contest, we always have as board an upset that comes out of  nowhere and we always go, well what exactly happened? So this happened here too! Ah tradition! ## Tsunami's Analysis While Day 2 of the contest was pretty bad for my bracket, it could've been worse. I took *three* upsets, and one of them paid off! Sadly it was the one that was facing the obvious winner of the eightpack in R2, so I was still screwed out of points in one R2 match no matter who won, but still, it softened the blow of being so far off base on Sekiro. The Walking Dead was definitely the "safe" choice, because it was both the top option and had contest experience, sort of, while Bastion had none. I say "sort of" because this was both games' Games Contest debut, but The Walking Dead had managed to get two characters into the 2013 Character Battle. Thing is, they both sucked. Spyro vs. Clementine vs. Reyn had the closest Guru spread between the top two characters of any R1 match (though not the lowest prediction percentage for a favorite because there was one match where all three choices were above 20%), and then Spyro just absolutely dunked on Clem, winding up with close to 57% of the vote in a threeway. Lee Everett, meanwhile, was the Guru favorite over Mr. Game & Watch and Meat Boy, because it was assumed that G&W being basically just another avatar for Smash wouldn't be enough and that Meat Boy's ridiculous design would cancel out G&W's silly design and they'd "joke SFF" even though Meat Boy is literally a main protagonist whose name is in the title of his game. Yes it's still ridiculous, but it's not like the "joke characters" who are largely side characters with memes. Game & Watch won anyway, because even foddery Nintendo is still Nintendo and should never be underestimated. I got both of those right then and I got this one right now. The Walking Dead is not the type of game to be trusted to be worth anything in contests, ever. Kind of makes me wonder why I picked Life is Strange but you can chalk that up to Halo being another thing that should never be trusted in contests. But here's where things get interesting. Whereas in the other seven matches over the first two days, the loser got nearly half of their raw votes from the unregistered users (only Life is Strange managed to even have a 300-vote disparity between registered and unregistered) and the winner received more than 1000 more votes from the registered than from the unregistered, in this match, that trend was *reversed*. Bastion's lead with the registered voters wasn't even 100 votes, at 4054-3987, but with unregistered users it was 3803-2912! It was largely the loser that benefited from the extra power of the registered bonus, making it closer than it should have been. Interestingly, this was also the only one of the first eight matches that was an upset, with just under 1 in 3 brackets getting it right. Hmmm...the number of registered votes for the first two days was just barely in the low 8000s. The number of brackets filled out, based on the prediction percentages, appears to be...*8703!* Holy crap, there are more brackets than there are registered voters! That wasn't the case in 2018; though the decrease in vote total is largely on the unregistered side, there were more registered voters in most of the 2018 matches than there have been so far in 2020, while the total number of brackets was just 7221. That's scary, because the general "line" on this site is that despite being largely millennials, we have the "boomer" mentality and are largely stuck in the 1990s. A contest entirely comprised of games from 2010 or later, it wouldn't at all be surprising if almost every voter had at least a few matches where they really didn't know much about the contestants and cared even less. Add in Allen forcing voters to vote in all four matches if they want to vote in any of them, and you get people voting with their brackets. I may have to go back over my Oracle and change every pick where I'm backing a Guru underdog, even though that would've burned me in this particular match, because it really feels like we might be in a situation where predictions and results have a higher correlation than in years past. Oh, and I guess there's something else funny to be talked about, too. With 4 and a half hours left in the poll, The Walking Dead went on somewhat of a run, winning six straight updates before losing one by a mere two votes, then the two games alternated update wins for 40 minutes except one of Bastion's wins was actually a tie. Since Bastion had only been up by 927 when the run started, it looked as though we were going to see the match go the full 24 hours with the maximum lead under 1000. It would've been just the 47th 24-hour battle to go wire-to-wire within 1000 votes and just the 11th in which there were no lead changes past the first hour (and just the 17th with no lead changes past the first hour even after throwing the 12-hour matches into the mix). But then Bastion started winning updates again, and it looked inevitable that its lead would reach 4 digits. With an hour and 20 minutes left in the match, Bastion led by 990 votes. The next update rolled in, and Bastion won it...by *one vote. *Next update, same thing, 1-vote win for Bastion. Then came a 2-vote win for The Walking Dead, wiping out the previous two updates. The next *two* updates were dead stalls, and then TWD won one by 6. 30 of the 80 minutes stalled out, and TWD had refused to let it happen! Bastion spiked an 11-vote win on the next update, however, and cracked 1000 with 35 minutes to go, en route to a final margin of 1027. In the Golden Age of Contests, I'm sure the stats topic would've been losing their shit about "barriers" and TWD's valiant fight to keep the margin in triple digits when its fate was sealed, but it's hard to muster up any sort of enthusiasm when those dead splits were 12-12 and 14-14 and the 11-vote "spike" was 21-10. If two entrants in a 1v1 each managed to get 2/3 of an update within half an hour of each other in the old days, it'd be a sure sign that one of them was cheating. Now, it's just expected statistical variance because the updates tend to be on par with what the fodderiest of fodder was pulling in in the contest's glory days. Remember how lopsided some of the early matches in 2009 were? Wold you believe that the final update that managed to get Crystalis *up* to **4% even** was only two votes fewer than The Walking Dead got on its final update? Or that in the final update of that ridiculous match where SMB3 pulled down over 75% of the total vote, the second-highest last-update total was exactly equal to Bastion's last update? These votes are awful and this contest is awful. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7921&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=7) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age vs (15)The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC 2020 _source: (2)Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age vs (15)The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC 2020 (revid 86493)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, March 29, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 8 - **Match Date:** Saturday, March 28, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dragon Quest XI - 72.52% 64 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dragon Quest XI - 92.10% - **User Votes:** Dragon Quest XI - 6593 The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC - 1448 - **Anonymous Votes:** Dragon Quest XI - 5205 The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC - 1510 Every contest, Board 8 dominates nominations. Every contest, we get a lot of our darlings into the contest field. Sometimes it works out, as Phoenix Wright can attest to. Other times, you get matches like this. Trails in the Sky is the latest Board 8 cause du joir, akin to past obsessions like Phoenix Wright, Shadow of the Colossus, the Persona series, Umineko, and Orange Man Bad. Don't point out the flaw in this thinking, either, or people who spend every waking moment in a Discord chat day after day after day might say mean things about you and we wouldn't want that, right fellas? ;) I will say that it is nice when Board 8 champions a cause that's actually good, and Trails in the Sky qualifies for the good list, but the hivemind methodology is so over the top anymore that some of you have reduced yourselves to caricatures. Agreeing with everyone is easy. Thinking for yourself and being a rugged individual is called survival strategy for a reason. Remember that. Anyway, Trails in the Sky could not have drawn a worse opponent in this contest. I know other games would have kicked the crap out of it far worse than Dragon Quest 11 did, but Trails not even winning the board vote tells me that this match reeks of the good old SFF stink. Dragon Quest 11 ultimately proved itself to be a badass in this contest, but remember, this match happened on day two back when a lot of people still thought we were in anti-blowout-FAQs. We hadn't yet seen some of the absurd beatings to come, so SFF was (and still is) a reasonable conclusion here. I'd be shocked if the overlap on these games was less than 75%. They really cry out as having the *exact* same fanbase. It might be worth it to give Trails one more shot at a contest before calling it a wrap, but who knows when or if we'll get another games contest. Look at the vote totals as you guys read these. It's not good, my friends. ## Ctes's Analysis The final match that I could watch start at 1am instead of 2am because of the damned daylight savings. Oh well. Dragon Quest overperformed quite a bit here, proving to us that it’s truly legit. Which is good for it, because it would need to be later on, when Monster Hunter showed it was worth more than we though. This is the first time in a contest that Dragon Quest has looked great. It has been at best fine before, but this is on another level. XI has had great reception and it probably also did no harm that Dragon Quest now has Smash Bros representation, as like 75% of the elite characters these days is in Ultimate. In that regard, it’s a shame it got to be the \#2 in this division, but something had to run into Breath of the Wild. Trails in the Sky SC is just happy to be here. It’s a cult favorite, so I wouldn’t have been surprised to see it seeded higher. It doesn’t matter much though; it would lose most matches it could have gotten. Estelle Bright was in our precious contest and neared the bottom of the x-stats. At this point, the game looked to follow along. We can praise Dragon Quest, but at this point it could’ve just as well be that Trails in the Sky SC was just that bad. Yesterday we saw Tales of Berseria being very bad. Worse relative to the field that Velvet was. The result here could very well be a combination of the two. ## Tsunami's Analysis Holy word salad, Batman! In this match, we have a pair of 9-letter initialisms, one from a two-digit number (written as a two-letter Roman numeral) and seven other words and one from 9 words straight-up (which was shortened to seven words and two initials even on the voting page). The very next day, we had a matchup of a game with 9 total characters in its name (including a space!) vs. one with just 6, and the day after that we had one with 6 vs. one with *4*--barely enough between the two of them to equal the initials of one of these. The silliness of it all is astounding, and it's about the most interesting thing about this match because we all know that DQXI was going to ride the power of its franchise name to three easy victories before getting pasted by Breath of the Wild. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have the grandfater of JRPG's against another JRPG that I don't know anything about. Sorry about that! Also I do believe this is the biggest title for a contest match. I mean both games have so many words on their names! So for the match. People were expecting around 70% for DQ 11 and it scored more than 80%. So why? Here is the thing. DQ 11 sold like crazy and after more than 30 years FINALLY DQ series is popular with the video game people! DQ games were always popular but just in Japan. They never did good in the West. But DQ 11 broke the mold. It has shipped around 6.000.000 units so far which is impressive for this series. And any game really. I mean it is a turn based JRPG and these have basically stop coming out. Except the Pokemon series. I played recently DQ 3 on Switch which came out in 1988 by the way and NPC's, monsters, spells, jobs, items and others are the same even after all these years! DQ is as old school as it gets. And we just love it the way it is. I mean you do know what you get when you buy a DQ game. So that means that DQ is strong or Trails is weak? I think a combination of both. Amazing performance of course. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7922&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=8) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mass Effect 2 vs (16)Resident Evil 7: biohazard 2020 _source: (1)Mass Effect 2 vs (16)Resident Evil 7: biohazard 2020 (revid 86494)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, March 29, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 9 - **Match Date:** Sunday, March 29, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mass Effect 2 - 66.57% 64 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mass Effect 2 - 75.53% - **User Votes:** Mass Effect 2 - 5205 Resident Evil 7 - 3042 - **Anonymous Votes:** Mass Effect 2 - 4099 Resident Evil 7 - 2471 Every now and again you get a 16 seed that clearly got mis-seeded for whatever reason. The most blatant example of this was Starcraft in 2004, but there have been other examples. Raiden in 2003. Duke Nukem and Terry Bogard in 2004. Wii Sports in 2010. Ratchet and Clank 3 and Phoenix Wright in 2015. Rosalina and Wesker a couple years ago. And, of course, CATS whenever he's stuck being a 16 seed. Now I'm not saying a lot of these mentions didn't eat some "16 seed losses" as it were, but most of these items were mis-seeded in some way. We can clearly add Resident Evil 7 to that list. Mass Effect 2 looked so awful in this match that people rightly questioned its status as a division favorite, and that was *before* Doom, Resident Evil 2, and Bloodborne all went berserk the day after this. 63% on a 16 seed when four other games break 80% in your division looks wretched. There's also Resident Evil 7 being a divisive game in that series. Some fans loved the horror movie throwback style, and others hated it for being way too short and not "Resident Evil" enough. To see it pull this off was a huge eye opener. There are two prevailing thoughts here. One is that Resident Evil 7 was hilariously mis-seeded and we need not think much of what happened here. The other is that Mass Effect 2 was in a *lot* of trouble. I'll talk more about this when we get to Mass Effect 3's matches, but there are a lot of people out there who utterly detest this entire series now because of what happened with Andromeda and 3's ending. People can make fun of our voters all they want to, but our voters have very astute and they absolutely punish you if you go sour. The contest did ultimately prove Resident Evil 7 as a hidden gem, not to mention Capcom having a resurgence overall, but at the time of this match we simply didn't know that yet. It took Resident Evil 2 and Devil May Cry 5 to really bring it home on that one. ## Ctes's Analysis When you’re the favorite to win a division, you are not supposed to only get 63% in round 1. Something was clearly off here. The prediction percentage was also lower than every other match in the division except for the one including casual bait and rally feared Fortnite. Fallout 4 got a significantly higher number against indie game VVVVVV, and we had just learned those things were legit. Resident Evil 7? Does anyone care about the series at this point? The remakes brought back some fuel, but the early games were always popular. The fifth one was fine, but nothing extraordinary like what it followed up on. The sixth was bad and the seventh wasn’t extraordinary either, and it was promoted mostly through VR. This was how it looked at the time. Mass Effect 2 looked like it could potentially lose to Fallout 4, maybe the round after that, and it was certainly not the favorite in the division finals after this point. That went to Resident Evil 2 now maybe even DOOM or Bloodborne seemed more likely. This division played out perfectly that way because every round 2 match felt uncertain. Andromeda was obviously expected as the main reason for what looked a decline, but we hoped that people wouldn’t punish previous entries for that and that the contest title would help Mass Effect 2 out, as it is often brought up in such discussions. Of course, we know now that Mass Effect 2 is just fine and the thing that was off was the seeding of Resident Evil 7. This was considered at the time, but we weren’t sure for a while. I think in hindsight, we can figure out why. Resident Evil is still a huge franchise name. The fourth title is one of the most popular and revolutionary games ever and everyone knows what it is. The REmakes have been a huge success too, putting the franchise in a more positive light than it has been for some time. The franchise also never had bad reputation in the way Mass Effect or Fallout has had, it just declined a lot from its peak. I can see it getting a bunch of votes from people not having played either game. On GameFAQs that would certainly favor the older title, especially in a match where you see no point of bracket voting. It’s certainly a shame that Resident Evil 7 didn’t get to break brackets somewhere, but it did serve the purpose of making the division interesting until the end. It’s also a good reminder of how much more exciting the contest would’ve been if more than two games had been allowed per franchise. Resident Evil wasn’t big enough for two big titles to take high seeds, so it allowed for a game to cause havoc with a low seed, even if it meant no victory. We’d have more runs similar to Mario Kart 8 this way probably. I’m sure there are those that would complain we only care about very specific franchises, but I doubt it’s that different from elsewhere and we’d still have the same top 16. ## Tsunami's Analysis Finally, on Day 3 of the contest we had a match with relatively even proportions between registered and unregistered voters. ME2 scored 63.11% with registered voters and 62.39% with unregistered voters. Which is not all that impressive for a 1-seed! The stats topic was discussing whether disappointing later entries in the Mass Effect series soured the voters on 2, but this seems like the exact opposite of what normally happens. Maybe with casual voters who aren't familiar with either game, the series name plays--in which case Resident Evil 7 was the perfect entrant to take advantage of this, as RE1-4 were all fairly highly regarded--but usually the more entries a series has, the higher rated its oldest entries get. Pokémon is the best example of this, where obviously you have the people who say that everything after Gen 1 (or sometimes Gen 2) is trash, and then you have a backlash where there are others that say that the series didn't even start getting good until Gen 3 and the first two generations are unplayable, but generally speaking the later generations grow in stature each time a new generation is released after it. I was really surprised that the Gen 5 games didn't make it in; I figured that with Gen *8* being out already, they could be really strong, since usually the rule of thumb is that the two most recent generations are "trash" and everything older is at least passable (though I'm not sure if Gen 8 has given Gen 6 this boost yet). Though the only game to get in is actually Gen 4, so yeah. (Good choice, too; I'm personally of the opinion that the second half of Gen 4 was when Game Freak decided to finally bother making their plotlines actually engaging instead of just a throwaway to hang the monster collection on. I guess they sort of put some of the lore into Diamond/Pearl, too, but they just did it so much better in Platinum!) So this result had everyone calling for ME2's demise as early as next round. Certainly possible, but it seemed a tad premature. ## Safer777's Analysis RE 7 got shafted. It has power and it could beat some of the game on this contest but it got the lowest seed possible so there you go. ME 2 got so much praise when it came out and it is considered the best game of all 4. Yeah I am including the 4th one too! RE 7 went for a reboot since RE 6 had the lowest ratings for a main RE game. So we had 1st person perspective and a new main character too. But I have to confess something. Even though I am a huge RE fan I didn't liked RE 7. Yeah I know, but still. I even liked RE 6 because playing with a friend was a blast. But never the less RE 7 got really high praise and it did well in sales. Not as good sales as Capcom wanted but hey. I don't know what the rest of the fanbase things about it, but as I said I just didn't liked it. So for the match. I believe RE 7 did good here. But well a 1 seed going against a 16 seed what do you expect? I believe only 1 time a 16 seed won in all contests that have happened on this site and that was 16 years ago. Still ME 2 did as expected so I guess all are good? Eh we shall see. Oh first match on this contest that I have played BOTH games! Also pretty sure RE 7 is the strongest 16th seed of all 16 seeds on this contest. Too bad for placenement. Couldn't we have an indie game that nobody cares here? ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7923&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=9) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Fallout 4 vs (9)VVVVVV 2020 _source: (8)Fallout 4 vs (9)VVVVVV 2020 (revid 86495)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, March 29, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 10 - **Match Date:** Sunday, March 29, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fallout 4 - 65.82% 63 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fallout 4 - 88.11% - **User Votes:** Fallout 4 - 5931 VVVVVV - 2316 - **Anonymous Votes:** Fallout 4 - 4679 VVVVVV - 1891 But on this most auspicious of nights, permit me then, in lieu of the more commonplace sobriquet, to suggest the character of this dramatis persona. Voila! In view humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the “vox populi” now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin, van guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V. "Are you, like, a crazy person?" I'm sure that they will say so. Remember, remember, the fifth of November. Gunpowder, treason, and plot. I know of no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot. Some of the voluptuous yet verified independent vectors in this contest were verifiable vibraphonists of viand. Most, however, were vogue vulgarizers. VVVVVV for Vendetta is one of the many, many indie darlings that fell flat on its face this year. Fallout 4 is a reasonably strong game, but there aren't many spots where it can break 70% on anything due to how much it divided the fanbase. I'm sure most people by now know what an utter debacle Fallout 76 has been, but more fans than you all might think blame Fallout 4 for that series becoming what it now is. For it to then turn around and break 70% on *anything* requires it to be up against the absolute bottom of the barrel. That said, it's worth noting that every single game or franchise Undertale beat five years ago got its win back in this contest. Fallout 4 may not be the most popular game in that series -- far from it -- but it avenged its older brother nonetheless. ## Ctes's Analysis This match is hilarious because it got to fool us twice. We’d just seen Hollow Knight and Bastion look impressive and for some reason that made us fear every indie game, not just conclude that they potentially can be strong. We also saw Bloodstained look pretty great at the same time as this match. I don’t think anybody expected VVVVVV to win here, since it was not expected to be close before the contest. People did expect a much lower performance though, so Fallout 4 overperformed a solid amount relative to oracle expectations. The best part of that is that Fallout 4 went into the next round with a chance to win. At least some thought it had that. Even if that match was decided instantly, we had some excitement when the poll opened. The truth is of course that VVVVVV is just not very great, at all. There’s not much point in seeing it back another time, unfortunately. This ends up being a really bad performance. This match also hid away any Bethesda backlash that people were expecting, because the company really hasn’t got their stuff together for a while, Fallout 76 being by far the worst offender, but Fallout 4 also could not reach previous heights at all. At this point, it did not seem like such a thing existed, but it’d be brought up again later in the contest. ## Tsunami's Analysis It wasn't just Mass Effect 2's own performance that had people calling for its head, however. While it was busy going roughly 5-3 on RE7, Fallout 4 was going 5-2 on VVVVVV. After the first two days, there was a perception that we'd suddenly turned into IndieFAQs, and this helped prove that we had to look at things on a case-by-case basis. VVVVVV was *thought* to be another strong indie game, but maybe we should've looked at its protagonist's CBIX showing and second-guessed it. Yes, Characters =/= Games, and VVVVVV is the type of game that I'd expect to be stronger than its protagonist, but Viridian nearly got sextupled by Big Boss. Managed to finish in second place anyway, 53.81% on Peacock, but still. Even if you want to chalk it up to the fact that MGSV was just coming out in 2013 so Big Boss didn't have an old man pic, it's not a great look. And on the topic of releases near contest time, Fallout 4 came out during the 2015 Games Contest and Fallout 3 was already a GotD semifinalist, so it was supposed to be a real threat again in 2015. If only it could have delivered! ## Safer777's Analysis So we have an indie game with the strangest title on this contest. I don't play Indie games so I don't know anything about it. Sorry about that. The info on this site says it came out 10 years ago(!)and as a lot of indie games is a Retro 2D platformer. Fallout 4 doesn't need introductions. However from the main 3 single player Fallout games that have come out since 2008 it is the worst one and the least liked by the fanbase. It brought voice acting for the main character and most hated it. Including me. Yeah the main character talking was a bad thing! Also the Fallout series has become somewhat of a joke after Fallout 76 came out. It is WORSE than you think. Yeah worse than that! So my opinion on Fallout 4? Not as bad as people say. Plus it has the best expansion on the series, which is Far Harbor. That area is awesome! So for the match. Strangely enough Fallout 4 did better than predicted. So I guess that VVVVV is really weak. Makes sense. I mean very few indies have staying power and we are talking about an indie game from 10 years ago. I don't even understand how this game got in, while other famous indie games like Fez and Doki Doki Literature Club! didn't managed to sneak in which are more beloved and famous. Strange. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7924&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=10) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Borderlands 2 vs (12)Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night 2020 _source: (5)Borderlands 2 vs (12)Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night 2020 (revid 86496)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, March 29, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 11 - **Match Date:** Sunday, March 29, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Borderlands 2 - 57.21% 55 for - 8 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Borderlands 2 - 80.77% - **User Votes:** Borderlands 2 - 4908 Bloodstained - 3339 - **Anonymous Votes:** Borderlands 2 - 3816 Bloodstained - 2755 Borderlands 2 was not the heavy guru favorite to get out of this fourpack, but it was the favorite nonetheless. And when you compare this performance to what Horizon Zero Dawn was doing to Fortnite, it was no contest. Borderlands 2 laid an egg here. Now some people might say this is due to Bloodstained being a very respectable game. They would only sort of be half right. As someone who has legitimately loved and written the book on this game (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/158368-bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/faqs/77623), I'm more qualified than most to comment on this game's strength. For the unaware, Konami is complete trash and turned all of their franchises into slot machines. I am not making that up. One such casualty of this was Koji Igarashi, a pinnacle of Castlevania development. Thanks to the magic (if you can call it that) of Kickstarter, a bunch of people poured money into a new Castlevania-type project. You know the rest. Bloodstained is among the most well-known and well-liked Kickstarter video games out there, but that didn't stop the game from having all of the typical Kickstarter video game problems. That is to say, it was an unfinished buggy mess when it launched. I got lucky with enjoying my trophies and playing it on the Playstation 4; on other systems, such as the Switch and PC, the game outright did not work at all for *weeks* when it came out. But hey, that's okay. Patch culture! If there is one thing that shows how lazy today's gaming developers are, it's patch culture. It doesn't matter if we release a game with a bunch of problems at launch. We can just push it to market and fix it later. Patch culture! It doesn't matter if Final Fantasy 15 is only half finished at launch. Patch culture! Well I and many others think patch culture can go screw itself. That, predatory microtransactions, and the debacle of DLC are a huge stain on gaming today, and it's gotten so bad that games released at full on launch day get *criticized for being complete on launch day*. That was actually a problem some people had with The Outer Worlds. That actually happened. Go look it up. To go one step beyond this, Bloodstained early on announced one of the stupidest patches I can ever remember. They wanted to nerf single player content. Yes, you read this correctly. This isn't Madden, or NBA 2K, or League of Legends, or some other online competitive multiplayer game. It's a freaking 2D single player side-scrolling RPG platformer. That announcement more or less killed this game, and even dumber is that it was announced before any fixes. How does this relate to a match against Borderlands 2, I hear you wondering. Simple. This was not some 60-40 struggle between two strong games. This was Borderlands choking like a dog. 59% against all of Bloodstained's baggage is a terrible performance, and when compared to Horizon just thrashing Fortnite, it meant those of us who picked Borderlands to win twice were screwed. And frankly, good. I'll get into the people behind Borderlands being trash in round 2, don't you worry. I've said it before, but our voters are astute. ## Ctes's Analysis Another match that fueled the thought of indie games being legit. Borderlands 2 is a previous Game of the Year winner here, and while I think everyone agreed it had a good year to take such a price, this still wasn’t very convincing. While Final Fantasy XV would end up fighting for the title, Borderlands 2 probably goes out of round 1 looking like the weakest GotY, just like it went into the contest as. I suppose one could make an argument for Smash 4, but it isn’t in the bracket, so we’ll never know for sure. Borderlands 2 actually performed better than the average oracle expected of it. This shows that the indie fear was now for real. The Borderlands series is hardly what it used to be. The humor is outdated, and the gameplay isn’t as fun as it used to be. We even saw a handful pick against it after the first few days of indie success. This could be a place where another indie game could do damage. The fear was in full force. It probably would’ve performed below expectations if it had been up the first day. Borderlands 2 is still good enough, however, it was never going to drop this. It doesn’t look all too great yet, but it had hope going forward, since trashing Horizon trashing Fortnite tells us nothing about its chances in another match. The Walking Dead only barely lost against its indie opponent, and I doubt anyone would consider TWD to get close to Borderlands 2. Looking back, Bloodstained looks like one of the better indies in the contest. It’s exactly the kind that could have damaged brackets given better bracket placement. At this point, the idea that indie games from the second half of the decade were legit was starting to form. Hollow Knight and Bloodstained had looked really good. Bastion won, but only barely against what was expected to extremely bad and VVVVVV was looking terrible in a match next to this. It was a good idea, that would end up having some truth to it and is probably a good rule of thumb, though it does not come without exceptions. ## Tsunami's Analysis Borderlands 2 was our GotY in 2012, but it's frequently considered one of our weakest GotY winners ever. And we once had a Call of Duty game win GotY, which in the world at large would certainly be stronger but Call of Duty hasn't been worth anything in contests since, well, around the same time that it won a GotY. Anyone who knows me should know that I'm a huge fan of both music and statistics, so it shouldn't surprise you too much that I frequent [WhatNotToSing.com](http://whatnottosing.com/), and the good folks over there [have a perfect explanation](http://whatnottosing.com/library/editorials.asp?id=75): *The American entertainment industry is all about the here and now. All major industry awards, be it Oscar or Tony or Emmy or Grammy, tend to be as nearsighted as Mr. Magoo. In Hollywood and New York and Nashville, one year is about as far back as anyone seems to be able to remember. As such, every winter these various acadamies manage to embarrass themselves by bestowing a major award on something or someone that will be thoroughly forgotten five years hence.* That applies to the Internet and its court of public opinion, too. CoD 4 did very well in the 2009 Games Contest, and then Modern Warfare won 2009 GotY the following January. And then...we just kind of forgot about it. It was a fad. Also, how did I never notice that typo in the editorial I just quoted? But as for Borderlands 2, we saw its weakness. 0-3 in CBIX, with only one of the characters even getting second place. Got upset in Round 1 of BGE3. No characters even *made *CBX. Can we go back to CBIX again, where one of them managed to allow a non-Symphonia Tales character into second place? Okay yes that was the resident "joke entrant", but still. And while it had the greater name recognition here, it's not like its opponent didn't have the pedigree. Bloodstained is a spiritual successor to the Castlevania series, produced by the series' long-time producer, Koji Igarashi. The similarity of its subtitle to that of the most popular Castlevania game is no coincidence. And remember how much this site loves Japanese things. This performance was very encouraging for Bloodstained, and if we ever get another Character Battle, I wouldn't be surprised if its protagonist was able to do okay. Not *great*, of course, because very few characters to debut during the Contest era have been worth much (Amaterasu, Altair even though he missed the last one entirely, Sora if you want to count by NA release dates but his game was already out in Japan by the start of Character Battle I). But decent enough for a newcomer. (And no, Geralt doesn't count; Witcher 3 may have been the game to boost him to *prominence*, but even just as a game character he dates back to the 90s, and across all media he's as old as Link.) ## Safer777's Analysis So we have the weakest GOTY winner from the previous decade on this site vs a spiritual successor to the Castlevania series. Yeah B2 had won GOTY here. Amazing eh? But then again once a Call Of Duty game won GOTY here. You heard me right. I don't know how myself too. B2 made popular the looter shooter genre. It is an amazing game and even better with friends. Do you know they released a DLC expansion for it 7 years after it came out? For free too? Yeah. The game is damn good! So for the match. The crew actually gave it lower win percentage(okay except Guest)and I don't know why. Sure we have a spiritual successor to Castlevania which is so popular that it coined the term Metroidvania but the Castlevania series is dead. The last game came out 6 years ago. Nobody cares anymore. Oh wait we have a pachinko Castlevania so all are fine I guess. Everyone knows the Borderlands series. The last game came out in the previous year. So name recognition for sure. I didn't know about Ritual since I don't play Indie games and I had to look it up. But Bordelands series? Too famous now. However B2 didn't even managed to break 60% which I say it is a moral victory for Ritual. Ritual is a good game from what I have gathered at least. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7925&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=11) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Horizon Zero Dawn vs (13)Fortnite 2020 _source: (4)Horizon Zero Dawn vs (13)Fortnite 2020 (revid 86497)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, March 29, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 12 - **Match Date:** Sunday, March 29, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Horizon Zero Dawn - 69.22% 61 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Horizon Zero Dawn - 56.87% - **User Votes:** Horizon Zero Dawn - 6510 Fortnite - 1738 - **Anonymous Votes:** Horizon Zero Dawn - 5642 Fortnite - 928 Before getting to anything else, let me first say this -- I legitimately *love* Fortnite. No trolling, no BS. I love the game. I wouldn't put it on a top 100 list or anything, but it's legitimately a phenomenal video game. I'm pretty sure every kid in the world under 13 with access to electricity has played it, and Epic has done a wonderful job marketing their game specifically to kids. I'll leave my hatred for Epic's business practices and their continued stupid decisions, like banning a 9 year old from a game *marketed to children*, out of this. I want people to know I have legit positive feelings for Fortnite, and I was somewhat bummed out when in this contest it got treated similar to how Draven and Sans got treated in the last one. It truly did not deserve to get destroyed like this. I have two main reasons for liking the game. First and foremost, I volunteer with the middle school and young high school students at my church, and we're always messing around playing sports, playing video games, and discussing the word. Smash Bros and Fortnite are the two games that usually get booted up, and these kids just go nuts for it. It's so cool to see. If GameFAQs wants to be a bunch of boomers and hate on something because kids enjoy it, then the users of GameFAQs need a little more joy in their life. A lot of you guys clearly either don't have kids or don't have a connection to them. I don't have kids of my own, but seeing how happy these kids are in church makes me want to give them all the joys in the world. Remember, the generation of gamers that came before you probably looked at you in the 90s and thought all *your* games sucked, too. Remember all of our parents freaking out over Doom and Mortal Kombat while extoling the virtue of Nintendo games? You shouldn't grow up and treat others the same way, bros. Kids all talk about Fortnite and Tiktok the way we used to talk about 90s tech. Leave it alone. The other reason Fortnite is awesome is because it functions as internet day care. I love the kids at church, but I won't deny that a lot of kids out there are spoiled little brats who need an ass whuppin. Thankfully, Fortnite also fixed that problem. Every single other game's online community automatically got better the second Fortnite got huge. That's because all the screaming brats don't play other games anymore. They all play Fortnite and Minecraft, which leaves every other game's online open to being good. Finally! So yeah, Fortnite didn't deserve this. And yes, I was secretly hoping for a giga-rally. Sue me. As for Horizon, the game is super legit, but it wasn't totally possible to know that from this performance alone. The one hope Borderlands 2 supporters had going for them is that almost any game would have blown Fortnite out. Even games that finished super low in the stats. It's simply not the kind of game that will ever get votes here, and in any contest it's in it will always get the Draven treatment. So I say if there's ever another catch-all games contest, let's have this Fourpack of Fun: League of Legends : Fortnite :: Dota 2 : Undertale. "I think Fortnite is a pretty fun game too. I like it more than a lot of other games in the bracket tbh. It's by far the easiest battle royale to 'get good' at imo from what I played. The lack of building in other royale can get rough since I'm pretty bad at shooters generally. Fortnite also has cool seasonal modes like playing/fighting Thanos and best of all LIGHTSABERS. The Dances are pretty hit or miss but I do think it's cool stuff like Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up (with the OG song and everything) and stuff like Star Wars TRAITOR scene and force choking. And of course seeing flossing making it to the Sonic movie. I like the gimmick weapons like the Kingsman/umbrella. I got really excited to just whack builds, block shots, and blow people who have no idea how to fight it." -SuperAngelo128 "I think Fortnite deserves a little bit of credit in its design. PUBG was the real innovator of the Battle Royale genre, but Fortnite took its spot at the top because they had imagination in spades and designed something aesthetically pleasing with a lot of personality. At the very least, that's the reason why Fortnite took an 80-20 beatdown whereas PUBG couldn't even make the field." -Greatone10 ## Ctes's Analysis This was a very satisfying result to many. Fortnite has been huge in the end of the decade, there’s no denying that. It’s in no way a GameFAQs kind of type though. Its appeal is a lot more casual. It’s also the exact type of game that we’re scared to see catch a solid rally, however. The player base is so huge and active and could easily outnumber. The chances of that happening are extremely low, I’m sure, but it shows how traumatized we’ve been. I’m sure some regulars were holding their breath for a good 20 hours of the match before feeling safe too, despite Horizon not just winning but dominating the match. Look at the prediction percentage here. That’s really low for a match where the winning game breaks 80% Part of that is of course because Fortnite is the casual bait it is, but I guarantee it’s also because of rally fear to some small extend. There are less brackets these days, the average user making a bracket now is better than it used to be. In addition, stuff like GTA and WoW are actually big enough here. At least people visit the site to look at stuff about those games. Fortnite doesn’t really have that going for it, so it’s probably not as much casual bait as those. It makes complete sense to include Fortnite in a Game of the Decade bracket, but let’s expect this to last time we ever see it. It’s tough to imagine it putting up a good number on anything. While Fortnite was the sender of attention in this match, let’s turn our eyes to Horizon for a bit too. It looks great here. Fortnite got most of the attention, but you deserve some credit for breaking 80% on anything, particularly a game everyone knows what is, disliked or not. It ends up getting that credit, but it was still uncertain at this point. Its round 2 match was debatable, and Horizon would go into it as the underdog according to the guru. Still, the upset felt good after this match. Horizon did a lot more than what was expected of it. ## Tsunami's Analysis This match followed neither of the "trends". Whereas in all 8 of the matches on the first two days, the "extra voters" on the registered side largely congregated towards one entrant, and in the other three matches on Day 3, the proportions were very similar, in this match, the raw margins of victory among registered and unregistered voters were very similar: 4772 among the registered and 4714 among the unregistered. Since there are more registered voters than unregistered, that means that this match wasn't even as close as it looked! With the double-counted registered voters, it still came out to a little under 81%; in reality, it was a tad over 82%. Which doesn't sound like a huge difference but you have to remember that the difference in percentage between 1.5x and 2x is larger than the difference in percentage between 3x and 4x. In this case, it's the difference between a little under a 4.25x and comfortably over a 4.5x. Apparently Fortnite is just that hated; I knew it'd lose but I figured its popularity would at least let it not get embarrassed. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have HZD vs a game that is the most popular in the world and it is a battle FPS royale. So that means in this site it loses to every other game! In every other site except Gamefaqs Fortnite would dominate since as I said EVERYONE and their dancing grandmas knows about it. Millions play it EVERY day. HZD I have played it and it is an excellent game with a unique premise too(robot dinosaurs!oh and other robot animals too)but it works. So for the match. Someone(can someone remind me who exactly to write it?)tracks on polls the age ratings(why?)and currently around 5% of the people that come on Gamefaqs is under 20 years old. And Fortnite dominates on people under 20. So it never stood a chance. Of course with a rally it could do it, but as I said above nobody cares for this site anymore. Sure a few years ago people wanted to make fun of us but now? Most people don't know that this site still exists. Oh and even though the Crew gave high win percentages for HZD it won even higher than they predicted! So yeah Fortnite is damn weak here. However if you see the correct prediction percentage a lot of people went with Fortnite. Guess name recognition or hope for a rally? Come on people no outsider cares for this stuff anymore. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7926&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=12) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Resident Evil 2 vs (14)Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair 2020 _source: (3)Resident Evil 2 vs (14)Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair 2020 (revid 86498)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, March 30, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 13 - **Match Date:** Monday, March 30, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Resident Evil 2 - 76.78% 65 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Resident Evil 2 - 92.37% - **User Votes:** Resident Evil 2 - 7116 Danganronpa 2 - 1421 - **Anonymous Votes:** Resident Evil 2 - 5756 Danganronpa 2 - 1215 Some indie games were okay in this contest. Most were not. Listening to yoblazer trying to pronounce "Danganronpa" wasn't quite as painful as Rosie O'Donnell's impersonation of the Chinese, but it was painful nonetheless! Swirldude was nice enough to enlighten us on The Show about what that game actually is. Apparently it's a visual novel that Phoenix Wright fans would enjoy, which... actually doesn't sound bad at all. But seeded contests all have their slew of round 1 blowouts, so here we were. But even then, we were less prepared than Illidan's opponents for what RE2 was going to do in this contest. "Painful" is also an apt word to describe Resident Evil 2 ripping through this match. This fourpack of matches pretty much all made Mass Effect 2 look terrible, and Resident Evil 2 got the ball rolling by proving its Game of the Year showing to start off the 2020 polls was no fluke. In those polls, it beat Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Sekiro to take the title. It followed that up by **destroying** Not Phoenix Wright. It was far from done after this demolishing, either. This was another feather in the cap of Capcom's resurgence, and who knew that designing good games without worrying about dirty microtransactions and loads of sinister DLC practices would make fans like you? It's almost like this is what people have been saying all along or something. Gamers don't want microtransactions. Gamers don't want on-disc DLC. Gamers don't want their intelligence insulted. They want *good games*. That's it. It's not hard. When you give gamers what they want, they vote with their dollars. Free markets work, my friends. I will say though that Resident Evil 2 cheated hard with that name. Let's not forget that every single game made in 1998 is technically a contest champion! So rather than being called Resident Evil 2: Remake or something similar, Capcom went with the original name. I am legitimately and truly convinced that this game got a 1998 boost from nostalgia, which kind of feels dirty. Two games, Persona 4 Golden and Pokemon HeartGold SoulSilver, had absolutely no right making it into this contest. Those two are just graphical upgrades of games not released in this decade. Resident Evil 2 is very borderline, and pushes at it really hard, but ultimately I'm okay with it since it's a full remake. The other two no, but RE2 is fine. The issue is where does it stop? Do we let Ocarina of Time 3D in? How about Link's Awakening? That's a full remake. I just think it's dumb that all three of these games got to feed on nostalgia in a contest specifically designed to avoid it. If you booted all three of those games in favor of Pokemon Go, Skyward Sword, and Pokemon Sword and Shield, the contest would have felt more fair. ## Ctes's Analysis Picking Resident Evil 2 to win the whole division was a cool upset pick before and during the contest. A result such as this was exactly what it needed to make it look possible. Mass Effect 2 had performed below expectations yesterday and now Resident Evil 2 scores a huge blowout, proving its strength to us. Even so, DOOM managed to exceed expectations even more in its match today, so it didn’t get to be a lock to round 3 in the eyes of everyone. What a good division this was after round 1! Danganronpa finally got a game into a contest. It has its cult fanbase, so congratulations! There’s not much to gain doing it again, however. Even if you considered Resident Evil 2 the division favorite at this point, getting blown out this badly by anything except perhaps Breath of the Wild should mean there is no point in coming back, so in a contest setting, it’s probably time to big welcome to the despair instead. Seeing how many blowouts we’re having at this point makes me consider what having four matches a day along with four votes is doing. That obviously favors a Resident Evil against a Danganronpa, so maybe it could’ve cracked the 20% it should have hoped for if it was the only match? Of course, the high number of blowouts is also because of the two games per series rule. This was the first showing of the remakes in the contest and so far it looks like it’s just as strong as it could be in any setting. Though at this point, there was no telling what that meant for Persona 4 Golden or Pokemon HGSS. Resident Evil 2 is by far the most different game from its original between the three. Now had it shown up worse than it looked in the GotY polls, they’d have reason to fear for themselves. ## Tsunami's Analysis So yeah, remakes were allowed into this contest, though at times it could be hard to tell because there were also a couple of games with the same name as their franchise's debut game, like Doom and God of War. I'm curious as to whether Bacon showed any sort of discretion; if it was just generalized "yeah all remakes are eligible", it's kind of tough to imagine that RE2 got a 1-seed and OoT3D didn't even make the field. Or did the lack of recency and the fact that handheld games are largely viewed as second-class citizens here make people forget entirely that it was eligible? No, that doesn't make sense; HeartGold/SoulSilver made it in and that's even older. (Then again, it's also a much bigger improvement on its original game!) At a glance, it appears that this was another case where almost all of the "extra" votes went in one direction. Then you realize that in a blowout this big, the proportion isn't all that far off! The official percentage is 83.13%; the raw votes have it at 83% even. Either way, it's close to a quintupling, which either means that RE2 is an absolute monster or that even by the standards of VNs, Danganronpa is piss-weak. In 2015, four VNs made it in, two each from two series. The original Phoenix Wright, a 16-seed, narrowly avoided a doubling from Skyrim, while the third PW game even more narrowly avoided a tripling from Symphony of the Night in a 2-15 matchup. In a pair of other 2-15 matchups, 999 got 22.2% on Persona 4, so roughly halfway between a tripling and a quadrupling, while its sequel, VLR, got a little under 21% against Mass Effect 2. Now, we know that Phoenix has pretty much gone mainstream, but I'd expect the Zero Escape series to be roughly on par with Danganronpa. The original, not-remade RE2 was also in 2015's contest, where it lost in somewhat respectable fashion to Final Fantasy Tactics. In fact, let's pull up the X-Stat calculator to see what the expectation would be: Resident Evil 2 (2015g) VS Virtues Last Reward (2015g) Resident Evil 2 has a strength of 23.93. Virtues Last Reward has a strength of 10.70. Resident Evil 2 wins with 77.64% of the vote!  A win of 33,656 with 60,875 total votes cast. 77.64%. Not even what Persona 4 got on the stronger 999. Either the RE2 Remake was just *that* good (not entirely inconceivable since you're dealing with updating a game from the late 90s to the modern HD graphics and controls), or Danganronpa isn't even remotely in the same conversation as Zero Escape. Probably some combination of both. ## Safer777's Analysis So how a game from 1998 went into this contest? Simple. It is not RE 2 from 1998, it is RE 2 from 2019! In all seriousness though I don't understand how RE 2 got in. I thought no remakes and remasters? Otherwise we would have OOT or FFX or stuff like that? Guess since it is actually a new game which just keep the general story from the original RE2 and changes all other stuff it if fair game. Just like how FF7 remake will be eligible for the next GOTD contest(if we are alive by then). RE2 remake got amazing reviews and won numerous GOTY awards. As a person who played the original RE 2 back then when it first came out I have to say the remake is excellent too. I just prefer SLIGHTLY the original RE2 but that is a personal opinion. As for Danganronpa 2...Sorry don't know anything. It is apparently a visual novel? So for the match. Well what do you expected? Even if you don't know anything about the contests here pretty sure you knew what game would win. And as always the crew overstimates the power of such strange games. They all went under 80%(except one person)and RE2 scored even higher than he predicted. See here is the thing. People just don't care about these strange obscure games ESPECIALLY if they are visual novels. Only Ace Attorney is somewhat decent here and that is not by much. I know that the D series has its fans since the games keep coming out but you know what I mean. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7927&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=13) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)DOOM vs (11)INSIDE 2020 _source: (6)DOOM vs (11)INSIDE 2020 (revid 86499)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, March 30, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 14 - **Match Date:** Monday, March 30, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** DOOM - 70.62% 65 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** DOOM - 94.22% - **User Votes:** DOOM - 7374 INSIDE - 1163 - **Anonymous Votes:** DOOM - 5941 INSIDE - 1027 **WARNING: THE SLAYER HAS CONTROL OF THE BFG.** **REPEAT, THE SLAYER HAS THE BFG.** **"You can't just shoot a *hole* into the surface of Mars."** **The ONLY thing they fear... is YOU.** **You are nothing but a usurper. A false idol.** **There is no chance that the subject is a demon. Maybe he is a God. He is uncompromising, a relentless being of violence. I believe him now to be more than just a man. He is.... DOOM.** All hail the coming of the Destroyer. The Slayer's time is now I could wax poetic for days about my love for these games. Really, I could. My Doom Eternal review alone is 5300 hundred words. It's funny, I first experienced Doom because a buddy of mine went "hey you'll like this song, check it out". I put on BFG Division for the first time and the rest of it figured itself out. But this is a contest PCA at the end of the day, so I'll *try* to be objective. First off, Allen clearly set this up on purpose. "DOOM INSIDE" is one of the first things people noticed when the bracket came out, and Inside got an 11 seed. 11! Above things like Mario Kart 8 and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Given Inside would eventually end up dead last in the stats, I don't believe it naturally got an 11 seed. Allen set this up to be cute. Secondly, Doom 2016 *clearly* benefited from Doom Eternal coming out ten days before this match. We see this a lot where a recent or same day release cause a related contest entrant to go berserk. We've seen it with Charizard, we've seen with Mario, and now we've seen it with Doom. Anyone reading this can see how much I love this game, but Doom is not strong enough to get the second biggest blowout of the entire round 1 no matter what it's up against. This performance was just comically absurd. I would love if Doom were actually this strong, but come on. 86%? The highest oracle prediction was 80. This was clearly a boosted overperformance, and trust me when I tell you that it kills me to say that. Before I move on, I want to toss some love to Lightning Strikes for recommending Inside so hard. I enjoyed Limbo, so after this match I figured what the hell. He's like KP; he'll never steer you wrong with recommending something. Inside is a really, really good game and I fully recommend it. It's really short, about 4 hours, and you can beat the entire thing in an afternoon. I dare say it didn't deserve to get demolished like this, but the all-caps match was too good to pass up. I see you working, Allen. This set up one hell of a match with Resident Evil 2 next round, and the stakes felt very high given how vulnerable Mass Effect 2 looked. Two games with 90s nostalgia name value overperforming en route to a debated round 2 match? Sign me up. ## Ctes's Analysis DOOM BEGAN ITS CONTEST WITH ABOUT AS GOOD A SHOWING AS IT GETS. BREAKING 86%, DOOM MADE THE SECOND HIGHEST BLOWOUT OF THE ROUND, AND THE BIGGEST AT THIS POINT OF THE CONTEST. NOT THE MATCH WAS EVER IN DOUBT BECAUSE WHAT EVEN IS INSIDE, SO LETS JUST MOVE ON SAYING HELL YEAH DOOM. Error message from gamefaqs.gamespot.com Your text may not be in all uppercase. Oh, silly me. How could I not notice I had pressed caps lock? Well, since I was not allowed to post before, perhaps I can elaborate a bit on this one. Kudos to Allen for setting up some of the matches, making round 1 a little bit more fun. DOOM looked as good as it could possibly could here. If you’re breaking 86% on anything, you’re likely worth something. At the very least, if you were worried what a Bethesda backlash might do, today was not the to start worrying further. Although of course, DOOM is not really what the issues have been about. DOOM made as big a scare as it could coming into next round. I’m sure that if Resident Evil 2 had faced anything just worth a little bit, we would’ve seen more people jump on the upset train. Imagine what happens if Resident Evil 2 got to face Bloodstained for instance. That would’ve been fun. DOOM was still going into round 2 as a major underdog, but there’s no denying it looked great today. However, as the contest proceeded, it became more and more clear that INSIDE is simply that weak. It ended up being the single worst game in the bracket according to the x-stats. It doesn’t matter that the x-stats are favorable towards the latter half of the bracket, it still ends up there. Imagine how low it could’ve become if it had been under the layers of SFF that the especially bottom half of division 3 were in. It could’ve aimed at records there! Turns out not everything is worth anything just because its indie, but I don’t think many of us were surprised here. It had a generic name and a generic picture while DOOM is one of the biggest names in a gaming world. It’s not like people are just voting for the lesser name and INSIDE has had just about as little exposure as you can get. I’m surprised it made the bracket, and I wonder if it would’ve had if not for its name being all in capital letters. Let me just take a moment to talk about the game a little. I usually don’t do this too much in these, but I know someone who’s been working as a sound designer on the game and a lot of small games similar to it. He has also been making sounds for CD project red in the past. We’re not close, but I always check out his stuff and he often shares some insider knowledge (pun intended). I was very happy and positively surprised when I saw this game made it to the field. Did you know that a lot of the development team behind INSIDE are Danish? Probably not because you barely know about the game, but it’s good! Definitely worth the few hours it takes. ## Tsunami's Analysis **THIS MATCH IS IN ALL CAPS AND IT STILL HAS FEWER CAPITAL LETTERS THAN THE DQXI MATCH. WHAT IT DOESN'T HAVE IS VOTERS FOR INSIDE. EVEN BOTW DIDN'T SCORE THIS BIG A BLOWOUT.** ...Yeah that's going to get annoying real fast. What's there to say, though? INSIDE narrowly took away the title of "fewest registered votes received" from The Outer Worlds, though it at least managed more unregistered votes than Fortnite. DOOM did have the most unregistered votes received, though, with RE2 second and Bloodborne fourth, behind Horizon Zero Dawn but ahead of Breath of the Wild. So it's clear that vote totals are starting to climb. On both sides; The Outer Worlds only beat INSIDE among registered voters by 5, but DOOM beat BotW with them by 449. I guess the repeated delays messed people up, so day 1 got bad votals? Literally 3 of today's 4 winners had a higher vote total than BotW did, both raw and adjusted. ## Safer777's Analysis BATTLE OF CAPS LOCKS! So we have a game from 1993 here? Huh. Well what I said above for RE2 applies for DOOM too. See Doom was SO popular when it came out that every other FPS for a time was called Doom clone. Yeah it was that popular! Even though it wasn't the first FPS it sure as Hell popularized the genre. Also it got a bad reputation at 1999 for a famous incident at USA. I don't say what it is, just search for it. Videogames are bad and cause violence right? We still have this thing. As for INSIDE...you guess it, I don't know anything about it! Man what is this contest and me not playing the games? Seriously I don't understand how so many low key games got in. So for the match. Well it was a slaughter. Highest win so far in the contest. Move over BOTW! Also correct me if I am wrong but that is the highest correct prediction percentage for a 6 seed ever too. Seriously not even 1 seeds get so much high correct prediction percentage on their first match! Also the crew went really low with the win percentage. On average they went with 70% and it score over 86%! So yeah pretty sure they were suprised too. So why DOOM did so well? Because INSIDE is damn weak AND the sequel of DOOM released a few days before we had this match. Now that it wouldn't win of course. Name recognision for sure too. I mean everyone and their Demon Grandmas knows about Doom franchise. Oh Doom had 2 films too. A bad one and a real bad one. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7928&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=14) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Fire Emblem: Awakening vs (10)Deus Ex: Human Revolution 2020 _source: (7)Fire Emblem: Awakening vs (10)Deus Ex: Human Revolution 2020 (revid 86500)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, March 30, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 15 - **Match Date:** Monday, March 30, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fire Emblem: Awakening - 66.03% 65 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fire Emblem: Awakening - 76.07% - **User Votes:** Fire Emblem: Awakening - 5448 Deus Ex: Human Revolution - 3090 - **Anonymous Votes:** Fire Emblem: Awakening - 4192 Deus Ex: Human Revolution - 2778 Fire Emblem didn't win by enough. I say that in jest given the obnoxious PC Master Race Deus Ex fans, but it's actually the truth. And yes, I know this isn't the same Deus Ex. Calm down. While Resident Evil 2, Doom, and Bloodborne were all going completely insane on the day this match happened, Fire Emblem sat there and only got 63% on a game this site assuredly does not care about. For those of us who thought Bloodborne wouldn't increase much from its 2015 loss to Final Fantasy 12 and picked Fire Emblem to beat it, this was the worst case scenario. It was plain as day after this match that Fire Emblem was screwed. It was a defensible pick, though. For those of us who picked Xenoblade to make a run, we had to pick Fire Emblem Awakening to make a run by default. Back in 2015 we had Fire Emblem, Donkey Kong Country 2, and Xenoblade all go 50-50 with each other in the same fourpack. So when I picked Xenoblade winning its division as my huge gamble this year, I looked at the paths of Awakening and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. ....yeah. We saw how those worked out. I had Awakening even beating Resident Evil 2 at one point, but thankfully I changed my mind. I'll talk more about this when the time comes to just trash Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but the very short version is the Fire Emblem series is not as popular as us fans want it to be. Trust me, I'm a hardcore series fan. It's never going to happen, friends. If Three Houses couldn't do it, nothing ever will. ## Ctes's Analysis It’s no good being the only advancing game in half a division to not overperform if you were hoping to get far. That’s how Fire Emblem: Awakening had it coming out of round 1. It even did slightly worse than expected of it, just to make matters worse. Fire Emblem was the slight guru favorite to make round 3 and a few even had it going further than that. The main reason for being the popular choice next round being it straight up looked better than Bloodborne back in 2015. Not my much, but still ahead of it. Also, Resident Evil 2 had a recent slim victory against Fire Emblem: Three Houses in the Game of the Year finals. It was expected that Awakening wouldn’t be too far below Three Houses, as it is the older game and has had more and better received Smash exposure to upweight that it’s a handheld game not quite as successful. Resident Evil 2 was expected to make the division finals, so if you thought Awakening wasn’t too far away from it, there was not too much room in between for Bloodborne to be. Also, when in doubt, picking the Nintendo game and or the RPG was worked out before. There’s no denying Awakening would go into round 2 as the underdog now. Human Revolution is surely the strongest game losing the this half of the division, but even so these just aren’t good numbers. We’ve seen the first Deus Ex a good bunch of times. It was destroyed as expected in 2009 and 2015. In 2010 it did shock us all by beating Rock Band 2 (however weird that sentence may sounds), but still lost big time to Fallout 3. It hasn’t been worth much. This isn’t the same Deus Ex. The reason it was the first that got into 2015 is probably because it’s better. This game is from 2011, so it only made it in because the first could not. Had Fire Emblem put these numbers up on the original, it might, just might, still be considered the favorite to round 2, but not like this. We’d have to see how Three Houses did, however. If Three Houses went big, then maybe this would end up not being as bad, but the writing was on the wall already. ## Tsunami's Analysis This can only be considered a disappointing performance by FE:A. This was the game that really brought Fire Emblem into the mainstream, much to the chagrin of longtime fans who thought that IS had taken all the challenge out of it. They didn't really...sort of. Yes, they made it more accessible than it was in the Super Famicom era, but then again just about anything would be more accessible than Thracia 776. Awakening was meant to be a celebration of the series' history, and the mechanic that actually got the most flak came from Genealogy of the Holy War! Well, no, that's not true. Second Seals really were absolutely broken, and combined with DLC that allowed for infinite grinding, Awakening really shouldn't give you much challenge unless you want it to. But the elitists were running challenge runs on the older games, so that's really nothing new. The "anyone can be paired with anyone (with exceptions)" mechanic, along with the children characters, is indeed borrowed from GotHW, and I'd say that Awakening pulls it off just as well as Genealogy did! Fates, not so much, but Fates isn't in this contest, because Fates was IS seeing dollars signs and trying to cater to their vast new fanbase of shippers, while *also* trying to placate their core fans by making the infinite grinding DLC less broken (and in the process, very nearly defeating the purpose of having it--making the DLC scale in level by your story progress just means that if you want to get all the children characters to their max potential, you basically have to kill all your momentum by grinding *everyone* up after every level.) Fates was a cash grab, pure and simple. I'm glad it's not in this contest. I mean, Awakening was also, but you basically needed the earlier DLCs to be able to beat Apotheosis. I've heard rumors of people handling it without Limit Breaker, but why would you want to? But yeah, Deus Ex: Human Revolution was never going to be worth much of anything. The first Deus Ex has done very little in every contest it or its main character has been in, with its only win coming against Rock Band 2 and by an extremely slim margin, and Human Revolution's protagonist made the 2013 contest and...barely managed to come within 10000 votes of Vivi while failing to double a Touhou character (and that's after she had fraudulent votes removed; if they'd been allowed to stay, Adam barely even *gets* second place). ## Safer777's Analysis So finally another match where I have played both games! Now we are talking! We have 2 games that revived their franchises too. Word from Nintendo was that if FEA didn't sold as much as they expected they would stop the FE series! Yeah as much the old fans whine FE never did good in sales. Fortunately FEA sold more than 5 times what they expected and the series is doing damn well now. I mean they have a gatcha game which has brought more than 800.000.000 dollars so far and they recently added a monthly pass for it which costs around 10 dollars per month. 10 dollars per month for a phone game and people bought it. All are lost. DEHR did well too both financially and critically but SE messed all that up with the sequel because of the damn microtransactions. They added a sequel hook campaign and added an extra mode which nobody asked for that was full of microtransactions. Plus the whole stupid thing with pre orders. And the game didn't sold well and the future of the series is uncertain. So for the match. Well FE series is Huge now and it wouldn't lose to DE. Strangely enough though it did slightly worse than expected. Still above 60% but lower than 65%. Guess DE has some power or something like that. Or just FE series is weak actually? Well FE is a SRPG while DE is an RPG and traditionally SRPG's don't do well in this site. Still bad seeding for DE. It could beat a few games here for sure. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7929&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=15) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Bloodborne vs (15)Call of Duty: Black Ops 2020 _source: (2)Bloodborne vs (15)Call of Duty: Black Ops 2020 (revid 86501)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, March 30, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 16 - **Match Date:** Monday, March 30, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bloodborne - 67.54% 65 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bloodborne - 77.04% - **User Votes:** Bloodborne - 6878 Call of Duty: Black Ops - 1662 - **Anonymous Votes:** Bloodborne - 5610 Call of Duty: Black Ops - 1361 It never ceases to amaze me how non Board 8 contest prognosticators always pick these casualbait games in matches. Only 77% picked Bloodborne to win a 2-15 match, really? Did you know that Call of Duty games actually used to be able to win matches on this site? It's true! It's even beaten well-known Nintendo and Square games. I promise these polls are real: Yes, that is actual evidence of Call of Duty 4 beating Super Mario Galaxy TWICE. I get that LFF happened and that Black Ops is going to be weaker than 4, but good hell. As our vote totals have fallen off of the edge of a flat earther's planet, it's clear that the people leaving in droves are the casuals. Site loyalists are the only ones sticking around, and even they're bailing. And since this web site *loathes* casualbait video games, things like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto are screwed moving forward. All that said, Bloodborne was in no way expected to be such a monster in this contest. No one in the oracle had it over 80% in this match, and most people went under 70%. The specter of that Final Fantasy 12 loss loomed large over Bloodborne in this contest, and can you really blame anyone for not having faith in it? The game lost 55-45 to freaking Final Fantasy 12. It's impossible to ignore that. Thankfully, Bloodborne has built up an incredible reputation in the past few years and came out meaning business this time. I know you all think Doom 2016 is my favorite game in this bracket, but it's actually Bloodborne, believe it or not. Seeing it go from losing to FF12 to holding steady over 80% for an entire match was just surreal. I could not have been happier over this performance, like a proud papa, and I was kicking myself for not picking it to win twice. It is AWESOME that this wonderful video game is getting the respect it so justly deserves. It's the best Souls game ever made, the best action game ever made, it's got the best DLC package ever, and it's really, REALLY difficult. Beating this game feels like a legitimate accomplishment, let alone getting the platinum trophy. ## Ctes's Analysis In a division full of huge blowouts, Bloodborne sought out to overperform the most. It fell just short of DOOM, but man does it look good here. There’s a lot to be said about Call of Duty these days (and I’ll get there), but it’s hard to think this would be the same Bloodborne as five years ago. Unlike a good bunch of the other +80% winners this so far, Bloodborne was not against a no name. Every single person voting know what Call of Duty is. It’s the first sign of the strength the FromSoftware games had achieved. Sekiro did not exactly look all too good at first, but Bloodborne went out the gates clearly wanting to bath in the first half of its name. Whether it was Souldborne generally rising or simply the contest title helping out here was not yet certain, but if you picked Bloodborne to round 3 as one of your risks, then what a happy day this must be. Not a single person in the oracle expected this big a blowout. The closest was still more than 3% off. I was in fourth being 7% off. That’s very telling. I had not expected it would be this much better than last time, but I did go high because I absolutely expected Call of Duty to be this bad. The huge result is undoubtfully a combination of one being better than expected and the other one being worse. I expected and had validated that Call of Duty has fallen considerably more than we already knew. Let’s recap for a bit. Call of Duty has won a Game of the Year award here in the past back in 2009. It looked good in Best Game Ever II and Game of the Decade I in 2009 and 2010 respectively. Fast forward five years and Call of Duty had been met with the criticism of favoring quantity over quality when making games. They weren’t as great as Modern Warfare. Black Ops is probably among the least disliked, but this caused a backlash on the franchise as a whole. I don’t blame you if you can’t remember Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare actually made it into the 2015 contest, but it did. It was a \#14 seed. I’m sure you remember Super Metroid that contest. Well, CoD4 was the game that Super Metroid destroyed in round 1 by breaking 80%. I expected this trend to have continued. It would decline further. Not as much as it did between our previous two games contests, but still decline. It wasn’t facing as strong an opponent this time, but it also wasn’t as strong a Call of Duty game. I expected the opponent to matter more though, because Call of Duty will get anti-voted to some extend no matter which entry it is. Well, I had the right idea, but I underestimated Bloodborne a bit. Back then I wasn’t sure if I just overestimated Call of Duty despite expecting it to be worse than most, but on this side of the contest, I can see that I had underestimated Bloodborne a bit. At this point, it became clear that we’d see a lot of blowouts this contest. Something we had almost none of last character battle. Round 1 had a lot of fodder due to the contest having a series cap and only recent games. From this day forward it was time to expect them more than we had done, even if this division had the most. Division 2 had a very boring round 1 with the best losing game in terms of percentage only barely breaking 40%, but round 2 was exciting. We’d have four matches that seemingly could go either way. I know some people thought some of the matches were obvious, but all of them had people on both sides. That’s quite rare! ## Tsunami's Analysis So remember back in the Borderlands 2 write-up, how I said that Call of Duty was popular here for a very short while and then it just kind of fell off a cliff? Yeah, it *really* tanked. Of course, even in 2015, the X-Stats say that Bloodborne was good for 63.25% on CoD4. 2009 CoD4 is allegedly good for 69.79% on 2015 CoD4, though, so there you go, that's a huge decline. I keep expecting Bloodborne to be weaker than it is because all of these new games have titles that sound like something an emo teenager would dream up. I can hardly keep track. Bloodborne's another Hidetaka Miyazaki production, though, so I'm not surprised that it's decent. Is FromSoftware going to become this generation's Squaresoft? It seems odd to think that way given that they've been around since the mid-90s themselves, but they broke out in 2009 with the release of Demon's Souls and they've had one hell of a good decade. Given how fed-up gamers are with so many of the big names of the past--Capcom, Konami, and even Squeenix themselves--there's certainly an opening! ## Safer777's Analysis Who keeps nominating COD games/characters? Seriously people. We are old on this site. Old people don't play these kind of games! I haven't played any of these games but I know them well. COD is a FPS that comes out every year, it is the same game and it always breaks record sales. Bloodborne is an exclusive to PS and I didn't know that. It is one of these get good games, meaning you have to be really good to advance because the game is damn hard. So for the match. Another slaughter. I know we had a COD GOTY here a lot of years ago(seriously even now nobody can explain it)but man. Once again the crew got low win percentage here. And to tell the truth I don't think anybody expecting this high percentage for Bloodborne. In any other site pretty sure COD wins. But not here. So there you go. COD is damn weak and it would lose to almost any other game here. Now if we had Fortnite VS COD... I would like to see that match! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7930&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=16) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (16)Tekken 7 2020 _source: (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (16)Tekken 7 2020 (revid 86502)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, March 31, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 17 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, March 31, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 80.60% 66 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 93.92% - **User Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 7104 Tekken 7 - 1404 - **Anonymous Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 5646 Tekken 7 - 1270 This match was never going to be in doubt, but seeing Ultimate pull off this absurd blowout was beautiful to see nonetheless for one very specific reason. Whenever a disruptor comes along, the status quo always gets defensive and pissed off instead of evolving to meet new demands. We see it with the Trump presidency causing legacy politicians and their ignorant supporters to lose their collective minds. We see it with the taxi industry not liking Uber. We see it with retail chains blaming Amazon for their own failures. Microsoft and Apple have gone back and forth on this for decades. We saw it with Blockbuster not thinking streaming would take off. We see it with any paradigm shift, really. Most importantly, we see it now among all of the morons who think Smash Bros isn't a "real" fighting game series. This was never really an argument to begin with, but fighting game fans are hilariously insecure pseudo alpha male types who go around festooning greatness, so seeing them get embarrassed in this non-argument time and time and time again is so good. They are clearly threatened by Smash Bros being the most popular and highest selling fighting series in the history of gaming, and they can't handle people who aren't "real men" (whatever their stupid definition of that is) being more popular than they are. It is *hilarious* to watch, and so was Smash Ultimate getting 83% on a garbage can with a garbage can fanbase. Protip for those playing the home game -- if someone constantly tells you they're an alpha male, you are dealing with an insecure loser. The best way to deal with those goofs is to laugh right in their face. We've won this argument, and we just set the viewership record at EVO. Yeah, the same EVO that you thought Smash didn't deserve to be in. We just took your space over and kicked you out of it, losers. Go watch some more UFC and pretend you could have been a pro athlete if not for that one injury you had in high school. Oh, and I'm a so-called nerd and odds are I've slept with far more women than you. It's called deodorant. Try wearing it. Oh, and maybe tell your old school fighting game developers to evolve a bit. They all got embarrassed in this contest for a reason. The only real issue here was Smash being in the same half of the bracket as Zelda, but given how this contest ended I have to say it was the right decision. Smash showed here, despite the blowout, that it was not in Zelda's league. No game was. ## Ctes's Analysis Prior to the contest, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was considered by many to be either the second or third best game here. It was obviously behind Breath of the Wild, but a fear amount of people considered it second. Skyrim was before the contest mostly considered the potential second ahead of Ultimate, but a few other games were in consideration too. Wherever we predicted it to be exactly, we all agreed that it was among the very best. Nintendo is so big these days with the huge success of the Switch. It had to be up there. Most people expected it to have a really boring contest run because the Nintendo hierarchy would mean it had a free pass to the semifinals before being fed to Breath of the Wild. The biggest case against Ultimate’s strength was its final Game of the Year poll against God of War. It was only a little more than year ago, so likely still in full relevance. It “only” won with just less than 55%. A reaction to that was considering God of War to be a top game here. Another was the thought that perhaps Smash Bros has stronger hype that games. I don’t think anyone here will deny that the Smash Bros franchise can boost things prerelease more than anything else. We’ve seen characters clearly boosting significantly due to be revealed for Smash. We’ve even seen that happen mid-contest before with Sonic being the key example. Even so, there’s a good case to be made for Brawl and Melee to be the strongest games last decade, even if Majora ending up getting past Brawl in the final with a bandwagon. That was a while after the release of even Brawl. There’s also the argument that the site has shifted away from multiplayer games. While Smash has had good single player, it’s always a multiplayer game first and foremost. We don’t really see games that are primarily multiplayer doing well here much anymore. Ultimate is considered a celebration of gaming more than it’s considered a fighting game by Mr. Sakurai himself, and there’s something to it. Fighting games and multiplayer games have had a clear roof in these contests, which Smash has always been quite a bit better than everything else in those categories. But maybe it still hurt it a bit as well. It was most likely put in this half of the bracket to avoid a pure Nintendo finals, but some regulars were using this multiplayer decline to argue that it wouldn’t have stood much a chance in the lower half either, perhaps not even getting past the critically acclaimed Super Mario Odyssey in round 4. Despite most of us thinking Ultimate had the most predictable path possible, it had to prove itself to a good bunch of it. Getting 83% against anything can hardly be considered a bad result, but it’s also extremely unreliable. Tekken 7 is all the things we talked about before, so it doesn’t really tell us much in itself. However, seeing as Super Mario Odyssey was facing Mortal Kombat 11, there was a good way to compare them through those. I never thought it’s a good measure for predicting the division finals, but it gave us something to discuss at least. The main reason I never thought so is that I could not see Ultimate vs. Odyssey coming down to what game is stronger indirectly, unless one of them was way ahead, which I don’t think anyone thought. Ultimate also has some overlap with Tekken 7, making the uncertainties even greater. Finally, when something gets percentages this high, the uncertainties are already so great that it’s tough to conclude anything from, so we’d just have to wait for now. Let’s talk a little bit about Tekken 7 first though. Most people believed Mortal Kombat 11 to be the stronger of the two, because Mortal Kombat has always been better than Tekken here. The debut of both series all the way back in our original character battle saw Scorpion slaughter Kazuya and that’s a perfect picture of how they’ve done since. Scorpion is decent here and Sub-Zero has showed some really good results. Three characters from Tekken have made the field and there was no point of them returning. The best result was when Yoshimitsu actually won a match in 2013 before dying in round 2, but that was lucky bracket placement more than anything. Despite that, I honestly wouldn’t be surprise if Tekken 7 was slightly stronger at least indirectly. We can’t tell for certain, because most matches to base things on are unreliable. I expect the gap to have closed quite a bit since our first contests. Sub-Zero will still be good most likely, but anything released in the past chunk of years from the franchise likely would not. It’s far past its prime. Tekken 7 however is actually rather good! I wasn’t a big fan of the story mode ending, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I was in a small minority and story mode has never been Tekken’s selling point anyway. The real reason for Tekken 7 doing better than Mortal Kombat 11 is probably most of all that Ultimate is a bit less respected than Odyssey, which matters at those percentages, but I won’t rule out that the gap between those fighting games have closed! ## Tsunami's Analysis The expectation here was that Ultimate would stomp all over Tekken 7, which had never been higher than the \#4 fighting game series on this site--#5 if you count Smash itself--and possibly even lower, though it would be a bit hard to gauge. Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat were obviously 1-2, and Tekken's sister series Soul Calibur was likely \#3 as evidenced by Nightmare's repeated decent showings in character battles. The only Tekken character to ever win a match was Yoshimitsu...who is also a Soul Calibur character. But in the early contests, there were a lot more fighting game characters, and some of them managed to make Round 2, most famously when Gordon Freeman barely broke 40% on Tina Armstrong. And, well, in a vacuum this *was* a stomping--nearly a quintupling. But this match came one day after both Resident Evil 2 and DOOM managed higher percentages, with the latter breaking 86%. So it seems strange to say that a game scoring almost 83% of the vote disappointed, but that was the perception, and the board eagerly awaited Super Mario Odyssey's performance against Mortal Kombat 11 to gauge their expectations for a potential Divisional Final. ## Safer777's Analysis So here we have what most people believe it is the 2nd strongest game on the bracket. Smash games are a phenomenon. When these games come out it is an event. Because they have so many characters and all of them are excellent games. But here is the thing. A lot of games have a lot of characters like the Warriors series which I am a HUGE fan of. BUT no other series ever has so many characters from so many franchises. And Ultimate has characters, spirits, costumes, stages from so many franchises that I can't even count them. No matter who are you, what you like and you don't, you are bound to have characters you recognize and like. And it is amazing for casuals and pros alike. Oh and Ultimate is the best selling fighthing game of all time. And the game isn't even out 1.5 years yet! We still have DLC and much more stuff too. Truly a phenomenon series. Tekken series everyone knows it. Really good and popular especially in the PS1 Era. After that it fell a bit but it is always popular. So for the match. Let's be real maybe 1-2 games can challenge Ultimate on this contest and maybe even that is high. So a slaughter as expected. As for Tekken 7 it can beat some indie games from the bracket for sure. But then again not everything can go against weak indies. But well yeah we don't care for fighting games not names Smash in this site. Characters are a different story but even there they all mostly suck anyways. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7931&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=17) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds vs (9)Bayonetta 2020 _source: (8)The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds vs (9)Bayonetta 2020 (revid 86503)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, March 31, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 18 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, March 31, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 68.59% 66 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 70.35% - **User Votes:** Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 5439 Bayonetta - 3067 - **Anonymous Votes:** Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 4316 Bayonetta - 2598 This entire match was criminal. Let's start with the winner. Yes, it was obvious Link Between Worlds was going to win. We can debate percentages all day, but who cares? It was being fed to Smash next round, and one of the biggest what-ifs this year was what if Link Between Worlds was in the bottom half somewhere? A case could even be made that Link Between Worlds is the *best* Zelda game, and to see it be handed such a guaranteed path and early exit just sucked. I'm not one for using the 3D on the 3DS, but this game used it in the best way possible and I cannot say enough good things about it. Not only that, but FINALLY we get a damn Zelda game with no limits on items. It's all MP. Go play with your bombs. Go fire some arrows. Go mix and match everything and see what you can come up with. It was a beautiful breath of fresh air. That said, Bayonetta was royally and indefensibly screwed over by this bracket placement. Did you guys know that this was the first ever contest match for this game? Bayonetta 2 made the field in 2015, but not this one somehow. Given all the love from Smash and Bayonetta the character going on a really cool run two years ago, this was the contest for her game to finally shine. And she draws *Zelda* in round 1, of all things. A lesser Zelda game, but a Zelda game nonetheless. We couldn't swap 9 seeds and put X COM 2 here or something? This was by far the dumbest round 1 loss of the entire contest, and Bayonetta really did not deserve this. Atrocious soundtrack aside, and good lord is it bad, I put this right there with Devil May Cry 3 as best pure action game ever made. I was not alone in being really annoyed by this match, either. There were a whole of topics on the board about it that day, and good. Allen did a great job this contest, but this match was a total botch. ## Ctes's Analysis Here’s a battle of two games contending for the title of “who got screwed over by bracket placement the most?” One of them is a previous Game of the Year winner and a Zelda game on top of that. I’m not doubting Allen screwed that one over on purpose. Bayonetta I’m not as sure if it was intended, but it sure happened. It’s easily the most unfortunate franchise in the bracket, because both games could be worth something and they got to face A Link Between Worlds and Automata respectively. The Mario also has a case going of it, especially with how good both games look in the x-stats, but at least Mario got to be in a debatable match. Not a single serious person could see Bayonetta winning. I’m not sure why Allen bothered to include both games when he so clearly wanted to represent as many franchises as possible when he would just fed them both to top games anyway, but maybe it was random. Seriously though, Bayonetta wins against a lot of the \#8 seeds if not all of them. The one I’d hesitate to pick Bayonetta against is Mass Effect 3 and I probably still would honestly. This isn’t even the first time Bayonetta has had the most ridiculous luck. The previous contest saw only the second game make the field despite being a Wii U exclusive at the time. Then the first game gets the worst possible draw relative to the seeding this time around. It’s a shame we couldn’t give it a victory somewhere. It would lose to any \#1 seed anyways. Yes, most likely also GTAV though I’m sure that would have some people pulling the upset. If Bayonetta 3 has had another update next games contest that is not just Nintendo telling us they’re aware of it existing, then perhaps the games will have even better chances of winning a round 1 match than it already had. Hopefully it has been released and well regarded, so it’s something to fear in the future. At least the character has been allowed to show off before, most notably exposing Riku of being terrible these days. A Link Between Worlds also has just about no luck in contests, but this time it got in and got to win a match. You’d also have to seriously rig the bracket for it not to win a match, however. Or we could’ve nominated it more I suppose. It got a tough an opponent as it could basically and still won with ease. It actually underperformed about 5% relative to what the oracles expected of it though. It might not be as good as it would’ve been back when it was new. Everyone liked it, but it’s rather forgettable. For a while it was not because it was the first Zelda game in quite a few everyone seemed to like. Skyward Sword, Spirit Tracks and Phantom Hourglass were not too popular. Twilight Princess, Wind Waker and Majora’s Mask were, but they have their haters too. It was also a return to 2D and more importantly a return to Zelda being non-linear. The reason it didn’t make it into the 2015 contest was most likely that while everyone liked it, it’s no one’s favorite. Then Breath of the Wild came and we forgot about it completely, unfortunately. I think the main reason it got into this contest above Skyward Sword other than Skyward Sword not being popular is that it was snubbed last time and board 8 thought it deserved to get into a contest. Board 8 influences nominations a lot these days, I could see that having made a strong push. I’d also argue it would be a shame not to have all 10 Game of the Year winners make it into a Game of the Decade contest, but Smash 4 already made that not happen, so it probably wasn’t its main drive. When all that is said and we can agree A Link Between Worlds probably isn’t as good as it would’ve been in 2015, I also think Bayonetta is just legit and that this match had no SFF, which I’m sure some were expecting. ## Tsunami's Analysis If there was any more need of evidence of a paradigm shift on this site, this was it. Bayonetta may have been an XBox 360/PS3 game when it first came out, but the character was largely considered pseudo-Nintendo after the sequel was a Wii U exclusive and the original was ported to Wii U at the same time, and then Bayonetta was added to Smash 4 back when third-party characters were still relatively rare in Smash. Given the general opinion of the Wii U, you might even consider the possibility that 3DS would trump Wii U despite the longtime mental block this site has had about handhelds (see: Link's Awakening as a slight Guru underdog to Mega Man X to advance out of R1 behind FFVI in 2009), but there was never any doubt that A Link Between Worlds would win. It's a Zelda game, after all, and one that got GotY in 2013, though it was far from dominating in doing so, only narrowly squeaking past Pokémon X/Y for 3DS game of the year and then getting LFF'd in the poll of all winners not only by the Wii U winner, Super Mario 3D World, but also by the fact that the winner of the "Download-Only" category was a fellow 3DS game, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies. This led to it narrowly finishing behind GTA V for third place in the poll of all winners, comfortably behind The Last of Us, before powering ahead in the final poll of the top three finishers to take the top spot. Because while it's clearly its own game, A Link Between Worlds will feel very familiar to anyone who's played A Link to the Past, and given how nostalgia-driven this site has been in the past, especially for Super Nintendo games, that should've been a very good thing. And while A Link Between Worlds did win comfortably, it wasn't even a doubling, which given the way the contest had gone so far was a very weak win indeed. Over half the matches through five days had ended with a doubling or worse! And this wasn't even an action/RPG hybrid like the games that had been doing well on previous days. This was a full-fledged hack-and-slash that was avoiding the doubling by, essentially, A Link to the Past 2. While it was obvious by its absence from 2015 that ALBW was categorically *not* held in the same regard as its spiritual precursor, this was an embarrassing performance that, of course, would be completely meaningless because it was expected to be hopelessly outmatched in Round 2 *anyway*. Of course, if anyone had been thinking quickly enough, they would've realized that this was a major hint as to the outcome of the most debated match of R1, which was due up the very next day. But who reacts that quickly, especially when the actual match outcomes were all so obvious that it was fairly safe to ignore the match once you'd voted in it? ## Safer777's Analysis Everyone agrees that Bayonetta got wasted here. The game has power along with it's main character. Couldn't we have a bad indie game here instead of Bayonetta? Damn. We have a Zelda game on this site so you have to know how it goes there. I don't know if ALBW is strong since it is a portable game and these are traditionaly weak and  not only that but it faces SSBU on the next round so that means that we will never know if it has real power or not. Obviously we can't have good bracket placement for every game/character in the contest but come on man, this seeding and bracket placement for both of these games was bad. So for the match. Well BTW did as most said. I mean it didn't even double Bayonetta. As I said above if only the bracket placement is different. Wasted matches. The Prediction Percentage is kinda low for a Zelda game on the 1st round too. Guess people thought that Bayonetta could do it? ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7932&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=18) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Marvel's Spider-Man vs (12)Dead Space 2 2020 _source: (5)Marvel's Spider-Man vs (12)Dead Space 2 2020 (revid 86504)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, March 31, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 19 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, March 31, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Spider-Man - 66.50% 66 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Spider-Man - 78.22% - **User Votes:** Spider-Man - 6010 Dead Space 2 - 2495 - **Anonymous Votes:** Spider-Man - 4710 Dead Space 2 - 2205 Not gonna lie, I forgot Dead Space 2 was even in this contest until I got to this match in my writeups. Apparently the voters forgot as well, because Spiderman destroyed it. This actually could have been a lot worse, because Spidey was up 75-25 early before settling down. It was nice to see for us MCU fans, and it was also nice to see for licensed games on the whole. Those games tend to be rushed crap, but this one was neither rushed nor crap. In a lot of circles, Spiderman was the game of the year for 2018. That's how well done and well respected that game is, so seeing it annihilate a middling game was no surprise. It also led to the predictable conversation that happens every single time a Spiderman or Batman game does well, which is that we need a character battle without the shackles. I fully agree with this, for the record. We've gotten too good at this and need the shakeup. Think of how unpredictable a lot of those matches would be. Spiderman vs Dante. Wolverine vs Luigi. Batman vs Kirby. Superman vs Ryu. Wonder Woman vs 2B. Thanos vs Kratos. Black Panther vs Ness. Iron Man vs Samus. Hulk vs Sephiroth. Mickey Mouse vs Sonic. Simba vs Solid Snake. Crono vs Goku. The possibilities are endless, and it would be a *great* contest. We would probably lean too heavily toward nominating too many characters that aren't pure gaming characters, but so what? Allen obviously knows we want this, too, and I doubt a fellow gaming nerd like him is averse to the idea. I don't think he's refused due to lack of desire. It might simply be an issue with licensing costs and such. Who really knows? But if that contest can reasonably happen, we need to do it. As a final side note, fuck Sony for trying to keep Spiderman out of the MCU. Sony's comic movies almost all suck ass, and this includes Into the Spiderverse. That might legitimately be the most overrated movie ever made. The first half was just dumb, but then Nic Cage, a pig, and an anime robot show up. Unless Nic Cage is being burned alive or bossed around by Sean Connery, I don't want to see him, hear him, or watch a movie that stars him. The *only* parts of that movie that I enjoyed were Miles and Prowler. Miles is good. Prowler is great. I'll take nothing away from those two. Everything else sucked, and I'm convinced half the stuff Board 8 gets obsessed with is an inside joke troll job. I refuse to believe you people actually like Into the Spiderverse, Shadow of the Colossus, Umineko, and Snakes on a Plane as much as you say you do. You're smarter than this. Supposedly. Ironically, I loved the original Spiderman trilogy and Venom was alright. Granted Venom was only alright because of Tom Hardy, but hey! I don't ask for much. Just about everything else though is dog shit, especially compared to what the MCU can pull off. Yeah, I'm kissing the ring, what of it? Bite me. Those movies don't all make a billion dollars by accident, and you're not cool for not liking them. ## Ctes's Analysis I was pretty excited to see Marvel’s Spider-Man in a contest because I thought it had great potential. The game was well received and sold extremely well. The Batman games have recent here and Spider-Man has actually been in good movies recently. I would be a lot more excited if Spider-Man didn’t have a pretty predictable path. I picked it to win two rounds without thinking and never looked back, but I still had some enjoyment in following it. Most of that is in the other two matches, however. I must admit had to look up Dead Space 2 to remember what it was other than “some horror game”. It was well enough received sure, but it’s not something that we care a lot about here and I’m sure I’m not the only one to have forgotten about it. Dead Space 3 did happen, but it wasn’t as popular and the company that made them has shut down since then. Dead Space 2 came out back when the whole world was incredibly excited about horror. We are that a lot less today. It had a lot of things going against it, but it wouldn’t have won either way. The first game got nowhere near beaten San Andreas a decade ago, a result that looked fine until Golden Sun made the upset the following round. The second appears to be the most popular so maybe it could’ve done alright if it was in a contest 8 years ago. All things considered, breaking 30% here was the best it could realistically hope for. It was below expectations, but Spider-Man ended up looking better than people thought, so this was honestly good for it. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have Spider-Man! Damn! A few years ago we wouldn't even dreamed to have such games yet here we are. If we ever have another Character Contest we should have ALL characters that have appeared in a video game to be eligible. Batman vs Chuck Norris anyone? I have played the Dead Space series and they are excellent games. I like the first one the most. But EA killed the series because the latest game didn't sold as well as expected even though it brought money. That is EA for you. Marvel's Spider-Man seems to be in the top 3 of best superhero video games ever so it has this going on for it. So for the match. Well for a Dead series(see what I did there? Get it?)Dead Space 2 did all right I guess. Some people thought that maybe DS would do better because of Super Hero fatigue or such. This thing doesn't exist. Super Heroes games/movies/shows are popular for more than 12 years and I don't see anything slowing them down. Too bad the DS series will never come out again. They had games on multiple consoles, phone games, comics, movies so many stuff. Yet apparently they didn't brought money. I do wonder why the 2nd game got in though. I thought most fans prefer the 1st game? In the first game the main character didn't even talked too! ## Tsunami's Analysis There is one debate that rages almost constantly on Board 8, and that is how characters from other media would fare in Character Battles if we allowed them in. The general consensus is that the most well-known characters would be very strong indeed, though there would of course be plenty of fodder. Perhaps the biggest issue is that by opening it up too far, you'd have such a large list of potential entrants that it would be absolute chaos. My solution, of course, would be to limit it to characters who have been in a "good" video game, since merely forcing them to have been in a video game doesn't really limit it much. Nearly everything has had licensed games these days. So how would we determine what's "good"? Why, how about "things that have been in Games Contests"?! Of course, we'd probably have to have Games Contests a bit more frequently, but as long as Allen's still gatekeeping to make sure only quality games get in, that'll do fine. Right off the bat you get a bunch of Disney characters via Kingdom Hearts, and a bunch of Marvel characters via MvC2. DC Comics doesn't quite get as good a deal as Marvel does, but the Arkham series has been a mainstay in these contests. The silly nomination system for the first BGE also allowed the Simpsons arcade game to get in, so that's a few more characters with potential. But there are people who figure that since this is a gaming site, anything non-gaming would get eviscerated by even a weak video game character. These people are wrong, but occasionally there are results that continue to fuel their belief. The Walking Dead getting upset by Bastion was one of them. Another one that was considered a major upset ironically came *in* a Character Battle, where people thought that having "Darth" in his name and being the top option would allow Revan (a KotOR-original character, therefore eligible for contests) to beat Terra Branford. Yeah, I don't understand why that's relevant either. The Star Wars Extended Universe is massive, including those video game-original characters. The fact that the Star Wars name alone doesn't make you strong doesn't mean that Han Solo or Darth Vader wouldn't be strong. We've seen that even in our top video game franchises, when we rallied Groose into the 2013 contest and he fell flat. Spider-Man fell just short of 70% against Dead Space 2, while GTA: San Andreas was only able to get 65.45% on the original Dead Space in the previous GotD. Some food for thought. Gamers are not so single-minded that they ignore anything that isn't related to video games. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7933&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=19) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Minecraft vs (13)Dota 2 2020 _source: (4)Minecraft vs (13)Dota 2 2020 (revid 86505)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, March 31, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 20 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, March 31, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Minecraft - 65.68% 65 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Minecraft - 89.25% - **User Votes:** Minecraft - 6504 Dota 2 - 2001 - **Anonymous Votes:** Minecraft - 5106 Dota 2 - 1808 Before we get to the match itself, Minecraft came out in 2009. It shouldn't have been in this contest at all, and no I don't care that it was in beta in 2009. League of Legends was disallowed from this contest because its beta was in 2009, so why does Minecraft get a pass? League having an awful fanbase doesn't mean we should have selectively enforced rules on bracket entry, and their subreddit doesn't allow for rallying anymore anyway. League would have gotten *annihilated* in this contest, and on the off chance it got rallied, so what? Rallies are always a good thing. No one will ever convince me of otherwise. Either both League and Minecraft are eligible, or neither are. I bring this all up because Dota 2, despite making its contest debut, never stood a chance here. It had a trash can performance against a game that GameFAQs doesn't care about at all -- Minecraft lost to Halo, of all things -- and Dota 2 did so badly here that it clearly falls in the realm of rallybait getting punished. Dota was never rallied, but this thing might as well have been a proxy for League for how hard it got buried. By the way, if you haven't listened to Ngamer's pro Dota rant on The Show, I suggest you check it out. I probably played 10,000 games of the original Dota, and I still voted for Minecraft here. The fanbase is truly that horrible, and it's what finally (mercifully) got me to quit. NG still loves the franchise though, and bless his little heart for it. I can see why. The games truly are a remarkable accomplishment and no two games are the same, but the actual people who play it are so, so awful. Co-op gameplay is probably not something I would ever bother with again, but I don't necessarily regret my old Dota playing days. They're some of the best gaming memories of my entire life. I just wish it actually... you know. Mattered? NG had a very funny point about why Dota 2 wouldn't get rallied here even if it wasn't in line to get punished. Voting for Dota 2 constitutes "not playing Dota 2" behavior, and the fans would never do such a thing. Exactly my point, NG. You're just a lot nicer about it than I am. This speaks nothing of the toxicity, the leaving, the trash talking, the bullying, the false reporting, that *stupid* banlist, the botting, the hacking, and everything else. Good riddance, Dota. You will not be missed. Well, except for oooooooone exception! ## Ctes's Analysis I do wish Dota 2 would have faced something other than Minecraft. Not because it would have won in many matches, but because it’s always fun to see casual bait lose a match against something far less known. Dota 2 is the type of game that would do that but look at what it faced. Minecraft. The biggest casual game ever, perhaps only rivaled by Wii Sports. Although Minecraft is probably slightly more cared about on a site like this. The prediction percentage against Dota is extremely high, so the casuals got this one right too. Minecraft looks pretty good today, but it’s hard to make much of it facing a game that probably gets its share of anti-votes. The true testament of its strength would come next round. Last contest it looked decent enough against the original Halo before Halo died against Final Fantasy VII the following round. Those are all games with some share of anti-votes probably, but I don’t think it’s a lot in Minecraft’s case, which is part of the reason it won so easily. It might just be the true neutral. No one has strong opinions about it at all, but everyone knows what it is and we’re fine with it. There has been talks about Minecraft’s eligibility in the contest because the classic version was made available in 2009. The full game was however was released in 2011, which is why it was allowed in. Most of the people complaining seem to complain because League of Legends was not allowed in while being in a similar situation. I’ve seen the same people claim both that Minecraft shouldn’t have been allowed and League of Legends should, which is a weird stance, but perhaps just a wish for consistency. If Allen told us that he just specifically targeted League of Legends I wouldn’t be terribly surprised. He specifically made Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask’s 3D version ineligible while allowing Persona 4 Golden and there’s not much consistency in that. I would also honestly believe him if he had told us it just didn’t receive enough nominations, but Dota 2 being in makes it seem likely it would have. It’s quite ironic in this Minecraft / League of Legends controversy, that Minecraft got to slaughter the game in the bracket League of Legends is most similar too. My own stance? I said before League of Legends was in a similar situation and similar is the key word there. It’s not the same and I don’t think it makes much sense to include Minecraft in the complains about League of Legends honestly. Just because both initial “releases” have been called alpha does not make them the same. The League of Legends we had in 2009 was an actual release, even though it was not out everywhere, and they’ve worked on it since. Basically, every place will list 2009 as the release year of League of Legends. Minecraft will be split between 2009 and 2011, but the ones saying 2009 probably acknowledges that the official release was in 2011. Of course, it sucks for League of Legends in terms of a contest like this that it’s release went the way it did, where some technicality means it couldn’t really compete in either Game of the Decade contest. I would not have minded it being allowed in because of this. It would’ve been an exception, but it would’ve been fair enough given the circumstances. I just wanted to point out I don’t think Minecraft should have been disallowed and I don’t think the decision on League of Legends should have anything to do with the decision on Minecraft. Besides, League of Legends would’ve been killed in round 1 in similar fashion to Dota 2, although probably worse because we bear a grudge on it here, so it’s not like we’re missing out on anything. Minecraft showed in this match that it’s worth having it in. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have the most popular game on the world here. And you may ask didn't you say that Fortnite is the most popular game on the world above? Yeah I did and it is true because both of these games are the most popular games on the world now. Depending on how you count. Fortnite is the most talked about game but Minecraft has more play rate. Oh and also apparently Minecraft is the best selling video game of all time. So there you go. Both of Fortnite and Minecraft are played mostly by people who are under 18 too. Yeah. Dota 2 is a MOBA game and guess what. We don't care for these kind of games here. BUT I want to say something. Why Minecraft is here? The game came out in 2009. Yeah the Beta started there and the official game came out in 2011 BUT League Of Legends came out with a Beta too in 2009 and the full game got released later and it wasn't allowed to enter this contest for this reason! I don't get it. Was the Admin afraid of a rally? Who the Hell cares for Gamefaqs now in order to rally something? Let us be serious. Pretty sure it would have lost in the first Round too. Well whatever. So for the match. Well since we hate MOBAs here almost anything could beat DOTA 2. And it just happened to go against Minecraft which we don't really care. Strange thing is that Minecraft did better than we predicted too. I have seen gameplay of Minecraft and it never impressed me. I guess if I was 30 years younger I could like it along with Fortnite. I do believe that Dota 2 is good though, not as popular as LOL but pretty sure it is the 2nd best MOBA. Or at least the 2nd most popular one. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was just...why? The outcome of this match was never going to be in doubt. I'm fairly certain that the Guest picker on the Crew only picked DotA 2 just to make sure there was no Crew Curse, because he, like all but one other Guru, had Minecraft in this match. But I'm going to quote the beginning of it anyway, because before it gets into the crazy logic, it makes a good point. Neither of these genres are particularly liked by GameFAQs. Its strange though, because both of these games are popular beyond belief. True, although I wouldn't necessarily call it strange. While in the previous write-up, I defended the overall gamer community as *not* being a bunch of elitists who don't care about anything non-video game, here I'm going to have to turn around and say that old-school gamers, like the majority of GameFAQs membership, are proud of the fact that they loved gaming before it was "cool" and hate anything with mainstream popularity. In fact I already talked about this exact same phenomenon on a single-fanbase level in my Fire Emblem: Awakening write-up. So while it was obvious that DotA 2 was going to get smashed just for being *a* MOBA, even if it wasn't the one that spawned the hated 2013 champion, it remained to be seen how high a percentage Minecraft of all things would be able to get. And the answer is...not *too* high, but pretty high. DotA 2 got a better percentage than Fortnite did, at any rate. It's odd, though; when I was writing these up, I thought that I'd underestimated Minecraft's ability to take advantage of DotA's weakness, and probably had a really bad Oracle because of it. In reality, my Oracle score was pretty good, and I was one of the few who overestimated it! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7934&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=20) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Undertale vs (14)Octopath Traveler 2020 _source: (3)Undertale vs (14)Octopath Traveler 2020 (revid 86507)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 1, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 21 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 01, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Octopath Traveler - 43.20% 10 for - 56 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Octopath Traveler - 21.58% - **User Votes:** Undertale - 4436 Octopath Traveler - 4779 - **Anonymous Votes:** Undertale - 3229 Octopath Traveler - 4245 I tried to warn you. *"Undertale is the new Portal. It had its moment, but it will never have a repeat performance even though it should be strong enough to make contests moving forward."* I never one time had any doubts that Octopath Traveler would lose this match. My only struggle in this fourpack was whether or not Shovel Knight could beat an Octopath Traveler that had just beaten the champ. It's a borderline miracle Undertale resisted getting punished here. Sans and Draven got *smoked* two years ago. Games that could even be *considered* rally threats got buried in this contest, yet Undertale managed to hang in there for 10 minutes before suffering a fairly respectable loss. There were a few reasons for that. One, Undertale has a legitimate fanbase. It wasn't some flash in the pan video game; it may not be the flavor of the month that gets the entire internet's imagination going en route to winning a contest, but it absolutely has a fanbase. There is a reason Kenny Omega used it for an entrance once and grown men were crying when this happened: Two, it was a 3 seed and had the brackets. There were bracket votes keeping this close. Three, the match started ten minutes late, so there wasn't the initial surge of anti-votes. Four, and perhaps most importantly, it has a Switch port and was the defending contest champion in a winnable match. This all combined to allow Undertale to avoid serving penance. I'm convinced that without a Smash character, a Switch port, *and* the much higher seed in a winnable match, this might have been in the same realm as what Draven had to go through two years ago. Hell if you remove all that and just switch the seeding around in this match, Octopath might have won 70-30. But all of those things converged together to make this a very respectable loss. I legitimately and truly thought Octopath would get 60% here. It's on record and everything! So for Undertale to lose close actually surprised me, though for some reason it losing shocked the board and turned this place into a sewer for a few days. Hell if there's something filthier than a sewer, I'd love to know what it is. Whatever that is is what the arguments were on Board 8 while this match was happening. Can't we just be happy Octopath Traveler won and call it a day? Do you people *still* have to argue over whether or not rallying is bad? Not only is there is no argument here, but Undertale happened five years ago. Get over it. Rallies keep these contests interesting, and the anti-fun brigade is just objectively wrong on this. They're also some of the most immature, obnoxious people this forum has ever seen. Did you know that if you enjoyed Undertale winning the contest five years ago and/or enjoy rallies, you're a victim blamer? No, really, that's an actual quote from a well known Board 8 user on this web site who also happens to be a moderator. Forget burn victims, orphans, the families of addicts, people in poverty, women forced into the sex trade, slaves, victims of domestic violence, the people killed by communism, or anyone else that is a true victim of their circumstance. The *real* victims in this life are those who don't like rallies during a contest on GameFAQs. That's what actually matters. This individual asked for his name to be kept off the record, so out of respect and journalistic integrity the usernames in this image are censored: Yes folks, if you enjoy rallying you are a victim blamer. That is an honest to goodness real quote. It gets better, too. From the same user: *"I don't see how I can lay it out any more clearly than I did here. If the **actually sane** "there's no middle ground" people want to actually refute this stuff then great, otherwise it's just thoughtless."* If you disagree with the anti-fun brigade or call out their hypocrisy -- don't think for one second that these people don't *love* rallies when they agree with the winner -- you are not a sane human being. That is a word for word quote. That is how dumb this mod thinks you are -- this individual, who will remain nameless, thinks you are mentally ill for *daring* to enjoy yourself in this life. Is it any wonder no one uses our site anymore when these are the types of people in charge of keeping the peace on it? Most mods used to act like DetroitDJ and Team Rocket Elite -- friendly, pleasant, fair, and knowledgeable. Now, a good number of them act like the one quoted here and a lot of users are on board with this type of mentality. People like to throw around the excuse of our site being dated causing the low traffic and collapsing vote totals, but the truth is no one uses our site anymore because of people like this pushing everyone away. Can you imagine the mindset required for thinking everyone who dares to disagree with your position is mentally ill? Couldn't be that you have a point that some might naturally disagree with. Couldn't be that one side of this issue is insufferable. Nope, disagreeing with anti-fun brigade must mean you're mentally ill. If that doesn't sum up why this site is done for, nothing ever will. I could draw some very obvious conclusions here about the political leanings of people who think this way, but I'll leave that one alone. Draw your own conclusions. Octopath Traveler, largely due to having enough natural strength to get around Undertale's advantages and getting boosted by juuuuust enough anti-votes to put this match away, was in a very interesting spot here. I think in a vacuum without 2015 ever existing, Undertale wins this match. But because Octopath won under some incredible circumstances, it was a wild card moving forward. Could it win this fourpack? Could it catch fire and be given a rallied thank you run? Who knows. But it's a Square JRPG on the Nintendo Switch, so it didn't win this match by default. It had to earn it, and earn it it did. ## Ctes's Analysis The biggest upset of round 1, at least if you go by prediction percentage, sees previous Best Game Ever III winner lose to a Switch exclusive RPG that people had mixed feelings about. It has since been released on PC too, but let’s face it, that didn’t matter much. Unlike the other big upsets of round 1, this one also cost a lot of people 3 points. It was bigger in every way. There were even a very few people taking it further than that due to its previous result, but all experts knew Super Mario Odyssey was out of reach. A few people predicted Undertale to lose today, but it was the clear favorite with most people picking rather high percentages for it too. The ones that thought it would be anti-voted picked Shovel Knight to beat it in round 2 instead. What happened here is a mix of a bunch of things that was the perfect cocktail for getting Undertale out early. The initial reaction was a huge number of anti-votes. Last contest we saw Amerterasu absolutely kill Draven in a contest that saw few blowouts. Draven was naturally weak, we knew that, but that result was out of proportions. Sans himself also looked very bad though not as bad. We have also seen various Poll of the Day questions show that we don’t forget the contest invasions and are bitter ever after. Most people did not expect it to mean Undertale would lose to Octopath Traveler of all things, but that anti-votes came surprised no one. In truth it’s probably not that bad. I don’t doubt that there were anti-votes for a second, but they probably don’t harm Undertale much worse than however much it’s boosted from the exposure last contest gave it. We’ve seen bandwagons lasting over several contests in the past. L-Block is the key example of this. While using a 4-way match to beat Link was a one-time opportunity, L-Block was significantly stronger in future contests than it started out being in 2007. Undertale is not a joke entry in the same way, but a bunch of our regulars played it because of the attention it got. Undertale is a perfect game to take advantage of such since it’s cheap and short. This result looked extremely weird at the time, but Undertale ends up landing almost right where it’s supposed to. The adjusted x-stats have Shovel Knight barely beating it. Obviously, those have as much uncertainty as you get, but everything is in line here. It then comes down to the severe underestimation of Octopath Traveler. As someone who expected Undertale to underperform and picked Shovel Knight to beat it, I did not expend Octopath Traveler to take enough advantage of it to win. The game was quite hyped before release. Being revealed at the first true Switch presentation, it had a lot of attention for its traditional RPG elements and graphics. It was aimed at people like us. However, while the game did fine, it wasn’t spectacular by any means. I have not gotten around to play it myself yet, but the eight stories of the game made it repetitive and most characters weren’t very interesting, certainly not enough to compensate. I wonder how big it could’ve been here if that was more popular. Because Square RPG on a Nintendo console is among the best criteria you can have on this site. Chrono Trigger is the best example obviously, but there are others. Look at how well Bravely Default ends up looking, we didn’t realize it yet, but this match had a lot to do with us just caring about Octopath. It would show next round. Tales of Symphonia is another good comparison. It’s not a Square RPG, but a RPG on a Nintendo console that lacks big RPG’s. Symphonia was almost unanimously liked, but the Gamecube wasn’t too popular. The Switch is however, so Octopath had the perfect console to get exposure. The part of the reason that people predicted big percentages was the huge indie hype round 1 had. It was thought that Undertale just didn’t get to boost from it due to anti-votes, but it looks decent enough and could’ve won a lot of round 1 matches. Its draw was rather unfortunate, we just hadn’t realized yet. It’s probably still a hindrance being an indie game. Not because of the fact that they’re indie games of course, just that indie games require word of mouth to become big, while something like Octopath is riding high on its developer name. Finally, I usually don’t express bitterness towards what happened in 2015, I mostly just express nothing. I’m not vengeful and do not judge Undertale differently because of it. I played it because of the contest too! It was quite enjoyable. I will however use this match as an opportunity to laugh at all the many people claiming that their love for Undertale was endless and that they truly did believe it was the greatest game ever made instead of being the hot new flavor of the time. Seriously, it’s one of the biggest moments of “what did we tell you?”. I didn’t mind using a flavor of the month kind of logic to vote in the contest, but the people saying so look so silly looking back. Almost none of them truly believed that, but just couldn’t realize it when confronted about it back then. Undertale is not the phenomenon the internet allowed it to be briefly, it’s not an all time great and it’s not the best game ever made anywhere. It’s just a pretty good and creative indie game with solid replay value. In that regard, it’s a shame it couldn’t get a winnable match when so many indie games could, but it had its fun last time. ## Safer777's Analysis The champion is back baby! Or not. We have 2 RPG's that were very well received from both fans and critics. Undertale was EVERYWHERE back in 2015. Seriously it has such an active community and it is a game that was made from 1 guy only! I haven't played it but people that have say that it is excellent. It is not a traditional RPG and this is the biggest thing it has for it. The characters are truly great and memorable, nobody denies that. I mean you can even finish the entire game without killing a single enemy! Seriously, name me one other RPG that this is possible. OT came out of nowhere and it is such an old school game that it is too old school for even people that like this thing! But it did well too and a sequel got announced too. So for the match. As you see Undertale lost. But why? People say anti votes. I don't believe it. Register users voted more for it than the unregistered ones. We all knew it wouldn't do so well now of course but this bad? Yeah Sans couldn't even score 30% on Pac Man in Character Contest but still. He got into Smash Ultimate! As a costume at least. We all knew that if it was against a stronger game we wouldn't pick it to win, but it is not that OT is a monster. This match also got in the top 5 of the most suprising Round 1 results and it makes sense. We rarely make Round 1 matches wrong except if we have unknown games/characters and we don't have any info on them. Sad part is that there was some kind of flame war on stats topic. Seriously people? After 5 years that barely anybody new is coming to this site? People are still pity about this sort of thing? I should known that after spending 18 years on this site but I thought we would have grown up. Not really. Also rallied games/characters do really bad without rallies. I mean when they use only their natural strength. We had Draven losing to Round 1 in the previous contest and now Undertale losing to Round 1 too. Plus Sans lost in Round 1 in the previous contest oo So yeah. Unexpected result for sure, expected stupid bickering between some regulars on this board. So there you go. I guess congrats to people that got this match right? ## Tsunami's Analysis Oh hey speaking of hated champions. The vote total for this match *was *the highest of the contest so far, but not by an overwhelming amount. And I have to say, this was not an outcome I expected! I figured that there was a chance that Undertale got anti-voted into oblivion the way Draven did in 2018 (and Sans himself to a lesser extent), but that if that didn't happen, Undertale probably had the natural strength to win its fourpack. Instead...this happened. The match actually got off to a slightly delayed start, for no apparent reason, and when it did, Undertale got off to a quick start, before fading back to closeness. By the freeze, Undertale was up by 5 votes, and on the next update, it raised that lead to 7. And then, bam, 41 vote swing, Octopath up by 34, and it never looked back. And it wasn't the registered voters killing it, either, although they were likewise motivated to come out in higher numbers. With the registered voters, Octopath won 4779-4436. On any previous day, 4436 would've easily been a majority of registered voters--hell, Bastion was at 4054! It was the unregistered voters who buried it, 4245-3229. Also the most unregistered voters of the contest so far, but it was enough of a blowout that 3229 would not, in fact, constitute half of *any* day's unregistered voters. (It would've come close on Day 1, where unregistered voters numbered in the 6500s.) We did get confirmation that all the usual spots from 2015 weren't allowing rally topics, which begs the question, where did these extra votes come from? Also, the mythical "casuals" didn't see this coming either. 21.29% prediction percentage in Round 1 was the fifth-lowest of all time, trailing only a pair of lolChief results (Yuna in 2013 at \#1 and Sub-Zero in 2010 at \#4) and a pair of 2009 matches (in)famous for very different reasons: the Oblivion/Symphonia/God of War/GTA:SA fatal fourway at \#2, which had the smallest spread between first and fourth of any fourway and is remembered fondly for it, and the Super Mario Bros 3 match that had the *largest* spread between first and second of any fourway and is laughed about as a result at \#3. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7935&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=21) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Shovel Knight vs (11)Dragon's Dogma 2020 _source: (6)Shovel Knight vs (11)Dragon's Dogma 2020 (revid 86508)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 1, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 22 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 01, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Shovel Knight - 60.52% 65 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Shovel Knight - 76.67% - **User Votes:** Shovel Knight - 6009 Dragon's Dogma - 3206 - **Anonymous Votes:** Shovel Knight - 4663 Dragon's Dogma - 2809 I know Undertale losing took up all the attention and most of the whining during this quartet of contest matches, but believe it or not, three other matches did in fact happen at the same time. One such match was Shovel Knight getting a ho-hum win over Dragon's Dogma. Some indie games were okay in this contest. Most were not. Shovel Knight is one of the ones that looked quite alright. It was actually over 70% early on before bleeding percentage all day, but the only stat that really matters in sports is wins and losses. Thanks to Undertale causing a bunch of noise, Dragon's Dogma fans (all 9 of them) got off easy for all the whining they did during this loss. What was so special about this game that it supposedly should have won this match? To try and find the answer myself, I went on Youtube, searched up the game's title, and immediately spotted a video called "Dragon's Dogma Is The Best Game You've Never Played". Okay, fair enough. Oh, it's the guy responsible for making the *bad* Devil May Cry games. No thanks. Moving on. ## Ctes's Analysis In a round where indie games were hyped to be as beastly as they were, this match should have served as a warning to us. We did expect worse of Shovel Knight on average though, so it probably only made the belief stronger, if it made any difference at all. Most were under the impression it was mostly indie games from the latter half of the decade that benefit, so what Shovel Knight did probably didn’t matter much to our overall view. Dragon’s Dogma is also an unknown quantity so the result would have to be extreme to change any overall views. I’m sure most of the people predicting a lower result simply ended up thinking that Dragon’s Dogma was a bit weaker than expected. The match should have served as an indie of just about how high an indie game could hope to reach. We were a bit back and forwards about what indie game was strongest. Everyone could agree that Shovel Knight was among the top, because of all the exposure and releases it has had. The best they could hope for were a doubling of Dragon’s Dogma. You can hear that doesn’t sound too good, no one gave Dragon’s Dogma any chances today. The game was fine, but we would’ve probably forgotten about it if it hadn’t gotten released on current generation consoles by now. I doubt it did the game many favors being released at a time where Devil May Cry was not thought the best of, when it’s basically Devil May Cry in disguise. Being able to beat it is not the most impressive feat. ## Safer777's Analysis So another indie game here. BUT I at least have heard of it! Shovel Knight has somehow become the face of indie games. Don't know why, he just has. He has even appeared in Smash Ultimate! Not as playable character but still. I don't know anything about Dragon's Dogma but I do believe it was liked. Then again all games in the contest were liked am I right? So for the match. Shovel Knight won easily. The only question that I have, is it the strongest Indie game here? Hard to say. It is super popular, it is like on 10 consoles or more! Damn! So many expansions, DLC and support too. Oh and all free. Yup. Big companies should learn from this. So nice to see at least some indies that deserve to do well doing well. ## Tsunami's Analysis While you'd never know it by my picks this year, I've actually gotten off to some pretty good starts in Guru before, even holding sole possession of first place in the Guru after correctly calling every match in Division 5 (two outright upsets and two others where the favorite had less than 60% of the brackets). That ended with Shovel Knight failing to be the indie darling I'd expected it to be. It's commonly accepted that for a rallied entrant to get moving, they need to have weak early competition to get past, because something too strong will kill it before it starts. L-Block didn't have to get past anyone stronger than Laharl in Round 1 and got a favorable LFF situation in Round 2, and Draven only needed to get past Jak and Chie Satonaka. Hell, L-Block and Draven were both Guru favorites to reach Round 2! But only that far. And Undertale got the polarizing Mass Effect 3, just weak enough for its rallies to work. Shovel Knight, in Round 1 of the 2015 Contest, was set to face Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Betting against GTA is never terribly risky on GameFAQs, so this was certainly a possible upset. And waiting in Round 2? The casuals would no doubt think it to be the massively popular World of Warcraft, as evidenced by prediction percentages in previous contests, but of course we all know that WoW is trash here, and so the Guru consensus (if you can call a roughly 5-3 ratio "consensus") was that it would be Chrono Cross, which is much maligned for being an alleged sequel to Chrono Trigger and not being even remotely as good a game. Either way, seems like a perfect target to start a bandwagon. If I'd really been thinking about it, I probably would've considered that enough time for the bandwagon to be fully rolling and picked more upsets based on the rallyFEAR effect, but mercifully I didn't, because while Shovel Knight did respectably, it never came close to beating GTA:SA. Come 2018, however, it seems that the casuals don't learn, because they must've seen 38.72% on GTA:SA and said "this game's really strong!" Shovel Knight the character was, astonishingly, comfortably favored in Round 1 against Captain Toad; the Gurus weren't so easily fooled. So when Shovel Knight came out strong against Dragon's Dogma, people were suddenly amazed. It was favored, of course, but it was still considered a strong performance, and the masses who picked Undertale for two rounds were feeling even worse because Shovel Knight to R3 wasn't nearly as unpopular a pick as it would be if Octopath actually got there. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7936&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=22) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Devil May Cry 5 vs (10)Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze 2020 _source: (7)Devil May Cry 5 vs (10)Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze 2020 (revid 86509)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 1, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 23 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 01, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Devil May Cry 5 - 48.37% 21 for - 45 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Devil May Cry 5 - 70.37% - **User Votes:** Devil May Cry 5 - 5309 Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze - 3906 - **Anonymous Votes:** Devil May Cry 5 - 4255 Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze - 3218 Speaking of Devil May Cry, what an incredible redemption story. There aren't many games, or franchises, that deserved to win a heavily debated match more than Devil May Cry. I know Dante himself has some success in contests, but his games? Here is the entire DMC history in our contests: That's it. That's the entire list. Blown out in the series contest, and 1-2 in the last Game of the Decade. Not just 1-2, either; those were three *awful* performances. Failing to double a game never released in America despite an absurd picture advantage? Come on bro. On top of that, the series has been through hell and back. Twice. The original game was supposed to be a Resident Evil, but it got changed partway through without ever fixing the camera angles. Trash. Then 2 happened, which was an all-time disaster. 3 was arguably the best action game ever made, and people thought okay, good, the series is on track. Nope! 4 was literally only half a game, and DmC was laughable garbage that was no indefensible the series almost died for good. DmC was a self-insert fanfiction. Seriously, the director modeled that game's version of Dante after himself and spent the entire game crapping on series fans: It would be a long time before we got a new game after that disaster -- 6 years, to be exact -- and mercifully it was an *incredible* video game. The camera was finally fixed. The characters were all good. The gameplay was top notch. I could go on, but I won Review of the Month singing this game's praises so go read that instead: There was one catch here. A Devil May Cry game in a debated match against a Nintendo game with a well-known name, of all things? Donkey Kong was past the choker label, too. In 2015, Donkey Kong Country 2 won two close matches (something DK is *very* shaky with). In 2018, Donkey Kong of all characters went on an upset tour. Not only did he upset Tidus, but Donkey Kong -- yes, *the* infamous contest choker himself -- beat Leon Kennedy in a MASSIVE guru upset. 160 gurus signed up for that contest. Only nine picked Donkey Kong to win twice. In those two contests, one for games and one for characters, Donkey Kong had shed nearly 15 years of grief. Seriously, what the fuck even happened here? Mind you, I am not remotely upset DMC5 won this match going away. I played and loved both games, but DMC deserved this and I was rooting for it. This thing was close for 3 minutes, and then DMC5 just boat raced this thing. There was no indication whatsoever that this was possible. I know DMC5 backers were confident, and I'm happy for you, but I thoroughly disagree that there was any way to truly know this was coming. I'm going to commit a logical fallacy here and appeal to authority. Yoblazer33 is the best to ever do it, and if his first two contests actually counted toward his overall guru score, he would *far and away* be the \#1 overall guru in our contest's history. By the NG and Swirl, I really think we should legacy rule his first two contest scores into the overall and call it a wrap. Yoblazer is not the 11th best guru ever and everyone knows it. Anyway, he knows what's up. He was in third place this year until the penultimate match, and would have won this contest if Bethesda didn't suck ass. He looked at all the same data I laid out here, and came to the same conclusion. Devil May Cry in a debated match, against Nintendo? EZPZ. But then in one of the biggest shockers ever, DMC5 crushed it and gave Donkey Kong some PTSD. DK doesn't have his choke label back, but if he pulls this once or twice more, look out. Swirldude, the \#1 overall guru via technicality (the dude is a genius who has put in serious work for 2 decades, but everyone knows \#1 is Yoblazer) was kind enough to explain what happened on The Show. The short version is DMC5 is a fairly strong and well respected game, and Donkey Kong Country means very little outside of the SNES. On top of that, DKC Returns on the Wii just wasn't good, and Tropical Freeze was released two years into the Wii U's life span -- also known as two years after people realized the Wii U was garbage. Nintendo is the dominant entity on this site, but even Nintendo has a weakness. That weakness is the Wii U. And that Show appearance perfectly encapsulated what happened here. Truly. We should have seen this coming. For all intents and purposes, Breath of the Wild is a Switch game. So let's throw that one out. Once you do, what exactly on the Wii U is relevant outside of Mario Kart 8, Smash 4, and Captain Toad Treasure Tracker? Bayonetta 2 was a Wii U exclusive and the gaming public *destroyed* that game for it. You'd be hard pressed to find anything Nintendo has ever done that's more radioactive, and they couldn't get off that system fast enough in lieu of the Switch. So Swirl had it right, I think. This is the Wii U's fault. It's also one of the only examples of a Switch port meaning literally nothing. Either way, I couldn't be happier. Good job DMC5, you magnificent bastard. You deserved this one more than you can ever know. ## Ctes's Analysis I’m honestly still surprised that this match went this way given recent contests and this one too. Devil May Cry 5 was supposed to win this match, the prediction percentage shows that most casual brackets agree. Being supposed to win the match has never stopped anything from dropping said match before, however. Board 8 expected that to happen here. It was close, but Tropical Freeze was the favorite to win and for good reason! Yet it just didn’t come close, and it ends up looking really bad no matter how you spin things. It was in the match for just about 15 minutes, but that appeared to just be the board vote favoring it, perhaps because we thought it would win. Donkey Kong is known for being a choke artist. Not that it’s actually an ability. Yet last contest Donkey Kong made two consecutive upsets in his best attempt to throw that title away before doing slightly better on Vivi in their third match. While that was Donkey Kong’s third loss, doing slightly better meant a lot. Vivi is clearly stronger than he used to be, partly because Final Fantasy IX is a lot more well remembered today than it used to be, but he was almost riding high on the Mario upset in 2013. Almost everything from Smash Bros had boosted that contest. Tropical Freeze was initially a Wii U game, but it was very popular and believed to be among the best Donkey Kong Country had offered after a previous disappointing title. Being a Wii U exclusive is no good, but it had been ported to Switch, so it shouldn’t matter anymore that it used to be only on Wii U. Devil May Cry 5 was the best thing to come out of the franchise in many years, so people expected a close match, but picking the Switch game just seemed like the right idea in such a match. Not only was it not the right idea, the match wasn’t even close! Not that it’s a huge win, but for a debated match, it’s not a good result. Was Devil May Cry 5 that good? Did we underestimate it? Dante has always been pretty good in these contests. The first and third games are great, most of us agree. It was the best idea for what happened here at the time that Devil May Cry 5 was simply pretty good. It doesn’t look like it now unless you believe Super Mario Odyssey is indirectly stronger than Ultimate and there was a lot of rSFF in that match. Tropical Freeze is just bad, that’s all there is to it. Then why is Tropical Freeze that bad? Nintendo was criticized for charging full price for the rerelease with basically no updates, so maybe it didn’t help it as much as it should. I still don’t think it’s the full explanation. I’ve also heard people say that being a Wii U game is going to hurt you and no rerelease can help that. Bayonetta 2 is the other game where this is used as an explanation, but then just how beastly do you imagine Mario Kart 8 is if it’s hindered by being a Wii U game at first? It clearly is not. Unless you think Mario Kart games are similar enough to the point where one of them proxies the franchise, then the argument doesn’t explain everything. It’s still possible I suppose, but I think we’re left with Donkey Kong Country just being really bad, and that we clearly overestimated the strength of that franchise today because Donkey Kong isn’t trash anymore. That Donkey Kong Country needs to be on SNES to be worth anything. The best of them is just alright here. Donkey Kong being iconic and boosting from Smash Bros doesn’t mean his games are any better. ## Safer777's Analysis DMC 5 came recently and it was amazing. The best of all DMC games fans say. So DKC was the favorite of Board 8 here. But I don't understand why. Sure DMC games never do well and Dante everyone always says he is strong yet he never does well. Do you know that in the first every Character Contest he was in the top 10 favorites to win the whole thing? The other 9 were the Noble 9 of course. DKCTF was a DKgame apparently too. Look I don't know about this. Sorry. I just know the original DK games on SNES which I have played all 3 of them too! So for the match. DMC won and without any real trouble here. Now I know when in doubt go for Nintendo but here is the thing. When people think about DKC games which ones they think? Yup the ones on SNES. Which are more than 25 years old by the point. Have you heard anyone talking about any DK games after that EXCEPT if they are a big fan of the series? Yeah thought so. Same with Metroid games. People think the NES and the SNES one and the one for Gamecube. Meaning ones that are like 20 years old or more at this point. People just don't really care for other games except if they are a huge fan of the series. Maybe you say I am wrong but I stand on my thoughts. So there you go. DK get's his real power from the Smash series. Casuals beat us onto this match too since most of Board 8 went with DKCTF. ## Tsunami's Analysis Oy. Just when Donkey Kong had finally shed the label of being a choker, *this* happens. Though in fairness, he was never really in this match, unlike so many of his famous choke jobs where he threw away a win. It took about 2.5 hours for him to win his first update, and the match was more than a third of the way over before he won one by more than 5 votes. And while it doesn't make the list of *most* embarrassing results for the Gurus, it's pretty embarrassing. The Gurus had Tropical Freeze as a slight favorite, while the casuals pegged this match correctly at nearly a 70% rate. The reasoning was simple enough: DKC games had performed decently enough in contests when given half a chance (which is to say, in 2015 alone, because the voting system for 2004 meant there was no way one would make the field over fellow SNES classics like ALttP, SMW, Super Metroid, FFVI, and CT, and 2009 both DKC games just got fed into bad SFF situations--and one of them still managed to reach R2!), while Devil May Cry...uh...yeah. Devil May Cry still has yet to get a game *into* an "open" Games Contest. No representation in 2004, none in 2009, and none in 2015. DMC1 made the field in GotD out of the vote-ins, but unlike in the Character Battle earlier that year, the vote-in winners performed like their low seeds suggested they should. DMC3 was a bit higher up on the seeding list, and it...failed to double Mother 3 in Round 1 before a wholly expected R2 loss to Metroid Prime. Now, let's put things into perspective here: Mother 3 has never been released outside of Japan. The theme for Round 1 pics was "box art", which is perfectly fair and balanced, but it inconveniences Mother 3 because its box is just the name of the game on a solid red background. So, huge pic advantage, huge playrate advantage, only 64.86%. Wretched! Its main character has done fairly well in contests, but mostly in that he's put up good numbers in losses and wins over fodder. The strongest character he's actually *beaten* in a 1v1, based on strength at the time, is probably Ryu Hayabusa in 2006, though based on current strength, it's his 2004 win over Tails. In multi-ways it's another story; he made the semifinals in 2007 and the quarterfinals in 2008 (but beat out the same character he advanced in second place behind in the 2007 quarterfinals for 2nd place advancement out of R3), and, well, his 2013 wasn't exactly inspiring but at least in his exit he managed to beat out a decent midcarder for second place. But 2007 and 2008 being by far your two best contests is far from encouraging. So what changed? The site's opinion of action games, obviously. Devil May Cry's creator went on to create Bayonetta and the two series have very similar combat systems, so after seeing Bayonetta overperform against A Link Between Worlds the previous day, this shouldn't have come as a huge surprise. Apparently this is GameFAQs' type of game now. Go figure. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7937&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=23) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Super Mario Odyssey vs (15)Mortal Kombat 11 2020 _source: (2)Super Mario Odyssey vs (15)Mortal Kombat 11 2020 (revid 86510)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 1, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 24 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 01, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Odyssey - 77.56% 66 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Odyssey - 91.57% - **User Votes:** Super Mario Odyssey - 7951 Mortal Kombat 11 - 1264 - **Anonymous Votes:** Super Mario Odyssey - 6365 Mortal Kombat 11 - 1108 Hey so remember how Smash Ultimate was supposed to waltz to the semifinal and its opening match confirmed it? **NOT SO FAST, MY FRIEND!!** Mario went completely and thoroughly berserk here, and it was a throwback to the early 2000s when Mario was just pasting fools all over the place. He was flirting with 88% at one point, too, but that didn't matter. What mattered here was this blowout being so massive that it had everyone sweating their Smash Ultimate \> Odyssey picks, especially the people who took that upset special and backed off. The reason for that is obvious. There is no planet, none, zero, where Tekken 7 would ever beat Mortal Kombat 11 in a contest match. It simply would not happen. Yet Tekken 7 did 3% better this round. By the way, Carl Lewis should thank his lucky stars for Fergie. Someone finally did the national anthem worse than he did. But yeah, Smash looked to be in some serious trouble after round 1. That would not let up in future rounds, either. ## Ctes's Analysis Forget about almost everything else, this here is a good contender for weirdest result of the contest. We don’t talk about it a lot, because the match was never in doubt and Super Mario Odyssey was expected to win big, but it has 86%! That’s an insane percentage in any match, but this match has just about no overlap between the games. They’re as different as it gets. Furthermore, while we saw similar percentages elsewhere, that was against games no one knows about. This is against a Mortal Kombat game. Shouldn’t they do a little bit better than this regardless of where the franchise is today? Only a single oracle predicted a better percentage for Odyssey that what it got, and he was in second. This is just beastly beyond sense. This match began the hype of Odyssey possibly upsetting Ultimate. They faced similar games, but Super Mario Odyssey faced the historically bigger franchise and did better. That opened people’s eyes. Prior to the contest, most people recalled how the Smash Bros game has been better than the Mario game on every single console except for N64 and didn’t think more of it. Let’s break this down for good measure. Super Mario is among the best games on the site and leagues ahead of the original Smash Bros, which isn’t that great a game, but just a tease of the good things to come. Super Mario 64 is in all likelihood better than all Smash Games, but it’s also from a console and time we value higher. Melee are leagues ahead of Super Mario Sunshine, most of which can be credited to the mixed feelings about Sunshine. We can debate forever about how strong the following Smash games are because they’ve become mostly obsolete and we will most likely never see them again. Regardless, at the time of being the most recent game in the franchise, Brawl was way better than Super Mario Galaxy despite the latter being decent, and Smash 4 was way better than 3D World, which we will never see in a contest now that it was excluded from this one. Also, all the Smash games would’ve beaten all the Mario games just mentioned except Super Mario 64. Odyssey did however have its small amount of support with most of them being among our best experts. A lot of this had to do with speculation and doubt about Ultimate, but it was also that Super Mario Odyssey is most likely the strongest game since Super Mario 64, similar to how Breath of the Wild is since Ocarina of Time. It was completely overshadowed by Breath of the Wild in all Game of the Year polls, but we also saw Super Mario 64 getting murdered by Ocarina of Time in 2004 before coming back to beat Chrono Trigger in 2009 despite another Mario game being in the poll. Fans are extremely passionate about Super Mario Odyssey and it shows. There’s a lot more to say about Ultimate vs. Odyssey in future matches, but it’s hard to argue Super Mario Odyssey did not have the better round 1. When that is said, we also need the friendly reminder of how little worth there is in comparing matches that are blowouts as big as these. Finally, back to Mortal Kombat 11. What in the world happened here? The x-stats have it at near bottom. The unadjusted stats are obviously worse to it because of the layers of SFF it got buried under, which leaves at it at second to last ahead of only INSIDE, but even being kind in adjustments puts it below every single game we know what is, including disliked stuff such as Dota 2 and Fortnite. It folded so badly. I know that Mortal Kombat is far from what it used to be, but it’s not disliked as severely as this suggests. Did almost everyone just stop caring about it? Super Mario Odyssey is very well respected, it likely has close to no one voting against it because they dislike it, but it appears here that roughly 14% of the site care more about Mortal Kombat than Mario and that every single person that cares about both or neither prefers Mario. This is most likely a case of people taking the contest title into consideration with the forced voting helping too, but regardless, I’ll be scared of picking a Mortal Kombat character to win much in the future if the franchise name couldn’t save it from this enormous embarrassment. ## Safer777's Analysis SMO.Hard to judge. It did amazingly well with sales and critical reception but where to put it with the other Mario games on this site on power? Don't know. MK 11 got in but here is the thing. From the 3 main MK games that have come out this decade, this one is the least favorite from the fans of the series. Then how did it got in? Who knows? So for the match. SMO shattered expectations. Even 80% was considered high and it got over 85%! And yeah MK 11 isn't popular but it is from a series that EVERYONE and their fatality grandmas knows about it. So why? Is SMO that strong? To tell the truth I think yes. Seems that the 1st party Switch games are damn strong. Remember BOTW scored higher than expected too. So yeah. Maybe BOTW can beat OOT and SMO can beat SM64 for the strongest franchise games? I would like to see that to tell the truth. I guess if we have some bonus polls or something it would be nice to see. Oh and we don't care for Fighthing Games here. Except for Smash games. They are fighting games, aren't they? ## Tsunami's Analysis While I'd advise against putting *too* much stock into this result, as the Undertale match raised the total vote count beyond what it had been in previous days, Mortal Kombat has always been a stronger series than Tekken, so for Odyssey to win this decisively was reason to question whether Smash Ultimate was really a lock against Odyssey in Round 4. I've always been of the opinion that there's little to be gleaned from the size of a blowout, however...at least, not for how foddery the loser is. If you get 8% or 12%, there's really not that much difference; it's just a measure of how strong your opponent is. But in that context, from the perspective of who wins those blowouts, it does say something, so Odyssey is probably the favorite right now! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7938&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=24) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Grand Theft Auto V vs (16)Baba Is You 2020 _source: (1)Grand Theft Auto V vs (16)Baba Is You 2020 (revid 86511)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 2, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 25 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 02, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Grand Theft Auto V - 76.23% 64 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Grand Theft Auto V - 95.06% - **User Votes:** Grand Theft Auto V - 6931 Baba is You - 1782 - **Anonymous Votes:** Grand Theft Auto V - 5308 Baba is You - 1454 transience looked through the entire bracket and looked at all the games by ownership, and Baba Is You is either at the bottom or second from it. I know ownership on GameFAQs is a bit of a flawed stat, but it's better than nothing. I don't really care enough to look it all up myself. The point here is I am convinced Baba Is You would have finished dead last in the x-stats if it had faced a heavy hitter guaranteed not to get anti voted -- Super Mario Odyssey or Witcher 3, for example. But because it drew Grand Theft Auto, it got to be the beneficiary of GTA's intrinsic anti-strength. Baba was actually winning this match when it started, because Board 8 detests GTA so much. Grand Theft Auto 5 is the one game in that series with real strength, though the series has had *some* success on this site. Vice City once held Melee to 53%, San Andreas was our Game of the Year in 2004, and there are all manner of fair results in the fourways, 2010, and 2015. The issue is people see these famous close upset losses to Golden Sun and Chrono Cross and assume all the matches go that way. That just isn't the case. GTA is the type of series that, due to its nature, will never blow anything out or get blown out itself. In fact, 5's win here is likely to be the biggest win a Grand Theft Auto ever gets on this site -- and even then, due to anti-votes, it wasn't able to put an unknown 16 seed opponent at the bottom of the stats like it should have. For the record, I am one of those people who anti-votes Grand Theft Auto in almost every match it's in. Not for the reason you might think, though! I'm sure a lot of people think GTA's anti-votes come from nerds not liking how GTA players remind them of the guys who stuffed them into locker rooms in high school or whatever. Not me. GTA started as super goofy cartoonish nonsense, and was legitimately hilarious back in the day. Then 3 happened, the series went 3D, and it turned into this hyper-serious sandbox that it's never truly been able to get out of. I've never forgiven GTA for the change in tone or the types of players it now attracts. It used to cater to gamers like us. Now it's plagued by frat boy morons. The series needs to go back to being cartoonish and ridiculous. As far as I'm concerned, this is where the series peaked and it's yet to be topped: ## Ctes's Analysis Considering Grand Theft Auto V was a \#1 seed in Best Game Ever, it should surprise absolutely no one that it would also be that in Game of the Decade. Once again, it’s a recipe for disaster, because it’s not one of the 8 strongest games in the bracket and not close to either. Its division looked to be among the worst. Of course, that’s partly because of itself being the \#1 seed. Yet it was enough for a a fair share of people picking it to win the division. The far most popular opinion however was that the Nintendo game coming out of the lower half would beat it, if Persona 4 Golden or maybe even Read Dead Redemption didn’t get to do the honor first. Even Cuphead had been a fun little upset worth taking for a few people before the contest. Indie games were seemingly on a new level this contest and many expected Cuphead to be the best of them. All three winning games today both looked pretty good today facing similar fodder. It appeared GTAV would be in trouble if it could not impress against Baba is You. I think it looks pretty good all things today. Most people likely don’t recall it doing well, because GTA has just about as bad a board vote as it gets. If you have that and the match isn’t close, people are unlikely to come back and notice how much you rose over the course of the day. It had only 71% at the freeze. Cuphead had 74% at the freeze and was expected to be facing the better game. Even though GTAV rose to heaven from there and Cuphead dropped quite a bit, people were still hyped about the possible upset for days to come until the word that the percentages changed significantly had spread enough at least. Baba is You ends up being near bottom of the x-stats to the surprise of not a single person. Even so, I think getting almost 80% on something when you’re as disliked at GTA is pretty great. Baba is You is probably also among the hardest fodder for GTAV to look great against, simply because it’s as different from it as it gets. The simple design catches your eye almost immediately among these 8 games, surely more so if Cuphead wasn’t next to it. I’m surprised it made it in, though it was of course only barely. I played the game during the contest because of seeing it here and because of its name. I’ve been nicknamed Baba in real life a few places before and I had enough coins on Nintendo Switch to get almost free, so I gave it a go. Unless you use guides in which case it’s obviously super easy, it’s probably one of the contenders for most difficult game in the bracket. This is the only one I’ve played so far because of the contest, but I mention it because it’s a small side effect of these contests I’ve always really liked. When we spontaneously try out and enjoy games because they were in the contest, that we might’ve played otherwise. ## Safer777's Analysis Look here. Another Indie game that I haven't heard anything about. Great. On the other hand we have GTA 5. So what to say here. GTA V is the most profiltable piece of entertainment media in the history of manking. Yeah kind of a big deal. Over 6 billion of revenue and that was 2 years ago. Still you find it in the top 10 weekly sales charts every time too. If someone didn't knew anything about videogames and asked me to play a serious one I would recommend this one. I know most of the money is from microtransactions but if people are stupid and buy them in any game it is their fault. Yeah I don't like microtransactions. As for BIY don't know anything about it. I guess it is an action puzzle game that is barely a year old. So for the match. See in this site we don't care for GTA games. Yeah we have bad taste here. But against BIY anything can score a blowout. And GTA 5 did just that. So that doesn't say anything about the power of GTA 5. Which is low I believe too. Man remember how once time a GTA character beat Kefka one on one? Yeah that was 15 years ago but still. I just had to put that somewhere! Also people were expecting GTA 5 to score above 80% and it didn't even score that! Yeah I don't know what else to say. Oh GTA 5 was in the previous Games Contest and it lost on Round 2. Guess it can reach Round 3 at least now? Oh and where is the sequel Rockstar? Come on now! ## Tsunami's Analysis Baba is WHO? Seriously, this is exactly what a 1-16 match is supposed to look like, more or less. It's not a massive blowout by this contest's standards but that's probably largely GTA V anti-votes. There's absolutely nothing in this performance that says one way or the other whether GTA makes it to Round 3 or not. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7939&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=25) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Cuphead vs (9)XCOM 2 2020 _source: (8)Cuphead vs (9)XCOM 2 2020 (revid 86512)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 2, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 26 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 02, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Cuphead - 62.19% 65 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Cuphead - 77.96% - **User Votes:** Cuphead - 6027 XCOM 2 - 2684 - **Anonymous Votes:** Cuphead - 4457 XCOM 2 - 2305 Pre-contest, KP discussed the indie glass ceiling and thought Cuphead would have the best shot at being this contest's strongest indie darling. Spoilers -- KP is a really, really smart guy. In the raw stats, Cuphead did the best. How much of that is natural strength versus getting to go against GTA5 next round is anyone's guess, but either way this game is legit. XCOM 2 was one of the many, many early round fodder games to just get its doors blown off in the early rounds, which is typical of a seeded tournament but I'm still bitter Bayonetta wasn't a 9 seed in *any* other division. That said, this match was not about XCOM 2. It was about Cuphead proving how legit it was, and this final percentage doesn't even do justice to how good the game looked in this match. It was over 70% for quite a long time before falling off to a respectable 68. How good was this performance? This coincided with GTA5's anti-votes preventing Baba Is You from finishing last, which started up all of the hype trains for, as Harrich put it so beautifully, the **CUPSET!!!** Cuphead \> GTA5 hype was alive and well after this one, boys. If nothing else we were guaranteed to see Cuphead get an early lead, but one trend here was very important to keep an eye on. See how Cuphead started off like a house of fire and then burned itself out midway through the match? That was a very, very common problem indie games would have all contest long. ## Ctes's Analysis Cuphead was very well received upon release, being among the leading contenders for strongest indie game in the bracket. Unfortunately, it had a pretty predictable path, but there were a group of people that took the upset against GTAV in the following round. The number ended up being smaller in the oracle than in the guru, but if we had a tally the day before the round 1 matches, I’m sure it would be higher. Indie games had been huge and had been winning matches they were not expecting to. Being an \#8 seed, that task was tougher for Cuphead, but at least it got the one \#1 seed that could hoped to be beaten already. Cuphead itself looked a fine deal better than what was expected of it. It had easily the smallest blowout of the day, but most people agreed it was facing the strongest of the losing games, which on this side of the contest look to be true. Not that XCOM 2 is worth much mind you, we just had a solid amount of fodder going out today. Round 1 was a lot about taking out the trash and today is one of the most extreme cases if that, as 31% was the highest a losing game got. I’m not saying anything is wrong with XCOM, it’s just not exactly the type of game we care very much. It’d probably do better if it had been released on Switch before the contest and not shortly afterwards, but it still wouldn’t have made a difference in many matches, certainly not this one. ## Safer777's Analysis Look another indie game(Cuphead)Oh boy. But I have played one of these games that are here. And that is XCOM 2! Yeah it was free on PSN once and I played it. It is a good Turn Base Strategy but man it is WAY too hard. Even on Easy you are getting wrecked. You have to get really good to play it above Easy. Plus XCOM is a historic franchise and it does well financially and critically too. As for Cuphead...I actually have heard about it too! Yeah! It is an old school 2D Platformer and it is DAMN hard too. Yeah 2 really hard games here. Cuphead got a bad press when released from some journalists because it was so hard that they barely could get past the tutorial. As this is a bad thing. Those people should know that not every game has to be for casuals. Hard games have to exist because there are people that like challenge. So yeah not everything for everyone just like in every other media form. So for the match. Cuphead did as expected. It is one of the most recognizable Indie games too. Pretty sure a lot of people know it because of the unique art style. Fortunately it did well in sales too. Guess there is a market for that! Who would have thought that? Is Cuphead the strongest Indie? Guess it is in the top 3 of the Indies here. Well we shall see in the next match. ## Tsunami's Analysis Wait, "XCOM 2" is really the *full name*? No subtitle? No extended name that XCOM is short for? Geez, no wonder it sucks. This result was not really that surprising. Cuphead's only previous outing was in a Character Battle, but the titular character only just squeaked into CBX with a 16-seed, and the one placed against the presumed \#1 overall seed based on match placement. Indie darling though he may be, that was always going to be a losing battle. GTA V is *probably* the favorite for Round 2 based on playrate alone, but then again, GameFAQs has always tended to reject the mainstream in favor of niche stuff, so a game that's so retro that its aesthetic *pre-dates video games by multiple decades* might be right up their alley. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7940&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=26) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Persona 4 Golden vs (12)FTL: Faster Than Light 2020 _source: (5)Persona 4 Golden vs (12)FTL: Faster Than Light 2020 (revid 86513)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 2, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 27 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 02, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Persona 4 Golden - 72.80% 65 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Persona 4 Golden - 88.36% - **User Votes:** Persona 4 Golden - 6845 FTL - 1866 - **Anonymous Votes:** Persona 4 Golden - 5111 FTL - 1652 Some indie games looked okay this contest. Most did not. FTL was one of the games that ended up looking like a garbage pile. FTL doesn't just look like a garbage pile in polls, either. Okie dokie. When I first did my bracket, I actually had Persona 4 Golden winning three matches before deciding to have some faith in GTA5. Losing to Chrono Cross and Golden Sun, while embarrassing, makes sense. But surely GTA5 wouldn't lose to a Vita game even with its built-in anti-votes, right? Yeah once this poll started I regretted that decision in about 5 seconds. Not only did Persona 4 show none of the weakness one might expect from a Vita title -- this thing was clearly a proxy for the original Persona 4, which is why this and Pokemon HGSS should not have been allowed in this contest -- but Red Dead Redemption pulled off a similar blowout in round 1 of this fourpack. Barring Rockstar hierarchy and SFF (GTA pulling off SFF, ha!), the winner of Persona 4 v Red Dead was going to the divisional finals. That was set in stone after round one. The discussion when this happened live centered around trying to order Baba Is You, FTL, and Ghost Trick. That was a flawed discussion, because it assumes transitive linearity with Grand Theft Auto when we know 100% that this is not the case. The issue is whether or not the third round match would be close at all, which more or less guarantees GTA can't win, and these round 1 results showed it would be close. That right there meant GTA5 was done. Side note. Remember back in Bizarro World when Board 8 actually rallied for and rooted for Grand Theft Auto to beat Warcraft in the series contest? It's surreal to think about. ## Ctes's Analysis Persona 4 Golden was probably one of the most exciting entrants to the contest in every sense. How would it boost from the huge success of Persona 5? How much would it matter that it’s a remake? On top of that it’s a remake of a game that was released before this decade and thus its eligibility is up for debate? How much would it matter that it’s a Vita exclusive, when the Vita is a good contender for last console you want to be exclusive to? The range of contest strength we believed it could be in was bigger than what most games had, and it had the perfect bracket placement for its run to be as exciting as it gets too. It was never going to lose in round 1, even if all the things that I mentioned before went against it as much as possible. However, you could make a case for it losing in rounds 2, 3, 4 and 5. For how many games can you make reasonable different brackets that has it losing in so many different rounds. We often see an early match that is important because we know the winner will advance several times. This isn’t even that! It could reasonably lose in any of those rounds and it’s a good reason as to why division 4 was perhaps the most important division in the bracket and the most difficult one to get perfect. It was hard to determine much of Persona 4’s future in the contest from this match though. Read Dead Redemption delivered a similar blowout. You could argue which losing game is better, but at these percentages that barely matters. Both games also had reasons for potential anti-votes. For P4G that would be the aforementioned status as a remake that a lot fewer people played than the original. FTL is exclusive to PC, which is also something you really don’t want to be exclusive to in a GameFAQs contest. Unlike our Vita exclusive, it’s also not a genre we particularly care for. It’s fine, but it was no surprise to see it end up as badly as it did. I sure hope that there are people appreciating all these fodder games got in, because these are the kind of matches we’re getting as a result. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have an enchanced version here I believe. Not even a remake. Persona series is always extremely popular with fans but they don't do well in sales. Persona 5 broke the mold though and it got very good sales so Persona games are finally getting recognition in the West. I am big Shin Megami Tensei fan and Persona started a spin off of the SMT series but now it seems to has surpassed the SMT in popularity and most people don't even know that Persona is a spin off series! I have played P3 and P5 but not P4. I know, I suck. Why? It came on PS 2 and Vita and by the time it came out I didn't had any of these consoles but I thought it would get a port on PS3. But that didn't happened strangely enough. I have even played the Labyrinth games on 3DS too! As for FTL it is another indie game. Great. The Wiki says it is a Space Combat Sim? Huh? It seems to be somewhat popular but as I said above I don't really know indie games so yeah. So for the match. Well this was never in doubt. Pretty sure P4 beats all indie games here. And it did as expected too. So nothing more to say. All these games going against Indie games you can't really judge their power. And Persona games are weak on this site too strangely enough. I mean in the previous contest Joker couldn't beat even Claire Redfield on 1vs1 and RE2 remake hadn't come out yet. But Joker who is the main character of Persona 5 got in Smash as a playable character which is amazing! And I do believe we even will have a Warriors Persona game spin off. Also I said spin off but Persona games are getting strange spinoffs. We have fighthing games, dance games, action games, hack and slash games... Everything! Wonder why? Plus the winning percentage for P4 is amazing. 77.77% You can't make this up even if you wanted! ## Tsunami's Analysis Well, this just kind of proves the maxim that it's better to be an old game than a new one. Granted, FTL has always been extremely niche, but the fact of the matter is that arguably the most impressive win of the day came by the remake of an older game. At least I think it was the most impressive? Maybe FTL's so niche that it actually would lose to Ghost Trick? Either way, the upcoming P4 Golden-RDR match was looking like a 6-point match. It was highly unlikely that merely getting similar numbers to the two of them in Round 1 was enough for GTA V to be on their level, given how bad Baba Is You was expected to have been. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7941&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=27) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Red Dead Redemption vs (13)Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective 2020 _source: (4)Red Dead Redemption vs (13)Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective 2020 (revid 86514)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 2, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 28 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 02, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Red Dead Redemption - 74.97% 65 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Red Dead Redemption - 94.77% - **User Votes:** Red Dead Redemption - 6843 Ghost Trick - 1868 - **Anonymous Votes:** Red Dead Redemption - 5382 Ghost Trick - 1381 Ghost Trick was one of the many, many games that served as mere filler for the early rounds, and it performed so badly that it might as well have been one of the litany of indie fodder titles. This is why we had a series cap of two, huh? So we could have even more blowouts than usual? RDR's blowout here was almost identical to what Persona 4 was doing to FTL. I mentioned this during the Persona 4 round one writeup, but I feel that Baba v FTL v Ghost Trick was a flawed conversation. You can't order these games in a vacuum, because GTA as a series comes with built-in negative strength. GTA5 was clearly screwed after round 1. What was *very* interesting however was the incoming Persona 4 Golden vs RDR in round 2. Both games scored identical blowouts against new competition. Both games were really close in the stats in 2015. It was clear that "Persona 4 Golden" might as well have been "Persona 4" in this contest, so it's fair to bring this one up... Persona 4 (2015g) VS Red Dead Redemption (2015g) Persona 4 has a strength of 25.16. Red Dead Redemption has a strength of 24.60. Persona 4 wins with 51.11% of the vote! A win of 1,355 with 60,875 total votes cast. Some of the best matches in contest history are the ones where you *know* it will be good in advance, and all the tools were in place for that one to make some magic. On top of that, it was also clear that the winner was the favorite in round 3. Unknown winner, high stakes? Sign me up! ## Ctes's Analysis Red Dead Redemption was an exciting entry to have back again. It looked fine in 2015 all things considered, and it recently got a very well received sequel which could boost the franchise name. Unlike in 2015, it did not have a predictable a path. Any possible Rockstar hierarchy is not something we have seen before as the games usually don’t get far enough to meet. Before that there was Persona 4 Golden to worry about. P4G vs. RDR was one of the most discussed round 2 matches both before and during the contest, though most of the discussion centered around the potential P4G had. Today they had similar enough high percentages against super weak games for us to not be any closer to a conclusion of that match. The board vote today was of course nothing short of hilarious. On one side we have a Rockstar game, which is not board 8’s cup of tea. On the other side, we have a game from the developer of Ace Attorney in the same genre, which is as much board 8’s cup of tea as it possible gets. It has always been amusing how it is so. Perhaps there is some overlap between interest in contests and interest in those games. Of course, Ghost Trick is not as big, but it’s still right down our ballpark. Ghost Trick has the honor of being one of only three games from the DS to make the bracket, the other ones being Pokemon HGSS, which is a remake and from 2009 in Japan, and Call of Duty: Black Ops which I can say with certainly that not a single person nominated because of its DS port and I’m sure it being released on DS is news to some people too. So congratulations to Ghost Trick I suppose! The DS is a wonderful console no doubt, but it’s a long time ago by now. Even the representation of the 3DS is quite limited. It’s not like we’re missing out on much. 2010 was the last year of DS before the 3DS released. The biggest snub is easily generation 5 Pokemon, which could’ve made it in. Then there’s a Golden Sun and a Harvest Moon, but I’m not surprised they didn’t make it. The real surprise to me is that there is no Ace Attorney game in the bracket with Ghost Trick being the closest thing to a representative. Did we forget or what happened? Board 8 controls the nomination to such a big extend that it sure feels weird. Metacritic matters too, but games of worse critics have made it in. I have never played Ace Attorney myself despite being here for so long, so I don’t know much about them. It might simply be that the more recent ones aren’t as well liked, so we did not care enough for them, but I still can’t help but be a bit surprised. ## Safer777's Analysis 3 blowouts in a day. Well against very weak games that is expected. Here is the thing. I thought GTPD was an indie game but, nope it is from Capcom! Yeah! It is apparently like an adventure/visual game? But I don't understand how it got it. It came out 10 years ago and it wasn't popular back then. Admin has to explain stuff how all these games got in but other more recognizable and popular games didn't got it. I just don't get it. As for RDR it made the western games really popular. Amazing story and gameplay too RDR 2 came out like 1.5 years ago and I believe it is considered slightly worse than RDR 1 strangely enough. Maybe because of the microtransactions? So for the match. Well I mean the match was pretty easy to predict. As it should be. I do wonder once again who exactly nominated GTPD. RDR was in the previous Games Contest here and it lost to round 2. Guess something similar will happen in this contest too. Also why RDR doesn't good in this site even though it does amazing everywhere else? Simple. We just don't like these kind of games here. We care only for Nintendo. Or something. Even though these games are doing amazing in sales and reception. But nope, not here. The winning percentage for RDR was huge too. Not even 1 seeds get that high percentage! ## Tsunami's Analysis Ghost Trick is basically like a spiritual...cousin, I guess you'd say, to Ace Attorney. Same creator, but it's a stand-alone game that doesn't fit into their continuity. It is therefore expected to be weaker than them, not that it really matters because no Ace Attorney games actually made this bracket. This is roughly a good percentage for Red Dead Redemption. It's tough to tell who should be favored in Round 2 due to the weak opponents everyone had. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7942&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=28) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Xenoblade Chronicles vs (14)Splatoon 2 2020 _source: (3)Xenoblade Chronicles vs (14)Splatoon 2 2020 (revid 86515)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, April 3, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 29 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 03, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 67.87% 66 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 77.66% - **User Votes:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 6953 Splatoon 2 - 1973 - **Anonymous Votes:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 5784 Splatoon 2 - 1476 Holy unexpected star of the contest, Batman! When this thing was announced, Division 4 was the big talking head debate show division. The case could be made for four games winning this thing (GTA5, Persona 4, RDR, Three Houses), and there was even some Cuphead buzz. But almost no one was talking about Xenoblade Chronicles. That changed in a hurry once this match happened, especially as Three Houses was stinking it up against South Park, but pre-contest? Not a word. Part of that is Yoblazer and I keeping our mouths shut. We both picked Xenoblade after a good look at the data pre-contest, but didn't say a word to anyone outside of yo I think giving one small Show hint. This is a competition, after all. I'll get into what I saw when we get to the divisional finals, because it was as good a pick as I've ever made. The important thing to remember about this match specifically is that Splatoon 2 is a game people actually care about. It sold over 1 million copies in its first week, it was an early Switch release, and it was used to launch Smash Ultimate. Remember? That video was seen probably hundreds of millions of times all over the world. Splatoon 2 helped do that. Xenoblade took that and beat it like it stole something. It was quite the start to the contest for Xenoblade, and confirmed why some of us had so much faith in it. Well, that and one of the best soundtracks in the history of video games. Seriously, go listen to it. ## Ctes's Analysis In a contest where everything released in 2017 manages to look good in the end, even things like Resident Evil 7 and Ys VIII that had all odds against them, Splatoon 2 sure just rolled over and died. I mean sure, this is a SFF beatdown, and sure, Xenoblade Chronicles turned out to be very good, but this still looks bad on the other side of the contest unless there is A LOT of SFF. Splatoon isn’t exactly the franchise that is in line with GameFAQs the most. It’s respected to some extend for being a decent new IP. The sequel is basically just the first game with continued updates because they needed it on Switch instead. Story Mode is fun in both games, but it’s mostly just more of the same. Even so, the original Splatoon managed to hold Metal Gear Solid below 80% last contest. It’s difficult for me to see the second one being any worse than that. At worst, it would be the same, but I have a really hard time seeing being released on Switch and getting Smash representation not doing the name any favors. This could be Zelda levels of SFF then, and it might be hard at first to think Xenoblade could be capable of that given that it has been a bit niche even though loved by most that played it. However, Splatoon is exactly the type of game you should extend to roll over and die when facing SFF. Nintendo fans like it well enough, but it’s no one’s favorite. At least not on our site. As soon as it faces something people have strong feelings for, everyone will turn to the other game. Xenoblade also isn’t as niche as it used to be since it got Smash representation and spawned more games. It’s also coming on Switch very soon! Regardless of any SFF, Xenoblade instantly became the favorite to win the division. A lot of people thought the winner of Xenoblade and Three Houses would go the final 8. The match against a potential Rockstar game reminded everyone of San Andreas against Golden Sun a decade ago and we know what to pick now. Three Houses was the favorite because of a combination of two things. Xenoblade and Fire Emblem: Awakening lost to the same opponent by an almost equal amount in 2015, and everyone expected Three Houses to be stronger than Awakening. Today, Xenoblade exceeded expectations by quite a lot. Three Houses also underperformed a bit, but that wasn’t enough for Xenoblade. Obviously, an SFF match is never the best way to measure anything, but it was already hard to argue Xenoblade took the title as favorite instantly. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have 2 games that are both Nintendo! Amazing for this contest! I have heard of this Xenoblade game and I wanted to buy it but for some reason I never did bought it. Strange. Splatoon is a multiplayer game and is very fun and good too from what I gather. Nintendo did well with this franchise. So a JARPG vs a multiplayer game on this site. Guess who won. So for the match. Well what to say? XC has apparently fought against Splatton 2 on some previous polls and it won there too so of course it won here too. Nothing to say, this match was pretty easy to predict and that is. XC took part on the previous Games Contest here and it lost on the 1st round against another Nintendo game too. So yeah. Seems that it is somewhat stronger now but we shall see. ## Tsunami's Analysis I've heard a lot of speculation that Splatoon 2 would be stronger than Splatoon because it was for the beloved Switch while Splatoon was for the hated Wii U. Was Splatoon really that recent or has the Switch really been around that long? \*checks\* Bit of both, honestly. Actually I guess that makes sense because I thought the Wii U had a pretty short shelf life. I never ended up getting one because by the time there were actually any games I really cared about, the "NX" had already been announced and I made the mistake of thinking that there'd be backwards compatibility like the Wii U had to the Wii and the Wii to the Gamecube. Luckily the one Wii U game I was really disappointed about missing out on just got ported to the Switch! (That'd be the Fire Emblem/SMT crossover; I love both those series so I was really excited to hear about it.) Then again, was XBC ever really going to be strong? It was a very late-stage Wii game and one that had...availability issues. Well, since Splatoon was in BGE3, let's go to the X-Stat calculator! Xenoblade Chronicles (2015g) VS Splatoon (2015g) Xenoblade Chronicles has a strength of 23.73. Splatoon has a strength of 13.60. Xenoblade Chronicles wins with 71.34% of the vote!  A win of 25,987 with 60,875 total votes cast. Just ignore the hilariously outdated projections on votes cast, where even with registered votes counting double, this match had fewer total votes than the projection's margin of victory. Now, granted, this contest has felt like BlowoutFAQs so far, but Splatoon 2 got 21.57% in this match. Splatoon's number for 2015 came from getting 20.93% on *Metal Gear Solid*. So...probably yet another case of the original being stronger. Being for the Switch might've actually hurt Splatoon 2 because it gets overshadowed by so many other games that the Wii U just didn't have! And given the usual fall-off for sequels...I'd say this feels like a constant enough result for XBC. Also, let me just check something...Okay. I honestly couldn't remember if Shulk was in 2018. Given that he'd had multiple Smashes since 2013 (well, okay, Ultimate came out *during* CBX, but they'd already announced that everyone was back), him missing the field entirely would've been a huge indictment. But he did make it. Didn't perform all that well, but he was there. Good enough to get by, at least given the competition for Round 2. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7943&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=29) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Overwatch vs (11)Death Stranding 2020 _source: (6)Overwatch vs (11)Death Stranding 2020 (revid 86517)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, April 3, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 30 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 03, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Overwatch - 52.59% 48 for - 18 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Overwatch - 72.66% - **User Votes:** Overwatch - 5115 Death Stranding - 3811 - **Anonymous Votes:** Overwatch - 3809 Death Stranding - 3452 One of my favorite gimmicks from The Show this year was yoblazer crapping all over Hideo Kojima and Death Stranding every chance he got. Granted, anonymous inside sources have hinted that he didn't even *play* Death Stranding, but who even cares? The game is a bucket of literal piss grenades. I am in no way joking about that one, either. You can actually throw your own piss at enemies. I know a lot of people expect me to rant and rave over Blizzard winning matches this year, but I have a changeup for you on this one. The better game won this match. Yeah I said it. Me, probably the biggest Blizzard hater on the entire internet, agree with this result. This is not a defense of Overwatch, either. It's an awful (very awful) ripoff of Team Fortress 2, it began the loot box plague, the designers and artists are SJWs, and the player base is *laughably* awful. I've brought this up before, but in Overwatch you can get banned for picking off-meta heroes and Blizzard completely lied about it. No surprise to anyone who pays attention to their nonsense, but the reason this happens is because the report system is automatic. If a bunch of players report the same person, they're automatically suspended and oftentimes banned. For playing a video game for fun. And Death Stranding is still worse. This was a debated match pre-contest, because everyone knew it would be garbage versus trash. It's hard to pick these fodder matchups, especially when there is no metadata to draw from, but Overwatch was a well known brand name. That's likely the only reason it won. Death Stranding is absolute *trash*, and the game is so bad that I've stopped feeling bad for Konami screwing Hideo Kojima over. They clearly knew something. For the unaware, Death Stranding is about a guy delivering packages after a plague hits, also known as the gaming version of Door Dash. I get that this is topical, but the game is a gigantic world with nothing in it, and way, way, WAY too many dumb mechanics. The irony of all ironies is that the game is completely lacking of any action whatsoever, but when action finally shows up it always happens at the wrong time. Jim Sterling has a good perspective on it: Adding to how bad the game is is how incredibly overhyped it was. "Finally, Hideo gets to make a game without the tyranny of a parent company!" Yeah, turns out this dude was a hack the entire time and needed an editor to pull his one or two good idea from his hundreds of bad ones. Hideo Kojima is the Vince Russo of video games, and Death Stranding is the new Shadow of the Colossus. It is an overhyped, terrible video game with bad mechanics, a lifeless world, and an *awful* fanbase. Yes, some video games prove the medium is an art form. Your game is not one of them. Go away. I mean come on, Death Stranding has **me** happy that a Blizzard game won a contest match. Do you guys understand how impossibly bad a game has to be to pull that off? ## Ctes's Analysis This was a fun match in the sense that both games had a chance of being really bad on this site. It was essentially a matter of what game would be anti-voted the least, neither is particularly liked here. It’s been a long time since anything from Blizzard had success here. The only real success anything had is probably when Diablo reached the semi-finals of the contest. The games have never been fodder here, they’ve just not been as good as they’ve on a lot of other sides, despite stuff like World of Warcraft having some of our most popular FAQs. Both Overwatch and Death Stranding did just alright in their respective Game of the Year polls. Not fantastic, but both looked like something that could win a match if they got the right one. Overwatch just barely beat DOOM, which looked like a beast not many days prior, but was also fresh off the release of DOOM Eternal. Both of them were behind Final Fantasy XV, Uncharted 4 and Pokemon Sun and Moon, which doesn’t sound too great. Death Stranding was just behind Bloodstained and just ahead of Devil May Cry 5, which by their recent results looks good enough. It was then behind Sekiro and Resident Evil 2. The polls suggested that would be somewhat close, so you had to go with your gut feeling of how they’d do in a contest setting. They’re both games that I’d expect to do better in multi-ways polls, because they have their supporters, it’s just not that many. The percentages seem to agree. Overwatch is past the days where it got all too much attention, it’s probably not disliked too much at this point if it ever were. Death Stranding is a lot more recent, but it also a lot more our type of game. It can be argued that the match came down to something like Death Stranding being disliked more, but I don’t think that’s what it is. Look at the prediction percentage? It came down to bracket votes. I don’t think Overwatch being the top option mattered any, that would’ve only mattered when making the bracket since the games are side by side now. Overwatch was probably favored by quite a bit because it’s the more known name. The match is close enough and the votals low enough. I think bracket votes decided this one and it doesn’t matter all that much, because the winner was never getting past Xenoblade even before Xenoblade exceeded expectations. ## Safer777's Analysis So a Tactical FPS Multiplayer vs...something? Look pretty sure nobody knows what exactly is DS. Seriously. It is something for sure but I am not sure why. DS is one of these games that you either love it or hate it. Me I have seen reviews and I guess I don't like it? Seems like a complicated walking simulator? Look sorry for its fans but let's be real the game is weird as hell. Kojima knows for sure how to keep people guessing but man. It was his first game after the MGS series too. But let's be realists. If DS wasn't by Kojima nobody would care for it. People just gave it good reviews and it got a lot of hype because of his name. Sure the game has some interest things but it mostly sucks. I mean the main premise is that there is a guy that delivers packages. And that is. Have fun walking with nothing to do from destination to destination. Even the combat, what little there is, can be avoided. As I said above if it was from any other developer the game would be ignored, but nope it is from HK and he did really good with the MGS franchise but here? Most say no. So for the match. This was somewhat in doubt. To tell the truth we don't like games like Overwatch here BUT against DS...nobody knew what to expect. Even for the crew not all went with Overwatch. However they all predicted a close match and it was somewhat close. Pretty sure DS is damn weak. Overwatch is damn weak too but against this it did fine? Look this match is strange. The prediction percentage was high for Overwatch so I guess few people got confused or something. ## Tsunami's Analysis Hoo boy. This was going to be the battle of the bad. On the one hand, GameFAQs hates the eSports scene. MOBAs get the brunt of their animosity because of what Draven did in 2013, but all of those types of games with teams and stuff are really not their thing. So the idea of Overwatch being worth anything was laughable. But its opponent was Death Stranding, a highly anticipated, recent game that had disappointed immensely. There was a topic on the board during this match titled "I thought it was popular....", that started thusly (emphasis added by me): Why, why must you lose Death Stranding. I haven’t played it, but **before it came out** people wouldn’t shut up about it. Well apparently it sucks. Yes, yes it does. Prerelease hype is possibly one of the *worst* predictors of contest strength ever. I hate to go back to the same examples over and over again but Lightning managed 36.14% on *Sonic the Hedgehog* while FFXIII was only out in Japan, then proceeded to get literally last place in a vote-in for Rivalry Rumble, failed to take advantage of Nintendo SFF to dispatch famed choker Donkey Kong in 2013, and only managed 34.38% on Dante in 2018 (which is admittedly probably more impressive than the loss to an LFFed Donkey Kong, but still looks bad compared to the Sonic match). Meanwhile FFXIII and its many sequels and spinoffs have yet to make a Games Contest, including this one. The fact that FFXIV, an *MMORPG*, is in this contest and FFXIII isn't is perhaps the biggest indictment of the game imaginable. So even though the idea of Overwatch having strength here was ridiculous, it was still expected to win this match, and it did, with an ease largely facilitated by the registered voters no less. Or maybe they were the ones rallying? This day clearly had a vote spike from the previous one. There hadn't been any talk of rallies, though, so it clearly wasn't evident enough to set off any red flags with the hypersensitive board. Surprisingly, it was this match, not the big upset that also occurred on this day, that knocked off the last remaining perfect bracket. We know this with 100% certainty because the last remaining perfect was a Guru. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7944&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=30) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Dragon Age: Inquisition vs (10)Ori and the Blind Forest 2020 _source: (7)Dragon Age: Inquisition vs (10)Ori and the Blind Forest 2020 (revid 86518)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, April 3, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 31 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 03, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Ori and the Blind Forest - 39.05% 2 for - 64 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Ori and the Blind Forest - 38.19% - **User Votes:** Dragon Age: Inquisition - 4283 Ori and the Blind Forest - 4646 - **Anonymous Votes:** Dragon Age: Inquisition - 3506 Ori and the Blind Forest - 3755 Some indie games looked okay this contest. Most did not. Ori and the Blind Forest pulled off an upset so unexpected that I went and bought it immediately upon seeing this match result. True story. This match was one of those types where it wasn't remotely as close as the final score would indicate, either. Dragon Age didn't even get the bracket votes, and Ori just sat there and boat raced this match en route to what I like to call a 52-48 blowout. This thing was never close and was never going to be, regardless of any periodic cuts or stalls Dragon Age made. I was frankly stunned into silence by this result, and didn't think Dragon Age would have a prayer of losing this. How many matches happened in this contest where a brand name video game demolished some indie darling? Hell, how many of the indie games this contest got to lose close? Two or three maybe? But once I did some digging to research points for this writeup, the reasons became clear. First off, people *hate* Dragon Age: Inquisition. Remember, this wasn't Dragon Age: Origins. Inquisition is the third game in the series, and the fanbase openly detests this game. It's apparently a very badly done game, too, with most Bioware honks rating it on the level of Mass Effect Andromeda. I wish I had looked that up pre-contest, because if this match was Andromeda vs Ori, I would have picked Ori without a second thought. More importantly than that is Ori having two huge breaks. One is that it got a Switch port in September 2019, four years after its initial release date on Steam. That will always help. Two and most importantly, this match happened on April 3rd, 2020. Ori and the Will of the Wisps launched on March 11th, 2020. Ori may have won this match with its own natural strength, we'll never know for sure, but these mid-contest game releases almost always help big time. It all added up to an incredible upset, with only two oracles and 18% of gurus picking Ori to win. This choke job by Inquisition had some people calling it the turd of the contest, but I don't agree with that. This was a one point upset, which in my world cannot ever be called a turd of the entire contest. Turd of the round maybe, but not an entire contest. The match didn't mean enough. Turd of the contest honors goes to Hideo Kojima. Oh wait, sorry, Kojima is just a hack who thinks toilet humor is funny and that bodily functions as weapons in a video game is a good idea and HYPER REALISM OMG. Can you imagine that trash in real life? It happens, you know. Antifa is known for putting bodily fluids in balloons, and there are idiots who think women shouldn't be allowed to arm themselves in self defense because if they're about to be assaulted they can just go to the bathroom on themselves or vomit. Yes, there are actually people dumb enough to think this. I'll bet Hideo Kojima helped come up with those ideas. Hey genius, it's called the second amendment and legal self defense. Use it. The *actual* turd of this contest is Fire Emblem. Speaking of. ## Ctes's Analysis This is one of the most hilarious matches of the whole round. It was not the most exciting contest round to be fair, but this one still fully delivered. Almost no one saw this coming before the contest began. There were some gurus that went ahead with the upset, but it wasn’t a popular pick. Despite the success of indies so far, only two people had this in the oracle, and this match eliminated all but four remaining people in last man standing. The upset had been considered a bit during the contest, but we had seen indie games doing better than we expected them to, yet no one could really believe Ori was within striking distance in this match. Partly because Ori is from the middle of the decade and not from the last years, which seemed to be the best thing. Mostly because the match just wasn’t expected to be close. The match was close within the first five minutes, but that was a huge sign that we’d see an unexpected result. Ori was ahead at the freeze while being the underdog. The next update had everyone pretty excited, but it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when Ori then jumped up quite a bit. It did the same thing the next update, and despite the match being close, it was never in doubt, and Ori never looked back. Dragon Age: Origins did pretty good in its Game of the Year poll and in the previous Game of the Decade. Nothing fantastic but enough to win a match like this for sure. It disappointed a bit against Super Mario Galaxy in 2015, but that was completely overshadowed by the fact that Super Metroid \> Super Mario Galaxy suddenly became the clear result. It also wasn’t enough to make much of it, but perhaps it was a small warning sign of decline. Dragon Age: Inquisition was never going to be as good as Origins, but man it’s still a hard fall. Ori and the Blind Forest was a for a while considered a contender for best indie game. It wasn’t initially, but this surprised us all enough for it to be. It should be mentioned that I think its status as an indie game is a bit in grey. It started out as that, but Microsoft backed them for three of their four years of development. It had a lot of exposure at E3 before release. Most indie games just hope to be included in some montage. It doesn’t make this result less impressive though! Dragon Age: Inquisition finished second in the 2014 Game of the Year polls behind only Smash 4. That means that judging from those, it should be the strongest 2014 representative in the contest. That means nothing though. 2014 is probably the worst year of the decade overall and I have a hard time seeing it beat Bravely Default or Bayonetta 2 today. Even South Park: The Stick of Truth looks to be within striking distance judging from this fourpack. It also obviously loses to Mario Kart 8, but they didn’t share a poll then. I don’t know exactly what happened to Dragon Age, but it apparently fell off a huge cliff, perhaps BioWare’s decline is all it took. Unless something big happens to that franchise, we should not have it coming back again. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have an indie game here...is what I would had say but Ori came out from Microsoft apparently! DAI was really big. People were dissapointed with DA2 but EA delivered with the 3rd game. At least this is my opinion. Most seem to think that the game wasn't good but for me it was amazing. It did really well with Critics and good with the fans, for critical reception I mea. As for Ori...it is a 2D platformer and is damn hard. It even got a sequel that came out few days before the match. I hear the game is pretty good but hate to say it I haven't heard for the series before the match. So for the match. DAI won and...Yeah okay Ori won. Here is the thing. I always get wrong matches in contests of course as everyone. In almost all of the ones that I get wrong I always think that maybe the other game/character can win. But not here. I didn't even gave a second thought. Sure DA isn't that popular now since DAI came out like 6 years ago but against a game that very few people have heard about? And DAI is an RPG too! Even the whole crew went with DAI here too. Is it possible the sequel that recently came out gave it a small boost that needed to beat DAI? DA series was never strong here, I mean we had the 1st game in a contest before and it lost to 1st round too. Another thing here is that DAI actually won a few hours too so the match ended pretty close at the end. For me a game/character that wins with less than 53% is pretty close so as you see here the match was pretty close but Ori was never in danger. Man sad to see that DA series doing that badly. And I heard that DA 4 will be big on microtransactions too so even worse when it comes out. ## Tsunami's Analysis I knew that Ori was at least somewhat popular among indies, but it was never going to stand a chance against a popular RPG series like Dragon Age...right? Well, let's take a look at the results: In the first GotD, Dragon Age: Origins piled up 69.21% on F-Zero GX in Round One (Oracle expectation: not quite 61%, with a few rogues picking GX to pull the upset outright) before pulling 31.13% in a loss to Twilight Princess. Now, if taken at face value, the 37.73% that Super Mario Galaxy pulled in on TP the following round suggests that DA:O would be able to break 45% on it, but of course SMG-TP is an SFF match so the adjustments suggest it's more like 41.25%. Actual result when the two games met in Round 1 in 2015: DA:O was held just under 36%. Origins also managed 30.32% in the final of the 2009 GotY, while Inquisition, the game in this match, also made the final vote in *its* GotY five years later and actually took second place (the 2009 final was close enough that 30.32% was actually third place out of three.) So by all indications, it's a strong series here. Probably. As such, just 17.61% of Gurus took Ori to pull the upset. "Oops." The casuals didn't exactly *embarrass* us on this one, but they clearly weren't as enamored of DA:I as we were; 37.68% of brackets had this match right. DA:I never led in this match, with the max lead for Ori coming about 3 hours from the end. But max leads are fairly meaningless in this contest, because with how low the votals are, there's barely any movement late in matches. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7945&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=31) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Fire Emblem: Three Houses vs (15)South Park: The Stick of Truth 2020 _source: (2)Fire Emblem: Three Houses vs (15)South Park: The Stick of Truth 2020 (revid 86520)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, April 3, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 32 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 03, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 70.19% 66 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 80.49% - **User Votes:** Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 6038 South Park: The Stick of Truth - 2889 - **Anonymous Votes:** Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 4661 South Park: The Stick of Truth - 2600 Right from the jump, it was clear that Three Houses was in a *lot* of trouble in this contest. Stick of Truth is very comparable to Splatoon 2, and the comparison point between Xenoblade and Fire Emblem's performances was no contest. Xenoblade looked far, far better. Some people tried to claim Stick of Truth had respectable strength for various reasons, such as big name exposure and memes, but those same arguments apply to Splatoon 2. Fact is, Fire Emblem as a whole just laid a huge egg in this contest. In a vacuum this match was a simple doubling for the expected winner. When compared to future opponents... We'll get into this more in round 3, but here is the short version since I have to save *some* juice for later. On top of Fire Emblem just being the Tales series with slightly more strength -- overhyped every contest without ever winning anything of note -- Three Houses was always going to get doomed by anti-voting by weird Smash Bros fans. I talk a lot of junk about a lot of fanbases in these writeups, but let's make one thing perfectly clear. Tourneycrab Smash players are the absolute worst fanbase on this entire planet. I would rather spend time with literally *anyone* else. Unfortunately, there are a ton of these people and they are very, very pissed off at Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Adding anti-votes to a series that already has a tendency to choke is a recipe for napalm death. ## Ctes's Analysis The red flag was up when Awakening had its match, but on top of Xenoblade overperforming, Three Houses looked nothing like a division winner now. I mean, full respect for going for the exact doubling. The percentages are there, it was just a few votes away. That’s satisfying. It was an underperformance however and Three Houses needed the opposite of that to still be considered the favorite to make it out of round 3 when Xenoblade was looking so good in the other match. Everyone knows what South Park is. The games are also well-liked enough. They’re nothing big though, the seeding and the lack of the other one makes that clear. You should not believe it to be riding super high on the name alone, just because people know it. Everyone here knows Fire Emblem too so the forced voting shouldn’t make much of a difference. Three Houses had to hope that somehow South Park was significantly better than expected or that Xenoblade SFF’d Splatoon more than the already expected high amount. It didn’t seem great for it. This match was another loss for 2019. Every game from that year looked off, except for remake of a 1998 game, which has a clear explanation for being a possible exception. Perhaps we’re too slow to try out new games these days. That’s certainly not something that would surprise me. It’s also possible it was just a bad year, but relative to Resident Evil 2, the other things looked further away that the Game of the Year polls indicated. Perhaps Three Houses had some level of anti-votes behind it. The Smash Bros fanbase consists of some of the most whiny, greedy, and impatient people on the planet. Byleth, the main character of Three Houses, being revealed for Ultimate was not taken well among the fanbase. Fire Emblem had already been hated on for having too many representatives compared to what people thought it deserved and they’re also quite similar many of them. Then Byleth was the fifth character in a figthers pass that otherwise had only third party stuff. You can see where the disappointment comes from, but Smash fans don’t get disappointed, they riot. I think it’s entirely possible that Three Houses was anti-voted because of it, but it had to be a bit for it to make a difference in the Xenoblade match as things looked now. ## Safer777's Analysis So 2 RPG's here. Everyone knows about FE series. It almost got cancelled a few years ago and now it is bigger than ever. FE3H got universall acclaim from both critics and fans. I still haven't played it, but one of those days... As for SP...if you are a fan of the series you have to play that game. It is basically a long episode. The writing and the humor is exactly like the series. And it makes sense. I mean the writers of the show took part in the making of this game. So for the match. Well it was never in doubt. However I do believe SP did good here. Supposedly FE3H is damn strong since it was big when it came out and still is but it barely scored a doubling. The main character from FE3H got into Smash! Like almost every other FE main character it seems. If SP was vs another weak game it would have won for sure. But that is how things are. I am a huge SP fan. I still remember when a friend of mine brought the South Park movie on my house on 2000 and like 10 people were watching it and I couldn't believe what I saw. I mean they have stuff like this in USA that is for children? After that I managed to find the 1st season and I was hooked. I have been a fan almost 20 years now. And I still can't believe the show is going on! But once again I guess bad performance for FE3H unless you believe that SP is secretly strong. ## Tsunami's Analysis As if we needed more evidence that non-video game origins are no object for GameFAQs voters. This was a *horrible* result for Three Houses, which was seemingly a lot more well-loved in the fandom than Awakening or Fates even though it's probably even easier than those games. Seriously, this game still has a "Casual Mode" despite the fact that Divine Pulse makes it so that you can take the risks in Classic Mode that you wouldn't dream of taking in anything other than Casual Mode in any other game. I *think* I actually had to start tightening up my play at one point in my first playthrough because I was running low on (and eventually ran *out* of) charges, but I never had to reset to save a unit, and on NG+, you'll never even have to worry about running out of charges at any time. Which is fine for me, because I'm more of a story guy and replay for the completion of filling up the support logs (a fruitless task in the later games, though one I'd managed on both 7 and 8). In Awakening and Fates, that meant one playthrough on Classic Mode to prove myself capable and then all replays on Casual. In Three Houses, it's Classic Mode every time, because there's still pretty much no risk to doing so. And against South Park: The Stick of Truth (which is apparently also an RPG?), it...came up just seven votes shy of the doubling. Yeah, we'll just call it "a doubling", but that it was even close, let alone technically coming up just short, is embarrassing. And in the raw votes, it's not even close; FE3H polled at 67.64% among registered voters and 64.19% among unregistered. And yet, would that really affect anything? Three Houses was considered a massive favorite over Dragon Age: Inquisition, and it was even harder to imagine Ori and the Blind Forest pulling the upset. Awakening was expected to get 48.23% on Xenoblade based on their matches with DKC2 in 2015, so Three Houses barely has to be stronger than Awakening at all to win that (which it still should be just from being on the Switch, given this site's apparent anti-handheld bias). So, what, we're panicking about its chances against the P4G-RDR winner in Round 4? Were we favoring it there to begin with? \*checks\* ...Apparently not only is FE3H the Guru favorite there, but GTAV is the favorite over the P4G-RDR winner in *Round 3*, and there's enough of a split on that R2 match itself that *Xenoblade* is actually the \#3 choice to win this division, with P4G \#4 and RDR \#5. So either I'm going to be made a fool of, or I'm still in prime position in the Guru after all. (Unless it's Red Dead Redemption rather than Persona 4 Golden that knocks GTAV off, in which case I'm really screwed.) You know what, let's settle this once and for all. Back to the X-Stat calculator! - looks at outcome of hypothetical GTA5-P4 match in 2015\* ...Da fuq? Is this some type of weird trickery based on GTA5 being in the SMRPG quarter of the bracket? ...No, P4's considered the slight favorite over RDR, and RDR was in that quarter as well, albeit in Division 8 to GTA5's Division 7. Well now I feel silly, but come on, it's GTA. When has that ever been worth anything in Games Contests? ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7946&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=32) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (16)Assassin's Creed Odyssey 2020 _source: (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (16)Assassin's Creed Odyssey 2020 (revid 86521)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 4, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 33 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 04, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Witcher 3 - 76.65% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Witcher 3 - 92.23% - **User Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 7184 Assassin's Creed Odyssey - 1340 - **Anonymous Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 5714 Assassin's Creed Odyssey - 1130 Well *this* was certainly an eye-opener. In these contests, it's all fun and cute to debate early round matches. They make things fun and I certainly wouldn't take that away from anyone. What actually matters are getting the late rounds right. We all knew Breath of the Wild was winning this contest, but there was a huge issue to solve in the bottom half of the bracket. Witcher 3, Skyrim, Pokemon HGSS, Mario Galaxy 2, Persona 5, Dark Souls, and even The Last of Us all had fair cases for making the final, though the prevailing opinion was that the second semifinal would be between Witcher 3 and Skyrim, with Skyrim as the favorite. Skyrim was the favorite because we have metadata on both games from 2015, and not only did Skyrim look like a shit-kicking badass that year, Witcher 3 lost to Metal Gear Solid 2. I know what eventually happened in this contest, but that is a real result. It actually happened. It led to Skyrim having a 60-40 advantage in those stats, and for Witcher to flip that around it needed all of the following to go right: -Netflix show boost -Switch port boost -"Respect" boost -Skyrim deboost because of people hating Bethesda -Skyrim having an overrated value due to being locked behind Undertale's value For those reasons, I picked Skyrim to beat Witcher 3 in the semis and make the final. I regretted that decision about 10 seconds into this match, because Witcher 3 was *clearly* a different animal in this contest as compared to 2015. It had over 85% early on and held steady for the entire match. Binding of Isaac Rebirth got 26% on Witcher 3 five years ago, just FYI. People make fun of the stats topic for making wild projections 5-10 minutes into a match, but we're usually *right* with those projections. Based on this match, the entire half of this bracket was done for. Holding Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which is arguably the most popular and well respected game in that series, to below 16% is just an absurd level of strength. The *one* hope the bottom half of this bracket had was the possibility of this being an SFF match. To that, I say *it doesn't matter* if this was an SFF match. The bottom half of the bracket was on notice either way. ## Ctes's Analysis The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was one of the most hyped returning contestants from the 2015 contest. The game has become a huge phenomenon, widely regarding as being one of the best games of the decade anywhere, which has only increased since release. In 2015 it did not look all that great, being a bit behind GTAV. You had to bank on it increasing from there to keep it far, and some did! Taking it as far as the finals. The Witcher 3 is also being remembered for the comment on the contest CD Projekt Red made when being contacted in a rally attempt. They didn’t notice it in time because of thanksgiving and would’ve liked to have been noticed further in advance so they could do something. That stuck with us. The Witcher 3 had some serious rally potential. Not that it would be needed today. Assassin’s Creed is way past its peak and Odyssey is easily the weakest of them to make the bracket. It was clear in 2015 that the franchise had fallen from grace by being trash in 2015. Ezio also looked way better in his debut than he did last time. They pumped out too many half-assed games too quickly and not even fans could keep up. I’ve never played past the Ezio trilogy personally and it wasn’t just because of lack of interest. One of the games would have to be seriously well received if I were to give it another go. I expected Assassin’s Creed to look absolutely terrible here. I remember when predicting percentage that I just kept going lower and lower on it and it just didn’t seem right. The serious doesn’t have many people caring about it any longer and I could see almost no one vote for it above The Witcher 3, one of the games that are always brought up anywhere when discussing Game of the Decade. Furthermore, Odyssey actually drew some inspiration from Witcher, causing them to be similar in some ways. The SFF hammer was in the hands of Geralt, and man, did it hit. Even if you expected anything Assassin’s Creed to be complete trash these days, this was a good performance. You could certainly be happy if you picked Witcher 3 to go far at this point. Though we still needed to see the other top finalist contenders in the bottom half. ## Safer777's Analysis The W3 is one of 2 games that can reach the finals, with the other beeing Skyrim. At least that is what we thought before the contest started. As for AC series you all know the series. This series had a game coming out every year but each game getting lower and lower sales so Ubisoft decided to stop making them for a while. So they decide to soft reboot the series with Origins and make them MUCH more combat oriented AND heavy loot based. Bassically they became action rpg's. With levels and all. I mean the previous games had combat and loot too but they never really matter. I mean you could just sneak around and kill everyone with 1 hit anyways. You can't really do that now though. As for the W3...Okay it is a game that basically every other open world action RPG compares it to see how it stands out to it. Yeah it is that good. It made the Witcher series REALLY popular and now everyone and their Magician Grandma knows it. I mean we even got a Witcher Netflix series and it was ACTUALLY good! And damn popular too! So yeah the Witcher series is everywhere now. So for the match. Well we have 2 action rpg open world games and of course the much popular one won. But it didn't simply won, it scored way too high. I didn't even expected to score above 77% myself and it scored more than 84%! Also the W3 is one of my favorite games of all time. BUT in this match I voted for ACO. Why? It takes place in Greece which is my country and barely any game take place there so I had to support it. I mean it was amazing to visit cities and landmarks that I recognize and have visited. For Americans that doesn't mean much since a lot of games take place in USA but it is different for me. So anyways W3 is DAMN popular now. I do believe thought that ACO could beat some indie games here. Which isn't saying much but hey. ## Tsunami's Analysis Way back when Assassin's Creed was a new series, it was a legitimate contender for being the rare new property that GameFAQs actually embraced. In 2008, Altair rode the Guru nomination to a highly advantageous bracket placement (the fourways didn't have proper seeds, but we're assuming he was like a 2-seed or something) and won his opening fourpack outright and advanced in second place out of Round 2. Come 2010, Assassin's Creed already had one sequel, and both Altair and Ezio got 2-seeds and made Round 2, where they ran into some very strong characters. Both those games made it into Game of the Decade, though the original needed to make it through a vote-in and got knocked out by MGS4 in Round 1; II got a 6-seed and reached R2 before losing to Wind Waker. Ezio also managed to have enough strength to get into Rivalry Rumble in 2011, somehow. He and Rodrigo Borgia were a 6-seed, which was the lowest seed possible without going through vote-ins; I have a sneaking suspicion that they wouldn't have fared so well in vote-ins. Come 2013, with the sequels piling up...Ezio *still* had enough popularity to get a 2-seed and had no trouble dispatching the 17 and 26 to reach R2, where he finished last behind L-Block and Auron. Altair, meanwhile, fell all the way to a 25-seed...which was not a bad place to be given that the 3-seed was reserved for "hyped newcomers who will inevitably flop". He took care of Shulk, the 3-seed in question, and Ratchet, then finished ahead of Lara Croft, former 1-seed, for second place behind, uh, Kefka. Yeah no one expected Kefka to be there but we all expected the winner of his R1 match to win in R2. Only in 2018, when Altair missed the field entirely and Ezio got fed to Zelda in Round 1, did either of the first two Assassin's Creed protagonists miss Round 2 of a Character Battle since their games' release! And yet, the interminable parade of sequels killed all buzz. This was a unanimous pick by the Gurus, and it was pretty close to unanimous with the casuals too--almost 91% got this right. Still, the degree to which ACO got owned was perhaps a bit concerning, even if a few Oracles did actually put in predictions that lopsided. After all, Assassin's Creed IV was favored in a match just two days after this! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7947&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=33) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Mass Effect 3 vs (9)Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty 2020 _source: (8)Mass Effect 3 vs (9)Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty 2020 (revid 86522)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 4, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 34 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 04, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mass Effect 3 - 60.11% 57 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mass Effect 3 - 64.54% - **User Votes:** Mass Effect 3 - 5218 Starcraft II - 3305 - **Anonymous Votes:** Mass Effect 3 - 4051 Starcraft II - 2793 This match was not hard to predict. We had already seen the varsity version of it five years ago: You're about to get your mind blown for a second straight Blizzard writeup -- I legitimately and truly enjoyed Starcraft 2. On my mother's ashes. I promise. My issue with it wasn't the game itself, but Blizzard's lying about it. Remember when they told us this would be three separate games, but only the first one would be full-priced and that the other two episodes would be relatable to an expansion pack? Yeah how'd that work out for you folks? There is a reason Wings of Liberty is what got in and not Heart of the Swarm or Legacy of the Void. I'm glad I have family that works for Blizzard that got me the games for free with the family discount, because I was not going to pay a penny to play any of them. But because of that, I got to enjoy a pretty good set of games. There were some flaws, namely too many maps being gimmicks instead of RTS campaigns, but I enjoyed most of it nonetheless. Heart of the Swarm was the weak spot, but the Zerg campaigns kind of sucked in the original too. The highlight for me was actually Wings of Liberty. My best friend's name is Jim, and to this day I'm always "daaaaaamn, Jimmy" when he's around. Tosh is great. Raynor is good. The little arcade game on the Hyperion was *really* fun. And with all that said, Starcraft 2 didn't deserve to be within a mile of winning this match. Mass Effect 3 is the better game with the better plot, the better gameplay, and even the better multiplayer. Yeah I said it. I am still, to this day, the \#1 Geth Trooper Soldier in the world. Every November 7th, I make sure to carry on the tradition by carrying a bunch of slugs through Platinums. This match goes a little deeper than just liking one game more than the other, though. I *love* Undertale, but Mass Effect 3 deserved better than to be its first casualty of the rally. It also gets unfairly dumped on for its ending and its sequel, when neither one is Mass Effect 3's fault. 99.9% of this game is A+, but because people are idiots they pretend the game is bad because of an ending. Screw EA for caving to these crybabies, too. Never give entitled brats what they want. I think I spent more time on Mass Effect 3 than the rest of the series combined, so seeing it get its redemption story was nice to see. I was shocked it was such a blowout, too. I figured the score would be similar to Mass Effect 2 v Starcraft, but I guess Starcraft 2 got run over by the Blizzard hate train. ## Ctes's Analysis If this match reminds you of another match, it’s probably the fantastic Starcraft vs. Mass Effect 2 from 2015. That one was quite the nail biter. Starcraft is known for delivering to good matches. Mass Effect 2 didn’t end up looking ahead of the other two Mass Effect games, but its loss against Metal Gear Solid 3 was all kinds of weird. Another issue is in that is how Mass Effect 3’s contest went. Mass Effect 3 is rather infamous for being second in the unadjusted x-stats of 2015. It was the game Undertale just managed a comeback against in round 1 and thus it’s buried under all sorts of weird stuff. I mean, if you believe that Mass Effect 3 is on that level, then this is an easy match and next round should be closer than most thought. Mass Effect 3 is one of the most controversial games this decade probably. It was initially disliked by many, but also cared a about by a great amount. The people complaining are always louder, so it might not be as bad as it seemed, but it still split the fanbase. DLC eventually fixed some the issues, but the damage had been done. Andromeda will always be the weak link now, but it also went into the forgotten realm. Everyone agreed it was awful. Mass Effect 3 is discussed more. The second game is the one that is remembered for being the best. In a contest called Game of the Decade, that will matter more than ever. It’ll never reach those highs. Then there’s Starcraft II. I don’t think anyone for a single second thought that it would be anywhere near the original one. The first has strength, but the second one was never that popular. It’s hurt more by any issues people might have with Blizzard today because it’s more recent. There is room for the difference between the Mass Effect games to be rather big and still have Mass Effect 3 win this match, so Mass Effect 3 was favored here with a good amount of certainty, just like the result shows it should. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have 2 games that I want to say some things about. ME3 was amazing for me. The first multiplayer game that I played online a LOT and made some friends and we played together and man it was amazing. I now can see why people like online games and playing with friends. The single story was amazing too. BUT. But! The ending of ME 3. Oh man. Now I know that it was impossible to put all our choices on an ending that most would like. I get that. But man when people finished the game and saw the ending...Okay I haven't seen more anger against a company. It was chaos. NOBODY was happy with the ending. Things were so bad that some people made a class action lawsuit against Bioware (or considering to do it, I can't quite figure it out). The point is that everyone was angry so Bioware made a DLC ending that was free. Yeah they tried to made a better ending due to angering fans! It made things much better at least, but of course a lot of people were still angry. So yeah. ME3 is known for this thing unfortunately. Still amazing for multiplayer with friends as I said though. As for S2...the first Starcraft game was big. Really big. Like BIG! Especially in Korea. It started getting tournaments in 2002 and man people that were taking part in these tournaments were celebrities. And not like the bad thing, the one that everyone respects and recognizes them. I mean the tournaments were on TV and there were HUGE crowds even so many years ago! I don't know why it happend but it did. As for S2...well it is popular but it came in 2010 which is more than 12 years after the first. So yeah. Also S1 was the ONLY 16 seed EVER in ALL contests that managed to beat a 1 seed in its very first match. We haven't seen this more than one time and we shall never seen it again because the seeding is much better and no rallies too. So for the match. Well ME3 would never lose since as I said S2 isnt' as popular as S1 plus we don't really core for exlusive PC games on this site anymore. Strange thing is that ME3 did better than predicted. People thought that even 57 would be high and it broke 60. So yeah. We don't care for PC games anymore as I said. ## Tsunami's Analysis Oh, hey, sequel fight. That was a hotly contested battle, and the general consensus was that neither of these games were as popular as those games, even if the adjusted X-Stats say ME3 \> ME2--I have no idea how they came up with that, though, because I *think* the match against ME3 was the *only* one where we got to see what Undertale's unrallied strength looked like? Obviously the *raw* X-Stats have ME3 behind only Undertale, but that'd just be silly. ...Hm. Well that's disturbing. It turns out I remembered wrong, and we did get to see unrallied Undertale for quite a bit of the match against Fallout 3 in Round 2 (in fact, Fallout 3's peak lead came more than 13 hours in, which is especially scary given that it fell more than 2500 short of Undertale's winning margin). And of course, it's fun to note how even though Undertale was continuing to win updates by large raw amounts right up until the end, the *total* votes in the late updates aren't really any higher than in a lot of the early updates where FO3 was winning (though given how the updates usually get quite a bit *smaller*, the fact that they're of similar size is still the rallies' fault). Kind of lends some credence to what Allen said about the Link-Draven match, that people could always come back and vote later. But what's disturbing is that there, uh...was kind of a blip in that poll, too. Nothing prolonged like what happened in Link-Draven, but if you look at the updater, there's a single update where Fallout 3 won *4-0*. For a second I thought that the updater had accidentally taken a double, since the seconds on the two updates are different, but it's actually the later update that has the earlier seconds reading--they're 4:59 apart, not 5:01. ...Or maybe not. It took a second update a mere minute later and that showed a more normal amount of votes. But then why did it show any change in votes at all? Strange. Must've just been a hiccup in the counting software. But back on topic. Presumably based on the pre-rallying ME3-UT and FO3-UT values, ME3 was in fact supposed to get 51.92% on ME2 based on 2015. ME2, in turn, got 51.12% on StarCraft in a match where both sides were rallying. So this was a fairly obvious result and I feel silly for thinking it could be close even though I got it right. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7948&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=34) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Stardew Valley vs (12)Destiny 2020 _source: (5)Stardew Valley vs (12)Destiny 2020 (revid 86524)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 4, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 35 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 04, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Stardew Valley - 65.62% 57 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Stardew Valley - 68.26% - **User Votes:** Stardew Valley - 6123 Destiny - 2400 - **Anonymous Votes:** Stardew Valley - 4752 Destiny - 2092 Some indie games looked okay in this contest. Most did not. Stardew Valley, however, arguably looked better than any other indie game in all of round one. If I'm not mistaken, it scored the biggest blowout of all the round one indie performances, which is rather impressive given all the fodder in this field. I get that its opponent was Destiny, which is quite possibly the most hated game in the history of this web site, but still. An indie title going 71-29 over a AAA main line game is a crazy result, no matter what the big name game is. This was reminiscent of Florida Gulf Coast destroying Georgetown. The game was as unknown as could be when it first came out, but now look at it. Personally I think Stardew Valley is garbage and I couldn't wait for Mario Galaxy 2 to rip it in half, but I can still respect the hustle. I also think Destiny is even *more* garbage, so it's not like the wrong game won. For anyone who cares, I don't like these games like Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, The Sims, Sim City, Minecraft, et al where there is no goal besides farm, craft, build, repeat. Farm, craft, build, repeat. Farm, craft, build, repeat. These are the kinds of games non-gamers play, and they barely count as video games. Still better than Destiny, though! ## Ctes's Analysis This match went as basically every one of us expected it to, but it was still able to fuel the indie fear since Stardew Valley did better than most people expected it to do. In that regard, Destiny is the perfect opponent. It’s bad and it was also in the previous contest where it was killed by Starcraft worse than it got killed today. If you expect some kind of SFF in that match, then Stardew Valley looks really good here. Not that in would matter much because Stardew Valley was never going to beat Super Mario Galaxy 2 regardless of how well it did this match. Destiny has every reason to decline, of course. Our site has never been too huge on multiplayer games like this one but even less than we used to. Five years is a lot of time. You should expect things to change quite a bit between then and now. It makes it harder to compare and to predict, which has its ups and down for contest nerds. It’s easy to see how much things can change in that time by looking at the character battles of 2002 and 2007. Or looked at 2004 and 2005 and see how much one year can do. If you’re declining by each passing day, then five years can make you decline a lot. Not to take any credit from Stardew Valley. It looks good here, and it’s probably one of the actual strongest indie games with the exposure and popularity it has had. It just wasn’t in any position to take advantage of it itself. On the other side of contest, however, I think it’s pretty clear that the main reason Stardew Valley went over 70% was Destiny and not itself. It’s a shame we have so many fewer brackets these days. Almost everyone that makes one has some contest knowledge. I don’t think there’s much of a chance that Sardew Valley would be the favorite with the activity in these we had a decade ago. On Board 8 it would, of course, but this is a clear casual trap. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have another indie game here. But this indie game has one of the biggest communities ever. The game is just a slice of life game. So many things to do and there are like a million mods for it. It is basically like an animal crossing game. Meaning there isn't a single goal or a big bad or something. You just play, relax, and have fun. And do things at your own pace too. So really good game and so many people like it. On the other hand we have Destiny. Seriously. Who keeps nominating Destiny and its characters? Yeah we had a Destiny character on the previous Characters Contest too. So nothing bad nominating characters and games you like BUT even the people that play Destiny don't like like it much! At least when it first came out. So yeah who exactly nominated it? Was it a trollish attempt or something? I just don't get it. So for the match. Well we have an indie game that is beloved against a game that almost nobody likes. So what did you expected? SV dominated. So people stop nominating bad games/ characters. At least the other games we have seen so far had something going on for them. Destiny has nothing. Let it go. Just let it go! ## Tsunami's Analysis Another match that everyone seemed to know the winner, but no one really felt comfortable about it. Stardew Valley was yet another indie game, and even though it is technically an RPG, the game series it's most commonly compared to is *Harvest Moon*. Actual Harvest Moon, not its RPG spinoff Rune Factory. Destiny, however, is neither Japanese nor an RPG. It is in fact made by Bungie, best known for notorious contest disappointment Halo. Destiny *had* been in a contest before, in 2015, where it lost in Round 1 getting 25.51% on...StarCraft. (Oracle expectation: 39.85%) Well, that certainly provides a good comparison for Round 3! Based on the 2015 X-Stats, however they were calculated, ME3 would be expected to get 76.02% on Destiny. Stardew Valley got 71.17%. So that comes out to...Stardew Valley being worth 48.35% on ME3? That seems awfully strange, but okay! (Far more likely that Destiny has fallen off a lot more than ME3 has; I wouldn't even really be surprised if ME3 had been vindicated by time somewhat, either because those who didn't get it *right away* only know the revised version or because the even *more* hated Mass Effect: Andromeda has lessened the hatred towards 3.) ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7949&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=35) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Super Mario Galaxy 2 vs (13)Return of the Obra Dinn 2020 _source: (4)Super Mario Galaxy 2 vs (13)Return of the Obra Dinn 2020 (revid 86525)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 4, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 36 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 04, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 82.66% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 95.45% - **User Votes:** Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 7474 Return of the Obra Dinn - 1049 - **Anonymous Votes:** Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 5896 Return of the Obra Dinn - 949 Can someone explain to me how in the name of all that is good Mario Galaxy 2 only got a 4 seed? The same applies to Obra Dinn, which clearly should have been a 16. This entire match was a mis-seeded bork. The biggest blowout of an entire contest usually goes to a Nintendo entrant, and this contest was no exception. It was so weird seeing it from a 4 seed, though. There was a small portion of this match where it looked like Mario might flirt with 90%, of all numbers, but he eventually settled at "only" scoring 87. This wasn't a blowout on the same level as what Tanner, AiAi, Cave Story, or Ms. Pac-Man have had to deal with, but it was a legendary blowout nonetheless. So much so that I can update this list! That's one of my favorite lists to keep updating in these PCAs. Watching an insane blowout is almost as fun as watching BAH GAWD IT'S A SLOBBERKNOCKER. It still meant nothing for the looming Witcher 3 vs Galaxy 2 match, either. Some folks picked Galaxy 2 in "Nintendo always wins" crusade, which I can understand, but what Mario did to Obra Dinn here just isn't comparable to Witcher 3 aethering Assassin's Creed Odyssey. People actually know what Assassin's Creed Odyssey is. ## Ctes's Analysis It makes me happy that Super Mario Galaxy 2 would become the game to score the highest percentage in round 1 of the contest and also among the best ever! It speaks volumes about Return of the Obra Dinn, and we’ll get there, but it also says something about the Mario franchise. You basically have to have played and enjoyed Obra Dinn to vote for it here. More than Galaxy 2 even. With the forced voting and with the Game of the Decade title in mind, almost no one will not just vote for one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time. Mario games are perfect at taking advantage of that system and Obra Dinn it not the type of game that stands out among picture of eight games, which might save something like Baba is You from dying as badly as it might have had. Super Mario Galaxy 2 looks good here, though it’s hard to make much of it when Obra Dinn is easily at the bottom of the games in the bracket. Unfortunately for Galaxy 2, it was in no position to make much use of any gained strength. It was never losing before round 3, and while a few looked at the chance of upsetting The Witcher 3 or just feared a Nintendo game would go berserk in the part of the bracket that had otherwise tried to avoid Nintendo dominance, just like Super Mario RPG did last games contest. At the same time as this match, however, we had The Witcher 3 doing almost as badly on a game people actually know what is. Even with potential SFF in that match, Galaxy 2 did not look to be on that level. ## Safer777's Analysis So here is the thing. SMG2 lost on the previous game contest against Mass Effect? I don't believe it. I thought people were made a mistake but no, it is actually true. I don't understand why. Sure ME was more popular back then but the SMG games are so popular with fans and critics. They both have 97% on Metacritic which is amazing for 2 games of the same series. As for ROTOD...It is an indie game and once again I do wonder how it got in, while other games like Pokemon Go didn't. So for the match. Slaughter of course. Remember when I said that Skyrim of Witcher 3 would reach the final match? After this performance SMG 2 is a contender too. I mean we all knew that it would win but this high? Highest win of the contest too! Yeah it dominated. I know that ROTOD is damn weak but still this is amazing performance. Well we shall see I guess. ## Tsunami's Analysis Just when you thought the vote totals couldn't get any worse... I'm fairly certain that that's a record low for votes in a 1v1 Games or Characters contest, even *with* the registered voter bonus. The Years Contest had a lot of first-round blowouts where even the raw figures for Return of the Obra Dinn were higher than the loser's vote total, but it's certainly worse than anything else this year or from 2018, including Draven getting hatestomped. Though at least the unregistered voters alone gave it more votes than Chester got in 2013. Honestly once you add in the registered vote bonus this isn't all that far off Chester's total for the end-of-round-1 "Worst of the Worst" bonus match. It's impossible not to look at the raw totals for this match and *not* think of the Years Contest, though, because Return of the Obra Dinn literally got 1998 votes before adding in the registered voter bonus. So now we were left to determine whether 87.25% on Return of the Obra Dinn was as impressive as 84.07% on Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. It doesn't seem like it should be, even if it was the biggest blowout of the contest so far by percentage. The biggest by total votes, though, was Super Mario Odyssey, so Galaxy 2 doing this as well...well, it was easy to think that Mario was just going to be a beast this contest. Hopefully Round 2 would give us a better handle on what to expect for the big SMG2-W3 matchup. Or, wait, is that even right? That was the foregone conclusion, but I can't help feeling that there's something in the way... After all, SMG2 narrowly lost to Mass Effect *1* in 2015. If The Witcher 3-Super Mario Galaxy 2 is supposed to be a close match, shouldn't Witcher 3 have trouble with ME3? ...Huh. The Witcher 3 did better in defeat than I remembered. Still, it does seem odd that The Witcher 3 is a unanimous Guru pick to reach R3 when the 2015 X-Stats say that it's only expected to beat Mass Effect 3 with 51.74%. What's SMG2's expected percentage against ME3? ...51.58%. Holy crap. The X-Stats have The Witcher 3 winning with just *50.16%* of the vote against Super Mario Galaxy 2. There are so many things that can change in five years. And yet Witcher 3 is more than a 5-to-1 favorite on the Guru (along with a sole Guru taking Stardew Valley to upset both of them--one of only three to even take Stardew Valley to upset SMG2.) Bring it on. (Even though I absolutely *hate* that I picked a game I hate to go so far.) Love the idea of such a close match. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7950&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=36) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Fallout: New Vegas vs (14)The Stanley Parable 2020 _source: (3)Fallout: New Vegas vs (14)The Stanley Parable 2020 (revid 86527)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, April 5, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 37 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 05, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fallout: New Vegas - 78.05% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fallout: New Vegas - 91.38% - **User Votes:** Fallout: New Vegas - 6533 The Stanley Parable - 1665 - **Anonymous Votes:** Fallout: New Vegas - 5172 The Stanley Parable - 1403 Some indie games looked okay this contest. Most did not. The Stanley Parable was one of the many, many, many games in this contest that functioned as early round fodder for the heavy hitters, because the two per series cap meant for some incredibly obscure entrants. I will say though that I looked into every game at least a little bit to prep for these writeups, and The Stanley Parable legitimately looks interesting. The preview makes it look like Portal: The Office Version, and it even looks like it was done in whatever engine Half-Life 2 was made on. I might check it out at some point. It was also up against Fallout: New Vegas, meaning it had zero chance whatsoever and functioned as a standard happy-to-be-here low seed. If we pretend Octopath Traveler and Mario Kart 8 never happened, and that match against Undertale was a very special case, did you know the lowest seed to win a match in this contest was 10? It's true. Look it up. We only had two major seeding upsets this year. There was some minor debate surrounding New Vegas vs Dark Souls 3 in round 2, but that was put to bed fairly quickly when the round 1 results came in. New Vegas was the clear favorite, as it should have been. Dark Souls 3 happened long after that series jumped the shark (it came after Bloodborne, which is just the better game in every single possible way, so Dark Souls 3 felt like a step backwards), while New Vegas is often described by Fallout fans as being the *real* Fallout 4. Those people absolutely loathe Bethesda, Fallout 4, and obviously Fallout 76 -- but New Vegas, they're all in on. It showed with how well it did in this contest. ## Ctes's Analysis This is one of the most straight forward matches of the entire round and that says a lot. The Stanley Parable had basically no matches it could win and is just happy to be here. It’s cool that something can go from being a mod in Half-Life 2 to being remade for a release as its own game and get representation in a contest like this. The contest was perfect for shining light on things like that, even though getting blown out in round 1 means we quickly forgot about them again, particularly when there’s eight games up on the game day and just one of the matches is interesting. Something worth noting about this match is that Fallout: New Vegas also didn’t appear to be much hurt from people thinking less of Bethesda than they used to. It’s hard to make much of it when against something like The Stanley Parable, but it was still good news for the many people taking Skyrim far. Or at the very least it meant no additional reason to worry. However, a bunch of people theorized that New Vegas might simply be immune to a backlash. It’s older and doesn’t have the issues that generally caused the criticism and most importantly it was only published by Bethesda and not actually developed by them. Regardless, it would remain the favorite in its round 2 match, just like it was before the contest. ## Safer777's Analysis So another Fallout game here. It is considered the best Fallout game that came out since the reboot in 2008 though and it faced an indie game. SP was amazing with it's clever writing but basically it is a walking simulator. Still it has a hilarious narrator and deserve a playthrough but these kind of games just don't impress me. So yeah. So for the match. Well I am dissapointed that FNV didn't even managed to break 80% here. And no, don't tell me that SP haw power. Seriously. But maybe I am overthinking this. I mean almost 80% has to be amazing right? Yeah that is probably it. So obviously really easy match to predict and nothing else to say. You can't judge game powers vs weak indie games. ## Tsunami's Analysis Having 4 matches per day is great, because it allows the boring Round 1 matches to be cleared out of the way quickly. And this contest had no shortage of those. Through ten days of the contest, there had been a grand total of *two* lead changes after the freeze. Undertale managed to make it to the freeze with a 5 vote lead and increased it to 7 at the next update before falling behind for good, and Walking Dead came out so on fire that its max recorded lead was *before* the freeze (64, compared to the 55 it had at the freeze) and managed slight gains over the next two updates before Bastion took the lead for good at the 40-minute mark. That's it. Even Ori and the Blind Forest, which had a smaller maximum lead than Bastion, never trailed. Honestly, in the absence of rallies, we're probably going to see this in every match. Fallout: New Vegas was considered by many to be a disappointment, yet it was still better than a 3 to 1 favorite among Gurus for Round 2. Given what we'd seen all contest, this was probably cause for concern. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7951&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=37) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Dark Souls III vs (11)Dishonored 2020 _source: (6)Dark Souls III vs (11)Dishonored 2020 (revid 88341)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, April 5, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 38 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 05, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dark Souls III - 66.31% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dark Souls III - 85.88% - **User Votes:** Dark Souls III - 5893 Dishonored - 2305 - **Anonymous Votes:** Dark Souls III - 4271 Dishonored - 2299 This was one of the many early round blowouts we had in this contest, and it was never going to be anything other than an easy win for Dark Souls 3. One thing of note here is that while Dishonored doesn't feel like a Board 8 type of game, the forum actually loves it. I don't know why or how, but it does. It's a welcome change of pace! Speaking of changes of pace, From Software really botched it (the pace, I mean) with Dark Souls 3. The game is not bad by any stretch, but you can't go backwards after Bloodborne and go back to playing as a piddling character in molasses whose every action takes 45 seconds. I want to dance around like Demyx's water, not actually feel like I'm fighting underwater. The shame of it is the design of 3 has some of the coolest areas and bosses in the entire series, but by this point it's on the ever so slight downswing. From Software recognizes this, too, so it was clear by the lore than Dark Souls 3 is the last one. The formula, at least for this character speed, is played out. Thankfully, From Software announced The Elden Ring, which is as clear and obvious a paradigm shift as we'll get. From Software, arguably the best game designers we've ever had (outside of their garbage camera systems, which somehow has not improved in *six games*), is making an open world game with all of these templates -- Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, Witcher 3, among several other A+ titles -- to draw from. To say I'm hyped is an understatement. If we still have these contests in 2030, The Elden Ring has the potential to be top 5 in those x-stats. Maybe even number one. ## Ctes's Analysis The Souls franchise including Bloodborne and so on was certainly one of them most interesting this contest and of the decade. The first Dark Souls is widely respected as being one of the most influencing games this past decade and it’s easily the most popular of the three Dark Souls games too. The difference between them in contest strength appears greater than the difference in how much the fanbase likes them, but that can be contributed mostly to the original Dark Souls being the most influencing one. Dark Souls III being the second one of them to make the contest probably didn’t surprise anyone. The second one is the least popular one by a decent margin. Dark Souls III was mostly expected to win in this match and then lose the next match, but it had an outside shot of doing better than that. Bloodborne looked a lot better than last time, maybe Dark Souls III would be stronger than we thought. Dark Souls III did just about what you would expect of it. Dishonored is past its peak and will probably slowly be forgotten, while Dark Souls is still talked about a lot. Dishonored didn’t even make the bracket in 2015, where it more relevant. It just didn’t really do anything groundbreaking and while being a fine game for most part, it was overshadowed. It managed to hold Dark Souls III down enough for New Vegas to remain the favorite in the next round, of that’s any achievement. ## Safer777's Analysis So Dark Souls is the Dark Souls of the Dark Souls series! Yeah I am kidding. DS is a series that is really good and DAMN hard and it's name became synonymous with hard games from other series. For example Cuphead is the Dark Souls of Platform games and such. So yeah DS series is really popular and of course made popular the get good meme. Dishonored is a cool game. I have played it. It is a stealth game but you have cool powers to use too and cause mayhem. The sequel isn't as good as the original strangely enough. Still DS 3 is the worst of all DS games so I don't understand why this got in, and not the 2nd game. So for the match. Well Dishonored is damn weak as everyone expected. I also think that DS3 isn't as well liked by its fans as the previous 2 games. But still name recognition and a weak opponent and it made it score a big victory too. ## Tsunami's Analysis We'd seen Sekiro do well, and Bayonetta overperform on ALBW, and DMC5 "upset" DKC:TF. And now, we had an actual Dark Souls game. And it did...quite well! It doesn't look that way based on percentages, but with votals so low, the difference between winning with 69.93% and 79.40% is only a little more than 2000 votes. And to me, almost 70% on Dishonored *does* in fact feel more impressive than 79.4% on The Stanley Parable. The Stanley Parable is described as an "interactive drama and walking simulator". In other words, it should be utter fodder. Failing to break 80% on it is not great, though coming that close isn't bad, either. FO:NV is a game that was in 2015, where it got almost 56% on BioShock Infinite in R1 and almost 42% on RE4 in R2. So, not bad. But let's look at Dishonored. We don't have any Games Contest results to work from, but in GotY for 2012, when Allen decided to switch from polling by system to polling by genre, it came in second place in "Action/Adventure Game", still well behind poll winner Assassin's Creed III, but well ahead of third place and in fact *exactly* doubling up 4th place (in a 10-option poll). We also do have a Character Battle result to look at! Corvo Attano, the main character of Dishonored, made CBIX as a 15-seed. He was blown out by 4-seed Pokémon Trainer Red, but nevertheless managed to just barely double 24-seed Sissel, the protagonist of another game in this bracket, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective. Now, there's no good way to figure out the relationship between character battle strength and game strength, but a doubling is a doubling even if it's, to round off, about a 70-20-10 threeway. This is a good performance by Dark Souls III, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to see it pull the upset next round. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7952&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=38) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth vs (10)Nioh 2020 _source: (7)The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth vs (10)Nioh 2020 (revid 86529)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, April 5, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 39 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 05, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Nioh - 44.89% 10 for - 50 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Nioh - 44.12% - **User Votes:** The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth - 3633 Nioh - 4565 - **Anonymous Votes:** The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth - 2715 Nioh - 3857 The oracle, guru, board, and casuals all got this one hilariously wrong, but Isaac seemed like the obvious pick so who can blame any of us? Nioh, despite having very good sales, feels like it got lost in the shuffle of all the Souls clones that happened in the latter half of the decade. There's also the matter of the Souls games not exactly lighting the world on fire in these contests before this year. Demon's Souls choked in 2010 and got its ass whipped in 2015. Dark Souls won two matches, then failed to break 30% the second it faced legitimate competition. Not only that, but Isaac was guaranteed to have a *huge* picture advantage, and Nioh itself is the bastard stepchild of a bastard stepchild. No-brainer pick, right? *That*, ladies and gentlemen, *is why they **play the games**!* Isaac had a small lead early thanks to bracket votes, and was only losing by 9 at the freeze, but then after a small stall Nioh utterly destroyed The Binding of Isaac for 23 and a half hours. It was a blowout win so unexpected that it had people looking for answers, but thankfully that's part of why I do what I do! People clearly did not respect Nioh's sales numbers when making their brackets, and many people also didn't expect the Souls series to have such insane respect in this contest due to the contest's title. I've mentioned this a few times, but our voters are very astute. "Game of the Decade" means something to them. When you put an irrelevant video game up against a well respected Souls clone, it's a wonder any of us picked against the Souls clone. But there is another point that a lot of us keep forgetting to factor in when making brackets, but I suspect that won't be an issue moving forward with how I keep bringing it up in these writeups. This match happened on April 5th. Nioh 2 came out on March 13th. These mid-contest game releases are a *huge* deal, because they almost always cause these massively inflated performances in polling. Nioh likely would have won this match either way, but without a mid-contest sequel this likely would have been a 53-47 type of match. *With* a mid-contest sequel, you get what we have here. To date as of this writing, Nioh 2 has over a million in sales. The right game won, too. If you read my review you'll see a 4/10 score and me ratting off a bunch of flaws, but I can still be in love with an average video game. For all that Nioh does wrong, and it botches a *lot* of things, the things it does well are truly special. One such thing is the soundtrack. Check this specific track out, which is nothing short of mesmerizing. I'm not one of those people that likes to look at a thesaurus and invent new phrases when discussing music, like those idiots at Pitchfork are known for, but one comment on that video says this theme is hauntingly feminine and beautiful. Couldn't agree more. It's a huge reason I'm happy Nioh won, despite not picking it. It deserved this. ## Ctes's Analysis Here’s the match that got all the attention today. We had seen indie games being good so far and Binding of Isaac was already the favorite to win before the contest started. At this point, not many kept their faith in Nioh. In fact, people generally thought Binding of Isaac would win rather easily. Nioh had about a third of the gurus supporting it and about a sixth of the oracles. Yet it won, and it won rather easily, giving life to what was otherwise a pretty boring division so far. Neither Binding of Isaac or Nioh looked very great in their Game of the Year polls and the former got just 25% against 2015-Witcher 3 in the previous games contest. They both looked to be bad and not far from each other. The top option is usually a good choice in such cases. If anyone considered it, Binding of Isaac could also stand out like a sore thumb today. The fatal mistake here was probably to underestimate just how good 2017 is. Nioh was up against Persona 5, Horizon and Automata, which are all huge. It was the first real sign of how good anything that year was. Resident Evil 7 came first, but it wasn’t truly given credit before the next round happened. Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey dominated, but were also both expected to, and Hollow Knight wasn’t as big back then as it became. Nioh made the upset though. The match was exciting in the beginning. Binding of Isaac won the board vote and they were dead even in the opening minutes causing all of us to work our f5 keys. In those minutes, you should feel best as a Nioh supporter. Most indie games had started of strong and stabilized throughout the match. We also knew Binding of Isaac was the favorite and had most bracket votes. At the freeze, the difference was only a 9-vote lead for Nioh. It extended that to 40 next update, which basically sealed the deal. Binding of Isaac stalled for two updates giving hope to some supporters, but the board vote is not just the opening five minutes, it’s the first 15 or 20. It’s usually from that point the board opinion loses influence and true enough, Nioh went from 48 to 122 and never looked back again, being a few votes away from a 3000-vote lead by the end. This was hugely unexpected after all the indie dominance, but it gave more life to the idea that perhaps indie games from the first half of the decade would not be as strong as the ones from the latter half. Furthermore, with Bloodborne looking good and people generally having high expectations for Dark Souls, credit was also given to Nioh for simply just being better than we thought. No one had the idea yet that indie games just weren’t quite at the level we made them to be on average, or that you can’t really group them as much as we like to do. ## Safer777's Analysis So in this match the whole crew got the match wrong as most of Board 8 too. And it is easy to see why. A really popular indie game vs a game that is damn hard and new too and we don't really care for these games here. TBOIR was in the previous contest too and of course got crashed there. But it had a much stronger opponent there too. Nioh is one of these get good games and maybe the hardest of them all. It is hard for sure but yeah you have to be really patient to play it and beat it. So for the match. Well Nioh won relativy easy. So why? I do believe that even though these 2 games are weak the sequel for Nioh came out a few days before the match and people say it is as good if not better than the original. So it gave it the slight push to beat the indie game. And TBOIR seems that isn't as popular as we thought. Eh. The prediction percentage wasn't as low as I thought though. ## Tsunami's Analysis Nioh was a contest newcomer, an action RPG (good thing for this contest) made by Team Ninja (maybe not so good? This is a very Nintendo-centric board and a lot of Nintendo fans are probably still mad about *Metroid: Other M*) with a sequel (actually prequel, but its name is "Nioh 2") that was released not even two weeks before this match (always a good thing, but imagine how high it could've gone if the start of the contest hadn't been delayed!). Binding of Isaac: Rebirth had made the 2015 Contest as a 14-seed and proceeded to come up against one of the few things against which the "older = better" would've actually worked in its favor, which along with the fact that it was from a series I'd actually heard of, I initially entertained it as a possibility for our requisite 14-3 upset (3-seeds always tend to be hyped newcomers that inevitably flop; Allen even made a joke out of it in CBIX and of course a 3-seed won it all). Mercifully I was successfully talked out of that; *The Witcher 3* nearly tripled it. But "familiar" usually trumps "unfamiliar", so even though the only contest experience BoI had was being weak (the protagonist also made CBIX as an 18-seed, but that meant an immediate date with a Noble Niner), the fact that it had any experience at all made it a favorite on Board 8, at a little better than 2-1 on the Guru and *5-1* on Oracle predictions, including at least one person who said straight-out in the Oracle Discussion Topic that they had Nioh in their bracket but their bracket was trash anyway so they were hoping that it was their Oracle pick of BoI:R that was correct. The casuals? Well, they were upset, too, but not nearly as badly as the Gurus. 43.53% of brackets had this match correct, so while they too were ultimately wrong more than they were right, they correctly saw this as a debatable match. And let's face it, winning with 56.53% qualifies as "close" in this contest. I'm honestly not even sure why I'm still making Oracle predictions under 55%; I suspect it's to mitigate disaster when I know I'm picking against the majority. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7953&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=39) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)God of War vs (15)The Talos Principle 2020 _source: (2)God of War vs (15)The Talos Principle 2020 (revid 86530)_ ## Results **Round One** Sunday, April 5, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 40 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 05, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** God of War - 83.02% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** God of War - 96.10% - **User Votes:** God of War - 6943 The Talos Principle - 1255 - **Anonymous Votes:** God of War - 5618 The Talos Principle - 954 Some indie games looked alright this contest. Most did not. The Tales Principle was another in the long line of low seeded indie darlings that existed simply to get their asses whipped by the heavy hitters. Allen almost did *too* good of a job with the seeding this year, but it is what it is. Contests with 128 entrants have a lot of early round blah to get through. New rule. Two video games can't have the same exact name. No more "Doom" meaning two things. No more "Resident Evil 2" meaning two things. No more "God of War" meaning two things. None of it. It's a stupid, lazy, cheap marketing ploy to get sales. That said, God of War is an all-time *amazing* video game and one of the best paradigm shifts in gaming history. It really is. I know a lot of you don't like hack-n-slash, and that's fine! You do you. God of War 2018 is not hack-n-slash. It's an open world adventure of sorts. It was out for blood this contest, too. Sort of. This match had a lot to do with Talos Principle being a complete unknown, because Kratos isn't the type of dude to score 85% blowouts in these things and we all knew he was no threat to actually win the division. Witcher 3 or Mario Galaxy 2 would make sure of that. It's a shame this site doesn't really care about God of War, because these games deserve to do a lot better than they ultimately do. Kratos has a phenomenal character arc ongoing, too. I've played every game in this series, and God of War 2018 is the best one by quite a lot. If you only ever play one God of War game, this is the one to play. Scout's honor. ## Ctes's Analysis God of War was hyped to be something that could upset some \#1 seeds before the contest. The game was very well received, and it got very close to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in the final Game of the Year poll of 2018, a poll that people like to being up more often that it probably should be, but nevertheless served to hype God of War quite a bit. God of War was however put in division of The Witcher 3, which had the potential to be the worst one you could draw other than of course Breath of the Wild. God of War did its best to live up to its hype, by almost cracking 85%, something that is never a bad result. It was against The Talos Principle, which is one of the weakest games of the bracket, but again, getting a percentage among the best of the contest isn’t bad. This match didn’t make its chances of living up to the hype worse. The problem was that The Witcher 3 did almost just as well on Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and while those two are more similar, Assassin’s Creed is also a much bigger name than The Talos Principle. God of War looked to be in a very similar situation to Super Mario Galaxy 2, which also demolished fodder but looked right ahead at The Witcher 3. The chances of God of War making it out of the division were not looking great. The Talos Principle is just happy to be the contest. It’s one of the most obscure games in the bracket, but perhaps being ported to consoles in recent years gave it just enough exposure to make it in. It probably needed to be against something unknown or something that gets anti-voted if it were to do better than this. Considering it’s a \#15 seed, only the latter seems possible, so I guess Three Houses was its best bet? Or The Last of Us if the leaks of the second game had emerged earlier? It’s a fun game if you’re into puzzle stuff, so hopefully its contest showing made some play it that had not already. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have GOW here. No not the one from 2005, the one from 2018. Why they couldn't add something to the sequel to differentiate it from the first game in the series I am not sure. GOW is excellent. Very different from the original trilogy too. The original trilogy was linear action adventure without character development and such. Kratos was always angry and was killing everything on sight. But GOW changed all that. We even moved from Ancient Greece to Ancient Scandinavia! Makes sense since Kratos killed all major Greek Gods so we had to change scenery! But man this game is huge with a lot of stuff to do, random loot, side bosses, side quests,amazing character development, exploration and optional areas and so much more. Seriously if you haven't played the game just play it. It is way too good. Deserves the GOTD title too. Also NO stupid DLC and Microtransactions. Just a huge Single Player game with a ton of stuff to do as you know were a ton of games a few years ago before companies became greedy? As for TP...it is a walking simulator? Yeah I don't know anything about that. So for the match. Okay the only question was how much GOW would win. And it won with really high percentage. Almost 85%. So yeah amazing performance. I do believe it is the strongest Sony exlusive game. But it is the strongest Western game here? Probably not but well we shall see. ## Tsunami's Analysis I really don't want to talk about this match. No, seriously, I *really* don't want to talk about this. I got this right in Guru, of course. Everyone did. And at 96.1%, it was second only to Breath of the Wild in prediction percentage among the casuals, too. Was I under some delusion that God of War was no longer popular here? Did I accidentally mistake the Talos Principle for something that might have anything remotely resembling strength? Or was I just not paying attention?! Because honestly, there is no good excuse for being more than *10 points* behind the second-worst Oracle prediction when you're not predicting an upset or even a threat of one. This match has single-handedly convinced me to start keeping tabs on what I put into Oracle for every match and adjusting them if I think I messed up. Predicting ***61%*** for a match where the actual winning percentage was nearly 85% can do that to a guy. Even *without* the benefit of being an established franchise, God of War's genre is much more of an asset this contest than it seems like it would've been in years past. That was just such a huge blunder on my part that I actually went to check my Guru to see if I'd screwed anything up in later rounds. Then I remembered what its next opponent was/would have been. Yes, it turns out, I *am* in the majority that picked God of War to make Round 4 and then lose. I just had a major stupid when it came to making my Oracle picks. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7954&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=40) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Persona 5 vs (16)Heavy Rain 2020 _source: (1)Persona 5 vs (16)Heavy Rain 2020 (revid 86531)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, April 6, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 41 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 06, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Persona 5 - 78.21% 57 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Persona 5 - 90.40% - **User Votes:** Persona 5 - 6953 Heavy Rain - 1856 - **Anonymous Votes:** Persona 5 - 5573 Heavy Rain - 1692 How did Heavy Rain make this contest, but not Detroit: Become Human? Detroit is by far the best game Quantic Dream has done. There was a good discussion this year about which game in the bracket fell off the hardest since release, and Heavy Rain was mentioned the most. I like the game, but it's hard to disagree. That game was almost universally loved and discussed when it first came out, now it's.... pretty much the exact opposite. I'm surprised it even made this contest. But Persona 5? Man is that game is a badass slayer these days. Remember when the Persona series would struggle to beat games like Dead Rising, Civilization 4, and Street Fighter 4? Yeah, those days are long, long behind us. This is a mainstream series now, and it has a case as being the strongest JRPG series on this web site now. No Final Fantasy game released this decade can touch the Persona franchise, and you have to go back to the 90s to find some FF games to match up. With all of that said, in a vacuum this match was a standard 1-16 blowout. However, it showed that Persona 5 was a slight step below the strength it needed to hang with the big boys and make the final. This was a great performance, but it wasn't quite enough to prove it could beat the likes of Witcher 3, Skyrim, and Dark Souls. Remember, these round 1 matches were all about positioning for that second finals spot. ## Ctes's Analysis Persona 5 is one of the boards favorite games. If that’s wrong, then it just has the loudest fans. Board 8 was into Persona way before it was cool, and the fact that our baby has become as big as it has to the point of getting a \#1 seed in anything seems to be more happiness than our minds can handle. Persona 5 was given one of the easier divisions, seemingly. Most people didn’t think there was an upset chance here, but almost everyone that went for an upset in the previous division took it past here as well, although everyone in this context isn’t that many people. Persona 5 had one of the simplest routes in the contest, most of us would agree. Anything Persona 5 does that can be twisted into a good showing was taken as a good showing. Maybe I’m giving the stats topic or a couple of loud users too much credit here, but it’s the vibe you would get from reading the board on Persona 5 match days, and I’ve been defending the idea that Persona 5 is great but not fantastic in these contests a lot. That it never stood a chance of making it out of top 8, regardless of which of the top 4 it was allowed to face. Persona 5 finished second in the Game of the Year polls, winning the Playstation one and barely avoiding getting doubled by Breath of the Wild in the end in a 7-way poll. Severely SFF’d Super Mario Odyssey almost avoided that too in 10-way poll with two other Mario games that got almost no votes, yet the final poll seemed to be an indicator of too great things for Persona 5. Not that any of those polls should mean that much. Now what would Persona 5 need to keep the hype up today? In the minds of some, probably just advancing would be enough. It was 0.08% away from the general consensus in the oracle, so it did as it should almost as much as you possibly could I suppose. That should keep all hope up. Heavy Rain was never that big and it’s mostly a joke these days, I’m afraid. I’ll defend the game and say that I enjoyed it a lot, but I haven’t played it in 10 years, which might be good for what I think of it. ## Safer777's Analysis Persona is damn popular here even though their characters do damn bad in these contests. Actually the Persona games do bad though. All Persona  games do extremely well with critics and fans but not that good in sales. But Persona 5 changed this. It did damn well in sales, it broke records actually. Plus Joker got even in Smash as a main character! Damn! Also the Persona 5 cast appears in many spin off games. Strange but yeah. In fact a Persona Warriors spin off will come out sooon. I shall buy it since I am a huge Warriors fan and a Persona fan too. As for the HR game it is like an adventure/visual novel kinda style game? Look it is strange. It is known nowadays for the memes though. Hey at least it is widely known unlike some games in this contest. So for the match. Well P5 won easily. I mean as I said HR is known even though for wrong reasons but still. P4 did really good a few days ago too. P5 did 0.5% better than P4 too! So nothing else to say. Persona series off to a good start. Finally they are doing good! ## Tsunami's Analysis So of course, as I so frequently do, I immediately followed up my colossal blunder with an outright win. Only went over by 0.02%, and unlike some of my previous wins where I just had the high/low pick on a match we all messed up, there was some tight competition. In fact, the Oracle consensus was only 0.08% off from what actually happened--the top scores were the ones closest to the median! Also, despite having literally filled out a bracket, it was at the very least when I was making Oracle predictions and possibly even *on the match day itself* when I went "wait, how is Heavy Rain in this contest? Didn't that game come out in like 2008 or something?" Nope, but I understand my confusion. Exact years for things in the past often elude me, so I probably remembered seeing ads for it on TV in my college dorm room and figured "yeah, that's late 2000s"; it actually came out in February of 2010 for the Playstation 3. It was then ported to the PS4 in 2016...and to Windows in 2019. So, yeah, recent rerelease, makes sense that it somehow managed to squeak out a bid. Got crushed, of course, because Persona is mainstream now even if SMT as a whole still isn't. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7955&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=41) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag vs (9)Sid Meier's Civilization V 2020 _source: (8)Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag vs (9)Sid Meier's Civilization V 2020 (revid 86532)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, April 6, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 42 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 06, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - 53.93% 41 for - 16 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - 64.34% - **User Votes:** Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - 5006 Sid Meier's Civilization V - 3804 - **Anonymous Votes:** Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - 4030 Sid Meier's Civilization V - 3233 I half wonder if Allen got the two Assassin's Creed games backwards by accident when making this bracket, because Odyssey is in no way 16 seed material. Black Flag is. How in the world did Black Flag even make this contest, let alone as an 8 seed, eight lines above Odyssey? No one, not even the biggest Assassin's Creed series fans, likes Black Flag. It goes to show how little this site cares about the Civilization series, because you have to be megatrash to lose to Black Flag on GameFAQs. Civ 5 might have won this match if it was multi-platform and the seeding was reversed, but that's not the timeline we live in right now. This was a typical dat top option 8 vs 9 fodder duel. We get those now and again, and this contest was no exception. Congrats on winning a ticket to getting destroyed by Persona 5, I guess. I have nothing else to say about this match, so here's a list of DAT TOP OPTION fodder vs fodder 8/9 matches. Yes, Laharl is on this list twice in both a win and a loss. This is the dumb stuff one looks up during matches Assassin's Creed wins. Small correction: Board 8 users were kind enough to inform me that people actually do, in fact, love Black Flag. I just got unlucky with the people I interact with, I guess! ## Ctes's Analysis On paper, this really seemed like a big match of which of these things we don’t care about, do we care about the least. Civilization V is nothing like what we usually enjoy here, but no one has anything against it either, similar to Age of Empires, although Civilization is probably bigger than that. We know what it is but put it against something we care about and it rolls over. Black Flag is a by genre a lot more something that we enjoy, but there are definitely people with something against it. Civilization was also close to getting a victory in the previous Game of the Decade contest, losing just barely to Persona 3, which was pretty bad. The fifth one is generally regarded as being the best one from what I can observe, so it could be a bit better than that. Assassin’s Creed IV is untested, but Assassin’s Creed as a franchise used to be good enough but is pretty terrible today. A few days prior to this match, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey rolled over and died. Black Flag is generally preferred among the fanbase of the two however, so it might still have what it takes to beat a Civilization game. The match was about as uninteresting a one can get with percentages like those. It was over almost right away. Black Flag clearly had board vote, but after that it stabilized, and the percentages were quite consistent for the reminder of the match. It appears we cared slightly more about Assassin’s Creed in the end, but I don’t think that’s really what made the difference. The prediction percentage shows that Assassin’s Creed was favored by almost two thirds of bracket. That’s probably for being the bigger name or maybe for being the higher seed, even though it’s close. If Civilization had that prediction percentage, there’s a chance the result flips, at least it gets a lot closer. The match does show Assassin’s Creed isn’t as anti-voted as something like Dota 2, Fortnite or Call of Duty. It can still get the majority of the voters in some matches. I wonder if Odyssey would also win this just by having the Assassin’s Creed name. It probably still does, even if it’s a little closer. We don’t have that many hardcore Assassin’s Creed fans these days, what the fanbase favorite is probably means very little. I would’ve liked for Civilization to actually get the victory, it has never had, but this was probably its best chance ever. Maybe next Game of the Decade if they make another good one and it gets the right opponent. A little fun fact to round off the match. My girlfriend’s father is cited in Civilization for something he first said about thirty years ago. He’s not someone you know and can easily look up, so it just appears like a random name in the game. ## Safer777's Analysis So AC 4 is considered the best of the old AC games, before Ubisoft soft rebooted the series. As a fan of the AC series that have played all games I can see why. It made pirates damn cool and the whole ship combat mechanic was expanded so much from AC 3 that almost all AC games have it and it is super fun to defeat all other ships and collect loot and upgrades. Serious fun here. As for the CIV series CIV 4 is actually my most played game of all time. Yeah for real. I still play it occassionaly because the fans have made so many mods that I have lost count. Amazing game. But I haven't even touched CIV 5 and CIV 6. Okay I played a bit of CIV 5 but I just can't get into it because when you have played CIV 4 for thousand of hours you can't just change. However the CIV series is considered the best turn based strategy series too. And yeah all games are amazing even though I play only 1 of them. But man the CIV games are damn weak here. So for the match. Even though there was some fear that AC would lose, I never thought of that. Sure the series sucks now on this site but the CIV games are extremely weak here. We saw that ACO got demolished by Witcher 3 but Witcher 3 can even reach the final match. It is a damn strong game. AC series was popular on this site back then on the AC 2 era and its direct sequels but after that we abandoned it. Still at least it got a win which is more that I can say for a lot of franchises here. ## Tsunami's Analysis We were just two days removed from seeing Assassin's Creed Odyssey get quintupled by Witcher 3, and the original Assassin's Creed had needed the vote-ins just to make the first GotD while Assassin's Creed II was the series' lone representative in 2015 and it was a 16-seed. All indications were that the series was toast. And yet, we still believed in it here, for the simple reason that Civilization has always been absolute garbage here. Civ V itself had appeared in 2015 and got doubled by Dark Souls in round 1; Civ IV made it into the first GotD and lost a close match with Persona 3 where it was actually favored roughly 57-43 by both Gurus and casuals; the series as a whole managed to just narrowly clear 10% in the opening match of the 2006 series contest against The Legend of Zelda; and in the series' lone failure to come in dead last in a contest poll, the first game in the series beat out Castlevania III for third place by almost 1000 votes while still coming nearly 28000 votes shy of second place Street Fighter II (which was itself nearly 10000 votes out of first) in a first-round match in 2009. The Persona 3-Civ IV match might've been sticking in Gurus' heads, because honestly, neither 47.65% on P3 nor 33.3% on Dark Souls feel like awful results. But the fact that it lost as a favorite, even though with hindsight it doesn't feel like it *should* have been a favorite, leaves you with a "won't get fooled again" mentality. This is exactly why Kefka's been burning us over and over with his nonsensical newfound strength. But with AC also declining, this was far from consensus; over 25% of Gurus had Civ V, and about 28% of Oracle predictions were for it. The casuals were similarly conflicted but clearly leaning in the correct direction; 63.47% of brackets had this right, which feels about right for a match that had a clear favorite but was somewhat debatable. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7956&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=42) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Sonic Mania vs (12)Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA 2020 _source: (5)Sonic Mania vs (12)Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA 2020 (revid 86533)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, April 6, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 43 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 06, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic Mania - 72.89% 57 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic Mania - 78.37% - **User Votes:** Sonic Mania - 5629 Ys VIII - 3181 - **Anonymous Votes:** Sonic Mania - 4356 Ys VIII - 2907 I bought Ys VIII because of this contest. True story. I looked into every game in the field, at least in part, and that one legitimately looks incredible. Can't wait to start! But what is with Japanese games and dumb subtitles? Look at this stuff: Not that anything will top the idiocy of *these* names: This match was never going to be unpredictable -- Sonic Mania was always going to win it easily -- but Sonic only getting 63% here was very disturbing. The game undershot expectations by 10%, and opened up all kinds of hype trains for Super Meat Boy beating it in round 2. We'll get to what happened when the time comes, but you know you've botched your round 1 match when you have people hyping up the possibility of Super Meat Boy upsetting you. By the way, the ultimate end result here wasn't people overestimating Sonic. People vastly underestimated Ys VIII. The series has been around for 33 years, so obviously it has a fanbase somewhere. ## Ctes's Analysis Sonic Mania was a huge board favorite, having gotten a solid nomination rally and earned its high seed as a result of it. It looked to be in a position where it could make round 3 and it was also the favorite to do so. Sonic Mania is popular for a modern Sonic game and the name still carries some strength with it. It’s crazy to think that there might not even be a Sonic game in the bracket if the board hadn’t pushed so hard for it to happen. Maybe Allen would’ve kept one in for legacy, but there’s no Mega Man despite those being just fine as well, no Metroid although that one didn’t have the best options. The Noble Nine is mostly represented in Smash Bros these days, except of course for Zelda and Mario, which are as dominant as ever. Super Meat Boy awaited in the next match and upon many indie games doing so well, the idea that Super Meat Boy could perhaps beat Sonic Mania in round 2 was gaining some traction. 15% of gurus went with before the contest, but it was getting more popular. Sonic Mania is most likely among the more preferable round 2 opponents to draw. An exciting battle of overseeded entrants at the cause of board 8 looked to come up. Then the match happened, and Sonic Mania went way below expectations. The board vote was very great, but Sonic fell drastically after that. It was against a Ys game, which isn’t something you expect a lot of people to know much about despite how many of them there exists. The franchise has existed for a long time but has only recently been promoted from nothing to niche. Sonic needed to do better here. It looked to be very lucky it didn’t draw something else or it might have not made it out of round 1. The next match looked to be close. Super Meat Boy looked fine, but not all too great considering it was facing something we expected to be among the worst of this already fodder filled bracket. We know that this result is just not as bad as one could have expected. Ys VIII is apparently not all that bad. I mean, there’s still not much point in having it in a regular games contest other than acknowledging it wasn’t trash, but it could’ve won the right match in this contest perhaps. If board 8 had pushed it to a high seed, it suddenly becomes a lot more possible. We have nothing to compare it to, because it’s the first time ever a Ys game has been in the bracket, but I don’t think another entry could’ve done better at any point unless perhaps we had a games contest in 1990, which we obviously didn’t. For all the worthless series we have, maybe you just have to be extremely patient and you can one day become worth something in a contest here. ## Safer777's Analysis A Sonic game finally! I thought the last good Sonic game was back in the 90's? Or not. Still nice to have at least 1 Sonic game here. I have played only the Sonic games back on Mega Drive 2 so I don't know anything about them after that, but I do know that almost all of them suck. As for YS...it is a JRPG but I haven't heard of the series and I find it strange because apparently there are at least 8 of them? Damn! They must have a lot of fans! Or at least I think so? Well they made so many of them so someone has to be bying them! Apparently they are around for more than 30 years! I am baffled! Okay obviously nobody knows all franchises ever but man a JRPG series that is going on for more than 30 years and this is the first time I hear of it! Well it happens to the best of us I guess! So for the match. This match was never in doubt but Sonic managed to disappoint! Classic Sonic. I mean people thought that even a doubling would be bad for Sonic Mania and it scored even lower than that! So yeah. People just don't care for the Sonic games I guess. Well makes sense I guess. But fans keep buying them so the company isn't in a hurry to make them good as the old days probably. Or something. ## Tsunami's Analysis Sonic's woes have been talked about at length for many contests, so a blowout win felt unlikely even though Mania was the return to the series' roots that the fans had long been clamoring for and Ys has always been a fairly niche RPG series. Then again, it's still an RPG series, and a Japanese one at that, so, you know, Flowchart. Or maybe not. In fact, out of 57 Oracle predictions, a grand total of *one* predicted Sonic Mania to win with a percentage lower than it actually did, though it did so by a wide enough margin to not even get a top 5 out of it. Was it Sonic antivotes or just RPGFAQs up to its usual shenanigans? We'd hopefully find out next round, since its next opponent would be an indie game regardless of who won the next match! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7957&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=43) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Super Meat Boy vs (13)Slay the Spire 2020 _source: (4)Super Meat Boy vs (13)Slay the Spire 2020 (revid 86534)_ ## Results **Round One** Monday, April 6, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 44 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 06, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Meat Boy - 69.26% 57 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Meat Boy - 81.45% - **User Votes:** Super Meat Boy - 6131 Slay the Spire - 2679 - **Anonymous Votes:** Super Meat Boy - 4898 Slay the Spire - 2366 Some indie games looked okay this contest. Most did not. But what happens when the Board 8 guru nomination gets boosted up to the 4 seed line and causes an indie versus indie match? Well as luck would have it, these early 2010s pioneers of the independent revolution are well-known enough to score nearly 70% (!!) in a GameFAQs contest match. Super Meat Boy is often listed along with games like Braid and Minecraft as making indie games mainstream, and here is a good article about it: Super Meat Boy was in some Game of the Year polls all the way back in January 2011, and character battle 2013 not withstanding it had to wait nine years to make a contest debut. And what a debut it was. I get that it was up against some roguelike card game trash, but a 70-30 blowout is a 70-30 blowout all the same. There aren't many examples of a game that *deserved* a win like this more than Super Meat Boy. It was so massive, and Sonic Mania's win so disappointing, that imaginations ran wild about round 2. The hilarity of Super Meat Boy beating a main line Sonic title was just too good to pass up hyping, and who knows? Maybe Super Meat Boy could catch some insane rally and do crazy damage this year. That would have shut up the anti-fun brigade real quick, because no one actively hates Meat Boy. Unfortunately, Sonic was many, many bridges too far. ## Ctes's Analysis Super Meat Boy received a high seed this contest because of being Advokaiser’s choice as the guru nomination, which put it in a easy first match with a little shot of making round 3 due to likely running into another overseeded game in round 2. Considering how Allen clearly preferred to represent as many games as possible, Advo could’ve aimed to get something different into the bracket because Super Meat Boy would’ve made it regardless but getting to be in a winnable position is also nice. I’m glad the guru nomination wasn’t something like Super Mario Maker 2 if the series cap actually existed, so it’s a good choice. Slay the Spire was expected to among the absolute weakest of games in the bracket. It’s not known very well and it’s not the type of game we tend to like at all. Despite doubling it, Super Meat Boy didn’t look all too great here. Super Meat Boy still had hopes of getting to round 3 because Sonic Mania looked quite disappointing in the adjacent match, but this wasn’t a particularly good performance. At this point, we were pretty confident that indie fear should be limited to the later half of the decade with only a few obvious exceptions like Shovel Knight, which has all the mainstream exposure it could’ve hoped for. Super Meat Boy is among the earliest of them, so it was only natural it wouldn’t be all too god. It didn’t release in a time where many had opened their eyes to indies, so this match was in line with that theory. Not that it disappointed much, it just didn’t look on par with some of the other indies we had seen in action. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have the Guru pick here and it won a match! Believe me that is a rare feat. SMB is one of these get good games. Strange how many are in this contest. People are hardcore it seems! STS I didn't knew it all and I saw a review for it by accident and man it is amazing! Yah a card game but not the 1vs1 and stuff like that. No you go to dungeons, make your deck, random battles, random loot, stuff like that. It is a sort game but you are meant to play it many games and get items/characters/loot/cards, all the good stuff. So for the match. Well SMB won. STS is really good but since it is still new it doesn't really have a dedicated fanbase like the SMB game. So once again congrats to the Guru pick! Still once again strange that all these indie games got in. I guess the Admin wanted some varitey or something. ## Tsunami's Analysis Super Meat Boy was the Guru nomination, which it rode to a 4-seed. Meat Boy had been in the contest before, once solo and once in \*sigh\* Rivalry Rumble. The 2013 solo outing is nothing to speak of--he came in third to Mr. Game & Watch and Lee Everett from *The Walking Dead*--but the ability to not get doubled by a Final Fantasy hero/main villain pair, even if it was only Zidane/Kuja, is actually kind of impressive. Though it could just be the silly character design at work. Giving it a fellow indie game to beat was a nice gesture by Allen, since so many Guru noms just fall flat immediately. But would it be beloved enough to get past an established icon like Sonic the Hedgehog? ...My bracket certainly hopes so! (seriously what was I thinking) ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7958&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=44) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Portal 2 vs (14)Tomb Raider 2020 _source: (3)Portal 2 vs (14)Tomb Raider 2020 (revid 86535)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 7, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 45 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 07, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Portal 2 - 64.16% 58 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Portal 2 - 80.20% - **User Votes:** Portal 2 - 5794 Tomb Raider - 2919 - **Anonymous Votes:** Portal 2 - 4410 Tomb Raider - 2674 Did you know this is the first ever contest match featuring a Tomb Raider game? Bit of random trivia for you. Lara Croft herself has an extensive contest history, but Tomb Raider just has this one match. This wasn't exactly the best debut, but it wasn't the worst either. We've certainly seen *far* worse. This was a typical, boring, predictable, ho-hum beating that Portal 2 put out here. This was certainly not the type of performance that would hint at what Portal 2 would ultimately end up doing in this contest. The main comparison here was Portal 2's performance in round 1 versus Kingdom Hearts 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2. Portal 2 was the guru favorite to win three matches, in large part because of what happened in 2015. It lost a close match to Sonic 2, which ultimately scored 22% in its loss to Pokemon. Not only did the game that beat Portal 2 get destroyed that year, but it had an inflated value due to being locked behind Undertale. I wasn't seeing what made Portal 2's being a hidden beast so obvious, and this match here against Tomb Raider wasn't exactly gangbusters, but hey, that's why I talk about what happens after the fact and you're all smart enough to see it coming better than I can :D I really would love to know how you all knew, because I don't think that Sonic 2 loss was some SFF beating. ## Ctes's Analysis Portal 2 was thought to be the most likely game to make the division finals, but I don’t think anyone of us had huge confidence in it. Kingdom Hearts is a more beloved franchise of ours, Red Dead Redemption 2 had good potential and even Animal Crossing could be good enough now that New Horizons had released to the best possible reception right before the contest. Back when the Portal games came out they were huge, spawned countless memes, and they were very popular here too. The board loved them. Portal 2 is only just recent enough to be in this contest. Its heydays are over. GLaDOS looked quite a bit weaker in 2018 than in previous contests. Portal 2 could only fall so much and not be out of favor for the spot. It ended up having the worst winning percentage of the day, so it shouldn’t be too dominant, but it still came out of round 1 as the favorite. Tomb Raider is a good game. It’s far from the series peak, but you should pick it against the other losing games today. It can do something on name alone, particularly when we have forced voting. People that have played neither game today might vote for the franchise with the bigger name. Portal is not the best series to take advantage of that against, but it still made Portal 2 look good enough here. We will probably never know how well the old Tomb Raider games would’ve done in a contest setting, but I’m not expecting it to be much more than this honestly. Maybe if we had a contest when they were new, but they would be riding more on their name than the actual games themselves. There is probably a reason that Tomb Raider has never been in any games contests before. Even back in the early contests, Lara Croft was never that good and I’m not thinking the games would be better relative to the field than she has ever been. ## Safer777's Analysis Portal and Half Life are these PC games that EVERY PC gamer raves about. Of course these have come in consoles but still they are primarily known as PC games. Also both portal games have appeared a lot in the games contests. As I said the Portal series is popular but I do believe they haven't released another game for some years. Well I guess either company doesn't see much money from this series otherwise why not made another one? Tomb Raider is here too! Oh it is the TR from 2013, not the one from 1996. Okay I know they are reboots but can't these companies add something to differentiate the titles of the same series? Mortal Kombat got rebooted a few years ago too BUT at least they named it MK9 because it was actually the 9th main game! I mean seriously. I have played the TR trilogy and it is fun but they tend to blend together since they are basically the same games, one on an island, one on snow and one on jungle. Very similar which I guess it is good if you like it but still. Also something that I have been informed. This is the first time EVER that a Tomb Raider game has got into a contest! Seriously! I know Lara has entered a contest many times but I could swear that a Tomb Raider game has taken part in a contest before. Apparently not. Damn! The old Tomb Raider Trilogy was so good back in the day. Also everyone was into Lara back in the day for 2 BIG reasons! Okay this is sexist but seriously even magazines were talking about this. I mean who cares for personality if you have big tits right? She was the first Video Game sex symbol too and she appeared in many non video game magazines too! I still have a giant poster of her in my door on my room that I got from a video game magazine like 25 years ago. Yup! You could say she was the first waifu before we ever knew what waifus were! The games were amazing too. They did well with the first 3, then they messed up and they had to be rebooted.  So for the match. TR got a bad draw. Sure it isn't as it used to be but it could beat some other games here, and not just some indies too. Plus Lara Croft isn't what she used to be. Of course like 25 years ago that the 1st TR game came out we had barely any main female hero and she became extremely popular for a while. She was in magazines, giving interviews, various events, movies, weird merhandise and anything really. But they kept messing the games and eventually the TR games just stopped coming out. So the Reboot was a huge success but not anything different than a ton of other games. Also from the new trilogy the 1st TR game is considered the best and the 3rd the worse strangely enough. So yeah Portal 2 was always going to be the winner. Still I would like to see at least a doubling here but eh. ## Tsunami's Analysis There was a lot of doubt as to whether Portal 2 would be terribly strong. The series seemed to be something that came and went--the first game did well in the first GotD because it was still fresh in everyone's minds, but it had a short shelf life. And this result...seems to suggest that the concern was warranted. Tomb Raider hasn't been worth a damn here in ages, if it ever was; Lara was at least worth a little bit in the early Character Battles but then again she was one of the pioneers of TJF in video game character design. Of course, people had concerns about its next opponent as well so who knows what would happen next. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7959&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=45) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Kingdom Hearts III vs (11)Disco Elysium 2020 _source: (6)Kingdom Hearts III vs (11)Disco Elysium 2020 (revid 86536)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, April 7, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 46 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 07, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Kingdom Hearts III - 70.14% 58 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Kingdom Hearts III - 83.59% - **User Votes:** Kingdom Hearts III - 5971 Disco Elysium - 2744 - **Anonymous Votes:** Kingdom Hearts III - 4739 Disco Elysium - 2340 This match is hilarious to me, but not because of the actual match. A buddy of mine, Raven 2, runs these forum contests every year to determine Board 8's Game of the Year. How cool of a coincidence was it that Kingdom Hearts 3 vs Disco Elysium was a final four match in this contest for 2019, two months before becoming an actual contest match? This match was always going to be an easy win for Kingdom Hearts 3, but it was a bad performance nonetheless. In indie circles, Disco Elysium is an all-timer. In fact, if @KanzarisKelshen is ever around, he'll be happy to get into how influential this game supposedly is and how RPGs are likely to never be played the same way again. I'm not being sarcastic at all, I just know nothing about the game whatsoever and Kanz has a very eloquent way of discussing the things he loves. To the general gaming public, no one knows what Disco even is, so this match might as well have been Kingdom Hearts versus Not Kingdom Hearts. And Not Kingdom Hearts thoroughly embarrassed Kingdom Hearts here. It isn't often a game scores 68% and can be called a choke artist, but it's true. There is just no way to compare Portal 2 getting 65% on Tomb Raider and KH3 getting 68% here with anything other than Kingdom Hearts being screwed. I shall now bow my head in shame for considering Kingdom Hearts 3, a franchise I despite, had a chance against one of my all-time favorites. ## Ctes's Analysis I was pretty excited to see Kingdom Hearts III in the field. It missed the Game of the Year field because Allen has begun basically only looking at Metacritic scores picking games for those things, so it was snubbed for things no one remembers. It’s such a weird decision not to have sales influence at all in my opinion. Luckily, it did not mean it couldn’t make this contest, though I’m sure it has been nominated a lot to get a \#6 seed, because the critic scores sure didn’t do it. Sora has gotten a \#1 seed too many times, so it’s not new that the site nominates Kingdom Hearts things a lot. Everyone knows the game released to very mixed opinions. First of all, it came out 6 years after being revealed and they had probably been working on the concept for many years prior to that. We are skeptical of most things Square has released ever since… well, Kingdom Hearts II probably. In the meantime, lots of Kingdom Hearts things had come out. Calling this one III is mostly just a move to promote a console release, because it’s a sequel to Dream Drop Distance, which is a sequel to Coded and that one is a sequel to the one called II. Remaking all the handheld games as 1.5, 2.5 and 2.8 probably didn’t make anyone less confused about the whole thing. I mean, I appreciate the release of all the games on consoles leading up the release of this one, but it was just as much of a mess as the story of the series. They had less Worlds because they were going for bigger Disney names and Disney is the toughest company in the world to deal with when it comes to rights. They also chose not to include Final Fantasy characters on the mostly incorrect assumption that the original Kingdom Hearts characters have been well enough established and liked for them to not need Final Fantasy. Not only is that a bold claim, but it’s also weird to think that increased quality in one thing means they didn’t need something else that people loved. Were they aiming for conservation of quality? They sure did not appear to get that in the heads of most. It was still a anticipated game named Kingdom Hearts, so it was never going to be complete trash. This site is Square fans at heart even if they’ve done their best to make us change our minds most of this century. It was enough that taking Kingdom Hearts III to the division finals was a decently popular upset pick. It did not quite do well enough to be the favorite going into round 2, but it wasn’t out of the question. Disco Elysium looks really good and it’s a shame it could not win a match. Actually, what’s a shame is that it’s so far a PC exclusive. It’s being released on current generation consoles later this year. If it had been released on those already we had probably seen it with a higher seed and quite a bit stronger, even though it wouldn’t be extraordinary. It is an RPG after all. I want to play it when it hits PS4 so hopefully I can find the time. ## Safer777's Analysis Oh man we have KH 3. When the KH series was first announced and we got details, EVERYONE was saying the same thing. Lol Disney AND FF characters together? Joke game? But when it came out oh man. Oh man. The game was amazing. Nobody expected to become so famous. So of course a sequel came out 3 years after the original. This was in 2005. Then a spin off game. Okay fine. Another spin off. Then another. Then another. There are so many spin offs and remasters that I have lost count. FINALLY after 14 years KH 3 came out but by then nobody cared. And it makes sense. I mean people want always sequels from a series, not spin offs. Sure maybe 1 here and there helps but not as many without main games like the KH series! Out of all KH games KH 2 is considered still the best. I had played it back in the day and even know if you ask me one KH I recommend my first thought is KH 2. That game is amazing. I haven't played KH 3 but a friend of mine played it. When I asked him about it he said there are no FF characters and I thought he was joking. I mean a KH game without FF characters? Yeah sure. This is like having a Smash game without Mario or Link. But guess what. Just GUESS! Yeah NO FF characters in KH 3! Okay seriously? Oh wait it has MOOGLES so all are fine! Yeah a huge dissapointment to put it lightly. As for DE it is an RPG but not one in the traditional sense. I don't know who to describe it, but basically it has NO combat and it has perks and dialogue choices and such but depend on how much you have raised each of the 4 unique skill trees of the protagonist and their sub trees. It is weird, I mean an RPG without combat? But not only works, it works damn well! Plus it even won some GOTY awards! Yeah you heard me correctly! And the game is barely 6 months old! So for the match. No matter how people are dissapointed by KH3 it wouldn't lose to DE because even though it is popular and good I don't think it has a huge fanbase or something. If there was a strong indie game here then I do believe it would lose. Yeah KH sucks now.  Also the KH series has the more convoluted story ever, maybe tied with the MGS franchise. So it barely scored a doubling and that is decent. Probably. ## Tsunami's Analysis The good news is that Kingdom Hearts III got the doubling. The bad news is, it only barely got 68% against a PC-exclusive (with ports to other consoles planned for 2020, but still, currently a PC exclusive) indie game that is nominally an RPG, but contains no combat and instead progresses through skill checks and dialogue trees. Which kind of sounds more like a visual novel to me! So, VN/RPG hybrid, that's fine I guess, but it doesn't sound like the type of thing that should have the strength to get almost 32% on a big name Square Enix series. They can't do anything right these days, can they? Of course, Kingdom Hearts isn't *just* Square Enix, and its other parent company is known for being one of the most well-oiled machines in the world. Maybe it'd be better for us all if they just bought up the video game/manga giant (yes, Square does more than just video games). Apparently the title "Disco Elysium" was chosen for multiple meanings, including "disco" being Latin for "I learn". I am certainly learning as a result of this project. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7960&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=46) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Animal Crossing: New Leaf vs (10)Street Fighter V 2020 _source: (7)Animal Crossing: New Leaf vs (10)Street Fighter V 2020 (revid 86537)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, April 7, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 47 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 07, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 64.93% 54 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 69.08% - **User Votes:** Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 5930 Street Fighter V - 2783 - **Anonymous Votes:** Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 4438 Street Fighter V - 2643 True story -- I originally picked Street Fighter 5 and fully planned on sticking with it, even knowing the game is a trash can and knowing it had no chance. Before Smash Brothers came along, Street Fighter was my jam. I was never any good at it, but so what? My friends and I have been playing those games together for almost 30 years now, and it's very hard to look past that bias. I was one of the idiots whining about STREET FIGHTER 2 LOST??? back when Mario RPG beat it. I was trying to rally it past Persona 4 for a meaningless third place finish. I **lost my shit** when 4 clutched up and beat Sonic Adventure 2 ten years ago. One of my favorite achievements in my entire gaming career is pulling this off: O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed his grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood **From sea to shining sea!** I did it fully legit. No boosting, no cheating, nothing. All by myself, all against randoms online. It was some of the most fun I've ever had playing a video game, and for the most part I went 50-50. Some characters, it was a breeze. T Hawk, Seth, Cammy, Adon, Gen, the shotos, El Fuerte, Blanka, Bison, and so on. For three characters, it was hell on earth. I think Viper, Makoto, and Guy took me something like 80 games each. Wouldn't change a thing, and it's among my most proud gaming accomplishments ever. I don't know how that web site calculates these things, but when I boot up my Playstation it shows only 3 players per 1000 has earned that trophy. Even if it's actually 1 per 100, that's still one hell of an accomplishment. I bring all this up because even I cannot defend Street Fighter 5 in any universe. That game is *garbage*. The V trigger system is a terrible copy of a terrible mechanic in its own right (X factor from Marvel vs Capcom 3, which can go burn in hell), the roster is trash, and the game released without a single player mode. Piss off, Capcom. I would have been willing to lose a point on purpose just on general principle of loving the Street Fighter legacy, but no. The game is bad enough to make me pick Animal Crossing, of all things. I can't stand those dumb farming simulators. Yes, I know it was the right pick and yes I know Animal Crossing was never going to lose this match, especially with New Horizons coming out two weeks before this match. Not the point. I wanted Street Fighter 5 to be good so much, and instead it might have tanked the entire series. By the way, this beating was so huge and the Animal Crossing hype so intense that regardless of RDR2's score in round 1, a lot of people were hyping up the upset train. And who could blame them? New Horizons has almost 15 million sales as of this writing, with 40% or so being complete non-gamers, so it was bound to help boost New Leaf in contest polls. Red Dead Redemption 2 was no lock next round. ## Ctes's Analysis This match is such a good example of how much a franchise can have changed in the eyes of its fans. Animal Crossing started out rather niche and took its time to become one of Nintendo’s greatest. New Leaf was huge, however, and this contest came right after New Horizons came out broke almost as many sales records as it possible could. If there’s one bad thing about this being a Game of the Decade contest and not a regular one, it’s that we could’ve seen New Horizons on the field right in the middle of when the whole internet is in love with it. The pandemic certainly helped to some extent, but it was always going to be huge. It’s coming out on a console that everyone really loves, which hasn’t really been possible for it before. You could argue the Wii, but Animal Crossing hadn’t quite reached the heights it is at now when the Wii was liked. It’s weird, it’s not the type of game we usually care hugely for but perhaps with Nintendo written on the box, that doesn’t matter as much. It would’ve been so much fun to see New Horizons in a contest this spring. New Leaf might have gotten some of that boost, however. It was expected to be stronger than it was back in 2015, though it’s hard to make much of that run when it was fed to Super Mario World in round one. In any case, when literally everyone is currently playing New Horizons, it’ll probably draw some votes to the Animal Crossing game. On the other hand, we have Street Fighter, which used to be a big series but has fallen off a cliff. Ryu has always been a character here, but it’s probably less than it used to be, and he can likely thank Smash that it’s not worse than it would’ve been if he hasn’t gotten into that. Street Fighter missed the previous contest and it’s only in now because the bracket is the most diverse thing we’ve ever had. It’s sad to see. New Leaf came just short of the doubling, but still looks great enough today. It’s a handheld game that’s pretty far from what we tend to like here, and the Street Fighter name alone might’ve kept it away from being complete fodder. Winning the next match wasn’t out the question, although Red Dead Redemption 2 looks pretty fine as well. ## Safer777's Analysis AC series is a series that I just can't get into it why people like. You don't have a clear goal. You just play, do some stuff, relax and have fun. Maybe that is the point. Not everything has to be super serious right? As for SF 5...Okay SF series made the Fighthing games popular ESPECIALLY SF2. The game was so famous that we had like 10 upgraded versions on it which I do believe is some kind of record. I mean we even had an updated version of SF2 that came on Switch and it had new stuff too! Damn! SF series is always popular but Capcom messed with SF 5 big time. When SF 5 came out it didn't even had an Arcade mode. Yeah a fighthing game without an Arcade mode! And no story videos too. Exciting! Basically it had nothing. They kept adding stuff via DLC. You know stuff that should be in the game from the START? Oh and they added 24 DLC characters. That you have to pay for. What I want from games! To not having anything when I buy them! Oh and they also added in game advertising. You heard me. Basically on loading screens and on the costumes of the characters they had logos of companies and such! Because when people play SF they want to see Ryu advertising Mc Donald's. I mean it makes sense right? So damn. So for the match. A strange thing happened. A new AC game out recently and it is DAMN popular. So the AC series is now the strongest it has ever been! What is going on? At least I can say that since this series is geared towards younger players it teaches them than when they grow up they will be constantly in debt, so it prepares them for real life! So yeah ACNL won pretty easy. I mean a doubling against one of the main game of the top 3 figthing game series is amazing. ## Tsunami's Analysis Animal Crossing has been nothing short of terrible in past polls. Or has it? Tom Nook did manage to get not-last place finishes in R1 matches in multiways, both in 2007 and 2013, with the latter being against someone who actually has...a not-last-place finish in 2008. But *that* was against someone with genuine contest wins, and in bizarre rSFF fashion, no less! Nook and his rival Crazy Redd also nearly avoided a doubling against Amaterasu and Orochi in Rivalry Rumble. The original Animal Crossing (or at least, the first one to be released outside of Japan) also managed to put up 41.45% on World of Warcraft in the first GotD, one of the few times that an entrant selected to win by over 90% of brackets failed to double its opponent and the only one to fail to even break 60%. But its most interesting poll was this very game appearing in the 2015 contest, where it proceeded to look *especially* like trash in a Nintendo SFF battle with Super Mario World. SMW got the lead to 1000 in only 15 minutes, to 2000 in another 20, and over 3000 by the end of the first hour, an 85-15 type of beatdown. And remember, 2015 didn't have great votals either, so those numbers are a lot bigger than they would be in our prime. So what made the poll so interesting? Well, like this contest, there were four matches per day. Which means that all of your potential opponents for the next *two* rounds are also active whenever you are. "Oh. That's only a Round 3 match, so..." Yeah. SMW had already been slowly bleeding percentage throughout the match; it's only natural when you've got such a big lead and the vote totals are so low, because even a few votes for your opponent can cut your percentage (in fact, hour 14 ended with SMW winning an update 14-4, which is a percentage cut). But once Undertale started rallying, the percentage bleed sped up considerably, and New Leaf even started occasionally winning updates outright. In the end, an entrant that was under 14% near the end of the first hour and at 15.86% when Mass Effect 3's lead over Undertale peaked over two-thirds of the way through the match wound up at *26.73%* when it was all said and done. It was a clear sign that if anything was stopping Undertale, it certainly wouldn't be Super Mario World. Flash forward to 2020. We've all grown a bit older, and many of us have kids. I fully suspect that's as much a reason why Nintendo always does so well here; we've moved past the "M-Rated video games so cool!" phase and want E-rated stuff we can share with our families. And then the pandemic struck, and we're all stuck in our homes, and what should release but a new Animal Crossing game for the Switch! And the thing about Animal Crossing games is, they're not terribly different from one another. If you love one, you probably love them all. The weakening of fighting games made this round a mere formality, not to mention Street Fighter V was hated even by Street Fighter fans. (I wish I'd known that; I figured this was a no-brainer based on Animal Crossing's past results.) The following round, however, would be far more interesting. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7961&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=47) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)Red Dead Redemption 2 vs (15)Dying Light 2020 _source: (2)Red Dead Redemption 2 vs (15)Dying Light 2020 (revid 86538)_ ## Results **Round One** Tuesday, April 7, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 48 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 07, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Red Dead Redemption 2 - 77.98% 58 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Red Dead Redemption 2 - 94.29% - **User Votes:** Red Dead Redemption 2 - 7133 Dying Light - 1581 - **Anonymous Votes:** Red Dead Redemption 2 - 5678 Dying Light - 1401 Some indie games looked okay in this contest. Most did not. Have we ever had a contest that was this packed with early round fodder? I can't imagine Dying Light deserving a spot in a field of 128 more than Dark Souls 2, Skyward Sword, Pokemon Go, Pokemon Sword and Shield, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Smash 4, Final Fantasy 13, the Phoenix Wright games, and plenty of others. By the way, the zombie thing? Played out. Don't let the success of Resident Evil 2 and 3 being remade, or the hype surrounding a remake of 4, fool you. Has anything ever been beaten to death more than zombies in fiction? Enough. We don't care anymore. And yes if Resident Evil 4 is remade, *again*, I will buy it. That game is an all-time legend regardless of what idiot hater has to say about it. Red Dead Redemption 2 scored a very predictable blowout, and there isn't much more to say. It's a good thing it did, too, because there were some potential hidden beasts waiting in this division. It was the casual favorite to *win* this division, too. It had the highest of all Division 6 round one prediction percentages. ## Ctes's Analysis Red Dead Redemption 2 released a bit more than a year ago and was a huge success in every way. On GameFAQs however, we tend not to be as huge on them as anywhere else. There was a chance RDR2 could make the division finals, but it’s hard to pick a Rockstar game in debated matches and be confident about it. They’re not weak, but they tend to lose matches here they would not lose anywhere else. RDR2 finished third in its Game of the Year poll behind Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and God of War. It’s not a bad showing, but Portal 2 was the clear board favorite to make the division finals and with Animal Crossing: New Horizons taking the world by storm, maybe RDR2 had to worry about the next round as well. Today, Red Dead Redemption 2 looked as good as could probably. Rockstar games are probably always voted against to some extent here, but Dying Light is a good opponent for it. That game didn’t do all that well and have already not aged too great. It was developed back when open world and horror was our two favorite things but came out a bit too late and wasn’t fantastic. It might honestly be anti-voted more if people remember it. They probably do when they see the name, so perhaps RDR2 gets a freebie today. Breaking 80% against anything is good and especially when you’re a Rockstar game on GameFAQs against a known game, so RDR2 could walk into round 2 with its hopes of getting further as high as it could’ve hoped for. ## Safer777's Analysis So a few says ago we had the original RDR game and now we have its sequel. General consensus is that RDR 2 is the weaker game. On the other hand we have a zombie game. However I have played it and it is damn good. At least for me. A friend of mine got it too and he has played it for like 200 hours. The game is pretty fun with all the random loot and such. Don't expect anything extraordinary too of course. The sequel was supposed to come on this year too but it got pushed back. So for the match. Well RDR2 would win no problem. The prediction percentage was huge too! Games like RDR don't do good in this site but against DL anything can be good. Although I am not sure how it got in. Yeah I say that a lot but at least I can see how almost all game got in. But not DL. I haven't seen anyone ever even mentioning it. I mean does DL has that many fans especially here? ## Tsunami's Analysis Since this was an obvious blowout (over 94% prediction percentage), it's fun facts time! The first Red Dead Redemption was originally considered a sequel, later redubbed "spiritual successor", to a game called Red Dead Revolver, but when Redemption proved far more popular, they renamed that as part of the series instead of just being the "Red Dead" series. Red Dead Revolver was itself considered a spiritual successor to *an NES game* called "Gun Smoke". Correction: an arcade game that was *ported* to the NES. If you're wondering how a Rockstar Games production could date back to the 80s, the original Gun Smoke was a Capcom game, but Red Dead Revolver kind of just sat in development hell for years until Rockstar took it off Capcom's hands. But things with pedigrees going back to the 80s tend to be very strong here, and even if most of the voters didn't know it, RDR qualifies. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7962&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=48) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Dark Souls vs (16)Hotline Miami 2020 _source: (1)Dark Souls vs (16)Hotline Miami 2020 (revid 86539)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 8, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 49 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 08, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dark Souls - 79.16% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dark Souls - 93.08% - **User Votes:** Dark Souls - 7167 Hotline Miami - 1458 - **Anonymous Votes:** Dark Souls - 5773 Hotline Miami - 1209 Some indie games looked okay in this contest. Most did not. Hotline Miami was one of the many, many games that looked like gutter trash. The game actually *is* gutter trash, too. I played a bunch of it over a buddy's house, and it's a wonderful example of how a great soundtrack does not a good game make. Thankfully, Dark Souls took out the trash. More than a few people banked on the Souls games being very strong this contest and overperforming their 2015 values, in large part because the words "game of the decade" might really matter to the voters. Two things dominated gaming in the 2010s -- open worlds, and Dark Souls. By the time Dark Souls made its round 1 appearance this contest, we already knew it would boost. Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, and Nioh all outperformed expectations. Only Sekiro looked "off", and that's easily explained. People thought it was too hard, because they suck at video games and don't know what they're doing in Sekiro. When Dark Souls finally stepped on the stage in this contest, it was very clear the flagship of that genre was ready to **destroy**. Regardless of opponent, 83% is an awesome result. As someone who absolutely loves Dark Souls and wanted to see Hotline Miami suffer, I couldn't have been happier over this one. I felt like a proud papa watching his kid hit the winning home run or something. I've wanted to see Dark Souls slay a contest for a long time, and I was finally getting it. And yes, I picked Last of Us to beat this game. Not because of 2015 x-stats or whatever, but because I thought it would get a similar boost for similar reasons, not to mention Last of Us 2 hype mid-contest. "Whoops." ## Ctes's Analysis Dark Souls was one of the most anticipated games to watch in the contest. Last contest, it was already good enough to make round 3 by upsetting Metal Gear Solid V. This contested, it was expected to do better. You can’t talk about Game of the Decade without Dark Souls being brought up. The Soulsborne games have been a huge part of this decade and they’ve been growing in popularity in the latter half the decade as well. Dark Souls has been very influential and has gained a lot of respect, a lot of which comes from the fact that it’s a hard game that came out in a time where the surge in mobile games made console games easier to complete or at least gave you the possibility of getting through on easy mode. You needed players to not give up and spent hours doing nothing on their new smartphone. Dark Souls however appealed to gamers building a reputation of the game being hard and it was successful enough for casuals to buy into it to. It’s a bit stupid, but it worked. I’m sure lots of kids today would name a Soulsborne game as the hardest thing ever and it’s not that bad, not even for its time, but word of mouth did this game huge favors. Of course, Dark Souls would’ve have become that big if being hard was the only thing it had going for it. It’s a great game. Some people were taking it to beat Skyrim and a few took it to the finals. Others however looked at its 2015 stat and figured it already had its peak strength then, which would put it below The Last of Us, causing The Last of Us winning the division to be a very popular upset pick. Dark Souls proved itself today, however, adding yet another blowout to the long list this year. It was in this and we could not count it out of a long run yet. Hotline Miami is from the early part of the decade, but it has had releases in the latter half too. It was released on Switch a year ago and it was released on Xbox One on the day of this match. I bet you didn’t know, but it’s true, though only if you’re American, otherwise it would be past midnight and be the following day, but at the start of the match it was on release day. It probably didn’t help the game in the slightest and that’s confirmation that you aren’t really worth much, so as much as this looks good for Dark Souls, it was still not really possible to tell what it meant. ## Safer777's Analysis Dark Souls is the Dark Souls of videogames! Okay I jest. But DS when it came out it made the get good meme famous. It is a hard game. Like real hard. You know one of these games that apparently people now don't care because they have the gatcha games/MMO's/Casual games? Yeah things don't work like this. People always want something different. Sure hard games like DS aren't for everyone but for people that like stuff like that it is excellent. Plus we all know some challenge in our games right? Well these games offer a LOT of challenge and that is a good thing. Plus after the great success of DS so many clones followed. As for HM...another indie game that I don't know anything about it. Yeah sorry once again. I do believe it is fairly popular and a lot of copycats followed it though. So for the match. Obviously DS trashed HM easily. Duh. The only real question is how much would score. And I do believe it scored excellent. I mean almost 83% is amazing no matter what game does that against what game. Also I do believe from the 3 DS games the first one is considered the best strangely enough. Well that is. ## Tsunami's Analysis Dark Souls became the fourth game this contest to break 20000 votes, though it was the first of those to give up at least 4000. We knew Dark Souls was going to be strong, so if anything, this is a good performance by Hotline Miami. Nothing to worry about, though; the next match was going to produce a weak opponent for it no matter what happened. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7963&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=49) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Rocket League vs (9)Dragon Ball FighterZ 2020 _source: (8)Rocket League vs (9)Dragon Ball FighterZ 2020 (revid 86540)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 8, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 50 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 08, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Rocket League - 53.70% 42 for - 19 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Rocket League - 61.47% - **User Votes:** Rocket League - 4491 Dragon Ball FighterZ - 4134 - **Anonymous Votes:** Rocket League - 3534 Dragon Ball FighterZ - 3443 Oh hey, it only took 50 matches, but we finally got a match that was actually in doubt after an hour! Imagine that! Figures it would be some random one-pointer, but so what? It finally felt like contest time, baby! The best thing about matches like this is there is no true way to know what will win going in -- two fresh contest entrants, both fodder, both with good reasons for backing them, and lots of meme potential. For Rocket League backers, the game has something like 87 bajillion players and 3 million commercials. I don't care enough to look it up, but I would not be surprised if Rocket League had the highest play rate of any traditional sports game ever made. I get that Rocket League isn't "traditional" in the sense of a Madden or NBA 2K, but I use that term because if you count Mario Kart or Smash Bros in this discussion then it's obviously no contest. The case for Dragon Ball was even simpler: There was no real way to know, so all we could do was wait for the match. When it finally started, it was *exactly* like an episode of Dragon Ball Z. 10 minutes to recap the last episode, 2 minutes of action, and 10 minutes to preview the next episode! :D Actually, it wasn't quite like that. Dragon Ball won the board vote, and then Rocket League made things 50-50. At the freeze there was a very small Rocket League lead, which increased to 29 at the next update. Match over, right? Nope! Dragon Ball brought it back to even almost immediately, and that's where this thing stayed -- deadlocked -- for well over an hour. That's when Rocket League started making a move, but it was a slow one. When Rocket League pushed for a 100 vote lead, things looked over, but Dragon Ball cut the lead in half before finally falling off. Rocket League built up a small lead late into the evening and into the overnight vote, and though Dragon Ball kept threatening to come back and make this a match, it was not to be. When the morning vote finally hit and decided the match, that morning vote went to Rocket League to seal things up for good. It made for an anticlimactic second half of the match, but the first half was like an old school F5 match. And yes, the Dragon Ball memes were running wild. The match itself was quite good! All it really needed was higher stakes among stronger competitors, but that was coming in the later rounds. Round 1 of this contest was a series of blowouts, but that would change later on once the mini rallies on Reddit started. For now though, we all enjoyed this latest episode of Dragon Ball Z. Dragon Ball was never my thing -- anime in general was never my thing, really -- but I won't knock people who like it. The issue here is the American version of that anime was a meme for a reason. They would run these long recaps to get more episodes in, which I hear wasn't done in Japan at all. Maybe that has to do with why Rocket League won, who knows. I would love to make a grand declaration about this match, but I honestly think Rocket League won it by default. Someone had to win it, right? As a side note, though Allen only plays for fun, this match knocked him off the leaderboard. ## Ctes's Analysis This was a very debated match for the 1 point that it’s worth. You could make a good case for each of them here and the match and it was close enough to make each pick a fine choice. Rocket League is clearly the bigger game here, but we never cared for sports games and we never cared for racing games. Even though it’s different, Rocket League is still both of those! We also don’t care for fighting games. This contest already showed the most recent Tekken, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter being complete trash. If we ever did the days are certainly over. Mario Kart and Smash Bros are exceptions to this, but they’re different from their genre and also has well established popular characters in them. People picking Dragon Ball FighterZ were hoping that having such a big franchise name might be enough to give it the win in a debated match. The match was quite exciting for a while. The very early board vote seemed to favor Dragon Ball, but Rocket League had a super small lead up until the freeze where it led by 10 votes. An update later, Rocket League had extended this to only 29 votes, which should make you worry if you expected Rocket League to have the top option bracket votes. True enough, Dragon Ball took the lead 15 minutes into the match, although only by 5 votes. At that point, it seemed like it could run away with it, but Rocket League took the lead back again, though with a lead of only 2 votes. Fighting over who could have the smaller lead, Dragon Ball took the lead by 1 vote an update later, giving us perhaps the most exciting match of the contest so far. Dragon Ball would make a small attempt at taking the match from there, but it struggled a bit. It took some bumpy updates for Dragon Ball to get its lead above 30, and it couldn’t keep it. Slowly cutting the lead down again, Rocket League went on to take the lead back and simultaneously show it was also capable of leading with exactly one vote. Then Rocket League would make a better attempt to build its lead, it slowly got up to the same place Dragon Ball was before bursting up to 81, looking like it was done. Dragon Ball had another form and it wasn’t even the final one, so in 5 updates that it all won, the lead was cut back down to the 30s. Rocket League would have none of that and spent two updates putting the lead back up in the 70s. Unfortunately, Dragon Ball revealed its final form and in one beastly update threw the lead back into the 30s, but that would be the closest point of getting the lead back for the rest of the match. Rocket League defeated the final form and from that point forward it never really looked back again. The match ended close up being close enough and had lots of stalls, but once Dragon Ball got back its good updates, it was far too late, so no one really noticed. The match would ultimately end up below 1000 votes and contend The Walking Dead vs. Bastion for best match of the contest so far, not that it was a hard title to claim in round 1. Eventually, Celeste vs. Rayman Legends got that. If you look at the prediction percentage and how close this was, it might’ve been decided simply by Rocket League being the top option and in extension to that having more brackets. Rocket League dying next round supports that claim. The weird thing about it is that Dragon Ball was best early on where most bracket votes tend to appear, but it might’ve gone on for longer than usually because we just simply do not care for either game all too much. It’s the best lesson to go for the top option when we care about neither, just like Overwatch vs. Death Stranding and Black Flag vs. Civilization V showed. The hard part is then knowing for sure when we care about neither game. ## Safer777's Analysis Now we had the first real match of the contest. This match was pretty close for around 7 hours with lead changed and all that! Just like a real contest! In this match Gurus were split on which game would win as the Crew too. And it makes sense. Both games are really weak. RL has Football which americans don't care about and DBZ is a fighthing game which this site doesn't care about. Plus no info in either on these games too. I went with DBZ myself because of name recognition. But I was wrong. So for the match. As I said it was realy close for like 7 hours and then RL just passed ahead and never looked back. So why it won? Well I do believe that it is more popular because actually it is a really fun game. It is about Football true BUT you have CARS playing Football! Yeah you use them to ram the ball, you can jump in the air and do a lot of tricks too. Plus you don't really have to know the rules, just ram the ball! As for DBZ it is one of countless DB fighthing games, nothing special. Still we got a good match for like 7 hours at least with back and forths and lead changes and such. ## Tsunami's Analysis This match had more total lead changes than the entire contest to date, including the first one to occur outside the opening hour. Rocket League led at the freeze, but FighterZ spiked a big update at the 15 minute mark to go up by 5. Rocket League retook the lead on the next update, but FighterZ was right back in the lead on the next update and was still ahead an hour into the match. It was the last time all match that it led, but still, progress! A match was actually won by the entrant that trailed after an hour! Okay yeah, "vehicular soccer" game vs. licensed fighting game was the definition of a fodder match, but you have to take the little victories. And this was the tightest Guru spread of the first round, 73-69 in favor of Rocket League, so we knew this could be a tough one to call. But all of this was overshadowed by a hilariously inept troll. About 40 minutes before the start of the match, a topic was posted stating that "Rocket League must win; I'll alert the Discord with 200,000 followers". And the opening post had a picture to prove the follower count, along with the statement "Someone has to stop BotW". He was, of course, laughed at, and when told it wouldn't work, he said "probably not but someone has to try, we don't need a Wii U game winning the whole contest". When it was pointed out that Breath of the Wild is a Switch game, he instead started defending himself against non-existent accusations that he doesn't even play Rocket League with more pictures showing his accomplishments, or *someone's* accomplishments at any rate since the username in the pics didn't remotely match the one he was using here. When told that it was fine for him to dislike BotW without taking it personally, he responded that he does like BotW, but as you can see he does play Rocket League. By the way, this was the second straight day that votes declined. Nice rally, bro. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7964&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=50) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Yakuza 0 vs (12)The Witness 2020 _source: (5)Yakuza 0 vs (12)The Witness 2020 (revid 86541)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 8, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 51 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 08, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Yakuza 0 - 63.41% 59 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Yakuza 0 - 86.12% - **User Votes:** Yakuza 0 - 6719 The Witness - 1905 - **Anonymous Votes:** Yakuza 0 - 5317 The Witness - 1667 There are a lot of games Board 8 has pushed over the years that make zero sense to me, and Yakuza might be at the top of the list. It seems like the exact opposite of what this place would like, yet here it is every year getting high seeds in our contests. Remember Character Battle X when Kazumiya Kiryu got a 2 seed, and it allowed Bomberman to get his first contest win in 16 years? It also, an odd way, allowed him to erase the memory of botching that big lead to Phoenix Wright in the LOL fourways in 2007. Well Board 8 was at it again this year, but this time they boosted Yazuka to a seeding high enough to take advantage in a contest loaded with slugs. A lot of you might remember Braid, which is a very famous indie game that was all the rage last decade. I would know, since I wrote a guide for it on GameFAQs. I loved the hell out of Braid, and I've played it multiple times. It's an incredibly clever game with an incredible soundtrack and a deceptively deep plot. Well the guy who made Braid made a second game that none of you have ever heard of, called The Witness. The Witness, while phenomenal, did not make the splash on this site that Braid did, and Braid wasn't exactly a strong game to begin with. The end result is that the same Yakuza that botched a 2 seed in a character battle managed to come back two years later and score a 77% blowout in a games contest. That is an incredible turnaround, and apparently the key to boosting wins is to keep getting overseeded until you break through. Who knew? ## Ctes's Analysis Sometimes a blowout is precisely what we need to get excited about a match and this one sure was that. After seeing big company games drop matches to indie games that they weren’t supposed to, so suddenly there was a bit of fear regarding this match, because Yakuza seems exactly like the type of game that is somewhat big but not cared about for on our site. This is the first time we’ve ever seen a Yakuza game in the bracket despite it being possible in all but the first games contest, and that’s just when we had a bracket that was clearly going for diversity above contest strength. No one actually thought the upset would happen, because The Witness was expected to be way too weak to take advantage of something like that. Indie puzzle games so far have not looked good and The Witness haven’t been lucky enough to get the Switch release we’re expecting helped so many other things out. Seriously, indie games are perfect for playing on the go and the Switch is a wonderful platform to play your indies on because of it. We did however underestimate Yakuza 0 by 14% in the oracle, which is without a doubt fueled by the indie fear still going on. That’s a lot. Not a single person went this high. Third place is more than 6% away, fourth place is more than 7% away. That’s despite only one person actually picking The Witness to win and he had it in his bracket too. It’s hilarious and it got plenty of attention today despite another match actually being good. We largely expected The Witness to just be that weak with no one really having played it, but Yakuza 0 is actually just decent enough we’ve later learned. It’s from 2017 so we should have seen it coming, but we didn’t. It would be hard to find matches it could win in a normal contest, but it might still be worth having there. It’s hilarious that despite Yakuza 0 looking great here, we weren’t ready to give it any credit for this match so all but a single oracle underestimated it next match as well. That’s even though it would go against a pretty controversial game! Part of the reason is that Yakuza characters appeared last character battle and were all terrible, but we know characters =/= games even if we occasionally forget. This says a whole lot about how little chance we gave The Witness. Obviously, it was weak, but we didn’t even consider that perhaps it wasn’t the worst in the bracket. It ends up being close to the worst in the bracket, but it’s still funny this match led to one to believe otherwise. ## Safer777's Analysis Man the Yakuza series. It is my favorite franchise of the 7th and 8th generation. The series is excellent. It follows the story of Kiryu which is an Ex Yakuza and tries to live a normal life but he just can't. He gets always pulled back in the Yakuza world. These games are mainly played for the story. The story is always good in these games. Of course they always have a TON of twists and you don't even know who the Big Bad at least like the final chapter and Kiryu always goes What? when he finds out. And there is always a guy that you beat him by punching him really hard then in a cutscene he pulls a gun and someone dies but never one of the main characters. It is a Yakuza tradition by now! Still it is awesome. There are 7 main games in the series that follow Kiryu. I was lucky to play the games in chronological order, meaning I started from Yakuza 0 and went up from there. Also these games(except Yakuza 0 which is a prequel)take place always in the year they come out. For example Y1 came out in 2005 and the story takes place in 2005, Y2 came out in 2006 and the story takes place in 2006 and so on. So you see these characters getting old and stuff like that. Now this series was always niche, meaning it did okay sales but it was never popular. Sega released Yakuza 0 in 2015 which is a prequel and it is the best place to start too since you learn about the characters. And man Y0 is the best game of the series. Having played all of them I agree too. Just play Y0. So what exactly are these games? They are like Brawler games, meaning you go around and punch dudes in the face. Also the world is small, like 1 area of a city and it sounds that it is small BUT there are always a TON of stuff to do. And so many minigames. I haven't seen another game that offers so many minigames which you just can ignore all of them if you want and no problem. But no, you just want to play them because they are so good. I mean I played Pool and Baseball which otherwise I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole. But not here! Yeah I raved enough but this series is excellent. So that is. As for TW...I don't know anything about once again. It is kind of a puzzle interactive game? So for the match. Okay Yakuza series is weak here but it wouldn't lose again such a game. The funny thing is that the Crew had Y0 win by less percentage than that. So it beat expecations easily. So was Y0 strong or TW weak? Okay hate to say it but TW is just extremely weak. Once again I do wonder how games like this got in. ## Tsunami's Analysis Two Yakuza 0 characters made the 2018 contest, one of them getting a good seed. Neither put up any sort of resistance against characters who were either proven fodder or frequently anti-voted. And yet, we all knew that Yakuza 0 would win this easily, because of the quality of its opponent. Though based on what we've seen this contest, action *games* are actually quite strong here, even if their characters rarely are. Or, wait, no, that's the opposite of the way things used to be! Guys like Dante and Kratos always far outperformed their games. Something's shifted. This would also be part of a larger trend where series that had been niche for a long time suddenly broke out into the mainstream. Apparently the Yakuza series has been around since the mid-00s, but it was 2018, not the bloated 243-character boondoggle of 2013, that saw it make its character battle debut on the strength of Yakuza 0. Same goes for the Witcher 3 being a huge smash hit when I doubt anyone even remembers the first two games in the series--and yes, both of them came out prior to 2013, yet Geralt's nowhere to be found in that bracket. Persona was at least a cult classic series prior to 5 taking it to the mainstream, managing to get characters into the 2013 bloat, but you can stick that in here, too. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7965&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=51) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain vs (13)Dead Cells 2020 _source: (4)Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain vs (13)Dead Cells 2020 (revid 86542)_ ## Results **Round One** Wednesday, April 8, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 52 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 08, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid V - 67.75% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid V - 87.15% - **User Votes:** Metal Gear Solid V - 6273 Dead Cells - 2350 - **Anonymous Votes:** Metal Gear Solid V - 5022 Dead Cells - 1960 You did this on purpose, Allen. There is no chance this was a coincidence. Some indie games looked okay in this contest. Most did not. Dead Cells, while aptly named for this match, was never going to make a match out of this. It's actually a very good game though, and I highly recommend it if Metroidvania is your thing. It's my thing for sure, so I was going to find it sooner or later. During the Persona 5 vs Heavy Rain match, we talked about games that fell off the hardest during this decade, with Heavy Rain being the game mentioned most often. The other game mentioned a lot was Metal Gear Solid 5. Now I *love* Metal Gear Solid 5, so this is painful for me to write, but I can see why people are down on it. The game released half finished and proved that Hideo Kojima was long past his prime as a storyteller. The gameplay was the best in the series, few people will argue otherwise, but almost everything else was suspect. That plot was trash. The setting was hit and miss. The characters and plot twist were really, really bad. The reused missions and home base aspect were such a turnoff. The potential for greatness was there, but once again, Kojima got in the way. Konami was right. It kills me to admit it, but they were. Death Stranding proved it. Metal Gear Solid 5 got very lucky to be handed such a weak fourpack, and in looking at the bracket, this fourpack and Undertale's fourpack are the only two MGS5 could have gotten out of. It serves penance anywhere else. But hey, those are the breaks and MGS5 was allowed to score a 73% blowout like nothing was ever wrong. ## Ctes's Analysis It looked like Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain would have quite the easy path this year. It got what was believed to be a very weak fourpack before running into the exact same game it lost to the previous contest. Back then it was an upset, but no one was giving MGSV any chance this year. There is no bigger shame in the gaming world than what happened to Konami and what happened to one of the best franchises of all time because of it, but not much to do about that, unfortunately. MSGV was certainly getting anti-voted a bit here. Not as much because of the actual game as its just voting against Konami. Despite that, it managed to outdo the boards expectations a little bit. Some probably thought it would be hurt more from all the backlash. Others probably put too much faith in Dead Cells after good showings by indies this round. Dead Cells is released around the time that appears to be the preferred time to be released for indie games, but it didn’t do it much favor. It just didn’t quite hit the big scenes. I’m sure MGSV got a lot of franchise name votes from the forced voting. If Dead Cells couldn’t look better than this against MGSV then its playrate is probably very low. Despite Yakuza 0 looking good today, Metal Gear Solid V would still come into round 2 as the unanimous favorite to win and into round 3 as the unanimous favorite to lose, so it’s not like it made a huge difference that it did slightly better than expected. ## Safer777's Analysis So MGS 5 is the last MGS game that the creator of the series worked before getting kicked out of the company. Now I don't know anything about MGS series but I do know they always have ridiculous stories and twists that can give the Kindom Hearts franchise a run for its money. DC is another indie game. It is fairly popular but that is. The thing I don't understand is that 3 of the crew guys gave MGS 5 a 55% winning prediction percentage victory. Okay people seriously? I know you are experts but we are talking about MGS series here. You know a series that is HUGE here? Or at least it was. Even the strongest indie game here wouldn't beat it. At least I think so. I know that people were dissapointed with MGS 5 because I heard even the story wasn't finished or something but still. So for the match. MGS 5 won easily. Well of course. DC may be fun and all but at the end it is just a metroidvania indie game and we have already hundreds of them since apparently it is the most popular genre to make games of. So did MGS 5 redeemed itself here? Hard to say. It did score a big victory against a well regarded indie game at least. ## Tsunami's Analysis While the days of SFF matches out the wazoo seems to finally be behind us, Allen can't help but get cute with the bracketmaking sometimes. Dead Cells going up against a Metal Gear game is funny enough, but we're also looking at a probable 2015 rematch in Round 3. It wasn't even a particularly close match in 2015, though it was one with what seemed like a fairly even split in prediction percentage. MGSV was expected to have suffered from backlash. It feels like nearly every established franchise has been facing backlash towards its most recent games. No wonder indies are doing so well; any franchise not owned by Nintendo is essentially getting punished for how good earlier games in the series were, or are perceived to have been. We're in the midst of maximum hype about a Final Fantasy VII remake, and seeing the ads, it certainly does look beautiful. Modern graphics with, presumably, the original story. But I can't help but wonder, if it weren't a remake, would it be nearly so beloved? I haven't gotten that far into FFVII yet, but so far I'm less than impressed, and pretty new graphics won't fix that. Though I was happy that the game took mercy on me after I failed the stealth sequence in Shinra Tower too many times. Funny, I thought that the problem with *modern* games was that they held your hand too much? It wouldn't surprise me at all if some gamers held that mercy against the remake, if it's still there. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7966&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=52) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Batman: Arkham City vs (14)Xenoblade Chronicles 2 2020 _source: (3)Batman: Arkham City vs (14)Xenoblade Chronicles 2 2020 (revid 86543)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 9, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 53 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 09, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Batman: Arkham City - 60.12% 54 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Batman: Arkham City - 71.52% - **User Votes:** Batman: Arkham City - 4817 Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - 4040 - **Anonymous Votes:** Batman: Arkham City - 4075 Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - 3378 Not to be confused with Xenoblade Chronicles X, which is the *actual* "Xenoblade Chronicles 2". The Xenoblade Chronicles 2 pictured in this match is, technically, "Xenoblade Chronicles 3". You can thank Japan and their nonsensical methodology with how they name and order video games. I don't get it either. By the way, remember TheStupidRaptor trying to claim Xenosaga and Xenoblade weren't in the same series even though the literal director said that both franchises are in the same series? Shout out to everyone on Board 8 spamming that gif at the dude until he closed his account. Finally some justice around here with getting rid of trashy users. I was paying very close attention to this match between Batman and Xenoblade 3 (you can't stop me from referring to it at such), because I had picked Xenoblade 1 to win its division. So while I knew Batman was going to win this match, I was also hoping for a very good Xenoblade 2.99~ performance. Batman won the match, and Xenoblade 2.5 Final Mix X Version 1.Beta Max / 4 Days Cubed Sideways looked good in losing. My one twinge of doubt here was perhaps both games being weak, but Batman put that fear to bed in round 2. As luck would have it, both of these games were quite strong and Xenoblade 3 could have caused serious damage in other parts of his bracket. It finished top 30 in the stats despite never winning a match, meaning it could have potentially won a bunch of the fourpacks. Not to mention all the hype for the Xenoblade 1 remaster that was happening during this contest. The Xenoblade train was alive and well! ## Ctes's Analysis Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is one of the most unfortunate games in the bracket and just like the others it’s a Nintendo game. As underseeded as it is, it failed to get a winnable match despite it being clearly being in the upper half of games in the bracket. It’s low seed is probably a sign of how the first one is so extremely favored. People liked 2 but not to the same extend as the first one. I’ve heard the DLC makes it closer, but it’s still easily the first. I haven’t gotten around to playing the second myself yet and I’ll be playing XenoblaDE on Switch soon before. That could’ve perhaps boosted the second one a bit as well. It’s pretty close here already and it’s just another point for 2017. Xenoblade 2 got really close here despite having all odds against it. A few people had it in their brackets, but I’m guessing most just thought Batman wouldn’t be as good as it seemed to be. Most people expected Batman to go above 60% here and it ended below 55%. I don’t think many people thought the performance was due to Batman being bad though. Xenoblade had looked incredible earlier and most things Nintendo had looked really good overall, Switch games in particular. Almost everyone knew right away that this was Xenoblade 2 being legit, although it’s still ways off of the first one. Batman proved its strength today. It should not be too surprising. They haven’t really been relevant for a while, but it’s Batman of course it’s going to hold up to some extent. Although this match did make people feel a little bit uneasy about picking Batman to round 3 when the BioShock franchise has shown itself to have a really high ceiling in the past. While it proved its strength, getting below expectations in percentage didn’t make that apparent right away and confirmation about that only came later. ## Safer777's Analysis Another Superhero game and it too won its match! Superheroes are awesome. I have played 3 of the Arkham games and I have to say that City is really the best. It is amazing. All 3 of them show how Batman games should be, the 2nd one is just slightly better. As for XC2 I only know it because of the controversy with the boob slider. So what was that? Basically you could costumize the character but she was 13 years old and you could make her tits big or small too! Yeah! I know it is strange but it is a game. Just relax and have fun? Anyways that is. Also it is an Action RPG. Strange thing to know about a game but I always like when in US news you can see everything violent no problem but if you show a little skin everyone there says think of the children because it is so bad to do that! So for the match. Well BAC did won BUT it did worse than expected. I mean 4 of the crew had it above 60% and it couldn't even score 55 here. So why is that? I guess that XCL2 is strong because I do believe the series is more known now. Plus Batman 4 was real bad and I even myself refuse to play it too. So it made the series look bad. Still it won. ## Tsunami's Analysis Remember everything I said about action games being the in thing now, and non-video game origins not being a detriment? Yeah, this match basically decided to throw that all out. 93% of Gurus got this right, and 71.32% of casuals, which means that it was by and large not a debatable match--yet look at how close it was! This was an absolute embarrassment, barring the possibility that XBC2 was almost as strong as the first--based on 2015 X-Stats, Arkham City is worth 52.86% on XBC, yet it could only get 54.46% on the sequel. And in the next round, it was set to take on a game that finished ahead of XBC in the 2015 X-Stats. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7967&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=53) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)BioShock Infinite vs (11)Terraria 2020 _source: (6)BioShock Infinite vs (11)Terraria 2020 (revid 86544)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 9, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 54 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 09, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bioshock Infinite - 63.78% 58 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bioshock Infinite - 75.41% - **User Votes:** Bioshock Infinite - 5920 Terraria - 2935 - **Anonymous Votes:** Bioshock Infinite - 5189 Terraria - 2263 Some indie games looked okay this contest. Most did not. Terraria was one of the many that served only as early game fodder, and though getting doubled isn't the worst loss in the world it managed to make BioShock Infinite look much, much stronger than it actually is. Only Heavy Rain and Metal Gear Solid 5 fell off more with people throughout the decade, and the reasoning for this is obvious. BioShock 2 damn near killed that series off for good, and Infinite tried far too hard to recreate greatness. Greatness cannot be artificial. It simply *is*. On the off chance anyone reading this hasn't played it yet I won't spoil you, but there is a reason people don't like BioShock Infinite, and it performed as such this contest. Can you imagine if Mario Odyssey, Breath of the Wild, Witcher 3, or Dark Souls was in this match instead of Infinite? The beating would have been legendary. But it is what it is, and we were treated to another run of the mill round one doubling. One thing I can talk about that spoils nothing is the gratuitous violence in BioShock Infinite. I'm not one of those idiots who thinks violence in video games causes school shootings or anything -- I've played a whole lot of games with a whole lot of violence myself, and I'm not exactly ready to join the military -- the violence in a video game has to be *in context*. The original BioShock was violent, but it made *sense*. BioShock Infinite's is just stupid. You're walking along in a fair, and all of a sudden your character pulls out a buzz saw pistol and cuts a guy's head clean in half? Come on, do better. That stuff existing just for the sake of existing is pointless. I doubt I'm alone in that belief, either. ## Ctes's Analysis If Batman had you worried about the next round because it got close to Xenoblade 2, then this match should remove any worries you had. Terraria is fine, but it’s not exactly the type of game that would ever do well here. Furthermore, at this point we all agreed that indie games from the latter half of the decade were the ones to fear and Terraria is from the early part of it. Just to add salt to it, Terraria ends up being the ultimate loser of the bracket. BioShock looks bad here despite getting the doubling. Of course, none of the above stopped the board from overestimating how close Terraria could get to BioShock, even though almost all of us agreed it couldn’t pull off the win. Expectations for BioShock Infinite were also very low. That series is way past its prime and we already saw Infinite in action last time where it lost in round 1 to peak strength Fallout: New Vegas. It was a step behind Arkham City then and with more reason to drop. The original BioShock could pull it off, but that one is on another level. You have to give BioShock some credit for managing to hit the sweet spot where it surprised us positively but still looked bad. It’s probably the forced voting at work again. It made a lot of round 1 matches less close than they would be otherwise. ## Safer777's Analysis So I don't know about the Bioshock francise but a friend of mine bought the trilogy a few weeks ago and from what I saw they are damn good and brimming with atmoshphere. As for Terraria people nick named it a 2D Minecraft so that is. Plus the game is excellent from what I hear too. Indie of course. Plus it has amazing sales so it has to be good right? I think the Bioshock franchise is on ice now too. I mean we haven't had a new game for 7 years which I don't get it. Good sales and amazing critical reception but that is? Companies should keep making games from their franchises that sell well you know. So for the match. Some people thought that Terraria could do it but I never even thought of that. Bioshock is still a strong name and indie games as we saw don't have serious power. Even more so on this site. So that is. ## Tsunami's Analysis If there was any good news for Arkham City, the presumptive favorite in Round 2, it was that its opponent, BioShock Infinite, was also disappointing in Round 1. Terraria is a sandbox game similar to Minecraft, hardly the type of game that GameFAQs goes crazy for. Yet here it was pulling down 32.33% against BioShock Infinite. Admittedly, Infinite hasn't had nearly the success in these contests, be it in games contests or Character Battles, that BioShock or BioShock 2 have had. But it's still an established franchise, which means it should be worth more than this. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7968&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=54) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Diablo III vs (10)Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward 2020 _source: (7)Diablo III vs (10)Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward 2020 (revid 86545)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 9, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 55 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 09, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Diablo III - 70.52% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Diablo III - 86.55% - **User Votes:** Diablo III - 6079 Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward - 2776 - **Anonymous Votes:** Diablo III - 5202 Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward - 2250 Okay, *now* we can talk about Blizzard being the worst company in human history. I played nice when discussing Overwatch and Starcraft 2, but Diablo 3 is in no way a video game worth playing nice with. Remember this garbage? Yeah, remember Blizzard being such useless, greedy trash that they released Diablo 3 with always-online DRM and *one server*? I remember. I was there. I bought a new computer to play that game and everything, and then I couldn't even log in because Blizzard thought one server would be enough. These people also refuse to add stash space to Diablo 2 or more deck slots to Hearthstone because they're worried about server capacity. It's unreal how much they lie. And then it got so much worse, but to understand how we need to go back in time a little to discuss the last great game Blizzard made -- Diablo 2. The game is so good that mere *rumors* of a remaster have people up in arms. To that I say those folks are gullible idiots (Warcraft 3 Reforged *just happened*, people), but whatever. Diablo 2 is still played extensively **TO DIS DAY**, and the game has its own economy over on d2jsp called "forum gold". A huge underground economy happened, and you guys know how well Blizzard handles news of anyone else making money instead of them. Just look at the Warcraft 3 Reforged EULA. Anyway, Diablo 3 finally got up and running, and much to everyone's horror the item drops basically did not exist. Anywhere you go, same complaint. And why was that? Because Blizzard was butthurt over d2jsp, so in Diablo 3 they turned item drops way down and launched the game with a Real Money Auction House. It's okay that items don't hardly drop in-game. Just open up the wallet and go buy them in the auction house! Blizzard tried claiming this was an improved way to sell items that you yourself picked up, but everyone and their mother knew that the sellers in the auction house were all Blizzard smurfs, because again, *items were not dropping in-game*. It was impossible for anyone to have all of the good items being sold in the auction house. It all added up to arguably the worst launch in the history of video games, and it never got any better for Diablo 3. People can talk all they want about the game getting better once content was added, I don't care. That game is laughable trash, from a laughable trash can of a company, and people are on my side now thanks to the whole debacle with China. Don't worry, we'll get to it. How do I know people are on my side? No one knows or cares about whatever Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward is. Is it an indie title? Is it a book? Is it an adventure? Is it a visual novel? No one knows, no one cares. All I know is it led Diablo 3 for two minutes, which is a wonderful allegory for Diablo 3's launch. I don't care what Diablo 3 did in the rest of the poll after those first two minutes, because they told a better story than the final 1,438 minutes ever could. The Blizzard hate is real, and my side will win. By the way, do you guys not have phones? Fuck off, Blizzard. ## Ctes's Analysis Even with how much Blizzard is dislikes these days, Diablo III still managed to almost break 70%. That’s how bad Virtue’s Last Reward is. It didn’t surprise anyone either. It’s a game we’re solely putting in there because it’s our own niche thing. Same thing as 999 back in Best Game Ever III. On board 8, it just got second place in a best 3DS game contest. In a contest anywhere else, it’s just happy to be there. Visual novels are never going to be bigger than really obscure in these things most likely. I’ll also defend Diablo III a bit. It’s a good game honestly. It’s not as good as the second one at all, but that’s high bar and it was just nice to be back after so many years. I don’t think it’s what Blizzard is likes for and I don’t think it’s getting anti-voted as badly as some of the other games are. I mean, we on board 8 did of course. This match had one of the most insane board votes of the whole contest because it’s one of our favorite games against something we don’t like. Diablo was losing a minute into the match and was ahead by only 2 votes two minutes into the match. That’s insane for something that ended up getting nearly 70%! ## Safer777's Analysis Diablo series is HUGE on PC! Diablo 2 is still played on PC, 20 years after it came out! A friend of mine bought D3 for XBOX and he has put so many hours on it that I have lost count. These games are all for the loot and the levels, since D3 hasn't even a traditional level cap. I never liked these kind of games but eh. So Blizzard announced a Diablo gatcha game a few years ago and man oh man I haven't seen more disappointment in a room from a video game announcement. I mean it was extremely bad. It was so bad that the game isn't still out. I don't understand the fans. Sure Diablo series was always for hardcore gamers on PC but they do know that mobile games earn more money per year now than the traditional games right? I mean every company would be an idiot to not relase gatcha games of all their franchises. Still Diablo series is still popular and they announced a new traditional Diablo game a few months ago. So this ZEVLR is a visual novel game I believe? And it got into the previous Game Contest too? Damn! So for the match. Obviously Diablo 3 would win. But it would be nice to win with above 70% at least. I mean it faced a visual novel game. Also I do believe that Diablo 3 wasn't liked when it first came out because it simplified things from Diablo 2 and also you could sell items you get in game for real money to other players and it had even an auction house provided by Blizzard in game too! Yeah it lasted around 1 year but that is 1 year too many. I guess a win is a win though. ## Tsunami's Analysis This feels like it was actually a pretty good performance for Diablo III. No, VLR isn't strong, but Diablo III was absolutely excoriated by the fandom when it first came out. Though I guess nowadays, how good a game you are when you first come out is completely irrelevant because everything's so wired that they can just patch things? And D3 is apparently a better game than it used to be. We'd see that again soon. Still, Diablo II beats RE2 outright in the 2015 X-Stats, 56-44. If we peg Diablo III at even *half* Diablo II's strength, VLR's projected to get 26.73% on RE2, which is higher than what VLR is actually pegged to get on RE2 via 2015 X-Stats. Even adjusting for the expectation that this RE2 remake is actually *stronger* than the original, which flies in the face of *everything *this site has stood for for the past two decades...there's still no X-Stat voodoo I could come up with to suggest that VLR is weaker than DR2. Also, did people forget that 999 came out in 2010? It seems really weird that VLR made the bracket and 999 didn't. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7969&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=55) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)The Last of Us vs (15)Crusader Kings II 2020 _source: (2)The Last of Us vs (15)Crusader Kings II 2020 (revid 86546)_ ## Results **Round One** Thursday, April 9, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 56 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 09, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Last of Us - 82.52% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Last of Us - 94.41% - **User Votes:** The Last of Us - 7198 Crusader Kings II - 1656 - **Anonymous Votes:** The Last of Us - 6198 Crusader Kings II - 1254 Just how *many* fodderific games were in this bracket? My goodness, there are only so many ways to talk about all these round one blowouts. I understand seeded tournaments as well as anyone -- trust me on that, the NCAAs are my favorite sporting event and is half the reason I fell in love with these contests in the first place -- but this contest was legitimately seeded too well. Octopath Traveler and Mario Kart 8 were the only major seed upsets, and everything else was chalk. I'm sure Crusader Kings 2 is a fine game, but it had no shot here. For those of us who picked The Last of Us to win this division by beating Dark Souls, this was a pretty good result. We thought that match was always going to be close (remember, the leak for Last of Us 2 didn't happen until the tail end of April and it totally threw us for a loop), so Last of Us had to go out there and put up a comparable performance to Dark Souls scoring an 83-17 blowout over Hotline Miami. It did just that. 82-18 over Crusader Kings 2 is about as comparable as it gets to what Dark Souls did, so The Last of Us was right on track with what it needed to do. If only we knew what was coming. What an absolute disaster. ## Ctes's Analysis The Last of Us was a very hot upset pick to win the division pre-contest. No other upset pick was taken by as many in round 4 and the division 4 favorite was taken by only 2 more. The reason for this was that The Last of Us looked straight up better than Dark Souls in 2015. Dark Souls is considered very influential, but The Last of Us also got a lot of awards and prestige back when it came out. Dark Souls looks pretty good right off the bad, so The Last of Us had something to live up. The popular opinion is that it did not manage to do that. It’s also what ended up being true. Crusader Kings II was brought up when people considered what the weakest game in the bracket might be. It’s an eight year old PC exclusive strategy game that wasn’t all too popular. It basically has nothing going on for it. It’s the type of game that we absolutely don’t care about here. It’s not even a niche thing, we just straight up don’t care. That said, you could with good reason give The Last of Us the benefit of the doubt today. It doesn’t really matter how much you get above 80%. Up there it’s way too uncertain. The Last of Us also got an opponent that it has less overlap with than Dark Souls did. It wasn’t out of the question just yet. Ironically, at this point we thought it was a bad thing The Last of Us 2 had not come out yet and perhaps people were annoyed about the delay. That’s nothing compared to what was to come. ## Safer777's Analysis TLOU is one of these games that people say it is one of the best games of all time and almost everyone agrees. It is excellent from a story perspective because the gameplay isn't anything special. But still it is an amazing game. Just play it if you haven't done it by now. Yeah it is a post apocalyptic game with zombie like enemies but don't let that fool you. CK2...I haven't heard it. It is a Real Time Strategy game and these games are always timesinkers and it seems that the fans are really dedicated but we all knew that it would really weak. So for the match. People thought this would be the biggest blowout on the contest and I agreed too, but it wasn't like that in the end. Still a huge victory as expected of course. But as I said many times against such weak games you can't judge a game power. I want to know though who exactly nominated CK2. I mean do people in this site play these kind of games? I am going to say no. ## Tsunami's Analysis No meaningful conclusions could be drawn from this match, because Crusader Kings II was always going to be weak. But still, is it really stronger than Hotline Miami? Because it got a better percentage on TLoU than Hotline Miami got on Dark Souls, and the 2015 X-Stats say that TLoU *should* be stronger than Dark Souls. Technically speaking, they say that The Last of Us should actually get a higher percentage on Dark Souls in the division final than on Arkham City in the division semis, but Arkham City was in the top half of Division 1 which means its X-Stat number is horribly distorted by the collective delusion that a.) Chrono Trigger would've won in the absence of rallies and b.) *that matters.* Because it doesn't matter. Rallies have always been a part of the contest. Many of our greatest contest matches were great because both sides were rallying. And I guess they were fine with that because even if they shifted the outcome, they probably didn't shift the percentage that drastically. But when one side manages to tap into a source of votes that the other can't match, suddenly we have to correct for what "should be" instead of what *is.* And once a rally has knocked someone off, there's no longer any need to account for logic in projecting what "should have" happened. I'll say it again: Yes, Chrono Trigger was indirectly stronger than Final Fantasy VII in 2015. You can see it in the actual percentages they got against Melee and you can see it in the percentages that Allen was kind enough to provide for "registered voters only" for all of both Melee's and Undertale's matches. **Wouldn't have mattered. **Final Fantasy VII won't lose to a fellow Square game. There was a pair of PotD's shortly before the contest, one for "What is your favorite Final Fantasy game" and one between the top two vote-getters of that poll for "which of these two do you like more". *Both times*, FFVII lost to FFVI, and then FFVII still narrowly broke 60% when they faced each other in the Division 2 Finals. Also, let's take a look at those "registered user only" numbers, and pretend they're the actual numbers. Note that this isn't the same as subjecting the 2015 contest to 2018/2020 rules because we don't know what the registered/unregistered splits are and either way, 2-1 isn't the same as 1-0. Looking at Melee's percentages against Undertale and Chrono Trigger, Undertale would be projected to get 22.33% on Chrono Trigger. Undertale vs. Mass Effect 3 - 29.49% 70.51% Fallout 3 vs. Undertale - 75.67% 24.33% **Undertale vs. Super Mario World - 19.28% 80.72%** Pokemon Red/Blue vs. Undertale - 76.30% 23.70% Undertale vs. Super Mario 64 - 26.21% 73.79% Smash Bros. Melee vs. Undertale - 69.59% 30.41% Undertale vs. Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 33.44% 66.56% Yes, *Super Mario World*, the game that started hemorrhaging percentage to *Animal Crossing: New Leaf* when Undertale started rallying against ME3, is projected to beat Chrono Trigger by this metric. It's probably misleading because it's only looking at "logged in", not the age of the account--while it's possible that Undertale legitimately picked up a bandwagon here on GameFAQs, it's far more likely that Undertale's percentage rises each round after the SMW match because more of the people rallied from off-site had accounts, possibly because they wanted to taunt the "butthurt" people (though I'm pretty sure that BracketEntry was a false flag operation by someone from Undertale's camp, or possibly even *Draven's* camp because honestly the LoL bunch seemed like the bigger group of trolls and Allen basically set things up to exclude the game from the contest). So, yeah, that happened then, and Allen conceded to give longtime GameFAQs users (well, anyone who had an account at any point before the contest began and still remembered how to log into it) a greater say, and it...flipped a grand total of three matches last contest, probably only one of which actually made B8 happy, and through pretty much all of Round 1 there hasn't been a single match whose outcome would've changed no matter how the votes were counted because registered and unregistered voters, while their percentages have varied, have always chosen the same game. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7970&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=56) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (16)Subnautica 2020 _source: (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (16)Subnautica 2020 (revid 86547)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, April 10, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 57 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 10, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Skyrim - 84.77% 59 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Skyrim - 95.40% - **User Votes:** Skyrim - 7354 Subnautica - 1363 - **Anonymous Votes:** Skyrim - 5975 Subnautica - 1216 Some indie games looked okay in this contest. Most did not. Subnautica was one of the ones that served as happy-to-be-here early round fodder. The name of the game in this match was not whether or not Skyrim would win; we all knew it was a guaranteed blowout. Skyrim was scoreboard-watching. It had to equal or outperform the likes of Witcher 3, Dark Souls, Persona 5, or any other hopeful game from the bottom half of the bracket. Skyrim's aspirations were to make the final, and anything less would have been a disappointment. The stats topic gets made fun of a lot for wild projections based off of early match performance, but we're often right. Go look at the updater. See how Skyrim was below 70% at the beginning of this match? Go compare that board vote to Witcher 3 and Dark Souls. Skyrim was *screwed*. I know Skyrim rose to 84%, but early board votes are often indicative of what's in store. No one on GameFAQs knows or cares what Subnautica is. Skyrim losing the board vote to it, or showing any weakness whatsoever, was unconscionable. I regretted my Skyrim \> Witcher 3 pick immediately, and my gut instinct was not wrong. Most of us have that intuition for a reason. We knew Skyrim was screwed right from the jump. We knew Xenoblade was a threat to win its division right from the jump. Among other things. Get used to Skyrim losing board votes, because it's apparently the new Final Fantasy 7 -- that is, the internet decided it was cool to hate on Skyrim for literally no reason other than being popular. Yes I'm aware Bethesda is trash now, but how is that Skyrim's fault? Final note before I move on. When looking into all the games this year, Subnautica reminded me of a long-standing hatred of mine -- people who record fake reaction videos for clicks. Streamers in general tend to be complete losers, but there aren't many things dumber than setting up a camera and recording yourself getting "freaked out" by something. We all know you're acting. Knock it off. Speaking of streamers, Twitch is about to turn into a thoroughly useless web site. I mentioned idiotic reaction videos on camera for attention just now. Well here is Steph Loehr, a member of the new Twitch Safety Advisory Council, pretending to be a deer on stream: In a previous livestream Steph called for voice communication to be banned from online gaming because, according to Steph, it gives \[normal people\] a massive advantage. However, later she admitted that the real reason she wanted voice chat banned in-game was because she’d be ‘constantly harassed by cis-gendered gamers’ on the platform. Ferociously Steph also stated that it is a fact that all white cis-gendered gamers are neo-Nazis, or rather white supremacists, and this is something she plans on changing by “banning these assholes” with her newfound powers. “I have power, they can’t take it away from me, and, honestly, there are some people that should be afraid of me and they are because I represent ‘diversity’. I am going to come for all these people. If you’re a really shitty person I’m going to come for you, period,” Steph said during her livestream. I just cannot figure out why people are abandoning the left in record numbers. Can you imagine having to be associated with this literal human trash? And yes, I said *human* trash. You are not a fucking deer and you full well know it. There is a huge subset of people with massive mental illness issues who use the LGBT community as a safe haven for mental illness instead of actually getting help. I live in the tri-state area, and I know a *lot* of great gay people around here. They absolutely cannot stand these people who use gays as a cultural shield, because it makes a mockery of trying to get equal rights in the first place. That's how bad round one of this contest was. It has me talking about how streaming has long since peaked and is only going to collapse from here. And I say good. 99% of these partnered streamers are literal trash cans. ## Ctes's Analysis The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim had a rough contest. It was consider the favorite by the board to reach the finals and get the honor of being the final game Breath of the Wild beats, so it could basically only underperform from expectations. Furthermore, the other \#1 seeds in the bottom half had board 8’ers defending them at any chance, while Skyrim really lacked anybody doing that. The Witcher 3, which was from the start generally considered the most likely game to take the spot in the finals from Skyrim, had begun its contest run by exceeding expectations, so Skyrim could really only disappoint today. It got 84% against a game that is pretty different from it and that’s on top of any potential Bethesda backlash it might have been a victim of, which really starts to matter when you hit the big numbers. I don’t think it was a bad performance, although some was making it out to be because Subnautica is expected to be extremely weak. It’s not that it’s a bad game, but it’s no big name and it’s not a thing for us, that much is true. But Skyrim got below 80% here and I think that was what it needed to be in contention for the spot in the finals it could hope for. The Witcher 3 looked better in round 1 for sure, but there was no telling what either of them was truly capable of yet. We couldn’t say much about the Bethesda anti-voting yet, but it seems pretty clear it’s there later on. It’s hard to grasp how much of a difference that makes. Like, Cloud Strife will probably never be the character to score the big blowouts again. Final Fantasy VII got that against them a long time ago for “always winning”. For a while, they started out looking bad at every chance, but still did just fine in the end. Because the round 1 matches were as big blowouts as they were, it wasn’t yet time to lose all hope of Skyrim reaching the finals. The Witcher 3 might have tilted the favorite status slightly, and Skyrim sure heard of that, but it was still reasonable to hope for it. The oracles predicted this match almost perfectly. I mean, we’ve been closer to the consensus than 0.77% before, although that’s still good. But the worst prediction still got 44.30 points. That’s pretty darn great. Despite that, people were ready to throw dirt at Skyrim right away. A big reason for that is its horrible board vote, which was a good hint of the expected Bethesda anti-voting. Most people don’t see the percentages at the end of the day and Skyrim rose throughout the day, though not as much as in future matches, which says a lot about Subnautica. It was judged from when the match began, and I know trends aren’t what they used to be, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be shifts. I’ll probably defend it quite a bit, because I think it needs to be mentioned in any Game of the Decade debate even if what it did so well has been improved upon now, and nothing that is wrong with Bethesda has to do with Skyrim. It didn’t deserve all the hate. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have Skyrim here. It is one of the Top 5 games on the Decade everywhere and on this site too. The real question is what place does Skyrim get's in this contest? I have it reaching the finals but I do believe Witcher 3 can beat it. Witcher is extremely popular now especially with the Netflix show. And even the company announced a Witcher 4 game even though they had said that Witcher 3 would be the last. And they would have been stupid to not release more games, I mean seriously. As for Skyrim...it has to be in every console that has come since 2011. Seriously this thing is everywhere. Everyone that plays videogames have heard it, the memes, the mods, everything. 9 years have passed and this thing isn't slowing down. I mean the company hasn't even show a gameplay video of ES 6 and why they should rush to make another game? I mean this thing still sells like crazy and people constantly play it. I mean even on this site after 9 years it is still the number 2 most popular game.As for Subnautica...another indie game. Joy. So for the match. The only thing that mattered is if Skyrim would score under 80% because that would mean it is weak now, or if it scored above 90% because that would mean it is the strongest game here. But nothing happened, so Skyrim did as expected. So that is. 2nd highest prediction of Round 1 of the contest too. Okay it makes sense. ## Tsunami's Analysis 84.00%. A nice round number, the type of match that perfect Oracle predictions are made of. And I threw one away! Among the many games that this board plays to liven up the contest even more is the "Spread Betting" topic. Allegedly the spreads are set by the Oracle picks, but having just been told by the Analysis Crew (and having done my own research and agreeing) that Subnautica would be a contender for weakest game in the bracket, I figured that Skyrim covering the spread was the smart pick, then checked my Oracle prediction to make sure that it was high enough to cover the spread. The Oracle consensus, even after me raising my prediction from 84% even to 86.67%, was only 84.77%. The average of the lowest and highest predictions was roughly 85.5%. Where the hell did they get -72 from?! So, yeah, Subnautica's weak, but getting 16% on Skyrim easily takes it out of contention for weakest game in the bracket. Far weaker games than Skyrim got higher percentages in R1. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7971&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=57) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (8)Fate / Grand Order vs (9)Journey 2020 _source: (8)Fate / Grand Order vs (9)Journey 2020 (revid 86548)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, April 10, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 58 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 10, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Journey - 62.88% 60 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Journey - 62.83% - **User Votes:** Fate / Grand Order - 2972 Journey - 5744 - **Anonymous Votes:** Fate / Grand Order - 2379 Journey - 4812 I had no idea what Grand Order was before this contest, but Gravy will periodically jokingly ask me to buy these little figurines from it for him. Normally I would consider it, but Grand Order making this contest was the first time I heard the term "gacha game". I legitimately had no clue what in the world that was before this contest, but thankfully we have Wikipedia. *Gacha games are video games that implement the gacha (capsule-toy vending machine) mechanic. It is similar to loot box, in that it induces players to spend in-game currency to receive a random virtual item. Most of these games are free-to-play mobile games, where the gacha serves as an incentive to spend real-world money.* The gacha game model began to be widely used in the early 2010s, faring particularly well in Japan. Almost all of the highest-grossing mobile games in Japan use it, and it has become an integral part of Japanese mobile game culture. Outside Japan, the game mechanism is also gaining popularity and is included in various Chinese and Korean games. Oh, so Journey took out the trash. Good to know. Nice to see it get a win after getting fed to Final Fantasy 7 five years ago, too. A lot of people expected me to dislike Journey based on my hatred of Shadow of the Colossus, but I legitimately adore that game and everything it was trying to do. I still replay it now and again, since it's legitimately only like an hour long. Video games can, in fact, be artwork. I'll even go full pretentious and quote myself! From the FF7/Journey writeup: *People will assume I hate Journey because of my opinion on Shadow of the Colossus, but no. Journey is actually an outstanding game. It deserved better than getting fed to FF7 in round 1, and it's everything Shadow of the Colossus wishes it could be -- simple, artistic, and extremely touching. The whole game is about 45 minutes long with no spoken dialogue at all, but has such an amazing message of friendship in it. Actually I suppose it could mean whatever you want, but I enjoy the friendship route.* Play Journey if you haven't. ## Ctes's Analysis This match was expected by many to give us the weakest game in round 2, which would end up providing Skyrim with yet another target on its cover before it proved to be wrong. Journey got rolled over by Final Fantasy VII in 2015, a game that most of us knows get a fair share of votes against it for always winning. It finished up near the very bottom of the x-stats and no one was really surprised. It’s a pretty game, and while it has gotten its prestige here and there on the internet, we’re not the place to get it from. We had no expectations for it, and rightfully so. Then there’s Fate / Grand Order, which has just about no business getting a seed that high. People know what it is because the anime series is pretty big but being the only mobile game in the bracket probably says a lot about how much we think of those. I’ve said before that Pokemon GO should’ve been in the contest. I stand by that, but not because I think it would’ve been worth anything. A few people picked Fate / Zero, but I’d expect that to be lack of faith in Journey more than anything. As I said, many people expected this match to give is the weakest game in round 2, even if a few other matches were brought up as well. Journey did better than the average oracle expected of it and no one picked against it there. We still expected Fate / Zero to among the worst games in the bracket and it’s weird how it ends up avoiding bottom 20 here. Perhaps the name helped. I’m thinking it’s a game enough people have tried out to prevent it from being destroyed so it has a possible larger playrate than the other bottom games. It drew a game we have previously shown to not cared about, which is perfect for taking advantage of such a playrate. It was also the top option in the bracket. Flip the seeds and Journey certainly scores a higher prediction percentage. On top of getting a good draw itself, Journey is probably also a bad draw for Skyrim being as different from it as it is. Skyrim has its anti-votes, but still ended up getting the job done for many rounds. That probably helped Fate / Zero escape the bottom. I think it could’ve easily gotten there elsewhere. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have our first gatcha game here! I don't understand how it got such a high seed here and we don't have other gatcha games like Pokemon Go or Dokkan Battle. I think though that F/G has a lot of Waifus so that is maybe it? But then again I always see F/G to be on the top of the Ios board so I guess it has to be popular. I do play some gatcha games like everyone else(if someone says he doesn't play or played at least 1 they are liars). I know they are the cancer of gaming since now every game and their gatcha grandmother has microtransactions but the fault is the people that buy them, not the companies that put them in. Journey is an indie game BUT when it came out it prooved that yeah even Indie games can win GOTY! Yeah it won some GOTY even though it is a walking simulator basically. But hey the art direction and the style were really good so that is. So for the match. We all knew that Journey would win. Sure nobody talked about Journey after the year that came out but F/G is a gatcha game so no way we would let such a game win a match. So even though Journey is really weak it won with a doubling. Even casuals got this match right even though the seeding was higher for F/G. Nice? ## Tsunami's Analysis Journey was piss-weak in 2015, so I figured the Fate name had enough clout to pull this one off. Then the Crew reminded me that even the people who play gacha games hate them, possibly even more so, because they make their money by making all the good stuff really hard to get. (It's true, too; half the time it feels like a chore doing my daily quests in the gacha games I play--which FGO isn't one of them. Sadly, the only one I truly *enjoyed* closed its international servers in 2016.) My Oracle still turned out pretty bad, though, because I still didn't have enough faith in Journey to not be awful too! And the apathy votes should've still leaned towards FGO because, again, recognizable name. It could very well fare better with people who *haven't* heard of it and don't know it's a gacha game than those who have! Also, in a contest full of blowouts, Journey failed to double a gacha game. On GameFAQs, which hates mobile games and other "casualbait" (even though FGO is less casualbait and more otakubait.) ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7972&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=58) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn vs (12)Crypt of the NecroDancer 2020 _source: (5)Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn vs (12)Crypt of the NecroDancer 2020 (revid 86549)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, April 10, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 59 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 10, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy XIV - 68.28% 59 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy XIV - 82.97% - **User Votes:** Final Fantasy XIV - 6265 Crypt of the NecroDancer - 2452 - **Anonymous Votes:** Final Fantasy XIV - 5083 Crypt of the NecroDancer - 2108 The only game in this entire bracket I hate more than Final Fantasy 14 is Hearthstone. Don't worry, we'll get to the latter in a bit. I mentioned this in the stats topic, which prompted Team Rocket Elite to ask for my bottom 10 games since I tend to call a lot of things the worst game ever made. Good idea, TRE! I thusly present Ulti's Shit List: 1 - Hearthstone - The worst game ever made by far. 2 - Warcraft 3 - The worst game ever made until Hearthstone came along. 3 - Devil May Cry 2 and DmC: Devil May Cry - Going Chris Berman on this one. I covered both of these in the DMC5 vs Tropical Freeze writeup. 4 - Lunar Dragon Song - It's a JRPG where you can't choose attacks, you have to choose between EXP and money, and there is an actual plot point called "The Curse of Lost Equilibrium". The main character is a postal worker who attacks enemies (which you can't choose) by doing gymnastics and kicking with sandals. When he loses his equilibrium, he can't stand on his head anymore and it causes a bunch of problems. I swear this entire paragraph is the truth. 5 - Mighty No. 9 - The main example for why Kickstarter is trash. 6 - Knights in the Nightmare - A strategy RPG that wants to be a bullet hell, and you can't choose the directions your characters face on the grid. It is so hilariously stupid, and might have the worst tutorial in all of gaming. 7 - Shadow of the Colossus - I've covered this one at length. 8 - Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks - They might as well be one giant game anyway. Covered at length in reviews, no need to rehash it. 9 - Every MMORPG ever made, and yes this includes Final Fantasy 14 and I don't care what the honks say to try defending it. I've lost so many friends over the years to this stupid gaming genre that I will never, ever play any of the games or defend them. These games can all go and choke. I hate them. 10 - Every Mario Kart game ever made, for popularizing the ever-moronic gameplay mechanic of punishing skilled players. Mario Kart didn't invent this mechanic, but they're certainly the most popular and egregious about it. It will take a true standard of shittiness never before seen to crack that list. Trash like Dream Drop Distance, Super Princess Peach, the Dissidias. Resident Evils 0, 5, and 6, The World Ends With You, and plenty of other bad games are all garbage cans, but they have a saving grace here and there that prevent them from making the list. Games known for being bad (Superman 64, Crazy Bus, ET, Hydlide, et al) have an entertainment value due to their status. "Ulti, you cannot honestly think Crazy Bus is a better game than Final Fantasy 14 or Shadow of the Colossus. Stop trolling." I got more entertainment value from it than any game on my shit list. No one will ever convince me a single game on my shit list has entertainment value. You also have absolutely no idea how much I love the Warcraft 3 Reforged metacritic user score. It vindicated nearly 20 years of hatred and proved me right all along. All I ever need is a long enough time line. So yeah, it sucks ass that Final Fantasy 14 got to score a free blowout against some indie rhythm garbage. Untitled Goose Game or Goat Simulator couldn't make the bracket for fear of an ironic rally, but Final Fantasy 14 gets to waste a slot. Amazing. ## Ctes's Analysis Final Fantasy XIV has somehow managed to be the most well-liked Final Fantasy this past decade. Not necessarily the strongest, but certainly the one with the least things going against it. That’s pretty crazy considering what it is. Although it’s also something that it achieved down the line. It wasn’t as good at first. It also got an interesting bracket placement where it had a possibility of making round 3. It looked good today as well, which made the next round a bit more exciting. Generally, the winner of the next match was believed to advance twice, but FFXIV had a outside shot. Of course, Crypt of the NecroDancer was never something to expect very much of. We’ve learned already at this point that there is no such thing as general indie boost. Some indie games are just legit now, and this one is not really from the time you’d prefer to be. Furthermore, it’s a rhythm game and that’s probably not something you want to be. We had Guitar Hero and Rock Band in the previous Game of the Decade, which is fair enough, they had their time in the spotlight, but they underperformed. You should respect nothing of such games and little of indies. Final Fantasy XIV probably does good here on the forced voting stuff. You see the name Final Fantasy there and it gets your vote for recognition. That matters against games that are hardly known. I wonder if the name alone cements it as what is the strongest MMORPG now, which isn’t exactly a big title here, but still a title. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have a MMORPG! But not a random one, a FF one. When FF 14 first came out it was SO bad. Like really bad. So bad that basically SE offerend an apology, disbanded the team that made it and started working on it again. After some time they came out with Real Reborn and killed the original FF 14 in real life and in lore too! Yeah that world got destroyed in story too! But then something happened. RR was amazing! Seriously they did such good job that everyone was surprised. So even though we have the original version of FF 14 coming out 10 years ago and RR coming out 7 years ago the game is played by thousands upon thousands of players and new stuff keep coming out on regular intervals. Yeah they managed to make one of the worst lauched MMORPG into one of the best MMORPG's ever! Damn! As for Crypt it is something of a rhythm based game. I don't know how it works exactly but I do know it has amazing music plus it has to be popular because last year a Zelda spin off came out that uses the mechanics of Crypt! Yeah and it was really good and nobody really expecting that! So for the match. Well FF14 has FF in its name and is against an indie game so of course it would won. And it did good I do believe. I don't think anything can be said. I am just happy that we do have a MMORPG going on Round 2. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was one of those matches that I barely even considered debatable when making my bracket and it turned out it *wasn't* debatable, but in the other direction. I mean, let's look at the facts here: this site has never been big on MMOs, as evidenced by the way WoW constantly gets embarrassed, frequently losing as the favorite and failing to win convincingly even when it does win. Again: only entrant, game or character, to win with less than 60% with over 90% bracket support. And this site hates most of Square's recent output, so even if this were a regular Final Fantasy and not an MMO, it wouldn't be *that* strong, though it'd still be strong enough to win. And most importantly, Nintendo has been famously reticent to allow anyone else access to their IPs, ever since the Philips CD-i debacle. Even though Cadence of Hyrule isn't the game in this poll, its mere existence is a vote of confidence from people whose opinions matter a lot to GameFAQs. Turns out, FFXIV is actually really well respected now. That "A Realm Reborn" in the title isn't merely a fancy subtitle; it's to differentiate it from the original release of FFXIV, which was such a disaster that Square basically scrapped the whole thing and then went meta with the rerelease, setting it in a post-apocalyptic world that's basically the same cataclysm that they dropped on the original release's world when they killed it off. People love it, *especially* because it finally gave WoW some much-needed competition. So after being informed that I'd horribly misjudged two matches in the same day *again*, I went into the Oracle topic, came up with what I thought was a good percentage for FFXIV \> FGO, then went back before posting because I'd already forgotten what the other game that I'd wrongly had losing was...and realized, oops, FFXIV was facing Crypt of the NecroDancer! So I had to redo it, and it was killing me because I still believed that if the opponents were reversed, I'd only have to change one outcome; that Crypt of the NecroDancer could still win. After this? I no longer think Crypt of the NecroDancer could beat Journey. Unless FFXIV is just that beastly, getting only 28.47% is just not a good performance, and I really overestimated the psychological effect of "Nintendo let these guys make a game with one of their most valuable IPs". The actual Cadence of Hyrule probably would've been stronger. Too bad it's a 2019 game or else we could find out in ten years. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7973&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=59) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (4)Uncharted 4: A Thief's End vs (13)Mario Kart 8 2020 _source: (4)Uncharted 4: A Thief's End vs (13)Mario Kart 8 2020 (revid 86550)_ ## Results **Round One** Friday, April 10, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 60 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 10, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario Kart 8 - 55.75% 52 for - 7 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario Kart 8 - 56.02% - **User Votes:** Uncharted 4 - 3507 Mario Kart 8 - 5210 - **Anonymous Votes:** Uncharted 4 - 3125 Mario Kart 8 - 4067 People really need to stop nominating these Uncharted games and characters to such high seeds. Death, taxes, and Uncharted blowing a match as a high seed. Well.... sometimes. Nathan beat Pac-Man back in the day, and Uncharted 2 has had some success. But when he botches a high seed, he botches it *badly*. In 2010, he was a 2 seed and lost to The Boss. Two years ago, he was a 4 seed and lost to Tails. This year Uncharted was yet again a high seed, and everyone with sense knew how this match would go. It's a shame, too, because Uncharted is a good series and all things Mario Kart are garbage. There is no defense whatsoever for any gameplay mechanic that either renders player skill irrelevant or punishes it for existing. And that gets to be the nonsense to take advantage of Uncharted losing as a high seed yet again. Puke. Doesn't surprise me though, because Mario Kart 8 is possibly the most popular and well-respected game in that series. It is in no way affected by the Wii U curse, as this contest showed. The true shame of Uncharted is that it's a victim of Misbehaving Canine going full SJW and alienating most of its player base. SJWs don't care about diversity, either, because they want everyone thinking like them. They act exactly like republicans did in the 1980s -- useless trash who censored and shut down everyone they didn't like, then acted all miffed when the country hated them for it. Trust me. I've lived through both. If you consider yourself an SJW, just know that you have the same exact mentality as people who thought AIDS was divine punishment for gays. Did you guys know the original writer at Naughty Dog was a woman, and an exceptionally talented woman at that? Skip to "Works". There are no bad games on that list. Zero. Uncharted 2 especially has a lot of contest success, in large part because of her writing ability. But no, let's fire her, redo Uncharted 4 from scratch, crunch our employees because we're total pieces of trash, and allow crazy people to write for us. Colin Cowherd has a saying I love -- "Don't let Twitter produce your show, because only 6% of the country actually uses it. Twitter doesn't matter". The companies who allow Twitter (or Tumblr, or ResetEra, or whatever other SJW trash rag you want to name) to produce their content all fall out of favor for a reason. Ergo, Uncharted 4 can't win any contest matches anymore. It doesn't stop there, either. Uncharted 4 was only the beginning of this mess. Just wait until we get to what happened with The Last of Us. Considering Uncharted 4 ended up on the top third of the x-stats, I don't think it was particularly weak compared to the rest of the field? Mario Kart 8 was just shockingly strong. "Ergo, Uncharted 4 can't win any contest matches anymore." is blatantly false. It would've comfortably advanced against every other 13 seed and beat a lot of higher seeded games. -Surskit A fair rebuttal. Time will tell! ## Ctes's Analysis This was one of them more debated round 1 matches of the contest. Not because it necessarily split the board the most, but because it was widely agreed that the winner of the match would advance all the way to round 3. Uncharted 4 is a big game and they have proved themselves to be alright in the past. Uncharted 2 advanced to round 3 in the contest we had a decade ago. The fourth one sold by far the most. Most of the discussing however centered around Mario Kart 8. Mario Kart 8 appeared in the latest Best Game Ever and got stomped by Super Mario 64 in round 1. It looked very weak back then, but it was also in a match that could be filled with SFF, so it was hard to tell. Racing games are historically worth just about nothing on our site, but Mario Kart is different from the norm and is this not really hurt by it. It’s similar to how Smash Bros has always been good despite being a fighting game. Now it has been released on the Switch to become one of the best-selling games of all time. It was largely thought to be best Mario Kart of all time, although people like us will probably insist on Mario Kart 64 being so. It had a high ceiling, but a low floor. Mario Kart 8 ended up being a favorite by a solid margin. The previous contest, Character Battle X, taught us to go with the Nintendo character in a debated match. This seemed like the same thing. This time, even the overall site favored Mario Kart ever so slightly, which is probably partially because experts make up a bigger portion of the brackets, but also because Mario Kart 8 has been one of the biggest casual games of the decade. I think it has some amount of casual bait in itself, so good thing that worked out for some of them for a change. Seriously, Uncharted 4 got screwed by bracket placement as much as you possible could. Even at the time of the match where most of board thought Uncharted 4 is weaker than it ended up being, it was unanimously agreed that Uncharted 4 would easily beat every other \#13 seed in the bracket. Mario Kart 8 is so far from the second strongest of them. The second best might just be Tales of Berseria. That doesn’t sound much like an achievement, so let’s look at the other perspective. Because on the other hand, Mario Kart 8 looks good enough to be able to upset every other \#4 seed too, except for Super Mario Galaxy 2, but including Horizon. Super Mario Galaxy 2 looks like it had a case for being among the eight strongest games, so that’s hardly a bad thing. Mario Kart 8 is easily the most underseeded game in the entire bracket and Uncharted 4 was the poor game to get screwed by that. It could beat a lot of games that made it to round 2 with relative ease. It took most of the contest before people accepted Mario Kart 8 is actually really good, so at the time Uncharted 4 was thought to be really weak. A few people were thinking Mario Kart 8 had no chance against Final Fantasy XIV next round and that this was just Uncharted 4 being trash, because the match was over right away. Mario Kart 8 won the board vote big time, it looked like it would go for a doubling for a moment before eventually calming down. I’m not sure if there’s some general Naughty Dog backlash going on. This was before The Last of Us 2 has leaked, but it was still not exactly the most popular company. Mario Kart 8’s inclusion shows that not all Mario spin-offs were not counted when considering the expected series cap of two games per franchise. It’s a good call too. It would be weird not having such a big game in the bracket. Galaxy 2 and Odyssey are both among the greatest received games of all time, they both had to make it in as well. Besides, Mario Kart alone of doing better than almost all series today, usually selling better than the platformer Mario on the same console. On the other hand, Uncharted 4 got in a high seed while Uncharted 3 did not. I’m sure this has been used as potential evidence of Uncharted 4 being weak by some, but it’s really just another snub a result of the game coming out in the game it doesn’t really belong to. It’s similar to God of War III in that regard. You don’t think of Uncharted 3 as a 2010s game when it’s part of an early Playstation 3 trilogy. By the end of the contest, Uncharted 4 ended up looking really good, Mario Kart 8 simply ended up looking way better than anyone had imagined it was capable of. I was defending this game a lot throughout the contest and I feel pretty proud for seemingly having had the correct read on it in the end. There are those that will probably still calling it a bust for being a high seed that dropped its round 1 match in a chalky bracket, but that’s quite unreasonable when it’s solely because of Mario Kart 8 being underseeded and many other games would have done the same. It seems like the general idea now is Uncharted 2 was pretty good, but the others weren’t as big and Uncharted 4 didn’t improve on the formula enough, so it wasn’t remembered as well. I mean, sure, there are surely parts of the internet that thinks so or we wouldn’t have the discussion, but Uncharted 4 was big in every way and you can’t deny how it was here 4 years after its release. IT was huge in reviews of both critics and users. It has sold more copies than any other Playstation 4 game. It also wasn’t supposed to improve upon the formula. It was created as the final entry in series to draw a conclusion to the story of Nathan Drake, and that’s exactly what it did. Besides, it’s not like the game just used the same gameplay, it’s better than the other games in the series and The Last of Us too, it’s just not as big as jump, but why should the fourth game in a four game story be that? GameFAQs has always been less interested in the series than most. People seemed to firmly believe that Uncharted 2 would easily be the strongest of the Uncharted games. I disagreed from the day of this match and claimed that I thought the fourth game has a chance of being the strongest and that I don’t think the difference is all too big. Uncharted 2 got the most outside praise, but Uncharted 4 sold better and fans aren’t really as settled on 2 being the best one as some people want to make it seem like. Plenty of fans prefer 3 or 4. My idea was mostly laughed at back then, but on the other side of contest, it sure looks like I was right. We can’t tell for certain, but let’s compare to the games that made both the 2015 and the 2020 contests. We obviously won’t use stuff like Witcher 3, Xenoblade Chronicles or even Mario Kart 8, which everyone can see boosted a lot. Compare them though Fire Emblem: Awakening or Borderlands 2, which have about the same distance to each other in both contests. Uncharted 4 looks better. Compare through Bayonetta 2 and Uncharted 4 looks better, and that’s even when believing Bayonetta 2 was SFF’d a lot this constant and keeping it constant. Compare through Civilization V and Uncharted 4 looks better. Compare through Minecraft and they’re about even, but it’s widely agreed that Minecraft was underrated in the 2015 stats. Compare through Shovel Knight and Uncharted 4 looks better, and sure, Shovel Knight is hard to read properly this contest, but you can see where we’re getting at. Even if you somehow want to say that all of that is within the uncertainties and it doesn’t prove anything, it sure as hell indicates that if the games are much different in strength, it’s in favor of Uncharted 4 and there’s not much else than gut feeling to tell us that Uncharted 2 should be stronger. There is no way for it to be by a lot. You can argue that some of the games I mentioned has reason to decline, but not all of them, and you can argue that for Uncharted franchise just as well. How a direct match between them would end is another discussion, but basically everything reasonable you can put on the table points towards Uncharted 4 not only holding up indirectly but looking straight up better. Part of the board wanted to call Uncharted 4 a bust, but it’s the opposite if anything. Everyone I’ve talked to about this claimed it would be way weaker than another entry from its series and it wasn’t at all. It exceeded our expectations and it’s a darn shame it’s complete lack of luck in bracket placement prevented it from getting a match where it could upset something. I don’t know what this board has against it, but whatever it is it sure isn’t a general opinion, not anywhere, but not even on our own site. Whatever happened with Naughty Dog was after this game came out. Uncharted 4 is a good game, and I’m glad it would end up showing it was good enough in the end. ## Safer777's Analysis This match was somewhat debatable but I don't see why. Has ever Uncharted games/characters do good here? No. We have MK 8 here(seriously how many MK games are out? Damn!) and even though it seems that after so many games MK series would have fallen over actually it is doing extremely well! I am shocked too. But then again when so many sequels of a game come out it is bound to be good and sell well. As for the Uncharted series I do believe that U2 is still considered the best. But all of them are good anyways. So for the match. Well MK did as most of Board 8 expected. A hard win. Seems casuals got it somewhat right too even though the highest seed was U4. So that is. We just don't like games like Uncharted here people. When you will learn? I want to say something else too. When the Uncharted series first came out everyone was saying it was a clone of Tomb Raider which okay made sense. BUT after the rebooted Tomb Raider series came out, everyone was saying it is a clone of the Uncharted series! So we have a clone of a series that was a clone of another series that got rebooted and is now a clone of the cloned series? Or something? So yeah we went full circle I guess! ## Tsunami's Analysis This match was debated for all sorts of silly reasons, most of them stemming as to whether voters would see it strictly as "Mario Kart 8", the Wii U game, or if they'd see it as both Mario Kart 8 and its update Switch version, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Because of course, voters will anti-vote anything associated with the Wii U. Uncharted has never been *that *strong here; Nathan Drake managed a single first-round win in 2013 against Pac-Man and Steve from Minecraft, but is better known for coming in 4th place in his debut despite having *CATS* in his fourpack and then later becoming the first 2-seed to lose in round 1 in a format with 16-character divisions (though we'd had 8-1 upsets in the 8x8 era, so...) As for the games themselves...er, the *game* itself, Uncharted 2, went two rounds in GotD, beating The Legend of Dragoon and Street Fighter IV, before losing to Halo, then beat out The Walking Dead in round 1 in 2015 before losing to Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Neither Uncharted nor Uncharted 3 have ever been in a contest. No, Uncharted wasn't even in the vote-ins for the first GotD. (Uncharted 3 would've been in this one, not that one.) Honestly, this feels like a really bad result for MK8. I honestly wasn't that concerned about having blown two matches in the same day because unlike the Bravely Default/Ni No Kuni disaster, at least my wrong calls would *both* be R2 losers anyway, but after seeing MK8 held under 59% by UC4 while FFXIV was putting up over 71% on NecroDancer, I'm not so sure anymore! Obviously MK8 had the stronger opponent, but was it by enough to account for that big a difference? Though it should be noted that at 55.86% correct, this was the most debated match of Round 1 with the casuals, narrowly edging out Nioh's upset of Binding of Isaac: Rebirth which 56.01% of brackets had incorrect. *(Note: Apparently some brackets got banned or something, because the correct prediction percentage for a bunch of early matches went up since I wrote these reactions. BoI:R-Nioh is now the biggest toss-up, as Nioh's prediction percentage is now above 44 while MK8's is above 56.)* ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7974&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=60) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version vs (14)Night in the Woods 2020 _source: (3)Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version vs (14)Night in the Woods 2020 (revid 86551)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 11, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 61 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 11, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 79.63% 59 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 91.81% - **User Votes:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 7143 Night in the Woods - 1463 - **Anonymous Votes:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 5644 Night in the Woods - 1461 Some indie games looked okay in this contest. Most did not. Night in the Woods was one of the many, many happy-to-be-here low seed indie games that existed entirely to make the heavy hitter look good. Pokemon HGSS is one of the games I don't feel should have been allowed in this bracket at all, but now that it was here it was time to watch it work. And work it did. Any doubt that this game wouldn't be a true proxy for Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal was put to bed immediately upon the game scoring an 82% blowout. I get that no one knows what Night in the Woods is, but that's still a very impressive start. It also put Skyrim on notice, because Skyrim had a crack in the armor. If you go into a match against Pokemon off of your A game, it's likely you lose. We already long since knew Pokemon would win the board vote in that eventual duel, but this match showed that it could go either way. And no, NieR honks, that game never stood a chance. We'll get to that in round 3. ## Ctes's Analysis The final one of the three remakes would also score a big blowout. It’s always weird to speak of the Pokemon entries as a single game when they’re technically two, but it makes sense, I suppose. So far, there was nothing indicating that being a remake would hurt you in any way. It was also still hard to tell because it’s different when facing games that people actually think about remembering the past decade of games than when it’s against something not widely known. The big opponent for Pokemon HGSS was NieR Automata in round 3. It was the board favorite to make round 4 but expected to lose to Skyrim by everyone except a few that fear Pokemon too much, or underestimate Skyrim I suppose. NieR looked pretty good today, but it wouldn’t take many votes against HGSS to prevent it from getting a higher percentage, so I’m pretty sure most people still believed in whatever they did before the contest began. Night in the Woods is a cute game that was pretty well acclaimed, but it hasn’t gotten the attention a bunch of other indie games have gotten. It released on everything and it’s from 2017, so here’ a good reminder that people aren’t actually voting for things because they’re from 2017, it just happens to have a lot of games we care strongly for. That might just be the most obvious statement you can make. The same thing can be said about indie games, however. We grouped those together a lot more than we should, especially in the early part of contest. One indie game being good doesn’t really say anything about the others, regardless of exposure. That indie games generally seemed to do better likely just means that indie games in general have a easier time getting exposure today. That obviously increases the chances that we’ll have legit indie games, but it doesn’t mean a general rise. Of course, another match going on today was showing that better. ## Safer777's Analysis So we have finally a Pokemon game! But it is a remade of the Gen 2 which came out in 1999. And even though we had 4 generations since 2010 the one from the 2nd generation got in even though it barely count since it came out in 2009 in Japan but later in other regions. As I guy who has played all main Pokemon games multiple times for me the 2nd generation is the best. And I was so happy to see HG/SS with all the QOL upgrades. Gen 1 is special for everyone so it is above criticism and most pokemon fans agree that the 2nd generation is the best. On the other hand we have an indie game that I haven't heard anything about. Of course. So for the match. Well HG/SS would win easily of course. The only thing that mattered was the final percentage. I do believe it did better than expectations since the average prediction was a bit lower than 80 so there you go. Well even though the latest Pokemon games seems to mess up the series since there are way too many complaints to count, they actually sold extremely well, they have sold more than 16 millions and the games are like 6 months old only. And this sales chart is old. So yeah people love their pokemons. ## Tsunami's Analysis Long before the contest was even announced, I theorized that due to the apparent "two generations" rule, where two generations have to pass before people can start getting nostalgic for a Pokémon game, that Black/White could be a beast in the Game of the Decade because it'd have the benefit of *three* generations having passed. Then Allen decided to allow remakes into the contest, possibly fueled by RE2Make winning GotY 2019 (wait, *what?!*), and even Gen V, which I'm pretty sure *is* remembered fondly because its metagame was very much still evolving when the Gen VI games came out (blame this on Gen VI being when Game Freak shifted to worldwide releases; Gen V didn't just *feel* shorter than previous generations; it *was* shorter), was completely missing from the bracket, let alone the newer games, but Gen *IV* got a representative with a 3-seed. Because as we all know, being essentially from the previous decade is a winning strategy for Game of the Decade. Just ask "Ocarina of Time 2". (I'm joking, of course; Majora's Mask proved it was legit in 2015.) Though of course, no GameFAQser would ever forget that HGSS was released in 2010 and not 2009. You could say its release date is...burned into their minds. Other than that, there's not much to say about this match. No entrant in Round 1 received more raw votes from unregistered voters than registered, but Night in the Woods came closest. There were 1501 more registered voters than unregistered, and of these 1501 votes beyond the unregistered output, a grand total of *2* went to Night in the Woods. GameFAQs loves its Pokémon. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7975&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=61) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Celeste vs (11)Rayman Legends 2020 _source: (6)Celeste vs (11)Rayman Legends 2020 (revid 86552)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 11, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 62 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 11, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Rayman Legends - 42.39% 7 for - 52 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Rayman Legends - 37.78% - **User Votes:** Celeste - 4335 Rayman Legends - 4271 - **Anonymous Votes:** Celeste - 3373 Rayman Legends - 3726 Figures the best match of round one would be a one point affair between indie fodder versus mainstream fodder, but them's the breaks! This match was anyone's guess, and though Rayman had made contests before, he always performed like a total bottom-feeder. Celeste has almost no past polling to draw from, and she performed horribly in the few polls she was in. We all knew she would be weak, but we picked her because it's very difficult to be weaker than Rayman -- kind of like a Celeste winning by default kind of a deal. It was a measly one point match either way, so even though the match was *awesome*, it didn't really matter at the end of the day. "But Ulti, Azuarc only beat JONALEON1 by one point you scrub!" JONA got this match right. Azuarc did not. I rest my case. Azuarc won this contest because he picked Dark Souls to beat The Last of Us. JONA did not. That was the main difference. Don't worry, we'll get to it. A few times in this PCA, I've mentioned the indie match trend, where they start off hot and then fall off a cliff as the match progresses. It came to an ugly head in this match. After Celeste took the early bracket votes, Rayman evened it up with the first update. It was a sign of things to come, though Celeste was able to rebound from the bad start. Despite Rayman's best efforts at stalling, Celeste was able to build up a lead of 200 after two hours. Rayman fought back rather valiantly and stalled her out for a few hours, but not before Celeste built up a 300 vote lead by midnight. It's like we were back in the F5 days! Overnight, however, is when Rayman made his move. He did a wonderful job stalling things out for a few hours before making his comeback move, largely with the help of Europe. Before getting into the rest of the commentary, there's a small thing I'd like to mention here. As far as I can tell, Europe really doesn't like indie gaming. The entire reason these games fall off after hot starts is because Europe never votes for them. I don't know the reason for this, but maybe one of our friends from across the pond can enlighten us. Once the European vote kicked in (and it was the European Board 8 users cheering *hard* for Rayman, so I guess he has a following over there), Rayman started coming back hard. That 300 vote lead Celeste had was below 100 in a couple hours overnight, and it looked as if Rayman would run away with this thing. When the sun began to rise on America and the morning vote kicked in, it was.... Celeste who started going up. So it looked like Celeste, who won North America going away, would be able to hold Rayman off and win this match. **NOT SO FAST, MY FRIEND!!** It was a short-lived bump for Celeste, who was never able to stretch a lead out past 100. Rayman recovered nicely, despite not having support from North America at all. Europe was carrying this dude hard. Rayman was able to get the match down to even around 8 am, and after one final push where Celeste desperately tried to shake this guy off the mountain, it was not to be. Rayman kept the match tied all morning, and finally started making his move after lunch time. He got the lead, but it stayed under 50 votes for hours and hours. Once it got over 50, it stayed in the 50-100 range all the way until the evening. That's when the avalanche knocked Celeste, not Rayman, off the mountain. He would ultimately win the match by 200 votes, which was a very sad, yet fitting end for Celeste in this contest. She never could find that golden strawberry. Sucks, too, because I *really* wanted her to win. Rayman was never my thing, but I harbor no ill will at all toward his fanbase. I know you guys have been waiting for a match like this for your boy for awhile, and it's frankly very impressive that Rayman won entirely on the back of Europe carrying him over the finish line. Typically after going through a barn-burner like this I have a big writeup on what does this mean and where do we go from here. Sadly, this match meant nothing beyond a cute one point upset. Congrats Rayman, you finally made it into round 2, and your reward is one a one way ticket to getting your ass whooped by Pokemon. "Also noted is that this match caused the last zero bracket to fail, as it got a point for picking Celeste to lose." -Nintendogs ## Ctes's Analysis After a mostly boring round 1 with lots of blowouts, the final day of the round gave us the best match of the contest so far and got us all hyped again for round 2. It was almost out of the blue. We weren’t particularly hyped for the match before it came. No one was expecting it to deliver this much. Celeste was already the favorite by a pretty big amount and the first round hadn’t really done anything to change that, the contrary if anything. Celeste is everything that we up until this point had agreed was good to be as an indie. Rayman Legends marks the first appearance of a Rayman game in any of our contests. We also only got the character into two contests. First time when expanding the field 2007 where he jobbed hard to Snake, Nightmare and Vyse. No point in getting him back in then, until 2013 expanding the field as insanely much as it did. From that point forward, he might be able to win the right match as being a mascot or well known character is better now than it used to be. Unfortunately for Rayman, he drew Squall in 2013 and missed the field completely in 2018. Perhaps if he gets into Smash Bros, we might care to nominate him again. Otherwise it’s a long shot. That’s a huge part of the reason people had little faith in Rayman Legends. It’s not even considered to be the best of what a series capable of doing nothing had to offer. The match was exciting almost right away. Celeste won the board vote by quite a bit. It’s not too surprising, we love games that. A lot of indies have had similar trends, and I’ve seen people talk a lot about Celeste and never about Rayman. On top of that we have the bracket votes, but Rayman didn’t really allow Celeste to get away. It held the lead during the freeze, going up and down a little bit, before being ahead by 21 at the freeze. Given what trends we’ve seen similar games to Celeste have, and given that Celeste probably had the board vote and the bracket vote, this sure didn’t look very good for it. True enough, Celeste’s lead dropped to only 6 in the next update despite bracket votes and the like still being in its favor. At that point, you could be really happy having Rayman in your bracket, because things were looking really good for it. Then the match randomly turned. Celeste won the next update by 3 votes, which isn’t much, but everyone expected a lead change. Celeste extended that to 20 votes the following update and go slightly up from there for a few more updates, before Rayman made a small cut. With a small lead of 36, perhaps it was still the power hour in effect. There was hope for a Rayman supporter, right? The next update would have Celeste bursting up to 88 and the one after that up to 144. That was a very quick shift that certainly looked like Celeste had this one in the bag. The next while would have them go a big back and forth at times, but overall, Celeste was going upward. Suddenly, it looked like Rayman had actually won the board vote. Five hours into the match, Celeste was up by 300 votes. It was looking like it was over, but that it would just end up being a lot closer than we thought it would. The 5-hour mark is interesting, because it’s when Celeste stopped going up. Two updates later it was ahead by 333 votes, which is the highest lead any of them had the whole match. Rayman did a pretty big cut then, but no one was paying too much attention yet. An hour later Celeste would be at the same spot. In other words, they were stalling for an hour. Then Rayman began working at making the match interesting from that point forward, as the US went to sleep and Europe began waking up. Rayman was winning in most of Europe, while Celeste held the lead in NA. Rayman began winning the hours from that point forward. It was a pretty slow progression at first and most of the board were asleep, but we began noticing slowly that the Rayman was putting together something. It had the time, but would it be enough when Celeste was winning in NA? Rayman certainly made the attempt. While the match was almost even for the two following hours after the biggest lead, Rayman cut off 100 votes the next hour. At this point, every awake had taken notice. Rayman continued to cut the lead of at a a good pace having broken the 100-vote lead nine hours into the match. Rayman began slowing down at that point. It continued to cut for a few more updates, but then Celeste began to stall. It would appear Rayman’s best hours were over despite Europe still waking up and NA still being asleep. The thing is, it was probably just close enough anywhere, so perhaps there was more to this match than geography. The match would stand completely still for a few hours and I don’t think there’s really any trends to use there, it just did. Votals are low enough for such to happen. Celeste attempted to get some of its lead back, but it wasn’t really allowed to get away. Eleven hours into the match would be when Rayman would begin the final strike. Right before NA would supposedly wake up and save Celeste. Rayman could the lead slowly and a bit more than hour later, Celeste managed a 2 vote lead before the change finally happened. Rayman was ahead. Slowly it began to build a lead that was over 60 by the time we entered the thirteenth hour. Then Celeste cut big time. NA had seemingly finally woken up and things could go Celeste’s way. It made sense that the morning vote began a bit later because the match was on a weekend after all. Celeste slowly got that away before we got into the best hours of the match. Celeste took the lead with a single vote. Then Rayman took it back only for Celeste to lead with a single vote again. Next update by 2 votes. It looked like anyone’s game. Celeste wasn’t able to run away with it. It had a lead in the 10s for a while, until Rayman swapped that around and did the same. At exactly 14 hours into the match, we’d get a tie. Celeste took the lead again after the tie. That would be the final time Celeste had the lead, but it was exciting for a while yet. Next update, it was Rayman’s turn to lead by a single vote. Then for a couple of hours Rayman would lead with about 20 to 30 votes. Rayman then attempted to build a lead bigger than that, but Celeste kept putting it back down to that point for a while. They would continue to make push each of them for the rest of the match, but Rayman’s pushes were just a bit better and so it ultimately won with about 200 votes. The upset ended up happening. Board 8 didn’t expect it and casuals didn’t expect it. No one cared much though. The winner would not make a real attempt at Pokemon HGSS, everyone knew that. It was just great to follow a match like that again. Two matches in round 1 so far, The Walking Dead vs. Bastion and Rocket League vs. Dragon Ball FighterZ had been exciting for a little while, but this was the first time the match was worth following almost the full day. It gave us some much-needed excitement. North America never really helped Celeste much, even though it won there. It looks like it needed to win bigger there to depend on it. Trends are a bit weird today and we have less of them, which makes it harder for a game to complete comebacks. There’s the power hour and there’s the time of the match where Europe dominates the vote. Those are the things we have today. Geography and our own taste. Rayman just seemed a little bit better overall. Perhaps it got the win on its more recognizable name that the character hasn’t gotten a chance to yet. Round 1 was notable for having indies exceed expectations. This match served as a nice foreshadowing for most of round 2 when it comes to indies. They usually underperformed relative to expectations. This match did a good job highlighting that a group of indies simply had gotten perfect matches to look better than they were, but it was mostly due to the other games. That was a sign of things to come. ## Safer777's Analysis Best match of Round 1! Yeah strange to say that, but it was. We had an indie game vs a non indie game. I don't know Celeste but it is a platform game with good story actually and people seem to like it. As for RL it is another platform game too so we have a fair match? Rayman was the mascot and the focus of Ubisoft before they became big with the Assassin's Creed series and they shifted focus there. Oh and also Rayman gave us Rabbids! You know the characters that EVERYONE loves? So for the match. As you can see the match was EXTREMELY close. Celeste was around 52.4 after the first 5 minutes and after 4 hours it was around 51.7. But no problem since it was winning in USA a lot. But it kept losing percentage and after about 13.5 hours RL got the lead. But then Celeste got it back. The games kept goint like that for a while and we had even a few ties. But then RL got the lead and we all say well USA is waking up and Celeste there wins by 53 so it would be over. But a curious thing happened. Even though the match ended and RL won Celeste's percentage in USA stayed at 53! So why this matters? Because most of the people that come on this site are Americans so the game/character that wins in USA wins the match. Sure we had a few cases where something won in USA and eventually lost the match but the percentage on USA was lower, like 51. Not 53 like here. I can't explain it. I guess RL won in the States that have the most people or something? Anyways very good match. Oh and also the whole Crew got the match wrong as most of the site it seems. And it made sense. Even though RL is from a series that most have heard, Ubisoft doesn't care for that anymore. So we all backed Celeste. Eh still at least we got a good match so that is fine. ## Tsunami's Analysis FINALLY! FINALLY! FINALLY! Yes, it really needs that many finally's. A lot of trends were broken in this match, saving Round 1 from being complete and utter monotony. Celeste jumped out of the gate on fire; the earliest update on our vote tracker had it receiving 16 of the first 18 votes. Of course, there are a bunch of registered users who make a contest of getting the first vote, so it's probably fewer votes than that. It was a bit wobbly after that until Celeste spiked back-to-back update wins of 52 and 56 near the end of the first hour. From there, though neither side could put together more than 5 straight update wins (and Celeste had managed that feat *before* it hit the two big ones, all of which amounted to a smaller lead than either of those two updates alone), Celeste slowly built up a lead, peaking at 333 at 1:10 AM, about five hours in. At 3:30 AM, however, it was Rayman Legends that broke that trend, winning its sixth consecutive update and pushing the deficit under 200. Celeste promptly won the next update, but then Rayman rattled off a string of seven, then a string of five shortly thereafter. By 5:10, the lead had dwindled all the way to 65 votes--but then Celeste reversed the trend. At 6:20, Celeste was coming off its sixth straight update win and had climbed back to 123 votes ahead (hey, we're still talking about this contest's crappy vote totals; large swings in updates late in matches just don't happen, except sometimes in the big blowouts where the leader can still put up decent net positives). The next update was a stall...and then Rayman started chipping away again. At 7:15, however, chipping was no longer enough; Rayman spiked a 29-vote swing to cut its deficit to 66. At 8:20, Rayman took its first lead of the match. It was short-lived. Celeste retook the lead a mere 10 minutes later as part of winning 6 of the next 7 updates after falling behind. At 9:35, the poll read 50%-50%, with Celeste clinging to a 1-vote lead. And again at 9:45, after it responded to Rayman's +9 with a +9 of its own, constituting two more lead changes. It then got a bunch more little wins to pad its lead all the way up to...18. At 10:25, however, Rayman spiked another +22, flipping a double-digit deficit into a double-digit lead. And again Celeste fought back, bringing it to a dead tie at 11:00 AM and winning the next update by 11. So of course Rayman Legends wins the next update by *12*. Lead changes 6 and 7 in rapid succession. And that was all the lead changes we had, though it took until the final four hours or so for Rayman to really start breaking away. In the end, it was a 217-vote margin and a percentage of 50.45%-49.55%. The Gurus were really tripped up by this, with a correct percentage of 27.46%, but at 37.67% the casuals weren't much better. And in addition to this being our first match that was honestly intriguing for quite some time, it marked the first match where the registered and unregistered voters disagreed. Celeste polled at 50.37% with registered voters and 47.51% with unregistered voters. Oh, hey, that means the unregistered voters actually flipped a match! Bravo for them, I guess. It's a 1-point match anyway as neither of these games stood a chance against HGSS. I honestly thought this was the first appearance by anything Rayman in any of the contests. Courtesy of the wiki, however, I learned that Rayman the character has in fact been in two contests, though one of them was the bloated 2013 contest and his seeding was below the line where he'd have made a 128-character bracket (yes, even when you account for the 8-seeds being taken up by Board 8 rallies without regard to where they ought to have been seeded.) He didn't make it to Round 2 in either, though he at least managed to beat out Commander Video in 2013. Honestly I'm not surprised; even among forgotten platformer stars, Rayman feels irrelevant. What an amazing match though! I normally try to do the entirety of a day's matches at the same time, but my hands are already getting sore (admittedly, I'd already spent quite a bit of time on the computer today before writing these) so I'd probably end up half-assing the next two matches' write-ups if I tried to do them now. Let *that* be a testament to how good, and how *necessary*, this match was! We were just one day away from the highlight of Round 1 being a troll claiming he was going to start a rally before a match even started and votals for the day in question being *down* from the previous two while the game in question actually trailed after an hour but still won. Most matches could be called right at the freeze; only a couple of others even had any lead changes at all but that had been the only one where it took over an hour for the winner to take the lead for good. A match that stayed inside of 51-49 for the final 16 hours and 45 minutes was a godsend. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7976&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=62) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Divinity: Original Sin II vs (10)Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft 2020 _source: (7)Divinity: Original Sin II vs (10)Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft 2020 (revid 86553)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 11, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 63 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 11, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Divinity: Original Sin II - 64.98% 54 for - 5 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Divinity: Original Sin II - 58.63% - **User Votes:** Divinity: Original Sin II - 5971 Hearthstone - 2636 - **Anonymous Votes:** Divinity: Original Sin II - 4887 Hearthstone - 2214 I'm not going to lie. I was low key worried Hearthstone might win this match because of this poll: In that poll, the original Divinity only beat Hearthstone by 350 votes despite Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft both having representation in that poll. I thought a straight 1v1 match with all the side stuff removed could give Hearthstone a chance, regardless of what the stats say in 2015. Thankfully, Divinity saved this contest and all of our lives by having none of it. I don't know what these Divinity games even are, but I bought Original Sin 2 and I will love every second of it on general principle. The reason for this is because Hearthstone is, with no debate whatsoever, the worst game ever made under any medium. Ever. It's so bad that there is practically no second place. If you want an esoteric analysis of Blizzard themselves, it's all right here: No need to go on another rant to rehash it all, and Blizzard screws up so routinely that I've been able to update that page every month with new information. You want Blitzchung, Warcraft 3 Reforged, and the entire Hong Kong debacle? It's all in there. Among much, much more. I'll stick to Hearthstone alone in this one, and I noticed that a lot of people don't know what Hearthstone is or why people hate it so much. Allow me to explain. Hearthstone pretends to be a card game. You get a mana crystal each turn, and you use that mana to play cards. Some cards are minions. Some are spells. You play cards, bash minions into each other, and eventually one hero's life goes to zero. That's how the game is advertised. What Hearthstone *actually* is is the very essence of what's discussed in this video: It's the very essence of U.S. Patent \#9,789,406: Hearthstone is in no way a video game, because *all* player skill is removed from ever factoring into any result. The only thing that ever affects any result in Hearthstone is RNG, and that is manipulated to encourage microtransactions and addictive player behavior. No decision you make ever matters in what happens on screen. No result is ever honest. It's a card game with every single skill option removed. All matchups are random, all draws are random, most of the targeting is random, a lot of the damage is random, the card generation effects are random, the discovery is random, and *all results* are random. All of it. That, by itself, makes it the worst game ever made, because in every other game ever made, actions taken by the player has *some* effect on the result. Not in Hearthstone. Every game plays out like those European board games where players are playing against the game itself, not against each other, and at any point the game can just tell anyone "you lose". The fact that anyone on this planet defends this garbage is beyond me, but they exist. On top of that, it's a card game that pretends to be competitive while offering zero skill options. There are no sideboards, no rematches, no card bans, no class ladder bans, no tournaments, nothing. Just RNG and nothing else. *Every other game ever made* is better than this on that fact alone, and there is no defending it. If you across someone who thinks player skill is in any way relevant in Hearthstone, you are dealing with a complete and total idiot. I would rather spend time with *anyone else* over someone who thinks Hearthstone is skill-based, because the game is factually not skill-based. Period. "But Ulti!" a defender of this trash will exclaim, "At the highest level every decision matters and blah blah reeeeeeeeeeee!" Fuck off. Hearthstone is not skill-based and it's specifically designed not to be. End of story. Go away. Original Sin 2 is in the mail en route to my route as I type this all up. I for one cannot wait for it to get here. I will play it, I will love it, and I will cherish it for preventing the worst game ever made under any medium from winning a contest match. ## Ctes's Analysis This was another one of the matches where it was discussed whether that the winner might be the weakest game to make round 2, although the winner was never really in doubt. Heartstone was in the 2015 contest and finished dead last in the x-stats after managing to get no more than 8.97% against Ocarina of Time, which is not exactly the game to receive the least number of anti-votes. Hearthstone is just that bad. It’s not our type of game and we don’t like Blizzard much anymore. We expected it to do very bad today. Divinity: Original Sin II was also a game we had just about no expectations for. It’s a PC game first and foremost, which is a bad thing here. It also focused a lot on its multiplayer experience, which likewise isn’t what you want to be here. Hearthstone reappeared after finishing dead last and yet we didn’t believe Divinity could pull off the doubling on average. That says a lot about how little we thought of it. Hearthstone would end up still being the worst of anything that appeared in the 2015 bracket, but it didn’t quite end up on the bottom this time, which makes sense, it’s a much weaker field. It’s seemingly casual bait to some extent judging from the prediction percentage. They both were a little better than expected, but mostly Divinity. It didn’t really change anything, because the winner today was clear and Divinity was never going to beat Automata. ## Safer777's Analysis Here we have DOS 2 which is maybe the best RPG that came out in the last 10 years. It is turn based and there are many customizations options, dialogue choices, combo moves, loot, so many stuff to do that seriously you can do anything. You hear that in many games but DOS 2 really does that. I do believe it is the only game that you can trully kill everyone on the map and still complete it. Sure you will lose most of the quests but the option is there. Just buy it if you like RPG's especially turn based ones. You can even change difficulty on the fly if you have problems plus there is a Magic Mirror on your base that you can change EVERYTHING for your characters except genders. So no problems if you think you made a wrong build or something. Money is somewhat tough to find but you can steal from everyone with a dedicated thief build. Which you can change any time anyways! Plus we got the the Definite Edition which adds even more stuff and it is all for all consoles so you don't have any excuse to not play it. On the other hand we have Hearthstone which is a card game. Card games are slightly liked better than gatcha games on this site so there. HS had been in the previous game contest which got owned easily so I guess almost every game could beat it here. So for the match. Well DOS 2 won easily. And it did really good. As I said we don't really play games like DOS 2 here which is a shame. Also forgot to mention something DOS 2 is an indie game! Okay mostly. The first game got made via Kickstarter. And also you do know how many microtransactions does DOS 2 has? Zero. Strange how the big companies say that the current model of making full games and selling them is unsustainable which a few years ago it was, you know, the NORMAL thing to do? But not anymore. Yeah money is good but make a good game at least first? Still nice win for DOS 2. The correct prediction percentage was kinda low too. I guess people went with the game that they have heard about? I had played Hearstone for a while too and to tell the truth to do good you have to buy cards with real money. Sure someone may say that you don't need to do that, BUT you have to play like the whole thing to get resources to get cards for free. Who has so much time for that to play a free card game? So yeah people just buy the cards. Gatcha game it is, so it does makes sense. ## Tsunami's Analysis Hearthstone was easily the weakest game in the X-Stats in 2015, certainly unadjusted and probably adjusted too. (The unadjusted X-Stats are mostly worthless because Undertale scored its largest blowout in the final against OoT. I feel like that definitely says *something* about Undertale, given that Link very nearly managed to stop Draven anyway, but I'm not sure what. But they can still be useful for comparing games that were on the same sides of the bracket.) Divinity was therefore expected to win easily, and it did just that. Some people were a bit surprised at *how* easily it did so, however, given its weak showing in the only other poll it had been in, but we all know that non-contest PotD results, even from GotY, are often suspect when used to predict contest matches. Nevertheless, this was the match where it was theorized that 2017 had actually been a stealth monster of a year and that there had been a number of games, Divinity: Original Sin II among them, that had flown under the radar because their only prior appearance in a poll was a poor showing in that year's GotY. People started talking about how 2017 would've done in the Years Contest. The thing is, it probably still wouldn't have done that well. There was a running joke about "just pick the closest year to 1998", except it wasn't a joke at all; if you actually made your bracket that way and picked correctly on all the "coin flips", you'd have a grand total of *two *wrong picks, though one of them would have been on a semifinal match so you'd still be far from perfect. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7977&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=63) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (2)NieR: Automata vs (15)Bayonetta 2 2020 _source: (2)NieR: Automata vs (15)Bayonetta 2 2020 (revid 86554)_ ## Results **Round One** Saturday, April 11, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 64 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 11, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** NieR: Automata - 63.85% 58 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** NieR: Automata - 81.32% - **User Votes:** NieR: Automata - 5922 Bayonetta 2 - 2684 - **Anonymous Votes:** NieR: Automata - 4784 Bayonetta 2 - 2316 The Bayonetta games got screwed this contest. Bayonetta 1 drew a Zelda game, and Bayonetta 2 was a Wii U exclusive for some dumb reason. It also ran into the worst possible opponent it could have seen. I know other games would have beaten Bayonetta 2 worse than Nier did here, but come on. This is what Bayonetta is known for: This is what 2B is known for: Of course Bayonetta 2 was going to lose. This match is the contest version of a once beautiful girl pushing 40 and now having to watch the pretty new 20-something steal all of her shine. Let this be a lesson, ladies. Don't spend your 20s whoring around. Us men have every advantage in dating after 30, because we have nothing but time. You don't ;) By the way, this is no defense of 2B or that freakshow fanbase. Just wait until we get to the Pokemon HGSS match, my gosh. I always enjoy when round one ends on a dud match, because I like doing a small retrospective here. Round 1 of this contest was garbage. An 11, a 13, and a 14 seed won. There were no other major seeding upsets and less than five matches out of the 64 were good. The matches would get better later, but round one was blowout city. People also *massively* overhyped all of these indie games. Some absurd number like 95 of them made the field, but only Hollow Knight, Bastion, Minecraft, Shovel Knight, Cuphead, Ori and the Blind Forest, and Stardew Valley won their matches. Seven sounds like a big number, but not when there are 64 games in round 2. Only one of these games would end up in round 3 and that required a developer rally, too. I have no problem with indie games, but the hype around them is just ridiculous. Star of the Round had to be Mario Odyssey or Xenoblade Chronicles. Those two meant business. Turd of the Round goes to Dragon Age: Inquisition and Hearthstone. Inquisition wasn't the biggest black eye of the entire contest like Fire Emblem was, but in round one it qualifies. Hearthstone was given a fairly winnable match and performed like the trash it is. On to round 2! ## Ctes's Analysis The final match of round 1 came down to a seemingly good-looking victory for NieR: Automata against yet another game screwed by bracket placement, Bayonetta 2. Automata was talked about quite a bit pre-contest. It looked alright considering its competition in the Game of the Year polls of 2017 and 2B made the latest character battle as a \#1 seed, showing that there’s definitely a fanbase here, even though she didn’t have the strength you expect of a \#1 seed. Automata had a match against Pokemon HGSS on the horizon. While Pokemon was the favorite, Automata was a popular upset pick. Bayonetta 2 did make our previous contest losing to Read Dead Redemption rather easily. Since then, however, Bayonetta was revealed as the final DLC character of Smash 4 and returned to Ultimate along with everyone else. Furthermore, both games have been ported to Switch, which the second one in particular needed to be. It was expected to be decent now, but it’s low seeding gave it a completely unwinnable match. Interestingly, despite the first one failing to make the previous contest, it was seeded a lot higher now, but they were both screwed by bracket placement. The oracles didn’t expect Automata to pull off a doubling, so it overperformed a bit. This made the people that picked Automata for round 3 happy, although the Pokemon match didn’t really teach us anything about what it was against. Automata would end up not looking as good in the next round though and would fail to make the upset, so what happened here then? The most popular idea is that Automata SFF’d Bayonetta 2. MechanicalWall was trying to put forth the idea already at the time of this match, but almost no one believed it at the time. Impressive seemingly being right about that from the beginning. I don’t think it’s obvious. The games are made by the same company, which has some rather passionate fans. They play similarly too. Those were the main ideas behind it, but I think it was reasonable to assume otherwise despite of it. Across all our contests, we have basically no evidence of previous SFF between things from different consoles from different companies. Different consoles is one thing if it’s a N64 game SFFing a Gamecube game or something like that, but a PS4/XBONE/PC game SFFing a Wii U / Switch game? That was hard to believe by many, myself included, and I don’t think you can blame us. But full credit where its due for sticking to it from the beginning. That explains why Automata looked so much better today than in the following rounds. The other possibility is that Bayonetta 2 simply didn’t boost the way we thought. That seems weird all things considered, but we also saw Tropical Freeze looking really bad despite getting that dreamy Switch release, so perhaps it’s possible? Mario Kart 8 being as good as it did is a point against it, although that game sold so insanely many copies on Switch that it might just have broken through to the boost regardless, or maybe people just see Mario Kart something and think that they know what that series is. Development of Bayonetta 3 is apparently happening, but that’s really all we know of it, which might not be too good for the series. A while ago it was including at the end of a direct where everything they had was a line confirming it’s still going on. Perhaps that’s a point against it. Finally, Bayonetta appearing in Smash likely did more for the character than the games, if it helped the games at all. That one at least seems likely to be. It’s just to say that we might simply have misjudged how good Bayonetta 2 actually is. I believe in the SFF idea the most though. It’s a shame it couldn’t get a slightly higher seed and make for some interesting matches somewhere else in the bracket. It’s actually the type of lower seeded game a bunch of round 1 matches were missing. If Bayonetta 3 is out the next time a games contest happens, then we’ll probably see at least one of them again, so let’s pray they get a better chance then. ## Safer777's Analysis You gotta feel sorry with the Bayonetta franchise here. Both games had so much bad seeding matches! If you could switch some seedings from the other divisions they both could win at least a match. As for the NieR franchise it got REALLY popular with the NieR Automata game. Before that barely anyone has heard of it because it is a spin off from the Drakengard series which even fewer people have heard of it. So why this NA game did that good? I have played it and the gameplay isn't anything special. So why? Because the art and the story are really good. Sure you do control androids and you fight machines but they ask philosophical questions like what is human, what is an android, what is a machine, does anything matter? I mean the main characters who are 3 of them know they are just advanced machines and their purpose is to die fighthing the machines and they know it they still have complicated personalities. Same with the machines. Sure most seem like the berserk type but there are others who just like to live in peace. But how are these things happening since all these things are just created, not born naturally? These things you do wonder along with the other characters. I mean others think only the missions, others want other stuff, others want both and you even find a pair of Androids, one is male and one is female who love each other and just want to leave everything behind and just have each other which is impossible since they are both advanced machines but they don't seem to mind that. So yeah you do wonder and make you think deeply. I mean even the Pods, which are just flying analyzing machines that you always have around and help in combat too have their unique personalities and they do wonder about stuff too! Plus the main character of NA is 2B which became famous of her sexuality. I mean she wears stockings a and a real low skirt which you can even remove so you can see all her glory. Okay she actually wears somekind of 1 piece cloth but still you can see her ass since it barely covers anything down there but hey I am okay with that! So yeah it is a weird game but weird in a good way. So for the match. As I said both Bayo games have some power and could win matches but they got strong opponents. So did NA did good? Yeah it did. More than a doubling and even though Bayo 2 is weaker from Bayo 1 due to beeing a Wii exclusive game, I count it as a good result. ## Tsunami's Analysis Both of these games were clearly going to be far weaker than their TJF-packing protagonists, although there was reason to think Automata might not be as weak as the original Nier presumably would be. I say presumably because we've never seen it in a Games Contest! It's actually recent enough that it would've been in this GotD, not the last one, and normally the instinct is that the first game in the series is always the strongest but Automata was far more successful commercially so it probably is stronger. Nier the character was weak in his only outing in the Character Battle but he was being SFFed by Riku. Then again, that kind of says everything, doesn't it? In fact, if you tried to use past results without understanding what they actually mean, there's a *direct* route you could've taken to getting this match horribly wrong: Riku beat Nier in 2013; Bayonetta beat Riku in 2017; sequels are always weaker than the originals; therefore there's no way that a Nier game could beat a Bayonetta game. The only question left is just how much weaker than the multi-platform original the Wii U-exclusive Bayonetta 2 is. Because this is GameFAQs, where Link Always Wins, and yet Nier: Automata won more convincingly here than ***2013 Game of the Year*** The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds did against the first Bayonetta. Even if being a handheld game is always a negative here unless you're Pokémon, I find it hard to believe that Nier: Automata would challenge ALBW. (Granted, it wasn't *that* much more convincingly, so the two Bayonetta games would have to be pretty *close* in strength for Nier: Automata to actually win.) Either that, or the "2017 factor" is stronger than we thought. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7978&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=64) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (8)Halo: Reach 2020 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (8)Halo: Reach 2020 (revid 86555)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, April 12, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 65 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 12, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 80.43% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 90.96% - **User Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 7768 Halo: Reach - 1415 - **Anonymous Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 6775 Halo: Reach - 1149 Zelda scoring an absurd blowout in round one was predictable. Doing the same in round 2 is some pretty rarified air. Since lists are fun, here is everything that's broken 80% in the first two rounds. -Mega Man in Summer 2002 over Ms. Pac-Man and Serious Sam. The blue bomber broke 90% twice, which is a record that is never getting matched. -Link in Summer 2003 over AiAi and Fox. -Sephiroth in 2003 over Raziel and Max Payne. -Zelda 1 in Spring 2004 over Adventure and Donkey Kong. -Final Fantasy 7 in Spring 2004 over Suikoden 2 and Xenogears. -Link in Summer 2004 over CATS and Ganondorf. -Cloud in Summer 2004 over Duke Nukem and Vyse. -Samus in Summer 2004 over Lara Croft and Sam Fisher. (God the Summer 2004 Contest sucked.) -Mario in Summer 2005 over Joanna Dark and Ness. -Zelda over Civilization and Mega Man X in the series contest. This one broke 80% in round 3 against Metroid, too. -Mario over Madden and Warcraft in the series contest. -Mario and Bowser over Earthworm Jim/Slug and Ike/Black Knight in that godawful rivalry rumble. -Link and Ganondorf over Arthas/Illidan and Amaterasu/Orochi in the rivalry rumble. -Chrono Trigger over Ratchet & Clank 3 and Dragon Quest 8 in Fall 2015. -1998 isn't in this club, technically, because it broke 80% in rounds 1 and 3 over 1993 and 2003. In round 2, it did not break 80% on 1992. Just typing this sentence is ridiculous because that contest was awful. That's the entire list, and it gets far more exclusive once we discuss round 3. It's pretty rarified air to get 80% twice in a row, and almost impossible to do it three times in a row. We all expected Zelda to go crazy here, but not *this* crazy. The oracle consensus undershot this match by 4%, and who can blame them? 85% in round 2 is insane, and this match really brought home how dominant a favorite Breath of the Wild was. It was around here where people realized that even a CD Projekt Red rally in the final might not slow this thing down at all. Halo pulled off a cute win in round 1, but that's all it was. Nice to know you, bro. We've compared Zelda to a lot of things over the years -- my favorite comparison is the New England Patriots, because beating them feels like divine intervention -- but I found the best comparison yet. I finally got around to watching No Country For Old Men, and Zelda in these contests is Anton Chigurh -- a dominant, cold, ruthless killer that just does *not* care about anything other than the mission. You never really get the better of Zelda. You can only delay the inevitable if you're in the crosshairs. But Zelda is a fair assassin. It's not undefeated. It just *feels* undefeated. "Call it." ## Ctes's Analysis This is an insane score to get in round 2. Breath of the Wild had absolutely no need to prove itself and yet it completely destroyed its competition once again by almost as much. I was tempted to fear Breath of the Wild was good enough to just slaughter whatever it came across, but that’s obviously not the case. It’s insane to keep doing this for a game that everyone with just the slightest bit of contest knowledge knew would be the winner. It also appeared that The Outer Worlds was fine and could’ve beaten something like Life is Strange too, but something had to get Breath of the Wild. Halo finished last in the x-stats of any game in round 2, so Breath of the Wild did have luck on its side looking good. Halo wasn’t really considered when figuring out what the weakest round 2 game might be. Halo: Reach is probably also yet another easy game to score a big blowout against just for being a Halo game. It could use its bracket votes and name to beat something like Life is Strange, but no one really cares about Halo anymore and Reach is a decade old already. I wonder if we’ll even see a Halo game next contest, but the original one might keep getting in on its name, I suppose. There’s a much bigger chance that fans of Life is Strange will keep getting that one back in again despite finishing so low in the x-stats twice, because that one actually has a small but very dedicated fanbase. I can’t remember seeing any Halo fans for a very long time, so if they’re still out there, they sure aren’t vocal about it. ## Safer777's Analysis Round 2 baby! And a huge win from BOTW. Now I did expected HR to break 20%. Sure we don't care about Halo anymore but still. But man BOTW did almost the same win percentage as it did in Round 1! After so many years and I still can't understand why people really like the Zelda games above all the rest so much. They are really good games yeah but man the story is almost always the same plus the personalities of the characters sucks. I mean the main guy doesn't even talk! And I can't think any other big franchise where the main character doesn't talk. And no Persona and Dragon Quest don't count since every game has different characters anyways there. You hear that people like good stories and characters but I guess since these series/characters are so old and they were that way from the start it doesn't really counts here. I guess though it is familiarity, I mean you buy a Zelda game, you know what to expect. Still people like their Nintendo on this site! So for the match. Well BOTW dominated. The crew had BOTW under 80% which I expected too but no, almost 85%. It seems the only thing that can beat a Zelda game is another Zelda game. Or a rally.  Man do you know that once upon a time Master Chief has reached a Semifinal match on a contest on our site without rallies? Yeah true story! Check it out! Now he would be lucky to reach Round 2! Man we really hate Halo now. Still a huge win for BOTW and well deserved. ## Tsunami's Analysis Breath of the Wild set a new contest high for votes received in a match, which is honestly kind of amazing given how lopsided so many Round 1 matches were. Then again, one of the truisms of the board is "there's rallying in every close match". This does indeed appear to be the first day to have over 26000 total votes, so there probably was some rallying going on, and since voters have to vote in all four matches (even though the totals never come out quite equal, because there is some way around that if you know what you're doing), it meant that Breath of the Wild got to pile on Halo: Reach even more. No one was complaining. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7979&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=65) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Final Fantasy XV vs (4)Hollow Knight 2020 _source: (5)Final Fantasy XV vs (4)Hollow Knight 2020 (revid 86556)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, April 12, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 66 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 12, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Final Fantasy XV - 54.84% 46 for - 7 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Final Fantasy XV - 51.64% - **User Votes:** Final Fantasy XV - 4679 Hollow Knight - 4505 - **Anonymous Votes:** Final Fantasy XV - 3906 Hollow Knight - 4013 For all the hype that indie games got in this contest, round 2 is where all but one of them fell flat on their face. With that said, Final Fantasy 15 got *incredibly* lucky in this contest and was spared a huge embarrassment. Hollow Knight is great and all, but how embarrassing would it have been for main line FF15 had it lost to freaking Hollow Knight? The reason FF15 got so lucky is because this match happened on April 12th. Final Fantasy 7 Remake released on April 10th. The contest got delayed twice, and FF7R's release date got delayed by a month from when it was initially supposed to come out. It took all those stars aligning at just the right time to get the Final Fantasy series just the right exposure to drag Final Fantasy 15 across the finish line, and even then it almost lost this match. I have zero doubts that FF15 loses fairly easily without the universe aligning in its favor. When this match started, FF15 had the slimmest of leads, likely due to bracket voting. When that wore off, Hollow Knight came storming back and looked like it was going to put this match away quickly. But its momentum died as quickly as it started, so FF15 was able to close things up fairly quickly. After the match was tied for a couple hours, FF15 started taking off, and most people assumed the match was over right then and there. By now, we all noticed the indie trend of hot starts cooling off quickly, so once Final Fantasy started climbing overnight we all figured it was over. Not necessarily true, though! Hollow Knight pulled off an incredible fight here thanks to, apparently, being one of the only indie games popular in Europe. I don't know what FF15 did to piss off our friends over the pond, but it wasn't good apparently. Hollow Knight kept this match in the 150-200 range for the entirety of the overnight period. It gave folks hope that a comeback could happen come morning, but it was not to be. FF15 ran away with this match during the morning vote, and built up a 400 vote lead at lunch. But before this match finally ended, Hollow Knight put up one final act of defiance. It spent the last 8 hours of this match refusing to lose, and though it was never a threat to actually come back and win, FF15's 400 vote lead got chopped all the way down to a 221 vote win. It was as respectable a loss as one could ever have in a contest, and I have zero doubts Hollow Knight wins this match without Final Fantasy 7 Remake coming out two days -- TWO DAYS!! -- before this match. On top of that, FF7R launched on a Friday and this match happened on a Sunday, so there may have even been a small weekend boost. Final Fantasy 15 had all those direct lucky advantages, and needed all of them to win this match. Just pretend FF7R comes out on March 3rd like it was supposed to. How much does Hollow Knight win this match by? 500 votes? Maybe more? Or just pretend this contest isn't delayed twice and this match happens three weeks prior. Hollow Knight probably wins. Those are the breaks though, and only one stat ever matters in sports. Scoreboard. For all that luck and all that effort in winning this match, this was Final Fantasy 15's reward. Have fun, bro. "I have never seen a more Pyrrhic victory than Final Fantasy XV in this match. What should've been a fairly easy victory ended up in the most painful win I've ever seen for a game. The fact that Final Fantasy VII Remake was released days before yet allowing Hollow Knight to defy indie trends speaks a lot at what strength you have and what people think of you. It's even more embarrassing when using the raw vote totals, as it showed FFXV winning by a single digit. Final Fantasy XV was the 2014 Brazil team in the World Cup -- absolutely shaky in its wins and then pummeled into the babies they were in the match where they lost. They have lived in infamy ever since." -Nintendogs ## Ctes's Analysis Round 2 started out with a big match that was basically just as big as the best match of round 1, that we just had a day ago. One day of round 2 was all that took. It was clearly more exciting now. Ironically, the two also follow very similar trends, but the opposite ended up happened. Final Fantasy ever struggling to make round 3 of any contest is not something you’d get anyone to believe when these contests began and the most recent Final Fantasy was still from the golden days. Of course, it helps that we’re in a contest where the good Final Fantasy games are ineligible, so we’ll probably not see the same thing repeated next games contest, but it’s still crazy. Final Fantasy XV might very well lose this one if not for the bracket votes, although Hollow Knight likely isn’t too far behind in prediction percentage. Almost everyone took Final Fantasy XV here without thinking much about it, but after a bunch of indie games exceeded our expectations after Hollow Knight was the first to do it, the upset was considering quite a bit more. Hollow Knight was believed a good contender to be the best indie game in the bracket. Its high seed supports this idea as well. I have seen the idea that Final Fantasy XV won the match because Final Fantasy VII: Remake had been out for only a few days when this match happened, but I’m not sure it matters that much. Fans of FF7 might just as well vote against FFXV. It wouldn’t surprise me at least. The match begin with Hollow Knight being a clear board favorite, but FFXV quickly took the lead and starting gaining slowly as the first minutes went by, but Hollow Knight wasn’t allowing it go get anywhere, using that great indie board vote, as it has been called. FFXV managed to hold the lead until the freeze. On one side, most indie games fell off after the early vote and Final Fantasy is known to do the opposite, but on the other hand, FFXV was expected to have the most bracket votes, so there was hope for both of them. The next update saw Hollow Knight make a small cut, still keeping the excitement high. Then FFXV fell off a major cliff to lose the lead. Hollow Knight would keep that momentum up and quickly build a lead up to 64 votes. It would seem like it used its fuel quickly though. FFXV removed most of that lead, bringing it down to 18 in two updates. The match would then stand still for a while, until FFXV began very slowly cutting the lead down until it was just a single vote away. Next update had FFXV take the lead with room to spare, as it got its best update in a while, but Hollow Knight would have none of that and instantly tied match. Hollow Knight would take the lead back, but instantly lost it again. FFXV would struggle to run away with it for bit, which included getting a one-vote lead as well. Hollow Knight would then randomly take the lead with a spike and would keep it for a few updates before FFXV would take the lead back with a similar spike. That was the final time Hollow Knight was in the lead, but it would be able before FFXV supporters to breathe out. FFXV would build upon its lead slowly, but because it was winning in NA and losing in most of Europe, people hoped Hollow Knight would do a similar comeback to what Rayman did yesterday. FFXV had built a lead of about 200 votes when the dead hours kicked in, Europe began to wake up and NA was away and true enough, Hollow Knight cut into that. Hollow Knight began cutting and moved FFXV down to about a 150-vote lead. It had a great spike, getting the lead down to almost 100, but FFXV instantly took it back and then the match stalled for hours. Hollow Knight couldn’t really make progress, but it did allow FFXV to never get away for real. Hollow Knight wasn’t doing as well in Europe as Rayman was and FFXV also had South America, which Celeste didn’t. Geography didn’t look to help out Hollow Knight any. The match was just really even. After a while FFXV would rise extremely slowly until it many hours later peaked at a lead of 400 votes before slowly going in the other direction again. Hollow Knight began making steady progress near the end but didn’t have time and lost by a bit more than 200 votes in the end. `It was a really good match, but it’s also a victim of our general lack of trends these days. Back in the day, we could’ve seen huge swings in each direction, but the swings we have now are mostly random and comes from the votals moving as slow as they do. For a match that felt back and forward a lot, it barely moved at all.` This match made it seem like Hollow Knight was indeed very strong, but the next rounds would show it simply had exceptional bracket placement as Breath of the Wild murders Final Fantasy XV and then calms a bit against the rest of its opponents. It’s probably the final time that happened though, and fellow indie game Bastion was already looking terrible at the time of this match. Final Fantasy XV was even weaker than we thought. It’s interesting that if Hollow Knight had pulled this off, we would have the first contest ever where there was no match between The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy. ## Safer777's Analysis Look at this percentage. This is a disgrace. Seriously. FF 15 barely won and it all thanks to FF7 Remake which came out a few days before this match so people go to various gaming sites to find info about the quests and such. If this match had happened like 2 weeks before FF7 Remake had come out HK would win no doubt about that. I do know that FF 15 wasn't exactly the super game that everyone expected since after 10 years you don't really care(except if it is FF7 Remake of course). I am a huge FF fan too and even I refuse to play FF 15. I just don't feel like it and plus it has like a bajillion DLC and you need to watch a movie to really understand what is going on. How is it possible that after 10 years they still weren't able to fully finish a game? Seriously. So for the match. After 5 minutes FF 15 was ahead by 53 so we all said fine. But after 20 minutes it was losing! After like 1 hour it got the lead but it never had above 51. So yeah. This is a disgrace as I said above. FF 15 lost a lot of hours to HK too. FF7 Remake to the rescue! Even the whole crew had FF 15 above 54 but yeah. Now I do believe there were 2 reasons this happened. FF 15 is weak and HK is strong. Or FF 15 is damn weak and HK is decent. Also the prediction percentage was low here. I mean half the people here didn't had FF 15 winning in Round 2? I mean I just don't get it. Maybe people really believed in HK or something. ## Tsunami's Analysis We'd nearly gone all of Round 1 without a single barnburner, and on day 1 of Round 2, it looked like the floodgates had opened after the final day of Round 1 broke the dam. Which I think is a mixed metaphor, maybe. They're both related to a lot of water all over the place. Final Fantasy XV won the board vote, which is hardly a very Final Fantasy thing to do, but it took only 15 minutes for Hollow Knight to take a lead. It held onto that for an hour and 15 minutes before FFXV took the lead for one update, and then the next update was a straight-up tie. Hollow Knight did swing out in front on the update after the tie, but FFXV was right back in the lead the following update. 15 minutes later, back to Hollow Knight; another 15 minutes, back to FFXV. At this point, we were 2 hours and 15 minutes into the match and had had six lead changes. And...we wouldn't get a seventh, though it was far from smooth sailing for FFXV. It briefly got its lead above 200 at 10 minutes to 1 AM, and a mere 45 minutes later, it was down to 118. 2 hours after that, it again got past the 200 mark, and *again *Hollow Knight immediately started cutting. And FFXV started fighting back; at one point, HK shaved off more than 50 votes in just 10 minutes and it took only 15 more minutes for FFXV to get its lead back to higher than it had been before those 10 minutes. At 5:05 AM, FFXV's lead breached the 200 mark again, at 215 and this time it stuck. *Really* stuck; for the entire hour after that, the lead never dropped below 213 nor exceeded 225. It crested at 232 at 6:20, then Hollow Knight managed to briefly get the lead under 200 at 7:30. As was the match's trend, this meant it was time for FFXV to gain momentum; by 7:45, it had a new largest lead, 238, though this was merely the beginning; by the time Hollow Knight next took an update, it was to reduce the lead from *298*, and FFXV breached the 300 mark not long thereafter. Another prolonged stall began until FFXV spiked a win of 23 at 9:40 to push the new high to 340, only for HK to spike a 27 ten minutes later. FFXV went on a push at 11 AM, winning an update by 32, and at 11:35 AM, its lead stood at 400 votes exactly. And that's where it peaked; HK started slowly battling back, but far too slowly; it wasn't until 6:30 PM, just 90 minuted from the end of the match, that the lead dipped below 300 again. HK would continue to make a late push to make the match look closer than it really was, but the match had been in stall for way too long. It was, however, the second straight day where the registered and unregistered voters disagreed on a match...but this time, the registered voter bonus made it look more lopsided, not less. FFXV won 4679-4505 with registered voters; Hollow Knight won 4013-3906 with unregistered. Put it all together, and the raw total was 8585-8518, a win of 67 votes. That would've made the all-time top 25! Wait...holy crap, even with the registered voter bonus, this still makes the 1v1-only Top 25! And, hold on, Rayman Legends \> Celeste was still a few votes closer... ...Oh. This is a sad day indeed. With these two back-to-back results, the legendary Mario \> Cloud upset from the first Character Battle has fallen off the top 25 list. It's kind of inevitable that all these legendary matches start falling off these lists, because the lower vote totals means close matches are numerically closer, but it's still sad to see. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7980&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=66) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Monster Hunter: World vs (6)Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice 2020 _source: (3)Monster Hunter: World vs (6)Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice 2020 (revid 86557)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, April 12, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 67 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 12, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Monster Hunter: World - 51.57% 35 for - 18 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Monster Hunter: World - 53.48% - **User Votes:** Monster Hunter: World - 5235 Sekiro - 3951 - **Anonymous Votes:** Monster Hunter: World - 4201 Sekiro - 3720 This match absolutely destroyed me on a personal level. In a contest where all of the Souls games -- even Nioh -- looked good, Sekiro is the one Souls-like that crapped the bed. I don't know why or how, either. Was it the "too hard" memes? Was it the lack of weapon options? I truly do not know, and I would love the opinion of anyone reading this who doesn't like the game to hit me up. This one has me stumped. The game has some issues, no doubt, but to fall this flat while *all* of the other Souls-likes did so well blows my mind. Not to keep plugging my reviews, but I think this will give you guys an idea of my love for the game: Yes, the camera work is a joke. Yes, the game is obnoxiously hard. Yes, the rope swing is effing goofy. So what? It makes the journey so rewarding, and it's what made this match so hard on me. Of all the Souls types to choke, it had to be Sekiro? By the way, none of this is a slight on what Monster Hunter World accomplished or the respect that it's earned. Did you guys know it has 16 million sales, which is almost a third of sales for that entire series? It deserved to make waves during its long-awaited contest debut, and make waves it did. Just not at Sekiro's expense. Jeez :( At least it was a 55-45 type loss to a very, very strong game, and in skipping ahead a little, maybe Sekiro didn't choke after all. Monster Hunter World would end up having a very respectable exit, and the game that beat it would itself have a *very* respectable exit. Here's hoping Sekiro just got unlucky instead of choking. I will say this. If any game needs to die and come back for our sakes, there isn't a better example. The code must indeed be determined by the individual, my friends. ## Ctes's Analysis This was a hotly debated match before the contest where a lot of people took the Sekiro upset because it looked to be pretty good in the Game of the Year polls. When round 1 happened, a lot of people agreed Monster Hunter: World looked better, since it was hard to think Ni no Kuni could be better than Bravely Default, but a third of the oracles still went with Sekiro today. You could argue that console games tend to do better than handheld games, so that Bravely Default wouldn’t be much better and you could argue that Sekiro had a worse opponent for it than Monster Hunter did, but you had to stretch things a little bit. Monster Hunter won pretty, but there was a bit of excitement in the first minutes. Monster Hunter burst ahead with the early bracket votes, but Sekiro quickly got very close. The were about dead even until the freeze happened where Monster Hunter was ahead by only 11 votes. Then it got one of the biggest jumps in percentage all contest by jumping more than 5% to lead with 110 and the match was over from there. Monster Hunter quickly went up. Sekiro got a final glimpse of hope when it after half an hour cut from 257 to 228, but it was just that one update where Monster Hunter fell off, it took it all back and a bit more next update and proceeded to quickly shoot for 1000 votes. It’s the first time Monster Hunter ever really looked that good in a contest and I think it’s part of the reason why many went with the Sekiro upset. I regret picking Sekiro more than most mistakes I made personally simply because I completely failed to realize what its opponent was. I knew it was a bigger Monster Hunter, but just how much bigger I forgot despite knowing it beforehand. This game isn’t just the biggest of franchise, it was huge and sold loads of copies. Most people never gave the winner of this match a chance in the coming round, but Monster Hunter would do so well that I felt it redeemed the Sekiro upset pick quite a bit. Sekiro would end up actually looking pretty good, it’s just that Monster Hunter also looked better than anticipated. It makes sense considering how the other games from FromSoftware (missed pun opportunity) ended up looking. That company is doing well in these contests. I think it’s worth having Sekiro back another time. Then more of us might just have played it to, it’s one of the newest games in the bracket and we tend to be slow at getting through such. ## Safer777's Analysis Another debated match here. Even the crew was split here. Both games did as expected in Round 1. I mean no matter which game you picked to win you would be correct because as I said they have similar strengths and did as expected in Round 1. So for the match. Well even though the match was really debated and we thought it would be close MHW won easy actually and even broke 55 too. So I wonder why. I do believe that we just like MHW better. That game had even an expansion and it was very well received too. So in the end both games did fine. Fine to see a MH game in Round 3! Also these matches are always nice because we don't really know who will win. So there you go. Also once again a prediction percentage in the middle. Also I believe that MHW is the best selling Capcom game of all time so yeah people really like this franchise it seems. ## Tsunami's Analysis The "Soulsborne" boost evidently doesn't extend to Sekiro, because this match was expected to be close and it wasn't close. Remember, this is the same series whose only previous outing involved being upset by Suikoden II. (Yeah, I know, not the same game.) More importantly, this is Capcom, whose last win in a debatable match was probably Mega Man \> Charizard in 2013. (Oh, right, the DMC5-DKCTF match in round 1. There was that.) The idea of MH:W actually being strong seems ludicrous, but here it was, reaching R3 and still being the favorite to do so. Well, at least it'd be facing something strong next round. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7981&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=67) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Bastion vs (2)Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age 2020 _source: (10)Bastion vs (2)Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age 2020 (revid 86558)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, April 12, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 68 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 12, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dragon Quest XI - 71.96% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dragon Quest XI - 64.99% - **User Votes:** Bastion - 2501 Dragon Quest XI - 6683 - **Anonymous Votes:** Bastion - 2378 Dragon Quest XI - 5543 As is very typical of seeded tournaments, entrants pulling off early round upsets usually get destroyed when they face legitimate competition. Bastion will be remembered for embarrassing The Walking Dead in round one, but that's all it managed to pull off in this contest. Well, unless you count rolling over and helping make Dragon Quest 11 look like a shitkicking badass. Dragon Quest 11 is clearly on a higher level than anything else in that series, and it proved its round 1 domination was no SFF fluke over some nothing burger Board 8 hype machine. Scoring 72% in round 2 is legit, regardless of competition, and this match was a huge eye-opener for how legit the game was. I think the reasons for the resurgence in Dragon Quest love are obvious enough. For starters, Hero got into Smash Bros. Ultimate and made a *lot* of waves in that game, both good and bad. So much so that it's too much to list in an unrelated PCA writeup. The series had respect long before 11 came out, but 11 is just a different animal. It's universally loved, has over 5 million in sales, and is on the Switch, Playstation 4, 3DS, and even Steam. The "universally loved" bit cannot be understated, either. People *love* this game, and that's how you end up scoring 72% in round 2 over a Bastion, a game that's universally loved in its own right. No disrespect to Bastion here, but DQ11 is many, many cuts above it. Spoilers, DQ11 would end up facing Zelda and getting into the top 20 of the x-stats anyway. Think of how crazy that is when Zelda was sticking 80% beatdowns on fools. ## Ctes's Analysis Despite Bastion pulling off a big upset the round before this, people had concluded that older indie games weren’t all too good and so not much was expected of Bastion today. We all knew that The Walking Dead was simply that bad and Bastion was lucky to draw it. Dragon Quest XI got almost exactly the percentage of the oracle consensus, so this match got by far the least attention today for being the only one that gave us pretty much nothing to talk about, but good job board 8! It’s ironic that no one was comparing Dragon Quest XI to Monster Hunter: World when that match would be closer that the heavily talked about Monster Hunter vs. Sekiro. The fourpack next to this one was simply better than anticipated. Today we had the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games in the bracket competing at the same time. I know there is another mainline Final Fantasy in the contest, but it’s quite different from our usual big ones. While FFXV undoubtfully had a better opponent, it’s weird to see the Dragon Quest game being so much better. Who would’ve thought we would see the day? The have been around for so long, both series and it has never been close. Final Fantasy was always the bigger name. It still is, but today it’s because of its history. Dragon Quest is so far ahead in recent years. Bastion would end up being one of the weaker round 2 entries and it’s likely the only time we’ll ever see it in a contest, so it’s great that its one appearance gave us an enjoyable match. ## Safer777's Analysis Even though the previous match was really debatable and you could even had doubts for FF 15's match this one was set in stone. Bastion suprised everyone with one of the lowest predictions in this contest for Round 1 but that was it. DQ 11 is damn popular. The best DQ game ever, the one with the most sales ever and the one where the main character came into Smash Ultimate! And his name is Hero. Yeah plain name but it says all you need to know. As a huge DQ fan I do agree that DQ 11 is damn excellent. Sure as old school as it gets but that is a good thing. Hey if it works, don't fix it right? So for the match. Well people expected DQ 11 to win with around 70 and it did just that! So yeah. Nice showing and it seems it is a lock for the division finals too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Still nothing to see here. DQ11's path was pretty much set in stone from the start: Win three matches, then get beat pretty hard by BotW. Nothing seemed to indicate that this won't still be the case. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7982&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=68) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mass Effect 2 vs (8)Fallout 4 2020 _source: (1)Mass Effect 2 vs (8)Fallout 4 2020 (revid 86559)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, April 13, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 69 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 13, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mass Effect 2 - 57.34% 55 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mass Effect 2 - 58.29% - **User Votes:** Mass Effect 2 - 6106 Fallout 4 - 2941 - **Anonymous Votes:** Mass Effect 2 - 6386 Fallout 4 - 3332 There was a lot of concern for Mass Effect 2 in this division after its horrendous performance in round 1. Unfair 16 seed or not, Resident Evil 7 scored 37% on this game. Any 16 seed doing that is cause for alarm. We know now how grossly mis-seeded RE7 was, but at the time there was a lot of fear for Mass Effect 2's future. Was the game going to be punished due to Electronic Arts being a corrupt garbage can? There was fear it could even lose to Fallout 4 here, and even the oracle folks, arguably the smartest prognosticators we have on all of Board 8, only picked Mass Effect 2 to win this with consensus of 57%. Only a fourth of them picked it to break 60% in this match. Turns out that fear was completely misguided, and Mass Effect 2 would come out in round 2 and just beat the piss out of Fallout 4 for 24 straight hours. At a glance this doesn't look like the most impressive of wins, but for those reading this reads down the line out of context, remember what was going on here. Mass Effect as a series was deader than dead, because of the internet hating 3 and Andromeda. EA didn't help matters, either. It had just gotten 63% against a 16 seed, and people were worried it was done for in this division, because a bunch of other games broke 80% in round 1. So of course Mass Effect 2 beats Fallout 4 *worse* than it did a 16 seed. This was super impressive, and it was the win people have been asking for from Mass Effect 2 for a full decade in these contests. It was a win so strong that people invoked those three beautiful letters -- SFF. When that gets busted out, you've done something special. And make no mistake, given the circumstances this was a special, special performance. Let's not forget that Fallout 4 once got 45% on Witcher 3 in a Game of the Year final poll. Let's also not forget that Fallout 3 was a \#1 overall seed and make the semifinal in the last Game of the Decade contest, including wins over Halo and Metroid Prime, before getting over 45% on Brawl. It also had a 6800 vote lead on Undertale in round 2 in 2015. These Fallout games are legit, and Mass Effect 2 went full Rick James on it. Yeah, so all that consternation about Mass Effect 2 losing this division was greatly exaggerated, though not unfounded. EA completely and thoroughly ruined the reputation of that series, so the thought that Mass Effect 2 might be punished was not impossible. Thankfully ME2 was spared all that, and retained its rightful spot as the divisional favorite. What *did* get punished for the sins of the father was Fallout 4. Series fans already didn't like that game and blamed it for the series falling off, going so far as to call New Vegas the "real Fallout 4", but Bethesda has become such a stain on gaming that everything associated with it is screwed. They are so incapable of being complete and total shitstains that they waited over a month after launch to put Denuvo on the PC version of Doom Eternal. Bethesda, seriously, go fuck off. You legitimately ruin everything you touch. ## Ctes's Analysis Today was a very exciting day because people felt like each game had a chance in all four matches, which never happens. Now hold that thought and look at this result. Fallout 4 got killed completely. It’s hilarious when matches fool us like this. I was over 8% away in my oracle prediction and I was still closer than the consensus. Almost no one actually thought Mass Effect 2 would drop the match, but we sure didn’t think it’d look good doing this after its previous match. Resident Evil 7 was instantly redeemed of course and it’s yet another point in the bag for 2017. It’s one of the two contenders for most underseeded game in the bracket, only rivaled by Mario Kart 8. We didn’t fully know that yet, but it was already clear that it was in large scale. Mass Effect 2 was thought to have a really hard time winning division after last round, but now it looked like it could still do that. If the Bloodborne rally had any effect on this match it was actually in favor of Fallout 4, because Mass Effect 2 dropped as the day went on, but it should be mentioned that Bethesda games usually rises as the day goes by, so this was likely mostly unaffected. No oracles took the Fallout 4 upset, but I’m willing to bet someone would have tried the upset if we hadn’t gotten the idea that indie games from the early part of the decade weren’t very good, which made VVVVVV’s big loss look less impressive. Mass Effect 2 would still have been the favorite, but it would’ve been by a bit less. Part of the reason that no one took it is probably also that it’s hard to pick Bethesda games in a debatable match, especially the ones from Fallout 4 onwards. It had quite the backlash and it shows today. Remember when Fallout 3 got to the semi-finals last contest? That sure was a hard fall. ## Safer777's Analysis So this match was debatable and the Crew was split too. Wait really? I mean you couldn't ask for a more easy match. Sure ME Andromeda put ME franchise on ice with how poor it was received but still everyone says that the game isn't that bad actually. I have played all ME games and yeah the game wasn't that bad. Plus nice to see a whole different galaxy although we will never see how things will end. As for Fallout 4? Almost everyone doesn't like it as much as the previous games. Especially with the paid mods. You know mods that we always had for free now we have to pay for them. Seriously? Also better not talk about Fallout 76. EVERYONE hates it. Sure people play it but then again people play anything. Even gatcha games. Before F76 came out people were saying\. After F76 came out people are saying\ So yeah. So for the match. ME 2 won with a doubling. Pretty easy. I mean as I said it is almost impossible to find someone that puts F4 above F3 or FNV. ME2 on the other hand is still pretty strong and in the top 3 space games ever. So yeah. ## Tsunami's Analysis Well obviously Mass Effect 2's going to win; a weaker Mass Effect game than 2 did better against Undertale than a stronger Fallout game than 4. But seriously, this was a good showing for Mass Effect 2, the type of performance it needs if it wants to stand a chance at breaking 40% against Breath of the Wild in Round 5. (It probably won't do it, but it looks like it can avoid the doubling.) Round 4 opponent? No, there's no cause for concern there, don't be silly. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7983&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=69) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Borderlands 2 vs (4)Horizon Zero Dawn 2020 _source: (5)Borderlands 2 vs (4)Horizon Zero Dawn 2020 (revid 86561)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, April 13, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 70 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 13, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Horizon Zero Dawn - 53.55% 41 for - 14 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Horizon Zero Dawn - 28.65% - **User Votes:** Borderlands 2 - 4106 Horizon Zero Dawn - 4939 - **Anonymous Votes:** Borderlands 2 - 4278 Horizon Zero Dawn - 5442 I love you Nick, but I can't support your love for Borderlands at all. They might be fine games for all I know or care. Not the point. I resisted mentioning this one during the round 1 writeups, because we have to save *some* material for later, so let's just do it now. I will never support or defend a single game on that list until Randy Pitchford is gone. Fuck that dude and everything he stands for. It's called voting with your dollars. Coming into this contest, I figured the crazy success of Borderlands 3 would help Borderlands 2 win two matches. It's not like Aloy set the world on fire last character battle, either, so I figured Horizon was incredibly niche and had no chance here. It was a logical conclusion. Then mid-contest, the news hit about what an indefensible piece of trash Randy Pitchford is. Long story short, I said screw my bracket and pulled as hard for Horizon as I've ever pulled for anything in any contest match we've ever had. Yes it was a longshot upset, but there is no planet where Borderlands deserves to win a damn thing anymore. Thankfully, the match was never in doubt. Borderlands tripped off the blocks, and though it got back into it at the freeze, the first update buried the game for good en route to Horizon Zero Dawn boat racing this poll. It slowly rose in percentage all match long from being tied at the freeze, to ultimately scoring a 55-45 blowout that was never that close. First off, congrats to Horizon for finally getting some fair time to shine. It had never made *any* poll before this contest, so we had no real idea what to expect. The game is *fantastic*, and Aloy losing to an Overwatch character made me sick two years ago. Not only was this match a wonderful bit of justice, but Horizon's performance in this might convince some more people to try it. It's a total win-win! This is also when we started to realize what a monster 2017 was in this contest. I don't want to steal MechanicalWall's thunder, since he's doing an analysis of specific years, but the very short version is that 2017 was just nuts in this contest. Notable releases that year were Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Persona 5, Divinity: Contest Savior 2, NieR: Automata, and.... Horizon Zero Dawn. It's not something that was lost on people as this contest moved forward, but more importantly, Randy Pitchford and Gearbox Software can go piss off. No offense to anyone who likes Borderlands, this has nothing to do with you at all, but this match was *justice*. ## Ctes's Analysis Borderlands 2 becomes the first of the Game of the Year winners in the contest to lose, although another one of them would fall tomorrow due to severe bad bracket placement. Final Fantasy XV almost did yesterday but managed to hang on. Borderlands 2 was the most popular choice for the weakest of the winners as it had an easy year to get title. The second place from 2012 would redeem that year as much as it could, however. Borderlands 2 was not expected to be as good as it was in 2015 and it lost to Earthbound easily back then. It hasn’t aged all too well, the humor isn’t as appreciated anymore, and the franchise didn’t really keep the level up. Despite all of that, Borderlands 2 was the favorite today. Lots of people took Horizon Zero Dawn in the upset, but we generally underestimated that game by a bit. It was completely overshadowed by being released right before Breath of the Wild and while it was still critically acclaimed, it seemed most people forgot about it quickly again. Well, at least you don’t forget it when it’s right there in the voting form. Horizon won this match easily. It won the early board vote big time, then Borderlands 2 looked to take the match when the freeze happened, but Horizon went up big time next update and never looked back. Then the Bloodborne rally happened and boosted Horizon a little bit more than already. It’s weird that Horizon wasn’t favored here to me. Look at the Game of the Year polls. Horizon isn’t too far behind Persona 5 and beats NieR: Automata, which we had great expectations for. I suppose people just thought people stopped caring very quickly. Or perhaps Aloy being trash in the previous character battle was what did it. The most cookie guru bracket this year was Master Moltar, who made just a single upset. This was the one, so he eliminated the guru cookie today on the first day of eliminations. Considering the Board8BOP user was on the leaderboard until the second semi-final and finished seventh on the second chance leaderboard, it’s pretty cool that the cookie died this fast, even if it really takes nothing to do it. ## Safer777's Analysis This match I was shocked by the result. I mean HZD is an exclusive game and Borderlands series is the one that made the looter shooter genre famous. We even had B3 coming out a few months ago too and it was very well received. HZD hasn't anything new in years. So yeah I thought pretty easy match. But no. So for the match. Well HZD won with relative easy. But why? I am not sure myself and I don't understand. Is it because the game is better? You can't really compare them though. Is it more popular? Once again I say no. So why this happened? I guess here in Gamefaqs we don't like Borderlands series even though we had B2 as our GOTY the year it came out. You heard me right. We had B2 as our GOTY! Things change eh? Still I have played both games and both are excellent in their own way. B2 for the loot and the wacky world and HZD for the story and the amazing world. The prediction percentage was extremely low too so I am not the only one that got this thingy wrong. ## Tsunami's Analysis When HZD scored a massive blowout of Fortnite, we all just chalked it up to Fortnite being antivoted to kingdom come. After this win, on the other hand, it looks legit. The Gurus were fairly split on this one, though they ultimately favored Borderlands 2; by the time Oracle came around, however, they were leaning towards HZD, likely as a result of BL2's Round 1 performance. With the casuals? Your guess is as good as mine who the favorite was. Technically speaking, more brackets picked HZD to win in this round than to lose in it, but the group that picked HZD to lose *last* round had the heavy plurality, 43.13% to 28.65% to 28.22%. Which means the favorite was *probably* Borderlands 2, which had an 80.77% prediction percentage in Round 1, but it's quite likely that "Horizon Zero Dawn-Fortnite winner" was favored over Borderlands 2 and certainly at least a *chance* that Fortnite could even be the favorite despite not being the favorite last round if enough of its R1 pickers were expecting it to be RallyFEAR and picked it to go deep. At any rate, this was a solid win for Horizon Zero Dawn. Its goal right now? Try to put up a better percentage on ME2 than its Round 4 opponent will. Prior to this round, I'd have called that impossible, but it just put up over 55% on presumably a stronger opponent than either of them faced, and neither of them broke 58%. Borderlands 2 (2015g) VS Fire Emblem: Awakening (2015g) Borderlands 2 has a strength of 21.33. Fire Emblem: Awakening has a strength of 22.89. Fire Emblem: Awakening wins with 53.41% of the vote!  A win of 4,149 with 60,875 total votes cast. ...Oh. Never mind then. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7984&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=70) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Resident Evil 2 vs (6)DOOM 2020 _source: (3)Resident Evil 2 vs (6)DOOM 2020 (revid 86562)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, April 13, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 71 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 13, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Resident Evil 2 - 55.69% 52 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Resident Evil 2 - 64.72% - **User Votes:** Resident Evil 2 - 5405 DOOM - 3641 - **Anonymous Votes:** Resident Evil 2 - 5202 DOOM - 4517 The fact that a game with questionable qualifications for this contest almost got to beat three of my all-time favorite games right in a row makes it really, really hard to like Resident Evil 2 moving forward, but at least the game was a full remake instead of something truly dumb going on this run. I probably would have lost my mind if this was something truly dumb like Ocarina of Time 3D; at least Resident Evil 2 was a new game of sorts. Granted, Doom also cheated with its name. I can't deny it. I've mentioned this before, but enough with games within the same series having the *exact* same name. It is so stupid. I debated this match for quite a long time in my bracket, and settled on Resident Evil 2 winning for a few reasons. First and most importantly, this is not a web site that has ever cared about FPS games. Doom is very popular on this site, but FPS by and large is very hard to have faith in in any debated match. Secondly, "Resident Evil 2" is a former contest champion. I don't say that ironically, either. 1998 dominated Best Year in Gaming that nothing held it under 66% for that entire contest. If you've never looked this up, check out how laughably, absurdly stacked that year was in gaming: We can joke all day long about Turok 2, Oddworld, and NFL Blitz being contest champions, but that stuff is the truth. When people see "Resident Evil 2" on their screen, it's going to get nostalgia votes from being from 1998. Third, any boost from Doom Eternal was going to be offset by Resident Evil 3's remake coming out mid-contest. It launched on April 3rd. This match took place on April 13th. That's just way too much for Doom to overcome, which is why I ultimately settled on Mass Effect 2 \> Resident Evil 2 deciding this division. It *killed* me to pick against Doom here, but it was a relief to see that this match was never close. Had I picked Doom and it won some legendary duel, I would have never forgiven myself. As-is, I and.... 140 out of 142 gurus simply made the obvious call. Doom was never going to make a match out of this, and the blowout was so decisive that you could take all of the advantages away from Resident Evil 2 and it likely wins anyway. Remove the RE3 Remake release date, change RE2's name to "Resident Evil 2: Remake", and release Doom Eternal on the day of the match itself and Resident Evil 2 likely still wins in the 55-45 range. It was a dominant performance by Resident Evil 2, and set it squarely as the favorite next match. ## Ctes's Analysis This match wasn’t really in doubt before the contest where all but two gurus picked Resident Evil 2 and didn’t think more about it, but DOOM delivered such an insane percentage in round 1 that made people have second thoughts. Most people still went ahead with Resident Evil 2, since it also did really well in round 1, but a few people took DOOM and there were more people that considered it. In the end we overestimated DOOM quite a bit. It turns out INSIDE was just extremely weak and from this point forward it was in clear contention for being the weakest game in the bracket, a title it eventually won, even in the adjusted x-stats. DOOM was actually doing a little bit worse than this before the Bloodborne rallies hit and boosted it. The match was never really in doubt. Perhaps a Bethesda backlash did something here, but I find that doubtful because Fallout: New Vegas didn’t look to be affected any and DOOM is also only published by them. We saw Fallout 4 get destroyed at the same time as this match, clearly that’s where the damage was done. DOOM could use its name to go really high on INSIDE in round 1 because no one knows that game, but against a Resident Evil game, that would not be as helpful. DOOM might’ve made for a better match elsewhere, but at least it made us doubt a match that we shouldn’t have doubted by going so high in round 1. Doom Eternal coming out right before the contest began might’ve helped it a little bit, so Resident Evil 2 was looking really good here. Resident Evil 7 also looked really good from this day forward, another good thing for Resident Evil 2 supporters. It was not expected by many to have problems before the division finals before the contest and it was probably the favorite to win it at this point, at least it was after round 1. Though now Bloodborne showed itself capable of successful rallying in a match it already won, so Resident Evil 2 would need its a-game to get through then. ## Safer777's Analysis Hey battle of the reboots/remakes/games that have the same title as their predecessors? Seriously companies change the titles! Remind me of Rambo movies where the 4th Rambo movie is called... Rambo! So when people talk about Rambo you have to ask if they mean the first movie or the 4th movie even though the 1st movie had another title but EVERYONE just calls it Rambo. Ahem. This match was debatable because both games did good in Round 1. Also they both had sequels that came out on contest season so more power to them. So for the match. Once again the Crew was split. That is 2 splits on the same day! In 1st round both games faced really weak opponents and did similar percentages. So I believe that RE 2 won because RE 3 came out recently plus we don't like FPS here. Still nice match. These matches that are debatable are always nice to see them. The prediction percentage was high too so few were fooled. ## Tsunami's Analysis Huh, maybe DOOM's blowout of INSIDE *wasn't* just INSIDE being piss-weak? Not to say that it isn't, but apparently DOOM has some real strength. Or RE2 isn't as strong as it seems. Still, 57.57% is not a great score for Resident Evil 2; according to the 2009 X-Stats, RE2 should get 66.28%. That may or may not have been an excuse to put "according to the 2009 X-Stats" into a write-up about a contest that only covers games released between 2010 and 2019. I was planning on using the 2004 X-Stats, but apparently RE2 didn't make that contest. I guess first entry syndrome won out there; I always thought RE2 was better regarded than RE1, but RE1's the only one that made it in '04. Granted, '04's nomination process was awful and resulted in a bunch of games from obscure systems getting in. Also, unlike RE2, the "DOOM" in this contest is not a straight-up remake of the first game in the series. It's a brand new game, and was actually *called *"Doom 4" when it was first announced. So that makes the stat especially meaningless...except this is OldFAQs, where "pick the year closest to 1998" is a valid strategy. Resident Evil 2, the original one, *is* a 1998 video game. Wouldn't you expect it to get even *higher* on 2016's "Doom 4" than 1993's "Doom"? Also, holy crap that is legitimately 21 years between original and remake. That's long enough to be "excusable". It's really been that long since the fifth generation, huh? And yet we're still technically considered to be in the eighth generation, even though we all know that since the Wii U is an eighth generation console, the Switch kind of has to be a ninth generation console by default. It'll probably be reclassified as a 9th gen console once the PS5 and XBSX come out later this year. The Switch has officially succeeded the 3DS, also an eighth-generation system, as well as the Wii U. Even more evidence that the 9th generation is already well underway. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7985&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=71) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Fire Emblem: Awakening vs (2)Bloodborne 2020 _source: (7)Fire Emblem: Awakening vs (2)Bloodborne 2020 (revid 88236)_ ## Results **Round Two** Monday, April 13, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 72 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 13, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Bloodborne - 52.97% 40 for - 15 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Bloodborne - 48.94% - **User Votes:** Fire Emblem: Awakening - 4117 Bloodborne - 4929 - **Anonymous Votes:** Fire Emblem: Awakening - 3476 Bloodborne - 6243 There were some very small rallies in this contest before this match happened, most notably during Celeste v Rayman and Hollow Knight v FF15, but this was the first match where there was a noticeable rally that made a serious difference in the match. The funniest part is Bloodborne probably would have won this match anyway, which is a reminder of this hilarity: That was a 55-45 match leading into the morning vote, and Melee was never in *any* danger of losing. Didn't matter. The fanbase went NO SIR NOT WINNING BY ENOUGH and rallied the troops to a 60-40 beating. It was a sign of things to come, though at the time we didn't think much of it. We just kind of laughed at the tourneycrabs and Reddit dorks for rallying the game in a match it was guaranteed to never truly be threatened in. The same thing happened here with Awakening vs Bloodborne, though some may argue Awakening was an actual threat to win the match. We'll never know either way. After Awakening won the board vote, Bloodborne stormed back to back the lead before the freeze. Typically when something storms back pre-freeze, they're a lock to win the match. Typically. There are exceptions, but it's not the norm. After a few updates where Bloodborne struggled to pull away, the fans took action and got the rally threads started on the Bloodborne subreddit. This allowed Bloodborne to go on a crazy pace in the match, because rally threads were up for the entire thing. This turned a potential 53-47 type match into a 58-42 beating where Fire Emblem never stood a chance. I don't think Awakening had much of a shot either way, but it *really* had no shot once rallying took off and Awakening wasn't able to keep up. I was one of the dopes that picked Awakening to win this match, because I didn't think the Souls clan would go up much from the 2015 numbers. "Whoops." But I wasn't mad or anything, because remember, Bloodborne is my favorite game in this bracket. Not Doom, Skyrim, Mass Effect 2, or Smash Ultimate. Bloodborne. I say screw the bracket, Bloodborne deserves all the shine this match helped give it. I can tell you all from personal experience there was an uptick in online activity during and after this match happened, too. This game got a lot of love because of this contest, and to that I say *good*. It deserves every ounce of love that us fans give it \<3 It also turns out that much like Melee five years ago, that first rally was a sign. It also meant that Fire Emblem was halfway ready to become turd of the contest. Seriously, what is up with that series constantly being overhyped, overvalued, and underdelivering in every single contest? We'll talk more about this when we get to Three Houses puking all over itself like some loser alcoholic, but Fire Emblem losing early in these things is getting ridiculous. This match set up one hell of a hyped up clash between Resident Evil 2 and Bloodborne, and the obvious fear was whether or not rallies would decide things. Only time would tell! This match *also* started up the trend of rally threads popping up all over Reddit during these matches, and yes I'm proud to have made and boosted a bunch of them myself. See I'm not a part of the anti-fun brigade that hangs out in the increasingly exclusionary Board 8 Discord for 16 hours a day pretending to be cool as my testosterone slowly drops to a level that makes reproduction impossible. Men are made in the gym and in the real world, not in chat rooms. Deal with it, losers. ## Ctes's Analysis This match was another one that had the gurus almost equally split, but Fire Emblem: Awakening was the favorite before the contest began. After round 1 happened, it did not look as good at all and Bloodborne suddenly became the favorite. You had to believe Call of Duty: Black Ops was really bad to keep your faith in Awakening high. Especially because Three Houses didn’t look spectacular in round 1 either. While believing Black Ops is as bad as possible these days is pretty reasonable, Awakening was never really in this match. Fire Emblem was a very easy target this contest. Both games didn’t get as far as the majority of the board thought and with what people think is too much Smash appearance, the series hasn’t really been as well looked at as it used to before it truly became mainstream. It seems however like Awakening wasn’t actually any worse than in 2015. The difference is at least minimal. I’m sure most people thought Awakening was better than Bloodborne in 2015 here and didn’t see that change with a big new Fire Emblem recently out, and while that looked stupid today, perhaps that wasn’t all wrong. It’s Bloodborne that has risen a great amount. It was new back in 2015 and hadn’t truly found its ground yet, but the Soulsborne games have established themselves as some of the best this previous decade has to offer and they’re some of the first things you think of when you think of what game of the decade was. Bloodborne hasn’t quite achieved the status Dark Souls has, but that’s because Dark Souls came first. It seems pretty clear to me that Bloodborne is mostly preferred by the people that play all the Soulsborne games. This all redeems Awakening supports a bit I think, but good call to those that expected the Bloodborne rise. The match wasn’t ever really in doubt. Awakening won the board vote but lost the lead before the freeze and Bloodborne never really looked back. The Soulsborne games haven’t had good board votes at any point and we love Fire Emblem here, so it’s to be expected. Worth noting is that Awakening was a bit above 45% for a while until a Bloodborne rally kicked in. It was pretty clearly the most successful rally of the contest so far and pushed Bloodborne up to where it was now and also clearly affected the other matches going on. Being capable of brining an effective rally to the table even when ahead suddenly made it very possible that Bloodborne could go further than round 3. The Bloodborne fans are very passionate about their game! It’s not the first time we’ve seen a game needlessly rallying when already winning a match. The rally topic was put up right away, but it didn’t gain traction until later in the match. Super Smash Bros. Melee is known for doing this back in 2015 against Pokemon Gold and Silver. Melee went on to kill GameFAQs favorite Chrono Trigger with its rallying powers, which frustrated the board a lot since Chrono Trigger looked good enough to beat Ocarina of Time that year. Melee would then continue to rally past Final Fantasy VII before losing a battle of rallies against Undertale. That did not make it very popular with our board, as it took away a bunch of matches we looked forward to and trivialized them instead. You can see where I’m going with this. Bloodborne took villain status in the eyes of many and feared to win matches it wasn’t supposed to because of it, though it wasn’t nearly big enough for anyone to fear it would get past Breath of the Wild should it get that far. ## Safer777's Analysis When I was making my bracket I didn't even thought about that. Easy FE victory. We are talking about FE series which is a core Nintendo franchise, has like 10 characters in Smash AND it was the game that saved the FE series. On the other hand we had one of these get good games which are damn hard AND it is a PS4 exlusive too! Sure FEA was on a portable console but still. Also this is the first match on this contest where we had a successful rally! Yeah it finally happened! It was for Bloodborne and it brought around 1500 extra votes. But as you can see Bloodborne would have won without this rally too. Yeah Bloodborne is legit and I was wrong it seems. So for the match. I am not sure why Bloodborne won. Are these kind of games that popular here? Sure we are on a gaming site and we are hardcore I guess but still? I mean FEA? The game that saved...yeah you know. So not sure. I don't think anyone knows for sure. I guess people just don't like the FE franchise as I thought. What else could it be? Maybe people really like the get good games a lot? ## Tsunami's Analysis Oh, hey, something that the lol X-Stats wouldn't have predicted! Two write-ups ago, I said that Borderlands 2 was presumed to be a stronger opponent than either RE2 or Bloodborne faced, then looked up the X-Stats for Borderlands 2-FE:A and found that according to 2015, that wasn't the case. Only problem is, the 2015 X-Stats not only have FE:A ahead of Bloodborne, but they also have Borderlands 2 ahead of Bloodborne! Narrowly, of course; something like winning with 50.21%. Apparently FE:A's a *lot* weaker than it was in 2015, which kind of makes sense because the backlash against FE:A from the hardcore series fans only got worse when the next game was everything wrong with *Awakening* turned up to 11. It's funny; Awakening was meant to be a big series of shoutouts to the entire series thus far, and then Fates ended up just being one long ode to Awakening, except it was far worse than Awakening ever was because the mechanics that made sense in Awakening were just kind of bolted onto Fates for the sake of keeping them. About the most encouraging thing about the series is that Echoes was still fairly loyal to Gaiden, because Genealogy is next up to get a remake and even though that's the game that Awakening was referencing with the child mechanic, it could get really ugly if they try to make it too much like Awakening/Fates. Oh, right, Bloodborne. There's absolutely no good way to determine the strength of any of these games; it seems that the Undertale Effect was a lot harder to untangle than we thought. Still, Bloodborne put up a better percentage on FE:A than RE2 did on Doom. If we take that underperformance as a sign that contrary to popular belief, the RE2 remake *isn't* as strong as the original, well, RE2 isn't even projected to break 56% on Bloodborne by the 2015 X-Stats. The turnaround it made on FE:A, it's by enough that it should be able to get past RE2 as well. Remind me again where all these games actually were in 2015's bracket? Okay, RE2 was on the opposite side from the rest of them, so its numbers are filtered through two Undertale matches including the final. And Bloodborne is stuck behind a bunch of SFF matches--it was in the division that had a ALTTP-MM final for the right to lose to OoT the next round. Yeah, these numbers are useless. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7986&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=72) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (8)The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds 2020 _source: (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (8)The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds 2020 (revid 86564)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, April 14, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 73 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 66.70% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 74.96% - **User Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 6093 Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 3288 - **Anonymous Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 5521 Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 3356 Go back to my Zelda/Bayonetta writeup from round 1. I was pretty upset over that entire match, but Bayonetta being wasted was only half of it. I'm also upset that Link Between Worlds was wasted this contest on such a predictable path, because that game deserved far better. The case can be made that it's the best Zelda game in the entire series, specifically because of how the MP works. There is no stock on your items, and the MP recharges over time. The game actively encourages you to go nuts using your items, which is something that was sorely missing in the Zelda series until this game came along. The Link's Awakening remake for the Switch is actually the game I'm playing currently, and the item stock thing is just beyond old. I really hope that moving forward, Zelda games adopt the recharging MP model. That wasn't the only reason the game was amazing, either. It has the best use for the 3D function on the entire 3DS, some of the best dungeon design in the entire series (if not the best outright), and some *incredible* map design and puzzles involving the switch between light world and dark world. The game's title is apt, and it does such an unbelievable job with it. If you guys haven't played that game, you need to. That's why it sucked watching the game be an 8 seed and get fed to Smash Ultimate so early. Trust me, I have no hate toward Ultimate and I enjoyed seeing a Zelda game get destroyed as much as anyone, but it deserved to go an extra round or two first. By the way, it is incredibly rare for a Zelda game to get utterly destroyed like this in a contest poll. "How rare is it?", I can hear people asking. Sounds like it's time for another PCA List™! Here is a list of the worst 1v1 losses Zelda has had in contests. I'm only bringing up 1v1 because there are some incredibly strange results from the LOL 4ways: Oops. Not counting the bonus poll from this year, no Zelda game has ever finished below 40% in any 1v1 contest poll. Ever. It's never happened to Link, either. What's even more hilarious about this run of domination is that Zelda's contest history includes a poll that happened between Ocarina of Time and Link to the Past in 2015. One might assume an SFF beating, but no. Link to the Past scored 40.1%: As annoying as Link Between Worlds' path was in this contest, it was simultaneously fascinating to see a Zelda game get utterly aethered like this. Enjoy this one while you can, because you might never see it again. It took 18 years of contests to see Link or one of his games finish below 40%, though I suspect Skyward Sword, Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, or Minish Cap could potentially fall that low if they ever got into one of these things. It was a very, very good showing by Smash, although Mario Odyssey would once again one-up it. ## Ctes's Analysis A Link Between Worlds becomes the second of the competing Game of the Year winner to exit competition. It did however lose to another Game of the Year winner, so there was no way around one of them going out today. ALBW is really one of the most screwed games in the bracket when it comes to bracket placement. The adjusted x-stats showed it in fifteenth, so not only did it exit perhaps two rounds earlier than it deserved, it also didn’t get to have the least bit interesting match, not only getting one of the best games in the bracket, but getting one that likely SFF’d it a lot. I know we don’t want to have Zelda games destroying the bracket, but there were only two of them anyways and ALBW wouldn’t have been too dominant. I’m sure it just didn’t get the nominations it needed to get higher, but there’s only one other \#1 seed that’d suck more to put it against. After it was snubbed in 2015, we might have finally got a real read on it, but no. It likely won’t be coming back either, because the console Zelda will have priority in future nomination periods. This was its best chance. A Link Between Worlds is a fantastic game. I know it didn’t win the prize anywhere else that it did here and many believe The Last of Us should have won back then. In any case, ALBW was really good and did a lot of things every Zelda fan missed. Being the handheld game after Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks is easy, but more people seemed more positive towards it upon any other release since perhaps Ocarina of Time. Twilight Princess, Wind Waker and even Majora’s Mask had people a bit more split upon release. Hell, even Breath of the Wild, which largely overshadowed it, had people more split. Breath of the Wild even got all the credit for being nonlinear, but ALBW was that too! It deserves a bit more praise than what we’re giving it at the end of the decade. It’s hard to tell how much SFF there is here, but if you believe there is a lot, then Ultimate once again doesn’t look as good as Super Mario Odyssey does. It’s tough to truly determine anything because usually Zelda is before Smash Bros in the Nintendo hierarchy. If you believe the same here happened today, then it looks extremely good, but that’s unlikely. The hierarchy is more a rule of thumb when it comes to the games, it doesn’t apply for every single entry obviously. Exactly where A Link Between Worlds stood today also wasn’t too apparent, so this round wasn’t very good for comparing Ultimate and Odyssey. ## Safer777's Analysis So maybe the 2nd strongest game here again a Portable Zelda game. Yeah no need to analyze stuff much right? I will say one thing only. This match is the biggest loss for a Zelda game ever! History here people! Seriously even in SFF matches no Zelda game ever had finished under 40% but LBW finished with around 36% as you can see! Man people really don't like portable games. Unless they are Pokemon games I guess? This match will always be remembered as the worst defeat for a Zelda game ever so it will be mentioned a lot in the future! So for the match. Obviously Smash would win. BUT the crew overestimated Smash. Most had it above 70%. I mean yeah it is Smash VS one of the weakest Zelda games here, but it still is a Zelda game! So yeah even when Zelda games/characters lose they still overperform! Typical Zelda dominance! ## Tsunami's Analysis Pretty standard SFF match here. ALBW did well to avoid the doubling. It was pointed out that SSBU has more Links in it than ALBW has, so yeah, not even the LAW was going to help it here. It was a shame that two GotY winners had to face each other so early in the contest, but at least the 2013 winner could take solace in the fact that the 2012 and 2014 winners were out of the contest, too. In fact, the 2014 winner had never been in it to begin with. That was the year that Smash 4 came out, and being a Smash game is basically an instant win button in GotY [oh hey Melee what are you doing there.](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/776-best-of-2001-overall-game-of-the-year) Most of the individual consoles' polls in 2001 only got their winner into the final poll, but for some reason the top three finishers in the PS2 poll all made the final poll, and finished 1-2-4. Melee lost to freaking *GTA3*. Weren't we supposed to be NintendoFAQs, not SonyFAQs? And yet Brawl, 4, and Ultimate all won their years. 4 did it so convincingly that they stopped at just the one final poll! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7987&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=73) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Marvel's Spider-Man vs (4)Minecraft 2020 _source: (5)Marvel's Spider-Man vs (4)Minecraft 2020 (revid 86565)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, April 14, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 74 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Spider-Man - 61.68% 50 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Spider-Man - 31.61% - **User Votes:** Spider-Man - 5431 Minecraft - 3949 - **Anonymous Votes:** Spider-Man - 5074 Minecraft - 3806 It blows me away that only 31.61% of people predicted Spiderman to win twice, while 82% of gurus got this right. Casuals get a few matches over on us each contest, but by and large we are much, much better than they are at all this. Either casuals had zero faith in Spiderman being a beast this contest, or they fell for the trap of thinking Minecraft or Dota 2 would win here via rallies. Leon4 has mentioned this a bunch of times, including currently where there are debates taking place over x-stats adjustments, but the disrespect for Spiderman before, during, and especially *after* this contest was insane. First off, Spiderman holds the record for fastest-selling first party exclusive on the Playstation 4. In the first three days of release, the game sold 3.3 million copies and had a PS4 bundle going on. The current sales data is a bit screwey, but estimates have it between 14 and 15 million. Those are some serious numbers, and to put that initial 3.3 million in perspective, the movie Spiderman Homecoming made 117 million dollars in its opening weekend. Far From Home opened on a Tuesday and made 185 million in its opening 6 day weekend. The PS4 Spiderman game that people keep trying to downplay for whatever reason made 198 million dollars in its first three days. Assuming the low estimate of 14 million in sales, it's made 840 million dollars. That is a seriously legit video game, and it's right up this site's alley. It's not the typical casualbait garbage like Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto, my friends. This is Spiderman.... you know, something us nerds should love. I don't quite understand the downplay here. By the way, this also shows how respectable Minecraft's exit was. 42% on Spiderman is no joke, especially given the numbers I just went over. If that game could ever rally its community to a poll for these contests, it would swamp everything. I think its players are too busy using quarantine time to try building Planet Earth to scale to really care, though. ## Ctes's Analysis This is probably the match that makes it so difficult for our board to accept Marvel’s Spider-Man is just really good. We have no faith in Minecraft being worth anything and we weren’t very openminded to Spider-Man being that either. Spider-Man had a really successful launch and we’ve shown to really like the similar Batman games in the past, so I’m not sure why it was that difficult to believe. Also, remember that Spider-Man was doing a few percentages better before all the rallying in the Octopath Traveler vs. Shovel Knight match happened. Both parties seem to prefer Minecraft in this match. The prediction percentage is really low. That’s what happens when you share a fourpack with both Minecraft and Dota 2, I suppose! Minecraft is not exactly the type of game that tends to do well here. It’s not one of our typically liked genres, a lot of its playerbase is younger than us, and why would you need to go to a FAQ site for it. It seems like obvious casual bait that isn’t worth much when it comes down to it. It also finished very low in the 2015 x-stats after losing to Halo, which went on to get killed by Final Fantasy VII. It was however brought up before that perhaps Minecraft was a bit undervalued in the 2015 x-stats because of the Halo vs. Final Fantasy VII match, as perhaps FFVII is a really bad opponent for Halo. This contest makes it seem like there might be some truth to the theory. I also just think we tend to group Minecraft too much with usual casual bait like GTA, Fortnite, Dota, WoW etc. Unlike all of those, it’s not really as disliked by anyone as it used be. We might not care for it much, but most of the hate movement against it has died down and everyone knows what it is. Furthermore, it’s huge enough that even a great part of our site has probably tried it out. Finally, it’s a Game of the Decade contest. Minecraft might boost a bit from that, because it’s one of the biggest games of all time and most sites mention it when discussing Game of the Decade. Minecraft will probably make it in again and be casual bait once more but still not get very far again, but it’s worth seeing it back I think, and it can win matches against the right games. ## Safer777's Analysis So most just picked MSM and it makes sense. Minecraft is the biggest game in the world and the game with the most sales ever and it is out for barely 10 years. BUT it is too casual for this site so yeah it never stood a chance without a rally of some kind. Well it can beat a lot of games here for sure but nothing major. So for the match. Of course MSM won BUT the crew overestimated it. Everyone had it above 60 yet it finished lower than that. So I guess it is a sign of MSM beeing weak because let's be real I don't think we really care for this game here. It just faced an easy opponent and it won. Or maybe Minecraft is legit and I am stupid. In every other site pretty sure Minecraft would win I do believe. Also if we ever have another character contest let's just have any character. I mean we have a Spider Man game and a Batman game who both did good in this contest but Spider Man and Batman are not eligible for character contests. Why? Just put everyone there and see what happens! Pretty sure almost everyone here wants that too! ## Tsunami's Analysis So about that assertion that Minecraft is weak...ah, wait, we don't have any gauge on Spider-Man. Let's try that again. So about that assertion that licensed games are weak... 57.65% may not seem terribly impressive for this tournament, but it is a round 2 match, and more importantly...Minecraft's not weak. Back in 2015, it got 43.28% on *Halo*. Not a Halo sequel; the original Halo. Yes, Halo is known for being a disappointment in contests, but it is still a big-name franchise and this is the first game in the series we're talking about. And Spider-Man did better against Minecraft than Halo did. Yeah, this was a match in which both games looked good. Minecraft was able to easily cruise past the percentage predicted for it by the Oracles, but Spider-Man still gets to say it beat a game harder than *Halo* did. Win-win! Except for the casuals; it's pretty clear by the prediction percentage that they thought Minecraft would win this outright. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7988&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=74) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (14)Octopath Traveler vs (6)Shovel Knight 2020 _source: (14)Octopath Traveler vs (6)Shovel Knight 2020 (revid 86566)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, April 14, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 75 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Shovel Knight - 57.85% 47 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Shovel Knight - 18.86% - **User Votes:** Octopath Traveler - 4623 Shovel Knight - 4759 - **Anonymous Votes:** Octopath Traveler - 4481 Shovel Knight - 4402 Either this match or Resident Evil 2 vs Bloodborne was the best match of the entire contest, and both of them had everything one could ask for from a contest match -- high stakes, lots of F5 moments, controversy, arguments, whining, the whole nine. We'll get to the latter match when the time comes, because this writeup is about Shovel Knight shocking the world. 18.86% prediction percentage in round 2, folks! Coming into this match, none of the hype at all was in Shovel Knight's corner. Octopath Traveler had ridden a wave of Undertale anti-votes right into the second round, and given the second match was against Shovel Knight, people figured Octopath Traveler would ride the momentum all the way through this match. I saw quite a lot of Board 8 users talking about how they would vote Octopath purely as a thank you vote for beating Undertale in round 1. This isn't unusual for games scoring upset wins, but a lot of people are still sore over Undertale winning the contest five years ago, which frankly speaks to how amazing Undertale's run truly was but I digress! Given how important the Undertale run was in 2015 and how important that round 1 upset was, it was only natural for Octopath Traveler to have football-like momentum on its side. All Shovel Knight had done leading up to this match was a bunch of bad showings in Game of the Year polls, a loss to Captain Toad, and beating a game in Dragon's Dogma that no one cares about. Of course the board was going to root for Octopath Traveler. I should note here that I picked Shovel Knight \> Octopath Traveler \> Undertale in my bracket for one very specific reason. I had a gut feeling Undertale would lose to almost anything because of anti-voting, but that Octopath Traveler would be weak enough to lose to Shovel Knight even with the momentum. The reason for this is very simple. No actually *likes* Octopath Traveler. People like the story of the game pulling off a round 1 upset over a contest champion in close fashion, but when seeing discussions about the actual game itself I don't see people saying anything good. I was of the belief that almost anything could have beaten Undertale in this contest, and that Shovel Knight would be respected enough to turn around and beat the winner. The fact that his mug is *everywhere* can't hurt, either. Technically speaking, I wasn't correct on all this and it took a literal act of divine intervention for things to go the way I picked. When this match started, it was a dead heat with no sign as to either game being able to win at all. Usually there's a sense of where things will go. Not this time! It was even for the first five minutes, and after a small (very small) Shovel Knight increase at the first update, it was short-lived. Shovel Knight scored another small update win, but again, it was short-lived. This pattern continued for an hour. Shovel Knight gain, tripped, Shovel Knight gain, tripped, Shovel Knight gain, tripped. These Octopath stalls and gains were fun, but Shovel Knight was slowly building a lead. After an hour, Shovel Knight finally took off. That early struggle to establish wrist control turned into a 250 vote lead very quickly, but back came Octopath Traveler yet again to show it wasn't dead yet. But after that bump to get it below 200, Shovel Knight took actual control of the match. Late into the evening and into the overnight period, it built itself a lead that would ultimately peak at 365 votes. If indie games had any presence in Europe whatsoever, this match would have been stone cold over, but once the dead zone started overnight and Europe started waking up, the match flipped. It started slowly (very slowly) at first, with the updates staying either tied or slight Octopath lean with every single one, with the occasional Shovel Knight +10 thrown in there. It was like watching open heart surgery, and it kept going like this all the way until the morning vote. As America began waking up, the lead fell down to 200 votes. But with America favoring Shovel Knight, easy win right? If you told me Nightwish did this song, I would probably believe you. Not only did Octopath Traveler win the morning vote, it *easily* won the morning vote. That 200 vote lead was under 100 in an hour, and though Shovel Knight tried its damndest to delay the inevitable, the lead was gone two hours later. After a tie that lasted *another* hour, because Shovel Knight was not about to just roll over and dig its own grave (yes bad pun, I am well aware!), it was Octopath Traveler that finally started winning wrist control in this matchup. It spent the rest of the morning and lunch time building itself a lead, though it never did so in any kind of domineering fashion. Octopath built up a 200 vote lead relatively quickly, but could never get beyond that. From here, it was hours and hours of stalling with Shovel Knight, of all things, having the slightest of leans in the match trend. This wasn't a "comeback attempt" so much as it was stalling thins out and hoping for the best, but it was working. Octopath's 200 vote lead got shaved down below 100 with five hours to go, and it was anyone's match from there. At this point, Shovel Knight made its move. It basically tried everything from here to erase that lead and try to jump ahead, but Octopath Traveler held on for dear life at every turn. Lead goes from 100 to 36 in three updates? Well here comes another stall where it stays at 50. Lead goes from 40 to 18? Well let's go back up to 33 because why not? It continued like this until Shovel Knight tied the match and seemed like it would break through with two hours to go. With two hours to go and lots of momentum behind it, Shovel Knight *finally* did the whole **LEAD CHANGE** routine, and it looked like the match would flip. Bu t true to form, Octopath Traveler just would *not* go away. When Shovel Knight finally got its lead back, this was what the match looked like for the next few updates afterwards: -Shovel Knight by 11. -Shovel Knight by 3. -Shovel Knight by 1. -Shovel Knight by 6. -Shovel Knight by 8. -Shovel Knight by 6. -Shovel Knight by 6. -Octopath by 30. With only 90 minutes left in the poll, that looked to *finally* end this match. But of course that wasn't it, because Octopath could not retain any momentum. It got stalled out for four straight updates, and then, at 6:49 pm EST, with just over an hour left to go, this contest's version of divine intervention: Stalwart stewards, we're calling for your aid!! The GameFAQs "Game of the Decade" vote is happening NOW and Shovel Knight needs your vote! Dig in at the top of the page! Octopath had no counter, and that was a wrap. What do you even *do* when the developer of your opponent rallies for their own game on Twitter? You sit there are you die, that's what. After nearly 23 hours of just beating the crap out of each other, Shovel Knight was bailed out in hilarious fashion, and it turned a 40 vote deficit into a 200 vote win in just over an hour. We'll never know what would have happened without a developer rally popping up right at the end of the match with perfect timing, and it's impossible to know for sure. My best guess is that Board 8 would have tried to get Octopath the win as a thank you for defeating Undertale, but with the way this match went, who really knows? It was anyone's game there at the end, but Shovel Knight caught a super lucky break to advance. Both games put on one hell of a show, and this is the type of match where it sucks someone has to lose, but shout out to Octopath Traveler here. It may have only been around for two matches, but they were two of the contest's most entertaining matches. Shout out to Shovel Knight, too, for pulling a *developer rally* of all things out of its ass to clutch up and win. This site talks about developer rallies a lot, especially when Witcher 3 is concerned, but to actually see one make this huge difference is always fun. It also opened up the door, however slightly, for Shovel Knight to catch fire in this contest and cause some real damage. It would need to, since its next opponent was Super Mario Odyssey. Yacht Club Games knew it, too: *"We can't give up! Not even if pitted against our beloved mustachioed main man!"* Who knows? Maybe lightning *can* strike twice. ## Ctes's Analysis Who could’ve guessed that this would be one of the absolute best matches of the entire contest? Shovel Knight was picked by a solid number of gurus to win this match but by far the most of them had it beating Undertale today. Very few people expected Octopath Traveler to be here, but even fewer people thought it would stand a chance. Almost everyone that did not pick Undertale to round 3 did not do so, because they expected Undertale to receive some similar anti-voting to what Draven got two years ago. Most people didn’t think it would be enough and that it could use its momentum to ride to round 3 in similar fashion to what L-Block did in the past. Not many were expecting a close match today, but it was exciting right from the beginning. They were neck to neck for the first five minutes, almost equal, and they went back and forth. Shovel Knight would make a minimal jump next update, but then Octopath stole the lead. Some argued Shovel Knight had the bracket votes and Octopath would run with it now, but others knew that most people weren’t bracket voting today because they had Undertale winning this match. Look at the prediction percentage and you see the proof. Octopath Traveler likely has quite a bit less than that, it already had close to this in round 1, and only a small handful of the gurus that picked Octopath in round 1 did so again. True enough, Octopath looked to be the bracket vote winner, probably as a minor bandwagon factor. Shovel Knight took it all back in the coming update and build on it afterward. Octopath would make its small cuts, but Shovel Knight would gain a good bit more. In the span of about four hours it would have build a lead of about 300 votes and almost no one one thought the match still lived. Then the night hours came and put the brakes in. It was similar to Celeste vs. Rayman Legends overnight, but Octopath initially didn’t make the same push and Shovel Knight looked to have a hold of the match. As morning came to Europe Octopath would stop stalling and start making progression. It was nothing fast at first, but it cut the lead down to below 300 again clearly moving forward. At this point people began taking notice, those of us awake at least, because Rayman had won its match with a bit of room to spare, so if Octopath could keep this up, it could win it. Octopath kept slowly cutting the lead down. The pace was inconsistent, but it went in one direction and a lead change seemed inevitable as the lead went down below 100 votes. With about 50 votes left to be cut, a rally thread was put on Shovel Knight’s subreddit, which seemed to halt Octopath’s cutting a bit, but not to anything major. It’s hard to tell how much it actually did, because it was also when NA was beginning to wake up and everyone expected that to give Shovel Knight some more footing. The match was around 50 votes for a while. A rally thread was then also put up on Octopath’s subreddit and that one later changed the course of the match. At first, it was successful enough to remove most of the remaining lead, but it looked to mostly a small spike. Octopath got close but couldn’t quite get there. Shovel Knight was ahead by nine votes, then three votes, then three votes again and then a single vote, but it just wouldn’t drop the lead. It looked like the reddit rallies have run their course unless they gained significant traction. Shovel Knight gained a little bit again from there, which might have been rallying I suppose, but is probably mostly the morning vote coming I think. It wasn’t all too fast. Then came the drama suddenly. As Shovel Knight just gained to be ahead by 46 votes, the moderators of the Octopath subreddit pinned it at the top of the page, meaning it didn’t really need to traction, everyone entering that subreddit would see it right away and they would know it had the moderators support. Its effect was plain to see. Octopath had a huge spike and the next update tied the match. It did the same thing again to take the lead of 50 votes. Octopath slowed a bit down from that point, but a lot of people thought the match was over at that point. Shovel Knight didn’t have anything to counter that with. While the first two updates were the most beastly, Octopath would have the rally thread pinned there for the rest of match, meaning a consistent boost throughout the day as more people visit the page. Octopath went up slowly but steadily and was leading comfortably with 8 hours to go. Then Shovel Knight really began stalling. Everyone was awake again now and the rallies had reached their potential. Shovel Knight did not lead Octopath get to a lead of 200 votes, though it was close at time. Shovel Knight then attempted to move things in its direction again, but it was a bumpy vote. Every now and then, Octopath would have a killer update, which often cancelled about 3 cuts, so it took a lot of time for Shovel Knight to get anywhere. With five hours to go, it still needed to cut off 105 votes. At the current pace, everything could happen. Shovel Knight had the time, but it was moving so slow that Octopath could perhaps do more if it wanted to. It seemed that most people on board 8 wanted Octopath to win, with most Shovel Knight supports being the ones that picked it to win today. That could end up bailing Octopath out if necessary. Shovel Knight made a solid push to get the lead from 101 and down below 50 before Octopath really hit the brakes. Then they stalled there for hours. Shovel Knight won by far the most updates, but they were almost never particularly big and Octopath had some seemingly random big updates every know and then. Octopath really stalled, as is natural in the later hours of our matches these days. Trends are hardly there anymore. With two hours to go, Shovel Knight took the lead with 11 votes, but it couldn’t get anywhere with it. Octopath cut and then took the lead back to be ahead by a single vote. Then Shovel Knight took it back and lead by under 10 votes for four updates. It seemed like the match would come down to the last second. This was super exciting, because our lack of trends almost always has it so that matches won’t be exciting near the end, but when the match seems to naturally land at just about it even, they can still be! Octopath had a huge spike next update, not only winning the lead, but getting 30 votes ahead, which put Shovel Knight in a very tough spot. It had such a hard time getting the lead and it couldn’t go anywhere with it. Some people believed the natural trends would give Shovel Knight the edge, but it just didn’t get anywhere, and it struggled to take this lead back now too, with only a bit more of an hour left. It was anyone’s game and at this point almost all of us were watching and were ready to do so until the end, but Octopath seemed to have the advantage. It was just nail biting and waiting for the next five minutes to pass until something following the twitter account posted this right away: Yacht Club Games, the creators of Shovel Knight tweeted about this match. Someone here who follows the account posted it instantly, so we’d see the effect right away. Most people agreed it would be game over for Octopath Traveler though. We did not know how much it did, but when the match was this close, this would be deciding. It was only 38 votes ahead. Still, everyone eagerly awaited the effect. After hours of excitement and refreshing, one user summed everything up very well right before the update stroke: "Whatever happens next, it's been an honor F5ing with you all this evening." – TheCodeisBosco Shovel Knight took the lead back right away. Only with 1 vote, but that was still a 39-vote victory. Plus, that was from the people that were very quick to see the tweet and act. Remember that everything I wrote last paragraph happened within five minutes. The match was over, everyone agreed. True enough, Shovel Knight would gain up to 37 votes next update and quickly burst well above 100. It slowed down again then, but with about half an hour to go, Octopath had nothing to counter with, when the effect still showed. It was over. Shovel Knight came just short of 200 votes and advanced. Yacht Club Games then made the biggest red herring in the world. Look at the comments section of that twitter post. People took notice that Super Mario Odyssey would be the next opponent and they rightly knew that would be a tough thing for Shovel Knight to get past. The account that answered that they’d still do everything they could to win, although they recognized that Odyssey is a great game at the time. No one here was worried about the match, because if this was what the twitter could do, it wouldn’t be enough, since Super Mario Odyssey are leagues ahead of Shovel Knight to begin with, but they ended up forgetting all about it, and no one here cared to give the reminder. It lost, but Octopath Traveler proved today that it was legit. It might’ve gotten some bandwagon, mostly early on, and it had pinned rallies, but it still looks really good today. Most people credited its victory to Undertale anti-voting, but it appears was alright after all, and that its momentum and anti-voting almost canceled each other out. It’s in line with what we’ve seen of Bravely Default. Being a Square RPG on a Nintendo console has always been a good thing. Maybe they should release Final Fantasy XVI on Nintendo’s most recent console if it ever happens. Shovel Knight ended up being the only indie game to advance to round 3 despite such a promising round 1. Whether it’s the strongest one remains to be seen. It seems to between Cuphead, Stardew Valley and Shovel Knight itself, but Shovel Knight ended up being behind several layers of SFF, so it’s really hard to determine. Cuphead was also below some. We’ll never really know. It’s hard to tell how the match would’ve ended naturally or even how it would’ve ended if Yacht Club Games didn’t tweet in the end. I’d call Octopath the favorite if only the tweet doesn’t happen, which means Shovel Knight takes the victory without it, since it easily had the least successful subreddit rally. It probably wouldn’t come down to the last second if no rallies interfered, but it would still be an overall close match. People tend to forgot Octopath already had a really strong really if they weren’t around, because that one didn’t change the direction of the match, it simply turbo boosted the direction it was going in. Shovel Knight likely wins a good bit easier in round 1, that means if Octopath hadn’t just beat Undertale. Though Octopath would still have looked good going out. In the midst of what was easily the best match of the contest so far and probably top 3 overall, there was of course talks of rallies and hypocrisy and everything in between. All the things about what you are allowed to think and what you are not. Shovel Knight used a rally to win in the end, so clearly any anti-rally person should be against it right? Oh, but Octopath had a big rally earlier, so it was mostly a counter, meaning Shovel Knight should be the game you cheer for as an anti-rally person. Oh, but wait, Shovel Knight did have a rally up first, so clearly it’s the villain, right? As an anti-rally person, you must figure out how the match, where the games are within a percentage of each other, would have ended with no outside interference and that’s the game you can root for. Except it’s hard to judge, so someone will disagree with you either way, it’s probably best to just not be happy at all then. If you’re pro-rallies, the only other option, then you had the time of your life, but you better have had the same stance in any other match with rallies regardless of size, otherwise you’re a major hypocrite and that’s no good. It’s probably obvious what I think of all that. I know, I’m beating a dead horse with some of the points but let me just make it clear how much I think all of the above is a major load of s\*\*\*. First of all, the good old idea that you either have to support all rallies or dislike all rallies. I wont ever hear counterarguments here because it makes no sense. Why am I obligated to enjoy Draven making Mega Man X and Ryu look like complete fodder on his way to swallow a contest whole if I enjoyed two games today rallied a bit back and forth using their subreddits? Nothing else in the worlds works that way. It’s no goddamn different that telling me I have to enjoy every single Final Fantasy game if I like one of them and no one is doing that. It’s not hypocritical by default. Sure, it’s probably hypocritical if you hate a certain type of rally influence in one match because it knocks one of your favorite games out, but then rally yourself in another match in similar fashion to help another favorite game of yours out. That does not mean you’re a hypocrite if you enjoyed today’s match, but hated Undertale and Draven and I really can’t stress this enough. You’re also allowed to dislike the tweet or the pinned rally more than the one rally this match had that didn’t do as much, because they’re not the same thing. It’s my clear observation that most people just want exciting matches. If rallies make a match more exciting, that’s great! That’s likely what happened today, but people got called hypocrites left and right if they had previous anti-rally in any context. If a rally makes what would have been a close match no contest, then that’s not great. It’s very simple! The last part goes in particular if it flips a result, and even more it goes on for several rounds to take away interesting matches from us. Still, we’re actually pretty consistent with these things. We disliked the rallies when they didn’t flip a result too, just look at Melee last contest or Bloodborne this one. A lot of also has to do with the fact that people want the games to fight on equal ground, so if one game can pull all the outside forces in the world, but the other one can pull none, then it’s not as well liked as if both pull people in. That’s completely reasonable! My own stance on rallies is somewhere in between. A lot of the issues with them these days is our very small votals, which makes it easy for a small really to have a big impact. If we still had 100k in total votes each match, then those small 100 vote boosts would barely be noticed and even some of our larger rallies this contest would be negligible. I like the idea that we give our site attention elsewhere and boost votals, but I would enjoy it a lot more, if people stayed around afterward. It makes predicting less fun most of the time because it’s so random what gains traction. I can appreciate a match like today despite rallies. I had a lot of fun following it all day, but I did not find Melee and Undertale fun for giving me one good match at best while likely ruining all of SMB3 vs. RBY, RBY vs. SMW, CT vs. FFVII, RBY vs. SM64, CT vs. RBY and CT vs. OoT (or however those would’ve turned out). Yes, the first one happened, but it was heavily influence and one of my best predictions ever was heavily clouded by the rally spillover. I suppose, I’m generally against them, but it’s circumstantial and I never really get angry I just care a bit less, and I would mind less if our natural votals weren’t as bad. Finally, I was rooting for Shovel Knight from before this match began. I love the game and I had it in my bracket too. Not only that, I would have been eliminated in the guru today if Shovel Knight didn’t win because Luster and I have identical brackets post round 2. I could go on a while about my passion for Shovel Knight, but you get the point. I was loudly cheering for Shovel Knight when the excitement was at its peak and I was happy that It won. I never stated that I was happy with the way it won, and I might have expressed earlier in the match that I thought it was a shame that one of the subreddits was pinned instead of zero or two. Suddenly, I was hypocritical for being happy when a game won that rallied itself past the goal line in the end. I was not being rude about it. Seriously? You are not a hypocrite if you hope the game you’re cheering for gets the same support the opposing game has had. Period. It’s not too surprising, but when not only trolls, but plenty of users were throwing the word hypocrite around back and worth, I wanted to bring it up. I was genuinely a bit sad at the end of that match that it did not seem like I could be happy without fueling that discussion. Was I just supposed to stop rooting for the game in the middle of the match because of how it turned out? Regardless of what you think about rallies and what you think others can think about rallies, these contests are all about rooting for your favorite games. Ultimately, it’s all about having fun and hoping that the games that made your decade better does well. Predicting and analyzing and all that stuff is secondary to that. Could we all f\*\*\*ing stop being jerks to each other for cheering for our favorite games, please? It’s a shame we couldn’t have this match without having these pointless discussions near the end, but make no mistake, this was a fantastic and memorable match. In a few days, round 2 was already way better than round 1. ## Safer777's Analysis So yeah as you can see from this result an EXTREMELY close match. 201 votes difference. So for this match the whole crew went with SK here. Plus they had it above 60 too! So the reason was that OT won against Undertale who was the previous champion via anti votes or something so people would vote normal here and they would favor SK because somehow SK has become the face of indie games. I mean Shovel Knight even got into Smash so you know that you have made it when you get into Smash! But here is the thing. Sure SK is the face of indies but OT is damn good. Not only it is popular and well liked but it prooved that people really care for the Old School games and that game is really old school. There is always a market for that. People just don't want constant MMO's, FPS, Battle Royale and such. They just want to play an old school game and have fun. Plus OT has a unique story. There are 8 characters and each has 4 Chapters to them BUT the other party members just don't exist in their story until the secret final chapter. So for example you can have a character getting trapped and that is since the other characters aren't there for the story, just for the gameplay battles. So theoritically you can just pick a characater and finish all their chapters and just 1 chapter of the other characters and you would have beaten the game. But why you would do that when there are so many stories to complete too? So for the match. Well in the 5 minutes SK was already ahead. After around 6 hours SK was still ahead by like 330 votes. There was even a rally attempt for SK on Reddit but it didn't took off. So yeah tough match but still we all thought SK had it. BUT then someone posted a rally on Reddit for OT and that one took off. So OT started cutting and after around 14 hours OT pulled ahead and started gaining. So we had a real close match. Eventually OT pulled ahead with like 200 votes. But then SK started cutting again. Then OT cut. Then SK cut. Then ties! Everything really! An exciting match! This went back and forth for hours until eventually only 1 hour remained. So like 1 hour before the end of the match we had a tie! Now that is amazing! But then something amazing happened. With like 1 hour to end the match the Official Twitter of the company that made SK started rallying on Twitter! Yeah! NOBODY expected that! So after this rally SK managed to win with 200 votes. So yeah the rally was effective! Really close wire to wire match. And the thing is that NOBODY thought this match would be so damn close! We all thought that OT was weak and SK is strong. Turns out these games are really close in strength. Strange to see an official rally decide a match but hey it happened. Rallies are always good at least for me. So yeah. I would like to see a strange game like SK winning the whole thing but alas. Still really excited match. Who know who would win without the official rally? Also lowest correct prediction percentage of the contest so far. And it made sense. Most had picked Undertale to win 2 rounds. Also something else to notice. When the contest started we all had this indiefear, that one of them would catch a rally and generally indie games will do good since there were so many of them and it is easy to rally for them. Classic underdog story. BUT you know how many indie games reached Round 3 out of around 60 that were in the contest? Only 1 AND what was with a rally too! So yeah. Indifear was a lie. It makes sense. When you are thinking of GOTD how many indie games you think? Only one and that is Minecraft. Sure indie games are good but not GOTD good. That is how it is. ## Tsunami's Analysis If you thought the end of Round 1 and beginning of Round 2 were exciting...you ain't seen nothing yet. It didn't look like it would start out that way. Octopath managed to take a lead 15 minutes in after trailing at the freeze, but Shovel Knight easily flipped it on the next update and got the lead into triple digits a mere 20 minutes after that. By the two-hour mark, the lead was over 200, and Shovel Knight followed the 35 vote gain that it made to end that hour with a 38 vote gain to start hour three. OT made some nice cuts as we reached 10:30, but again SK easily countered, tacking on 31 and 46 votes in consecutive updates. Every time Octopath looked like it wanted to cut, Shovel Knight countered. At midnight, four hours in, Shovel Knight led by 340 votes. It would gain *one* vote on the next update, then spend the rest of the hour futilely trying to increase its lead. But then the next hour hit and bam! +20, +24, new max lead at 1:15 AM. Shortly after 2 AM, SK's lead peaked at 365, but then at 2:15, Octopath made a sizeable cut and followed it up with another one two updates later. SK recovered, forcing Octopath to wait until nearly 3:30 to get within 300, but from there, the comeback was slow but inevitable. Then, suddenly, it wasn't so slow. Octopath got within 200 at 10 minutes to 6, then within 100 at 7:05, and a 25-vote cut at 7:20 left Shovel Knight's lead at a mere 45 votes. From there, however, it went into a stall; an hour and a half later, Shovel Knight's lead was at 43, having not dipped below 35 nor risen above 56 during that time. Shovel Knight won the next update to increase its lead to 61 at 5 minutes to 9, only to be met with an Octopath run. 61 became 46, then 24, then 9, then 3, then 3 again, then 1...and with its lead down to a single vote, Shovel Knight *finally* won another update, then two more, then a net positive over the next two, and then another one. At 9:55 AM, Shovel Knight had restored its lead to 46 votes. At 10 AM? *Deadlock*. At 10:05? *Octopath Traveler leads by 50.* Wait, seriously? Did we have an honest to God *rally* going on? Because that is an insane swing for this deep into a match. Octopath slowed down after that, netting only +17 over the next half hour before picking it up again to gain its first triple-digit lead at 10:50. It hovered for a bit, got up to 151 at 11:40, let SK spend about half an hour gaining back about 30 votes, then quickly smacked it down in only 10 minutes. At 12:45 PM, Octopath led by 193 and seemed primed to win easily. Shovel Knight took a chunk back, but it could never keep much of its gains; at 2:15, Octopath still led by 171. And then the comeback was on. Highlighted by a +21 at 2:25 and a +27 at 3:20, Shovel Knight got the deficit down to 36 before Octopath started putting up any resistance. And resist it did; it took until 5:55 for Shovel Knight to regain the lead, a +17 giving it an immediate double-digit advantage. Which Octopath wiped out in two updates to take a 1-vote lead at 6:05. Shovel Knight was back in front at the next update, but only by 6 votes, and the next update only grew it to 8...then back to 6...then 6 *again*... And at 6:30 PM, Octopath spiked another of its huge updates. +36, lead of 30. They traded update wins for the next 20 minutes, with a net of +8 for Octopath. And then, suddenly, it was Shovel Knight that had the huge rally power. A 38-vote deficit became a 1-vote lead, then 37, then 50, 76, 99, *137...* Shovel Knight won 13 of the final 14 updates to end up winning by 199, the largest lead by either side since 5:50 AM. A title previously held by its *penultimate*-update lead of 194, one vote more than the largest Octopath's lead ever got. Shovel Knight started out looking like it would win easily, then spent much of the second half of the match trailing, and in the end, still won by a fairly comfortable final margin. The registered voter bonus carried much of that; Shovel Knight's raw vote lead was just 57 votes, courtesy of a 136-voter advantage with registered users offsetting a 79-voter deficit with unregistered. The favorite in this match? Obviously it was Undertale. At 18.86%, Shovel Knight \> Octopath Traveler had the lowest prediction percentage of the tournament so far...taking the mantle from Octopath Traveler \> Undertale, at 21.58%. Undertale was the Guru favorite, too, and as for the Oracle...well, it seems that the Oracles were convinced that Octopath's win was a result of Undertale anti-votes, not its own strength. Very few people predicted a match this close, and most of the ones who did were Octopath pickers trying to mitigate the damage if they were wrong. I ended up with a top 5 for this match going over by nearly 3% on SK's percentage. So let's give a hand for everyone involved here. It's clear by the wild swings, at least relative to our vote intake, that this was a match where both sides were rallying, and it brings into question another outcome. It was, of course, noticed that Undertale had been trying to rally yet again, though it was far weaker than what it put up in 2015, and the common belief was that it just wasn't getting it done and couldn't get past the antivotes. But now, perhaps, one has to wonder if we weren't giving Undertale too much of the credit for the increased traffic. Maybe it just got outrallied? Shovel Knight's run would be coming to an end the next round, of course, faced with Super Mario Odyssey. But it should be noted that outside of 64, 3D Mario has had a long and storied history of looking like utter trash in Games Contests. Whether it's Galaxy losing to CoD4 twice in 2009 or Sunshine and NSMBWii getting upset by Halo 3 and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 in 2010 or the Galaxy games losing to Super Metroid and Mass Effect in 2015, Mario just hasn't been worth much as a platformer franchise this century. Maybe he continues to stay so strong in character battles because this is RPGFAQs; the Paper Mario games have done just fine in contests, after all. (Of course this isn't actually the reason, but the point still stands; PM64 and TTYD are the only Mario games from either of the past two decades to do well in any contests.) It wouldn't surprise me one bit if Shovel Knight made Odyssey look bad heading into its match with Ultimate. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7989&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=75) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Devil May Cry 5 vs (2)Super Mario Odyssey 2020 _source: (7)Devil May Cry 5 vs (2)Super Mario Odyssey 2020 (revid 88237)_ ## Results **Round Two** Tuesday, April 14, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 76 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Odyssey - 73.00% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Odyssey - 76.50% - **User Votes:** Devil May Cry 5 - 2735 Super Mario Odyssey - 6652 - **Anonymous Votes:** Devil May Cry 5 - 2472 Super Mario Odyssey - 6408 After that crazy match between Octopath Traveler and Shovel Knight, I need a dud writeup to cool off! I would say "dud match", but this one happened at exactly the same time so it wouldn't be accurate. Either way, we've thankfully got a dud match to cool off with. Devil May Cry 5 pulled off a very cute one point upset over Tropical Freeze in round one. We call these matches "one point upsets" because everyone knows the winner has no chance in the next round when the time comes to pay the piper. Not only did DMC5 get utterly destroyed, but this was the second round in a row where Super Mario Odyssey looked better than Smash Ultimate. There was a whoooooole lot of "wish I could change my bracket" sentiment going around, from myself included, because that match looked like a done deal in Mario's favor after two rounds were in the books. I maintain there is no planet where Tekken 7 beats Mortal Kombat 11 in a contest poll on here, and 71% on Devil May Cry 5 is just more impressive than 64% on Link Between Worlds -- the irony of which is no Zelda game had ever lost that badly one on one before. There was also this poll that Team Rocket Elite was kind enough to dig up for us: In retrospect, we really should have taken holding Link Between Worlds to 36% more seriously, but at the time there was a whole lot of freaking out about Smash Ultimate's chances to beat Odyssey, when the latter was clearly an uncaged beast in this contest. ## Ctes's Analysis Super Mario Odyssey had yet another round of looking really dominant. It seemed to finish a little bit higher as a result of the rallying in Octopath Traveler vs. Shovel Knight, but it’s a bit hard to tell. It would probably still finish above 70% and that’s a really good showing. The goal for Super Mario Odyssey was to do the impossible for a post 64 Mario game; beat the Smash Bros game of the same platform. This round definitely taught us the least of the three rounds leading up to the clash because Ultimate was against a Zelda game, but Odyssey still did what it needed to do and look impressive enough to make us doubt the hierarchy. The board actually went even higher on Super Mario Odyssey on average, probably because it went so high on a game with a name everyone knows last round. I suppose we just have to acknowledge Devil May Cry had a release worth something again for the first time in quite a while. It’s not fantastic, but Devil May Cry 5 looks to have more strength in it than most of us thought and it explains why it took so easily care of Tropical Freeze when we all expected the Donkey Kong game to be alright with its Switch release. We didn’t have that great a read on the Devil May Cry series before this contest actually. The only time they’ve appeared in a contest in the past was in the previous Game of the Decade where the first and third one made it in. Neither looked particularly good, but they ended up being alright in the stats, not as much as one might have thought. Perhaps they would’ve looked better earlier in the decade, that’s when Dante looked best in the character battles. At this point the fourth game had come out and wasn’t as big as the third and DmC: Devil May Cry had just been revealed, so I think we had seen Donte already, which might have caused some backlash if we did. This contest, we fifth one just came out and it was well liked again. It has a big enough name that I could see it having good footing on franchise name alone and with the most well-liked Devil May Cry since the third, finishing where it did isn’t so bad. Of course, it’s buried behind some layers of SFF, so its exact placement is hard to tell. ## Safer777's Analysis Well after the previous super exciting match we had a simple match. People were expecting SMO to score around 70 and it did just that. DMC was lucky that it faced a damn weak Nintendo game(how many times you hear that on this site?)and well it got owned. And it makes sense. Sure Dante is a midcarder here but his games are always doing bad. Hell pretty sure Dante has become weak now. So for the match. Well SMO won easily as expected. But to tell the trutn I did expected to score under 70 here. Sure the best Mario game in some time but DMC 5 is the best DMC game ever too. Then again it is freaking Mario. So the question is that what place does SMO holds in this contest? Top 5 for sure. Guess at the end of the contest X-Stats will say us. Hey they still work right? ## Tsunami's Analysis I may have spoken too soon. Holy hell, DK, what's wrong with you?! This is an ass-whooping entirely commensurate with what you'd expect a Mario game to be doing to a Devil May Cry game. For comparison's sake, the weaker of the two DMC games in the last GotD would be projected to break 41% on Galaxy, the strongest Mario game in that bracket. Super Mario Odyssey was definitely for real, but still, how weak must Tropical Freeze be to get nowhere near beating something this weak? Odyssey suddenly looked like it would stand a chance against Ultimate, even though we all know it won't. That's the power of Link for you! Ultimate clearly got rSFFed...right? *Edit: Tsunami has since played Super Mario Odyssey. This is entirely deserved. Odyssey is the best 3D Mario game and SM64 is probably the only other one that's even close.* ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7990&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=76) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Grand Theft Auto V vs (8)Cuphead 2020 _source: (1)Grand Theft Auto V vs (8)Cuphead 2020 (revid 88342)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, April 15, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 77 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Grand Theft Auto V - 55.78% 49 for - 5 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Grand Theft Auto V - 80.61% - **User Votes:** Grand Theft Auto V - 5744 Cuphead - 3609 - **Anonymous Votes:** Grand Theft Auto V - 4993 Cuphead - 3656 After how good Cuphead looked in round one, compared to how "off" Grand Theft Auto always looks, plus with this match being in the group of matches to take place directly after a developer rally for Shovel Knight, hype for **THE CUPSET!!!** was through the roof. A lot of people figured Cuphead would win the board vote plus get help from rally spillover, which could potentially create one of the all-time funniest matches ever, or at least one of the funniest freezes. All that hope got dreamcrushed in a matter of minutes. There was only a very small board vote win for Cuphead, and after the first couple minutes were over, Grand Theft Auto 5 dominated this matchup. GTA5 had 54% at the freeze. It won with 60% of the vote. That's a pretty good rise on a site where any win for Grand Theft Auto feels like running in mud, but it's worth noting that for all of the struggles GTA has around here, Grand Theft Auto 5 feels like the one game in that series with real strength behind it. It's easily the strongest GTA game on this site, and though it lost to Super Mario RPG in 2015, it scored 43% against a game that made the semifinals that year. GTA5 is clearly legit on this site, and a cut above the rest of the GTA games here. I don't think was Cuphead, or indies in general, crapping the bed here. GTA5 just picked a good time to give us arguably its best match ever. Shout out to Leon4 for this stat -- did you guys know that GTA5 winning this match meant that this was Grand Theft Auto's first appearance in round 3 of a contest since Tommy Vercetti beat Donkey Kong all the way back in 2003? It's true. Look it up. I couldn't believe it either. I don't like GTA games much at all, but I do enjoy when long droughts end. Props to the series for finally getting to hang with the big boys! And given this performance, maybe it was finally safe to take Grand Theft Auto seriously on GameFAQs, and maybe it could finally win a division. After all, its next match was going to be against a Vita game or Grand Theft Cowboy, so its ticket to the divisional finals was a lock. What could possibly go wrong? ## Ctes's Analysis Cuphead winning this match was a tempting upset to many before the contest, although not many actually ended up taking it. It doesn’t look very good now, because it didn’t even come close. It was another slap in the face to indie games, but just as much a time to recognize that Grand Theft Auto V is probably pretty strong all things considered. It will never be as good here as it is anywhere else. All of our contest history backs that up, but it wont job to the first thing that has some strength as some people thought and more people feared. After the first round, Grand Theft Auto V did look like the better game. Especially if you factor in any anti-votes it might have gotten. Considering its awful board vote, it probably has quite a few of those. Cuphead went neck to neck with it when the match began and still held its lead a minute in. GTAV would end up looking safe by the end of the freeze, but it was still only just above 54% at the freeze. It rose to heaven from there. There’s quite the difference. Indie games typically have very good board votes and that goes for Cuphead too, so the board vote was as funny as they get. Cuphead failing to get 40% is a disappointment when you consider the chances we gave it, it never had, but that’s probably more on us than on it. It still looks to be a good contender for the best indie game in the bracket, although there’s a lot of weird results ahead of it. All of GTAV vs. P4G, P4G vs. Xenoblade, Ultimate vs. Xenoblade, BotW vs. Ultimate and BotW vs. Witcher are matches where you need to think once again if the result is natural or the case of some other factors. That’s every single match ahead of Cuphead! Two of those pretty clearly favor Cuphead, two of those pretty don’t and the final one is something we can’t agree on. It makes it as hard as it gets. Cuphead looked really good in its Game of the Year polls, clearly indicating its on the high end of the indie rank, so the adjusted x-stats probably has it right. It got a ton of exposure and even a bit of Smash reference since then, so it makes sense to think it’s up there. It’s a shame it was seeded \#8 so it would run straight into a \#1 seed. Even in the weakest division, that was too much for it. It would’ve been cool to see it elsewhere. Imagine if it switched places with Super Meat Boy, going against Sonic Mania would be a neck to neck match. Grand Theft Auto V looked really good today, and at the same time Persona 4 Golden only beat Red Read Redemption by a hair. Almost everyone expected GTAV to be the better of the two Rockstar games, so that made GTAV the favorite going into next round as it had been before the contest began, despite that we now knew Persona 4 Golden would be a Persona 4 proxy. ## Safer777's Analysis I don't know why but there was an indiefear with Cuphead. Sure it is an amazing indie game and very recognizable because of the art style but man we are talking about GTA 5 here. If GTA V was facing a middle tier Nintendo game then yeah sure, but against an indie? Not really. I mean the whole crew had GTA 5 under 55 too! Of course it won with more than 60. So for the match. There was a fear as I said but GTA 5 managed to win easily. Indies aren't as strong as people say. I mean it is just a general thought but indies cover a myriad of genres and such so you can't just it is an indie game and that is. I mean even the biggest indie game of all time which is Minecraft didn't do much in the contest too. Also even though Shovel Knight seems to be the face of the Indies, Cuphead may be more popular! Strange but I do believe that is the truth. So yeah. GTA 5 seems to be weak on this site since we don't like good games ilike this it seems, but it just faced weak opponents. Or maybe we love GTA here? Of course not. ## Tsunami's Analysis GTA V continues to be casualbait, trailing only BotW and Witcher 3 *(and Skyrim, but that hadn't had its match yet when I wrote this)* in R2 prediction percentage. Cuphead's classic Disney aesthetic continues to perform well here, and while it never stood a chance of winning, this was a solid showing, more or less. It couldn't quite break 40%, though. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7991&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=77) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Persona 4 Golden vs (4)Red Dead Redemption 2020 _source: (5)Persona 4 Golden vs (4)Red Dead Redemption 2020 (revid 86569)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, April 15, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 78 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Persona 4 Golden - 52.06% 40 for - 14 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Persona 4 Golden - 31.05% - **User Votes:** Persona 4 Golden - 4620 Red Dead Redemption - 4737 - **Anonymous Votes:** Persona 4 Golden - 4664 Red Dead Redemption - 3985 There was a lot of hype during this day of matches about **THE CUPSET**, the board vote, and rally spillover helping Cuphead pull off the impossible. As luck would have it, those factors all ended up helping Persona 4 Golden instead. Did you guys know that the meaning of "Persona" actually means "yoblazer33 getting fucked in the ass"? I didn't know that myself, but he was kind enough to allow Board 8 to be privy to that information. Who knew? This match may look like a very close, hard-fought win for Persona 4 if you only look at the results, but it was one of those types of matches where the final score was in no way indicative of how the match actually played out. Persona 4 jumped all over Red Dead Redemption early, and Red Dead was never able to get back into it. Red Dead made this match a lot of fun with these random updates all over the place where it would chop 20-40 votes off, but then it would lose those votes back just as quickly. There were only two parts of this entire match -- once in the first evening and once during the late morning vote -- where Red Dead Redemption was able to string a few updates together and make any real headway at Persona in this match. But on top of all of those early factors helping Persona jump out to an early lead, rally threads popped up all over the place on Reddit all day long to help Persona 4 out during this match. Any time Red Dead tried to make any move whatsoever, it was smacked back down like whack-a-mole. This match may *look* close, but it wasn't. Red Dead Redemption was never going to win it, at least not with a bad board vote, rally spillover, rallies on Reddit, and having to potentially deal with getting some blowback from GTA anti-votes all at the same time. This was one of those rare 51-49 blowouts. Persona 4 Golden also officially hit bandwagon status from this match, which was pretty cool to watch for the rest of its run this contest. And yes, this would ultimately help Persona 5 out as well. This would set up a match between Grand Theft Auto V against Persona 4 Golden. Logic would say GTA5 was a bridge too far given the struggle to win this match, but given all things working in Persona 4's favor, who knows? GTA5 was the favorite going in, but bandwagons are very, very hard to beat in these things. "I think the quote was actually 'Shin Megami Tensei' means 'yoblazer33 getting fucked in the ass,' but I digress." -Greatone10 ## Ctes's Analysis Today would be the true test of how much strength Persona 4 Golden had compared to Persona 4. Back in 2015, Persona 4 and Red Dead Redemption looked to be very close, but Persona 4 a small step above. Based on that, Persona 4 Golden would need to basically be a Persona 4 proxy to reach that high, but it obviously doesn’t only come down to this. Both games have also gotten critically acclaimed new games in their series since last time, which might’ve boosted these two. Persona 4 Golden was the favorite to win, though most people overestimated how easy it would be for it. Most of us probably thought it proved itself to be on Persona 4 levels in the first round, but it’s different to be against some fodder game than one of the big names of the decade. There also seems to be a group of people who will pick Persona if it just has the slightest chance of winning, so maybe that helped make it the bigger favorite. Persona 4 won the board vote and that shouldn’t really surprise anyone. Rockstar games have the worst board votes and Persona games have the best. Everyone seemed to think it was fine after behind ahead of the freeze, but I was skeptical. Persona 4 barely gained in the last minutes of the freeze and while it went up from there, it was pretty slow considering there was all the reason in the world to think this would be its best time in the match with great lengths. I posted this in the stats topic at the time, but everyone was saying it fine. This happened for a few updates, but then Read Dead Redemption cut at the hour mark and people finally expressed the worry they should. It was not a big cut, but a Rockstar game cut Board 8’s beloved JRPG halfway through the power hour was a major warning sign. Read Dead Redemption continued to make small cuts in Persona 4’s best time of the match. Judging by the votals, there’s a good chance there was a little bit of rally spillover from the Shovel Knight rally in the final hour of the previous matches. Nothing big, but it seemed to help Persona 4 a little. Another reason that it was in trouble. There was a real reason to think Red Dead Redemption would win at this point. It never happened though. Red Dead Redemption made a lot of pushes, but it couldn’t actually get to close. The main reason for this is probably the board’s passion for Persona and the board’s lack of passion for RDR. Throughout the day, a lot of small Persona rallies would come help it out whenever it got close. Usually it doesn’t matter much what board 8 prefers in a match, but today it most likely did. We ended up having Persona 4 rallies here and there, and they worked a bit, because Persona is now big enough that there are places around the web where people care for it. Another important point is that no one tried to rally for Red Dead Redemption. People had it in their brackets, but no one seemed to care enough to counterrally. Or they just enjoyed seeing Persona get a victory. It’s hard to tell how the match would have ended if some people supporters RDR to the same extent, we can’t really know how well it would have worked. I think Read Dead Redemption claims a narrow victory here without outside interference, but it’s not easy to determine just how much the rallies did. It wasn’t spectacular, but that and a little bit of spillover might just have made the difference. There were definitely less complains about rallying as we usually see, probably because the result bothered nobody. I don’t think it’s hypocritical not to complain, just to make that clear. It only is if you passionately dislike rallies and then rally yourself. It’s only natural not be as annoyed when you hate the result. But it shows how much we like Persona 4. I just think Red Dead Redemption deserves a little more respect that it got, because Persona 4 definitely needed help to get this victory and I think the board is a little too good at turning a blind eye to when Persona is in trouble. The early part of the match makes that clear to me. Perhaps it’s more than Persona 4 Golden deserves a little less respect cause even though RDR never got too close, the idea that Persona 4 is just stronger than RDR by a solid enough amount to win with relative ease is misleading. Persona 4 had a very fascinating run that everyone should appreciate, but I still think it’s a shame we don’t get to see what we would prefer in a Grand Theft Auto vs. Red Dead Redemption match, even if we got something better. It’s just that it’s probably the best chance we’ll ever get to see how that hierarchy works because they almost never get further than round 2. I personally think Persona 4 should be happy it could gain some momentum in this match to overcome GTAV as well. I’m sure it wins that match without it. Considering the prediction percentage today and the ones in round 1, it’s pretty clear RDR was the sitewide favorite by a good amount. ## Safer777's Analysis Extremely close match and I didn't expected that. I don't think anybody expected that to tell the truth. Even the crew had P4G winning by around 54 and it made sense. The both faced weak games on the 1st round and RDR is HUGE! Like really huge. The sequel isn't even out for 6 months and it has sold already tens of millions of copies. P4G is an updated version of P4 and it is on Vita! Yeah a Vita game reached round 3! What are the odds of that? So for the match. Even though it says P4G pretty sure people just see P4 and voted for it. I mean I didn't even knew that P4G is on Vita, I just saw Persona 4 and voted for it. Also another match where the winner lost in USA but still won the overall match. I do believe there were some rallies too and it seems that may have helped P4G to win. I mean you can't really rally for RDR righ? Still really close match but strangely enough RDR never took the lead. P4G at the 5 minute mark was winning by 56% too and see how close it ended.  Yeah you look the final percentage which P4G won by 50.83 and you may think that there was an exciting match but not really. Overall nice match even though P4G was never in serious danger. Still seems that RDR is stronger than we thought because on this site we LOVE persona games/characters even though they are doing bad in contests typically. Until this contest at least. Low prediction as expected. ## Tsunami's Analysis Upset alert! Upset alert! Just 31.05% of brackets got this right, compared with 88.36% who picked P4G to win in Round 1. RDR's Round 1 prediction percentage was sixth-highest...and its *sequel's* was eighth-highest, so yeah, clearly getting a lot of respect from the voters. But do you really want to pick an action-adventure game over an RPG on RPGFAQs? ...Apparently, yes. This match broke a trend that had stood throughout the entire first round and into the second: *Unregistered voters made up the **majority** of Persona 4 Golden's raw votes!* Red Dead Redemption won over registered voters 4737-4620, but Persona 4 Golden smashed it with a 4664-3985 advantage with the unregistered voters. It made for a 562-vote win in raw votes, but just 451 on the scoreboard...wait, those numbers don't add up. 4620 **4664 9284 13879** **4737 **3985 8722 13428 Okay, the third column is indeed the sum of the first two columns...but with the first column, the registered voters, counting double, shouldn't it be 13904-13459? Makes me wonder if the "registered voters" column is in fact counting *all* registered voters, and Allen has to manually adjust it to make sure that only accounts that were created before the start of the contest are getting their votes counted double. Well, fixing it would only make things even closer, so it's no big difference. You see...Persona 4 Golden was still extending its lead almost right up until the end. Its maximum lead was 458 votes with just 10 minutes left in the match. That's two fewer than our long-time record, the legendary Frog vs. Liquid Snake match from 2004. But no big deal, right? That record's been broken like 15 times now. In this contest alone, three other matches had smaller max leads. Except Octopath led during its match. So did Hollow Knight. And Celeste. And Mega Man in both of his losses in 2018, and Mario in his loss to Cloud in the same contest, and all of the others, even the ones whose matches only lasted 12 hours. Red Dead Redemption? Didn't. Never even came close. Usually, the updater at least captures a single-digit lead because it takes its first snapshot only a few seconds in, but P4G was already up 22-10 by the time it could. It was up by 74 at the freeze and hit triple digits by the 15-minute mark. The lead entered the 200s by the end of the second hour. This was, in fact, never in doubt. It just happened to stay close. Heck, the lead didn't even hit 400 until only about 2 hours remained in the match. Could've really made a record that would be tough to break if P4G hadn't surged right at the end. This is a match that looks a lot better on paper than it actually is. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7992&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=78) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Xenoblade Chronicles vs (6)Overwatch 2020 _source: (3)Xenoblade Chronicles vs (6)Overwatch 2020 (revid 86571)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, April 15, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 79 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 66.15% 53 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 38.68% - **User Votes:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 6847 Overwatch - 2512 - **Anonymous Votes:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 6370 Overwatch - 2278 Xenoblade Chronicles taking out the trash. Not only that, but it looked *good* doing it. I know Overwatch isn't a GameFAQs kind of game, nor should it frankly be anyone's kind of game given the company who made it, but Xenoblade scoring a 73-27 blowout in round 2 of a contest seemed impossible a few years ago. Remember when Nintendo was being a bunch of jackasses and refusing to release Xenoblade Chronicles, Pandora's Tower, or The Last Story over here in America? And it took the entire gaming public just totally embarrassing these people for them to *finally* cave? I remember it like it was yesterday. I bought all three of those games and still own them to this very day, out of pure respect for what gamers accomplished in all this via banding together and telling a big company to piss off with their stupid decision making. For those unaware of this, read about it on Wikipedia: Almost ten years later, look at Xenoblade now. I had a lot of proud papa moments in this contest, and this was a big one. Given how well I remember gamers wanting Xenoblade to come over here, and thinking it would never happen, and then being *so happy* when it did finally get over here.... this was so awesome. And it got to blow out a piece of trash game from a piece of trash company on top of all that. *And* it was a killer performance compared to what Fire Emblem: Three Houses was doing on this very same match day. Given the total insanity brewing in Division 4, could Xenoblade actually pull the impossible and *win a division*? Only time would tell, but this performance was an eye-opener for quite a lot of people. Xenoblade wasn't scoring these crazy blowouts against indie fodder trash. People actually care about Splatoon 2 and Overwatch. I don't know *why* anyone cares about any game made by Activision-Blizzard, but they do. Thankfully, all four games that made this bracket thoroughly embarrassed themselves. ## Ctes's Analysis The previous round saw Xenoblade Chronicles look absolutely incredible. However, the match likely had some unknown amount of SFF in it, so we couldn’t really know for certain if it was a misleading result. Today, it proved that it’s on a whole new level. You can really get far in five years it would seem. Xenoblade cemented itself as a favorite to win the division today by a good amount. Overwatch is not exactly the most beloved game on the website and is probably anti-voted to some extent, but it can win against tons of games in the bracket and has some strength to its name. Overwatch is another casual bait. Look at the prediction percentage for this match and then know that almost every guru picked it to win today. It’s a very GameFAQs kind of result, we had two of those today. Despite the board knowing Xenoblade wouldn’t be in trouble, every single oracle went lower than the result today. We expected Xenoblade to look really good and we really like it ourselves too, and yet it still outdid expectations by quite a bit. The consensus was below a doubling. It’s incredible how far the game has become, because to bury a big name like Overwatch, even on our site, you have to be recognized yourself. I don’t think Xenoblade was that yet five years ago and it definitely wasn’t when it released. But through Smash exposure and Nintendo acknowledging the series in recent years, it has gathered its respect. Xenoblade had basically nothing to worry about the coming round despite Three Houses being the pre-contest favorite to win that match. It would take some serious Nintendo hierarchy kind of thing to make it seem likely Three Houses could end on top of that match. ## Safer777's Analysis Boob Slider! Oh that is in the sequel, sorry about that. We all thought that XC would win but nobody expected such a big win. Man Death Stranding has to be damn weak. So yeah I don't know what else to say. I guess that XC winning a Round 2 match with 73 is so amazing that if you said that before the contest people would call you crazy and laugh at you for sure. So for the match. XC dominated here. Seriously that high? Even the whole crew had it around 66 too. So yeah. I don't know who the XC franchise got so strong but it did! Or they face really weak opponents? Too bad we didn't had Hentai rallies here. Overwatch has to be the AAA game with most Hentai ever. Probably? Still amazing win of XC. And for a while it was a Wii exlusive too! ## Tsunami's Analysis This is entirely in line with expectations for Overwatch. I guess the casuals got fooled by it? Or I dunno, maybe not. 38.68% got this right, compared to 38.98% who had XBC reaching this round and losing, but XBC's first-round prediction percentage was about 5 points *better* than Overwatch's. I feel like Overwatch probably was the favorite, but its low R1 prediction percentage was either people overrating Death Stranding or just there being a high enough percentage of people who *finally* realize that casualbait games tend to get slaughtered here. I think the upshot of this is that Kojima needs to bite the bullet and just *make movies* instead of trying to make these cutscene-heavy video games. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7993&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=79) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Ori and the Blind Forest vs (2)Fire Emblem: Three Houses 2020 _source: (10)Ori and the Blind Forest vs (2)Fire Emblem: Three Houses 2020 (revid 86573)_ ## Results **Round Two** Wednesday, April 15, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 80 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 15, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 63.04% 54 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 59.21% - **User Votes:** Ori and the Blind Forest - 3511 Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 5845 - **Anonymous Votes:** Ori and the Blind Forest - 3310 Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 5340 This was just a brutal match for anyone who had Three Houses beating Xenoblade and/or winning this division. In round 1, Three Houses looked off against South Park, but one could easily blame that on the match just being goofy. This match against Ori and the Blind Forest was not goofy. There were no excuses to be made here, even with Ori getting a sequel mid-contest and looking better than expected in round 1. One is an accident, two is a problem. Fire Emblem was in serious trouble, and remember also that this match was happening during a bunch of Persona 4 Golden hentai rallies. Three Houses is very heavily related to Persona with how it plays, so it's not unreasonable to think those types of rallies would help the game out. They didn't. Given what happened to Fire Emblem: Awakening in this contest as well, another bad performance from Three Houses would cement the entire series for "Turd of the Contest" honors. Spoiler alert -- Fire Emblem was the Turd of the Contest. These warning signs did not exactly bode well for Three Houses in the match to come, and we'll talk in full about what happened and why during the match Three Houses had with Xenoblade. That said, a lot of this was also Ori being a lot better than expected, so it deserves credit for both upsetting Dragon Age and exposing Fire Emblem. I actually bought this game on the Switch because of this contest, and it deserves all of the praise I saw you guys giving it while this contest was going on. I'm saving a lot of my love for when I finally write a review for it, but I feel like this writeup would be missing something without a quick mention of how incredibly beautiful the game is. That one shot really says it all. One of my favorite things about contests is getting to discover new games to play, and had this little run not happened I never would have known a game like this existed. Hell, without these contests I probably never would have played Chrono Trigger, Metroid Prime, Symphony of the Night, Kingdom Hearts, Gunstar Heroes, Lunar, Phantasy Star, Half-Life, and so, so, so many other games. Good times. I always love seeing topics pop up about people trying new games because of these things. ## Ctes's Analysis Yet another round and yet another underwhelming performance for Fire Emblem: Three Houses. This is in no way how you want to perform when you’re the favorite to win the division. Despite its round 1 result, it still went a little below Board 8’s expectations for it. Ultimately, none of that looked to matter all too much because Xenoblade was leagues ahead of where we expected it to be. Three Houses could have done what it was supposed to do for two rounds and it still wouldn’t be the favorite to win the following round. Three Houses had to hope there was some Nintendo or Smash hierarchy that favored against Xenoblade next round, but it was weird to imagine. Ori and the Blind Forest ends up looking like one of the top indie games, although I think its indie game status is a grey area. It appears to be behind Cuphead, Stardew Valley and Shovel Knight, but above things like Hollow Knight. I think it’s misleading and that it’s actually a bit lower than that. Ori was only released on Xbox and PC until very recently where it got a definite edition on Switch. I have a hard time imagining it’s that high up there. I think Fire Emblem: Three Houses is an easy game to overperform against. The Smash community are pretty tired of Fire Emblem right now and it was pretty clear in the previous Character Battle how much influence the Smash fanbase has over our contests. I also think Xenoblade overperformed a bit against Ultimate, but that does not seem to be the popular opinion. ## Safer777's Analysis So after the suprise win of Ori on Round 1  there was some scepticism here. Sure Dragon Age was far weaker than we expected but still it is not that FE3H dominated on the first round match. So we had to see what it would do in this match if it could be redeemed at least. So for the match. FE3H won and it did as expected I guess? Or actually worse now that I think about it. Look we all thought before the contest that it would win the division but now? I don't think anyone still expects that. Seems strange because FE3H is on Switch and it is the FE game with the best critical reception from both fans and critics plus FE is a core franchise. Also how many FE characters are in Smash? Seriously. Also Ori is a franchise now and I think it is not an indie game? I am not sure about that. Still when a game does decent and in the previous match a game does amazing where people were expecting to be the other way around you know you did something wrong. Anyways at least FE3H won. ## Tsunami's Analysis We all believed prior to this match that FE3H was probably the favorite in Round 3, and after this, not so much so. Holy crap what a disappointment. Or maybe Ori's just that good. I'd be willing to believe that Ori's actually kind of strong. But I still think XBC has the advantage next round, much as I hate it. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7994&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=80) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (8)Mass Effect 3 2020 _source: (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (8)Mass Effect 3 2020 (revid 86574)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, April 16, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 81 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 16, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Witcher 3 - 69.09% 52 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Witcher 3 - 82.77% - **User Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 7137 Mass Effect 3 - 1944 - **Anonymous Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 7723 Mass Effect 3 - 2169 If you had any game other than Witcher 3 winning the bottom half of this bracket, round 1 should have dashed most of your hopes, and this match here should have killed the rest of them. This was a beating so laughably ridiculous that people threw around the three wonderful letters (SFF) to explain it, which does make a lot of sense under the circumstances, but I will once again make this point -- if people are calling your match SFF, it means you've accomplished something truly special by beating your opponent into a pulp in front of the entire world to see. The *only possible hope* for Witcher 3 not to make the final was some weird hierarchy where Western SFF was a big deal, but Nintendo could possibly still beat it. This wasn't impossible, but it was extremely unlikely at this point. Almost breaking 80% on Mass Effect 3 here is just completely insane, regardless of how much SFF was involved. The concept of "Western SFF" is fairly new in our contests, and a lot of people discussed this being the first contest where such a thing was possible at all, and if such a thing does exist then Witcher 3 is clearly the king of it. As for why it was so easy to SFF Mass Effect 3 like this, people will point to the obvious answers like "Bioware went SJW" or "The ending sucked". I'm going to go curveball on you -- the *fanbase* is indefensible trash, and *they* are why Mass Effect is dead. Not SJWs. Not Anita Sarkeesian. The fans are. Trust me, if feminism or SJW nonsense is what killed this series, I would be the first guy to mention it. But that isn't what happened. This all goes far deeper than a bad ending or erroneously consulting with a crazy lady for Mass Effect Andromeda. Bioware fans were a low key terrible fanbase for a long time, far before the ending to Mass Effect 3 happened. They're typical PC Master Race weirdos who complain about every single stupid little thing, but they kept getting a pass because Bioware's games were usually good. KP has talked about this a lot over the years, and I still remember him pointing out how ridiculous these people were when the original Dragon Age came out. Eventually, Mass Effect 3 happened, and despite the game being 99.9% amazing, despite the multiplayer being incredible, these people bitched nonstop all over the internet like some idiot toddler whose parent wouldn't buy them a candy at the supermarket. We've all gone shopping when this has happened. It's never fun, and those one or two children ruin it for the rest of us. Well these idiot Bioware fans ruined the franchise for the rest of us, long before Feminist Frequency or Mass Effect Andromeda ever happened. The whining over the ending was just absurd, and worse yet, EA caved to these idiots. The last thing you ever want to do with a spoiled brat kid is give it what it wants, because dumb kids can be trained the same way as dogs -- repetition and "let it cry". They'll get the message eventually. EA screwing up and catering to these morons is what ultimately killed Mass Effect. Not Andromeda, not the feminists, and not the SJWs. The fans did this. Don't forget that if EA releases the Mass Effect Trilogy that's rumored, either. It does not change what the crybabies and the trolls did to this once very fine series. It's how you get Mass Effect 3 getting SFFd into oblivion. Witcher 3 is a beast, no doubt, but this wasn't all Witcher 3. Oh and while we're on the subject of fans killing a franchise, WWE has been giving wrestling fans everything they've asked for for years. You wanted Seth as champion. Got it. You wanted Brock to put people over. Got it. You wanted Becky as champion. Got it. You wanted Kofi as champion. Got it. You wanted Roman out of the title picture. Got it. You wanted competition that's able to put on a good show. Got it. Among a whole lot of other things. And surprise surprise, wrestling is still garbage compared to what it used to be. Turns out listening to a bunch of smarks didn't work after all. ## Ctes's Analysis This was the match that truly changed the favorite to reach Breath of the Wild from this side of the bracket. The Witcher 3 looks so great today. Everyone who picked Skyrim in the semi-finals knew they were in deep trouble. Everyone who believes Persona will win whenever there’s a small chance knew now that it would take a miracle. Dark Souls supporters knew that even if they got past Skyrim, the final was almost out of the question. Galaxy 2 supporters literally lost all hope today. Not a single oracle went expected Witcher to win by this match, the closest being more than 1% away, and the second closest being more than 3% away. This was a bloodbath out of nowhere. It certainly wasn’t just Assassin’s Creed Odyssey being downvoted into oblivion. The Witcher 3 was serious now. The previous games contest actually saw Mass Effect 2 probably being the weakest, though of course, they’re as hard to compare as it gets due to Undertale and that Metal Gear Solid 3 vs. Mass Effect 2 match was all kinds of weird. Even so, it was pretty clear that the games weren’t too far ahead. Mass Effect 3 might have been hurt by the format a bit. The Witcher 3 is mentioned everyone when it comes to Game of the Decade and Mass Effect 3 will forever be hunted by the controversial ending, sadly. But even if you think the contest title severely boosted Mass Effect 2 and did the opposite to the third one, there’s no denying how incredible The Witcher 3 looks here. The Witcher 3 looks a lot more mortal later in the contest, although the games standing up to all finish within the top 8 of the x-stats. I’m not trying to take any credit away from this result, but Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Persona 5 are vastly different from The Witcher 3 in terms of fans, while Mass Effect and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey share a lot more of their fans with it. It was later widely accepted some kind of SFF happened here, popularly called Western SFF. We’ll save the talk of why that’s a stupid name for another time. Although given what we seem to know the forced voting and contest title can do to matchups like this one, it seems pretty likely that Mass Effect 3 was also hurt a bit by usual SFF, which redeems its performance a good bit. ## Safer777's Analysis So I thought that Witcher 3 wouldn't break 70 here since well ME is a beloved franchise and except the ending controversy ME 3 is a pretty good game. Plus it is the game that I have played the most online with others. Seriously I had so much fun and I even found a lot of people from my country to play around. But as you see I was damn wrong. Even the Crew had W3 around 72. Pretty sure after this result Witcher 3 was the favorite to reach the final match. So for the match. W3 dominated and nobody expected this much as I said. So yeah W3 is a beast and it is almost a lock to reach the final match. It would be awesome if it won but alas. Netflix boost for sure! I called it first on this site too! Yeah I am that amazing! Also another strange thing that I saw was that people saying that we had Western SFF? Huh? Seriously this has to be first. These games are completely different. Where is the SFF? This is like saying that MGS and Silent Hill if they face each other MGS would win because of East SFF? Come on, SFF doesn't work that way. ## Tsunami's Analysis Holy shit what just happened Any semblance of faith that anyone might have still had in the 2015 X-Stats meaning anything at all was obliterated here. Yes, we all knew there was no good way to figure out a proper X-Stat value for ME3 since it faced Undertale in Round 1, but the one they eventually came up with had it still beating ME2. Now, ME2 was in Division 8 and Witcher 3 in Division 7, so their relative X-Stat values should be fairly accurate--that's the SMRPG quarter, so the only SFF match that can gum things up was MGS-MGS3 in the Division 8 finals. The adjusted X-Stats say that the Witcher 3 only wins that matchup with 53.59%. The *raw* X-Stats say that Mass Effect 2 wins it with 50.56%. Yes, we all know that ME3 \> ME2 was comical to begin with, but this is an absolute brutalization. A lot of people said this was a huge SFF match. It probably was, but we've had SFF matches be close before. This is a beatdown, and taken at face value would arguably make Witcher 3 the favorite to win the whole damn contest. Something very strange was happening here. Some people were even saying that ME3 was getting caught in Undertale's backlash, either being punished for not stopping the menace before it could be started or for riding Undertale's wake to an undeserved \#2 in the raw X-Stats. This was of course ridiculous, and yet, Witcher 3 was only 13th in R1 prediction percentage yet *3rd* in R2 percentage, behind only BotW and Skyrim. It's clear the voters had no respect for ME3 at all. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7995&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=81) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Stardew Valley vs (4)Super Mario Galaxy 2 2020 _source: (5)Stardew Valley vs (4)Super Mario Galaxy 2 2020 (revid 86575)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, April 16, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 82 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 16, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 69.10% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 60.94% - **User Votes:** Stardew Valley - 3085 Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 5999 - **Anonymous Votes:** Stardew Valley - 3909 Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 5984 40% of bracketmakers thought Mario Galaxy 2 would lose to either Return of the Obra Dinn, Stardew Valley, or Destiny. Yeah I don't get it either. Mario Galaxy 2 was one of the most grossly underseeded games in this entire bracket, and I say this with the game having a 4 seed. It should have, bare minimum, been on the 2 line. If you want to skip ahead and look at the LOL x-stats, Galaxy 2 ranked 8th. Seems like the right spot, because this game having a 4 seed was just dumb. As good as Stardew Valley looked in round one, it looked just as bad in round two. Seeded tournaments have their fair share of blowouts in the first two rounds once all the happy-to-be-here entrants get beat up by the heavy hitters, and Stardew Valley was one of the many mid-majors of sorts to fold once legitimate competition showed up. Beating Destiny was cute. Beating Mario Galaxy 2 was not happening. Thanks for playing, friend. See you next time. This set up a very interesting match between Witcher 3 and Mario Galaxy 2, and for as amazing as Witcher 3 looked in this contest, we were getting set up to test the Western SFF versus Nintendo theory. Did Witcher 3 look this good because it was the new king of the west, or did it look good because it was just... you know. Really good? We would find out in round 3 in pretty funny fashion! ## Ctes's Analysis I think this is one of the rare matches where both games actually look impressive. Super Mario Galaxy 2 underperformed relative to our expectations, which were likely fueled by the absolute blowout it delivered in round 1, but this is still a very solid performance on a game that ends up looking really good. Unfortunately, Super Mario Galaxy 2 got screwed by bracket placement so badly, because The Witcher 3 currently looked to be god tier in contest strength and there was just no way you could hold on to that longshot upset any longer. Stardew looks really impressive today and it only looks more impressive with each passing round and each passing Witcher 3 match in particular. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is the exact type of game to benefit from this format. It’s not too important that it’s from the Wii’s declining years any longer, because Nintendo are on top again and Super Mario Galaxy 2 is one of the best rated games of the decade, which absolutely matters in a contest like this. Yet Stardew Valley held up to it. We’re in the middle of a round that certainly isn’t kind to indie games. The ones that looked better would look a lot less good after the following round, but not Stardew Valley. I suppose Stardew Valley just had a really impressive amount of exposure and is exactly what we’re looking for in a game? It got a physical release, which is a dream come true for an indie game, but not just that, it was easily available in tons of places. At least my own observation was that every place had this game for a while, even places with slim selections. It had almost Shovel Knight levels of exposure in that regard. It’s also just really perfect at what it aimed to do. If simulation games aren’t your thing, then you won’t like it of course, but otherwise, you’re likely going to really like this game. It deserves to return to the field again in the future. ## Safer777's Analysis So there was a rally for the next match and this affected this match too since the rallied match and this one were going on at the same time. I mean SV got a lot more votes than SMG2  because it is an indie game and they are more easy to rally for them. But still of course SMG 2 would won but it dropped the win percentage by some margin. SV is a really beloved indie game that was made by only 1 guy so yeah. It is like an Animal Crossing game where you can just relax and have fun. No worries, just do whatever you want at your own leisure. As for SMG games they are both Wii exclusives but they both have 97 on Metacritic which is more than amazing. I don't play Mario games but man they have to be extremely good. So for the match. SMG 2 was winning by more before the rally so yeah it dominated here and even the crew went lower. I guess SMG 2 is a beast game because SV has to be one of the strongest indie games here. So yeah. Once again it is Freaking Mario! Also the prediction percentage seems kinda low for SMG 2 because well it faced really weak opponents and 4 out of 10 people thought it wouldn't even advance to Round 3? Strange. ## Tsunami's Analysis "Freaking Mario" may be strong, but his games aren't, at least not since SM64. Still...what is that prediction percentage? Galaxy 2 had over 95% prediction percentage in Round 1, yet it barely cracked 60% here. 35% of people thought that either Stardew Valley or Destiny would stop it? I mean, good for them; shows that maybe they have some taste after all. My bracket's pretty much busted since I was counting on this overrated piece of crap going deep because Nintendo Always Wins. It's pretty much toast next round against Witcher 3, which I continue to underestimate for some reason. Oh, right, maybe because the "common wisdom" is that licensed games are garbage? Yeah that's right I'm going to pull the licensed game card again. We need an all-media character battle desperately. Or even a limited one. We already force people to put game of origin in their nominations, right? So just make them do first game. Though I suspect that due to the "licensed *crap*" aspect, most of the beloved Kingdom Hearts Disney characters had other games first. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7996&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=82) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Fallout: New Vegas vs (6)Dark Souls III 2020 _source: (3)Fallout: New Vegas vs (6)Dark Souls III 2020 (revid 86576)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, April 16, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 83 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 16, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Fallout: New Vegas - 52.12% 40 for - 13 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Fallout: New Vegas - 48.31% - **User Votes:** Fallout: New Vegas - 4743 Dark Souls III - 4338 - **Anonymous Votes:** Fallout: New Vegas - 5649 Dark Souls III - 4243 This was one of the stranger matches of the contest. There was some slight buzz for Dark Souls 3 potentially winning this match by jumping aboard the Souls hype train, but ultimately New Vegas was the favorite, as it should have been. I'm sure when everyone prepped their bracket, they all did the same math. Fallout: New Vegas (2015g) VS Dark Souls (2015g) Fallout: New Vegas has a strength of 27.79. Dark Souls has a strength of 25.11. Fallout: New Vegas wins with 54.82% of the vote! A win of 5,871 with 60,875 total votes cast. Even assuming a blanket and universal Souls boost due to the title of this contest being "Game of the Decade", Dark Souls 3 would have to boost well beyond where Dark Souls was in 2015, on top of New Vegas falling off. New Vegas was not going to fall off given it doesn't have the Bethesda stench all over it, so it stood to reason that New Vegas would win the match in the 55-45 range. On top of that, I'm a big, big fan of the Souls games. I've played them all, and in three of them (Dark Souls 1, Bloodborne, Sekiro) I have platinum trophies. I'll probably do the same for Dark Souls 2 at some point, oddly enough, because I love that one more than most people. Given all that, I would have been floored had Dark Souls 3 won this match. I've mentioned this before, but Dark Souls 3 came out after Bloodborne and felt like the most absurd step backwards imaginable. We went from perfectly fluid combat and aggression to back to "Hold L1 and wait". Yes, I am aware you don't *have* to use a shield and things like dodging and magic are a thing. Not the point. The game is hella slow compared to the previous one, and it's impossible to play Dark Souls 3 after Bloodborne and feel okay about it. Good game, but the shark had been jumped by this point. Ergo, a 55-45 match felt correct. How we got there, though, was quite strange. At the freeze, New Vegas had 57% of the vote. It started with 60, but hey, no cause for concern right? "Whoops." With the first update, New Vegas's lead went from 81 to..... 81. Things stayed fairly close for the next few updates, too, though New Vegas was slowly climbing. Then this match went straight to Funkytown. Did you guys know that on top of the typical rallying spots for Souls-type games, there is apparently a big community to draw from if hentai rallies are your thing? Yeah I didn't know that either and would have loved to go my whole life without knowing this, but if I had to learn this information than so do you. Yes, there is Souls hentai and people were rallying those people to this match with it. Thankfully, the New Vegas subreddit had a rally of their own that dwarfed anything Dark Souls 3 did, and that was a wrap for the match. Both sides rallied a bunch, but in the end, New Vegas was able to come out on top in the predictable 55-45 type match we all expected. "Come out on top" might not be the best choice of words given the subject material, but hey. It is what it is. New Vegas won fairly easily and finally got to enjoy making it to round 3 of a contest, joining its brethren, Fallout 3, which accomplished this feat twice. ## Ctes's Analysis Fallout: New Vegas was the heavy board favorite here, which should be a little surprising given how close the match was and the trends the contest had, but it’s a match that highlights very nicely how many experts we have. A general trend we’ve seen in the contest so far had been that the Soulsborne games have looked very good and they’ve also been some of the most memorable and defining games of the decade. Another general thing is that Bethesda has gone downhill quite a bit since the beginning of the decade, although they started it very high. Fallout was certainly a stronger series the last time we had a games contest, where both Fallout 3 and New Vegas were looking better than Dark Souls, but times change. The people that did not consider a Soulsborne boost, but simply looked at previous stats likely all picked New Vegas today without thinking twice about it. For once that worked out nicely, but it was a close call. New Vegas got less today than it was projected to get against Dark Souls in 2015. We still predicted this one very nicely in the oracle though. The Souldborne boost was clear this time, but people also knew that Dark Souls III would not be nearly as strong as the first one. It appears to be that it’s closer within the fanbase, but overall, the first one has gathered so much more respect. The third one is basically what the first one was five years ago. The overall boost could’ve easily been enough to win this match, especially if you thought the Bethesda decline would strike New Vegas today. Yet the board also correctly expected that New Vegas would not be harmed much by this, because it wasn’t developed by Bethesda, but only published by them. Of course, there are almost always exceptions, and it was reasonable to go higher on New Vegas or pick Dark Souls III, but this result was the general consensus on the board. New Vegas would have the edge, but it would be close. I think our board as a whole deserves some respect every now and then for things like this. It’s often brought up when we collectively screw up, so let’s bring it up when the opposite happens. The board seemed confident about this, and it’s not often you see us being so confident in a match as close in percentage as this one. It’s one thing when we had a Link vs. Cloud like this every year and we knew what would happen, but this was impressive. ## Safer777's Analysis So this match did had a rally on DS subreddit but here is the thing. It did brought votes but they were around 50-50 for both games. So why? Because if you have played any of the modern Fallout games FNV is your favorite and the best out of all them. So yeah even though DS 3 is a different genre you can't really vote against FNV here. Now IF DS 1 was here then maybe it could do it sure, but not DS 3. So for the match. Well FNV started at around 57 on the match, then it dropped to around 53 and basically stayed there for hours and that was it. So yeah rally votes but it didn't affected this match at all. I mean at the end FNV started even gaining percentage. Still a close match but in the end FNV wasn't never in any danger even with the rallies. Still good result from DS 3 since it seems to be the weaker of the DS games. ## Tsunami's Analysis The prediction percentage suggests that this was a toss-up in voters' minds. Only 48.31% got this right, down from 91.38% who had New Vegas reaching Round 2. Dark Souls III also had a R1 prediction percentage above 85%, so it's not the other entry's fault. The match failed to live up to their expectations, settling into a groove where the last 18.5 hours had the percentage between 53.69% and 54.19%, finishing at 53.96%. A good percentage by the loser, but never in doubt. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7997&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=83) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (10)Nioh vs (2)God of War 2020 _source: (10)Nioh vs (2)God of War 2020 (revid 86577)_ ## Results **Round Two** Thursday, April 16, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 84 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 16, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** God of War - 71.31% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** God of War - 79.71% - **User Votes:** Nioh - 2432 God of War - 6649 - **Anonymous Votes:** Nioh - 2307 God of War - 7586 Nioh pulled off a cute little one point upset in round 1 against The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, but we call them "one point upsets" for a reason. That reason is when the winner gets to the next round, they typically get annihilated. God of War scored a total beatdown in this one, which set it up quite nicely for its match with New Vegas. There was a small chance New Vegas could pull the upset there, so ol' Kratos had to make sure he looked good and ready in his warmup fight. Shout out to Nioh though, no shame in losing badly here. I love that game even with its flaws, and I'm very excited to play Nioh 2 and see what direction the series takes moving forward. I also love God of War 2018 to death, so this match was a win-win for me. Killer match picture, too: The case can be made for that image being the best and most iconic image in the history of video games. It's that good and that important. I don't know if it would be \#1 on such a list of hypotheticals, but it's in the conversation. It has to be. Remember, Kratos had beaten the entire Pantheon, plus a lot of esoteric Greek stuff of myth, and those games were just done by this point. Amazing games, but a reboot was needed and it had to be *bigger*. Going from Greek to Norse is such a crazy undertaking, and for it to work, the scale had to be insane. Then Jormungandr pops up and it's like.... oh. Yeah shit just got real, boys. This game is not messing around with you. ## Ctes's Analysis God of War looks quite dominant once again. Nioh just had a sequel right before the contest began and we’ve had a contest where anything FromSoftware has looked really good. God of War looked like it could give a lot of division favorites a good scare. Just not the one in the division it was actually in, unfortunately. God of War over Witcher 3 was a fine upset pick if you wanted something that would give you a good winning chance if it pulled through, though it required you to think The Witcher 3 hadn’t boosted much and that the Ultimate vs. God of War GotY poll could be translated to contest strength. It was always a longshot and the hope officially died today, despite God of War exceeding our expectations a little bit. Nioh ended up looking pretty bad despite looking good coming out of round 1. Despite just getting a sequel, it doesn’t look like the game was all that big. It just turns out The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth was among the weakest things in the bracket, which we didn’t believe at the time of its match. Nioh is a good example that 2017 just has a large collection of strong games, but that nothing does well because it’s from 2017, as it seemed at times. Games like Nioh was simply in a great position to make it seem like that because it got a weak opponent the contest had led us to believe would be decent enough. When all that is said, I do believe Nioh was perhaps SFF’d a little here. Although Nioh later came out on PC, the games were both released as Playstation 4 exclusives only about a year apart. I think they overlap a little in fanbase. ## Safer777's Analysis So Nioh did managed to win in Round 1 since it's sequel had come recently and it did pulled out the upset, but against GOW it didn't stand a chance. The question was how much GOW would score. The crew was between 70 and 80 and it scored in the middle. So it did really good. Almost a tripling! So for the match. I don't think the rally that was going on for another match that was happening at the same time affected this match because you can't really vote against GOW. It is amazing game. Seriously so good that I didn't expected that. Also a friend of mine told me something that I haven't noticed too. It doesn't have a single DLC or microtransaction! Seriously! Is this the only big  AAA  game that hasn't anything like that? Probably. So yeah a damn strong win. Is this the strongest exclusive non Nintendo game? For sure. I want to see how far it reaches. ## Tsunami's Analysis Without even meaning to, I ended up bringing up a topic of discussion with my Guest Analysis of this match for the Crew: Can Japanese and Western games SFF each other? I honestly don't see why they shouldn't, but apparently people think that they don't overlap that much. I mean, this isn't exactly the best match for it since Nioh's an ARPG and God of War is a straight-up hack-and-slash AAG, but I feel like unless you're loyal to a specific *company*, you wouldn't be any less likely to be a fan of other games from the same genre just because they were developed on the other side of the Pacific. In a weird way, even those same people realized it in other genres, when they figured that a Mario game would be harder for "the indies" to rally against. A lot of those indies are Western in origin, you know! But for some reason, platformers are apparently the only thing that's allowed to SFF across the ocean. (Though I have to admit I *haven't* played that many WRPGs, if any. I've had this copy of Skyrim sitting around for years since I got it second-hand for practically nothing and I've never actually installed it because I wanted to stream my blind playthrough and there have been other things higher on my streaming priority list. I need to play it! Maybe when this contest is over, since Skyrim's obviously going to go really far.) ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7998&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=84) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Persona 5 vs (8)Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag 2020 _source: (1)Persona 5 vs (8)Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag 2020 (revid 86578)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, April 17, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 85 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 17, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Persona 5 - 71.20% 55 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Persona 5 - 73.69% - **User Votes:** Persona 5 - 6560 Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - 2620 - **Anonymous Votes:** Persona 5 - 5519 Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - 2358 I've seen a lot of strange things on Board 8 over the years, but you guys stanning for Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, of all things, after my round 1 writeup is one of the weirder ones. Since when do any of you care about the Assassin's Creed games? Thankfully Persona 5 utterly destroyed it to boot the series out of the contest entirely, so we can all move on with our lives. It's really fun to see how far the Persona series has come in contests, and it's likely only to go up from here. Remember this match? If you had told me ten years ago that Persona would headline a division so dominantly that it would be one of the easiest divisions to call in a gaming contest, I would have thought you were clinically insane. That is, however, exactly what has happened. I dare say Persona is the flagship JRPG series on this site right now, which was utterly preposterous a decade ago. Things have really changed around here. The only possible threat to Persona 5 in this division would be the divisional finals. Nothing in the top half was ever going to touch it, though I'll argue nothing in this division was going to come close to it regardless. Not with Smash Bros exposure. ## Ctes's Analysis If the previous day wasn’t enough in itself to make it clear Persona 5 would not get further than the quarterfinals, it surely became clear today. You had to believe a huge difference in strength between two Assassin’s Creed games despite the site not caring about neither or that The Witcher 3 SFF’d Assassin’s Creed into oblivion to still hold onto the idea that Persona 5 had a chance of getting to the semifinals. In the first round, we weren’t sure how beastly The Witcher 3 was because it might have been the Assassin’s Creed series falling off a cliff, but Black Flag still managed to win a match and look less terrible than Odyssey here, so the anti-voting clearly wasn’t on the levels of Call of Duty and such. Obviously, this didn’t stop Persona 5 supporters from believing it could do it, but from this day forward, you really shouldn’t believe there was much of chance. Despite winning a match this contest, I really doubt we’ll see an Assassin’s Creed game make the field again unless they’re a serious turnaround in that series or that the next Game of the Decade contest also tries its best to very diverse. Assassin’s Creed II barely made it in a five years ago. It had potential to be big at one point, but the ship has sailed. It’s a shame to see a series, that was so amazing at one point, fall at much as it has done, but here we are. Of course, the games are still successful from an economic perspective, so everything is fine at Ubisoft headquarters and we’ll likely see games released consistently for years to come, but the days where less casual gamers praised the franchise are long gone. ## Safer777's Analysis So obviously P5 would win because as I said before Persona 5 was hugely successful in sales and in reception plus the enchanced version came out recently. So the hype is real. Plus the main protagonist of P5 got in Smash which pretty sure nobody expected. So yeah Persona series is finally known by most. And it started as a spin off too! That is how you know you made it. As for the AC games I am sure AC 4 is considered the most popular and maybe the best too. For me the best is AC Odyssey since it takes place in Greece plus well as you know the series got soft rebooted with Origins and once again it is doing very good. The next game will have Vikings on it! So for the match. The only thing that mattered is if P5 would score above 70 and it did that so all are fine. What else to say? Nice to see a JRPG that isn't from Square Enix doing this good. The prediction percentage was huge too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Well, Persona's definitely in the mainstream now. 73.69% of brackets got this right, and ACIV *was* the favorite in its R1 match. I guess Assassin's Creed just isn't that well respected any more? I seem to remember that the other Assassin's Creed game in this bracket got slaughtered and everyone knew that it would. Who was that against, again? ...Oh, of course. The Witcher 3. Really looking more and more like a contender for the title with every passing match! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=7999&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=85) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Sonic Mania vs (4)Super Meat Boy 2020 _source: (5)Sonic Mania vs (4)Super Meat Boy 2020 (revid 86579)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, April 17, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 86 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 17, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Sonic Mania - 52.18% 40 for - 15 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Sonic Mania - 48.80% - **User Votes:** Sonic Mania - 6003 Super Meat Boy - 3179 - **Anonymous Votes:** Sonic Mania - 5009 Super Meat Boy - 2863 Random bit of trivia -- this was the 8000th poll in GameFAQs history. Not really contest trivia, but hey. This was one of the most surprising blowouts of the entire contest, and if anyone disagrees with that, just look at the oracle consensus -- Sonic Mania with 52%. Given how good Super Meat Boy looked in round one in beating the absolute tar out of Slay the Spire, how indies were overhyped in this contest, and that Sonic looked like dog shit against Ys 8: Sanctimonious Subtitle, it made sense to hype up Super Meat Boy and think this match would be close. It's also fun rooting for the guru nomination to do well, as we tend to do each contest. When the poll started and it was clear Sonic Mania was going to beat the holy hell out of Meat Boy in this contest, a lot of people went searching for answers. It was even a big topic on The Show, with Nick giving my favorite explanation on the panel. I'm paraphrasing here, but he said Super Meat Boy is the type of game with enough respect to beat up anything without name recognition, but anything *with* name recognition will destroy it. Okay, makes sense. I think that applies to most of the well-respected indie titles, but Nick is on point. I'm going to go one step further however and call this an SFF match. To understand why, you have to understand all the garbage the Sonic fanbase dealt with between Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast and Sonic Mania: Wikipedia doesn't even list it all, either. No mention of the terrible spinoffs, like Sonic and the Black Knight. I didn't like Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, but I can't hate on anyone who did. Even if you liked that game, you went **17 years** between good games in the Sonic series. For me, it was 20 years. I can't really understate how trashy that series got, guys. You saw it all happen. Just.... Sonic as a werewolf. Sonic 2006. Sonic Heroes. Shadow's entire character. It went on and on and on. On top of that, the Sonic fanbase isn't known as the *worst* fanbase in gaming, but it's very close. It's infested with perverts, incels, furries, weirdos, and just outright losers. A few of these people are even on Board 8, though I won't name any of them as they don't deserve recognition. They're few and far between, but they're here. Trust me. If you want a hint, pay attention to anyone who likes both the Sonic series and the Pokemon series. Odds are you've stumbled across one of these freak shows. So imagine being me, or one of the millions of people like me that grew up in the 90s. Most people on this site grew up in the 90s, so this won't be hard to imagine for most of you. You're just a regular dude who loved sports, hanging out with friends, playing video games, and the other usual stuff. You see Sonic, one of your favorite characters as a kid, reduced to being a shell of himself. I mean come on, a **werewolf**. I mean come on, people. Finally you just bail, because it's clear this series is gone. But you still like platformers, right? How does one scratch that itch when the Sonic series is dead and gaming is mostly 3D? With indie games and handhelds, of course. Games like Super Meat Boy, Braid, VVVVVV, a litany of Castlevanias on the DS, and so on. This love continues to the present day, too. Don't think Board 8 or this contest hyped up Celeste or Hollow Knight for no reason, or even games that didn't make it like Salt and Sanctuary or Dust: An Elysian Tail. Then, from almost out of nowhere in 2018, manna from heaven descended upon the earth. "Hold up, is that Green Hill Zone? Holy crap is that the old school sprites? **Is that the final boss from Sonic 2??? What in the world??**" Of course Sonic Mania SFFd Super Meat Boy into the ground. I'd be shocked if the two games had less than 80% overlap. This was such a huge proud papa moment for me personally, regardless of what happened next round. By the way, the other main reason I consider this an SFF match is because there are several games that finished above Meat Boy in the stats that I don't think would beat it in a contest match. That's pretty much the SFF hallmark. ## Ctes's Analysis This match is one of the most hilarious of the entire contest. It was expected to be close and it then Sonic Mania makes a real attempt at the doubling. Such results happen in round 1, especially in a contest where most of the field is new, but in round 2 it’s a lot rarer. Sonic Mania looked pretty bad against Ys VIII in round 1. It only remained the favorite in this match because we expected Slay the Spire to be among the weakest games in the bracket and Super Meat Boy didn’t look very impressive killing it. Sonic Mania was a bigger favorite before the contest begun that after round 1 though. The match ended up being a matter of who sucked less. No one had any faith in Ys VIII, so it seemed quite believable that Sonic Mania was just bad because everything Sonic being bad these days sounded believable. It isn’t exactly good, but not at all as bad as we thought for a moment. Then we had Super Meat Boy not destroying Slay the Spire as anything was supposed to. Games like VVVVVV and Binding of Isaac looks very bad after round 1, and those are indie games from around the same time as Super Meat Boy. This allowed Sonic Mania to remain the favorite despite the silly round 1 performance. Then the match was over in a matter of seconds and two other matches today actually looked better for a very brief while. Everyone supporters Super Meat Boy looked so bad, but it really didn’t seem like a bad upset pick at the time. The oracle consensus is more than 14% away from the result. The closest pick is more than 2% away and the second closest more than 4%. What a shocker this was. It really became apparent how much we’ve begun to appreciate smaller RPGs. Ys, Bravely Default, Octopath Traveler. Some of those have a big developer behind them, but the point still stands. On top of that we’ve seen Dragon Quest and Persona looking better than ever with Xenoblade looking to be very good as well. Perhaps a time has come where we’re looking at different RPGs, small ones too, because we’re a bunch of people growing up with Final Fantasy, which is trash today. It’s a shame Ys didn’t draw Super Meat Boy in round 1 for one of the most hilarious results of the contest, but we still got to have this insane overperformance due to how misled we were. ## Safer777's Analysis So this match was a suprise for everyone. I mean the Crew was split here too plus they all expected the winner to be around 53. But man SM dominated here. Almost a doubling! I was suprised too, I thought SMB would win since nobody cares for Sonic games anymore. Sure people know Sonic because of Smash but Sonic games? Almost all of them suck in the last decades. But from what people told me SM is actually a good Sonic game which I guess makes sense since well it is the only game that got in the bracket! So why we all thought that SM sucks in the contest? Because it couldn't even double an YS game which an obscure series even though there are like 10 of these games! So for the match. Well SM dominated. Why? Because Slay the Spire which Super Meat Boy beat easily has to be in the bottom 5 here. So yeah that weak. And SMB even though it is a fairly known indie series seems to be really weak too. Yeah there is a sequel now. Okay it is not out yet, but it will come out soon. After 10 years! So seems that we are wrong and SM is somewhat decent and SMB is damn weak. Hey at least as a Guru pick it won a match! Also seems that YS series isn't completely fodder. ## Tsunami's Analysis So apparently Sonic's worth something again? This was a great showing, and a lot of people saw it coming; while the prediction percentage was under 50%, it's close enough to be a clear plurality. It seems like a lot of the disappointments of the past decade figured it out at the end. Ah, well, at least the Guru Nomination made it to Round 2. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8000&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=86) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Portal 2 vs (6)Kingdom Hearts III 2020 _source: (3)Portal 2 vs (6)Kingdom Hearts III 2020 (revid 86580)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, April 17, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 87 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 17, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Portal 2 - 57.92% 51 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Portal 2 - 50.55% - **User Votes:** Portal 2 - 5754 Kingdom Hearts III - 3426 - **Anonymous Votes:** Portal 2 - 4844 Kingdom Hearts III - 3030 I warned you about Tetsuya Nomura, folks. I won't spoil FF7 Remake here, but you can't say I didn't warn you. That guy has been garbage ever since he became a director. The dude is a good artist. I will never take that away from him. He gets made fun of a lot because of belts and zippers, but I do legitimately like his art style. As a director and writer though? Trash. He is laughably unqualified, and we have almost two decades of games as proof. He's a hack. A few years back, I mentioned how I would rather pick Kingdom Hearts and be wrong than pick against it and be wrong. The series has pulled so many wins out of its ass in debated matches over the years that it's so hard to pick against it when there's even a small chance it can win. That said, I think we're at the point where this series is done for on this site. There have been way too many bad games in a row now in that series, not to mention Kingdom Hearts 3 itself being trash after 15 years of hype, for it to recover. So I knew Portal 2 was winning this match. Didn't care, I picked Kingdom Hearts 3 anyway, even over one of my all time favorites, knowing full well what was coming. At least, I *thought* I knew what was coming. Portal 2 delivered a beatdown so massive that it had people talking about it winning this division, perhaps even more, because it felt like we were watching something we hadn't seen before. The reason for that is simple. We hadn't seen anything like this before. Did you know this is the first time a Kingdom Hearts game got under 40% in a 1v1 contest poll? It's true. Look it up. The losses are always close, even in the LOL 4ways if you care to look those up as well. After all that, Kingdom Hearts 3 finally gets released, finally it gets into a contest, and.... dud. Much like its useless director. Seriously, how did we go from this... ...to THIS? Not only has Tetsuya Nomura ruined Kingdom Hearts beyond all repair, and we saw the result of his idiocy live this contest, but he's also in the process of ruining Final Fantasy 7 even more than it's already been ruined. All Square had to do was take the same game and make it shiny. That's it. Instead, we got hit with false advertising. Defenders of Nomura can call that trash whatever they want, but at the end of the day we got lied to. And I *told you* he was going to pull some BS with that remake. I fucking knew it. Add another one to the pile of things that goof has ruined. I mean really, hasn't FF7 been through enough? Crisis Core, Dirge of Cerberus, Advent Children, Before Crisis, Last Order, and now this nonsense? Enough is enough. That cow has milked dry every which way and needs to be brought to the slaughterhouse already so it can be put out of its misery. And fire Tetsuya Nomura and just start all over while you're at it. When the only Final Fantasy game to get any respect for an entire decade is an MMORPG of all things, something has gone seriously wrong. Seeing Kingdom Hearts and its idiot director completely collapse at the hands of one of my favorite games made me *so* happy, too, because Portal 2 deserved to go on this crazy run it went on. It got screwed in 2015, so this contest was a nice bit of justice for it. Final point before I move on. I don't really care about credits in games and knowing who voice actors and motion capture actors are and all that other jazz, so until this week I was probably the only guy on the planet who didn't know that JK Simmons is Cave Johnson. I knew that voice sounded familiar when I was playing and I could never put my finger on it! Cave Johnson -- first man in human history to successfully give a potato an orgasm. ## Ctes's Analysis Kingdom Hearts III was a semi-popular upset pick taken by a good number of gurus. Kingdom Hearts has traditionally been stronger than Portal here and the third one was untested, as it did not appear in any Game of the Year polls. Portal also looked weaker in recent contests as it did a decade ago when it was a huge phenomenon everywhere. However, Kingdom Hearts III was not received too well for various reasons we’ve been through before. You had to hoping it could ride on its name to victory and that was always a longshot. We saw how well it worked out for the game thinking they had their own characters and didn’t need Final Fantasy anywhere. It’s the same thing here really, and besides, Portal is quite the name here as well. Oh, and I know that’s not the main reason the game wasn’t too well liked, but it all counts. The first round definitely made Portal 2 look like the favorite today, as shown by very few oracles picking it. True enough, it had little trouble, though we underestimated it a good bit. Kingdom Hearts III did best with the board vote, surprisingly. Despite not being too well liked here either, we still appreciate the franchise as a whole it would seem, because we sure used to love Portal too. It was close for a few minutes. Then it was basically over, but if you believed Portal 2 had all the bracket votes, you might have still had hope at the freeze, because Portal couldn’t really run away with it until that point. When the next update came it was pretty clear that Portal 2 was not going to break a sweat winning the match though. I think at the end of the day, this wasn’t really a matter of which franchise we think the best of a decade later, but just the games competing. Portal 2 was loved, and Kingdom Hearts III had a mixed reception. In a Game of the Decade setting, Portal 2 is still remembered despite being very early. The first Portal was good and did impressive last Game of the Decade too, but the second one took the good idea and really built upon it. I saw the name being brought up in many Game of the Decade discussions, it probably benefits a bit from the contest title, similar to what Mass Effect 2 seemed to do. Portal 2 goes into the third round as the big favorite, although it depended on how much a boost you thought Animal Crossing. Kingdom Hearts ended up looking fine, but it’s a huge fall from grace. Both games were among the biggest games last decade. This one barely made it out in time to enter this and after so many years of waiting, it wasn’t even that great. The future is not to bright for Kingdom Hearts. They pumped out handheld games and countless remasters up until the release of this game because it was hyped by the misleading title of it being a “mainline Kingdom Hearts” despite being a sequel to one of the handhelds that more casual fans probably thought of a spin-off. If they want to make up for this with another release in the future, they probably can’t get people to buy everything again, because it won’t be as anticipated. We might very well have seen the effective end of the franchise, but Kingdom Hearts II will probably continue to be a decent entry in these contests and Sora is probably still somewhat strong. ## Safer777's Analysis So this match. Damn. Okay so here it goes. KH is a beloved series. I mean KH 2 is still considered one of the best games of all time and it came out 15 years ago! But see here is the thing, when a sequel comes out after 14 YEARS it has to be the best game ever for making us wait all this time! Oh sure there were a TON of spin off but people ALWAYS want the main games to play. Not a spin off. So is KH 3 a bad game? No. But after 14 years everyone was dissapointed. Same deal with FF 15. Not a bad game but that game was in development for 10 years. You think it would managed to please everyone after all this time? Extremely few games can do it. Grand Theft Auto series can. Elder Scrolls series can. This is why games should be out every 4-5 years the maximum so people will not lose interested or find something else to play. Plus as I said in my previous analysis KH3 hasn't FF characters. You know the series that became popular because it had Disney and FF characters together? Yeah screw that now! Oh there are moogles! Yippee! And the reason FF characters weren't there? Because they wanted to focus on the stories of the main characters in KH? What? First of all pretty sure nobody knows what exactly is going on with the KH series since there are so many spin offs that either add things, take aways things, or change things. So if we had Cloud fighthing Sephiroth for example we wouldn't be able to understand the main story of KH 3? Yeah sure. So for the match. Well Portal 2 is a damn beloved game even though it seems that the Portal series is dead now. Portal 2 came out 9 years ago. It is some kind of puzzle platform and it still hugely popular. I don't get it. Valve has Half Life and Portal and they don't do anything with their franchises. Hey anything would be fine! Except gatcha games. So Portal 2 won with as much as expected. I do wonder if KH 2 was here though. Would it win? Who knows. As I said KH 3 came out, there was hype for 1 week and then everyone just moved on. Sad. I don't know if they make another KH game but pretty sure the franchise isn't what it used to be. Also strangely enough this was the worst loss for a KH game 1VS1! Damn it! This is strange. We had the worst loss for a Zelda game 1VS1 a few days ago and now this. ## Tsunami's Analysis Nothing to talk about here; over half the brackets got this right and the match wasn't even close. RPGFAQs strikes again... ...wait, ***Portal 2*** was the winner? Not Kingdom Hearts III? And people *expected this?* Fuck, man, I didn't even remotely *consider* this one, and their respective Round 1 results did nothing to sway me one way or the other. I guess KH3 did have the worse result, even with the slightly better percentage, because its opponent was a lot less recognizable than Portal 2's, but come on. Portal 2 got upset in Round 1 in 2015 (which I called correctly) and Wheatley lost to *Crash Bandicoot *in Round 1 in 2013 (not so much so). 2015 X-Stats say Portal 2 gets 35.96% on KH1 and 34.04% on KH2. And that makes perfect sense because *they're fucking Square Enix RPGs*; hell, I think KH1 might technically be pre-merger Squaresoft. Yes, the endless spinoffs dragged the series down, but this is a numbered game. Kingdom Hearts III. This wasn't supposed to be a contest. It just...I keep wanting to say "I didn't even consider this upset possibility", because I can't wrap my head around the fact that Kingdom Hearts III *was* the upset pick! I honestly wouldn't have been surprised to see Persona 5 \> Kingdom Hearts III as our "haw haw casuals" moment, because Persona still doesn't have the name recognition that Kingdom Hearts does. I'm pretty sure "the casuals" don't actually exist anymore, but still. Portal 2 was proven crap, and yet it's pretty much dead even with RDR*1* in the 2015 X-Stats so we knew that RDR2 would be even less of a challenge, except actually we didn't know that at all because the idea of Portal 2 not weakening considerably since 2015 was *also* laughable. You know what, Portal 2 was in Division 3, aka "the Undertale Division". Yes, it lost to Sonic 2 and Sonic 2 lost to Pokémon, but the exact X-Stat numbers on that would still be fishy because we were already prepping Pokémon to be our savior again, just like in 2013 with Mewtwo. Maybe Portal 1 can give us something "cleaner"? ...Goddamnit Portal 1 was fed to Melee in *the first round.* We had nothing. Nothing remotely reliable, aside from the characters bombing, and as we all know, Characters =/= Games. And we...oh. Forget "prepping to be our savior". RBYG-StH2 was the same day as UT-SMW! And Undertale's own rallies favor Pokémon there. We really had nothing. Except... Portal (2015g) VS Kingdom Hearts 2 (2015g) Portal has a strength of 24.72. Kingdom Hearts 2 has a strength of 34.22. Kingdom Hearts 2 wins with 63.88% of the vote!  A win of 16,900 with 60,875 total votes cast. That one barely moves at all when switched to raw X-Stats; I suspect the fact that it moves at all is just due to rounding errors. Because Melee was perceived to have rallied in Round 2 against Pokémon GSC, and then in every round from Round 4 against Chrono Trigger until its defeat against Undertale. The two matches where it had not been perceived to have rallied were Round 1 against Portal...and Round 3 against Kingdom Hearts II. *It's a clean comparison*, even if it was through an entrant that had rallied. Which begs the question: Why? Was Kingdom Hearts III *that* poorly received? There is no good reason for Portal 2 to have gotten stronger, since there are no other games in the series. Yet somehow, everyone just kind of knew that Portal 2 would win. Against probably the biggest Square RPG of the decade. What site am I even on anymore? ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8001&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=87) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Animal Crossing: New Leaf vs (2)Red Dead Redemption 2 2020 _source: (7)Animal Crossing: New Leaf vs (2)Red Dead Redemption 2 2020 (revid 86582)_ ## Results **Round Two** Friday, April 17, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 88 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 17, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Red Dead Redemption 2 - 57.31% 49 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Red Dead Redemption 2 - 69.82% - **User Votes:** Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 3943 Red Dead Redemption 2 - 5238 - **Anonymous Votes:** Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 3237 Red Dead Redemption 2 - 4638 Given Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out mid-contest and the specter of casualbait titles getting anti-voted to death always exists, there was a little bit of fear that Red Dead Redemption 2 could lose this match. Red Dead Redemption 2's day would come, but it would not happen here. This isn't to say RDR2 had a good match by any stretch, but it didn't have a bad one either. It did about what was expected given the circumstances of New Leaf getting boosted by New Horizons selling 238 billion copies in ten minutes after it launched. Unfortunately, "about what was expected" was not going to get it done long term in a division with Persona 5 and Portal 2 looking like kings. The two Red Dead Redemption games aren't at the level of Grand Theft Auto when it comes to anti-votes or anything, but I feel like they're both stained just enough by the casualbait stench that they have a ceiling around these parts. As a total semi-unrelated side note since we're on the subject of Westerns, Django Unchained was added to Netflix recently and I rewatched it a couple nights ago. It's shocking to me that so many people are pro-censorship these days, because censorship kills artistic creativity. That movie would never get made today in 2020. I don't think white people should be going around using racist language or anything, but on the subject of artwork we're in a really bad time; sterility is anathema to good art. Django Unchained would be laughably unwatchable censored, and the villains would be completely toothless. But the uncensored version of that movie? Good hell, I've never wanted villains dead and good guys to win so much in my life. That movie was horrifying, as well as very historically accurate. The entire purpose of knowing our history is to learn from our mistakes so they've never repeated, not to sterilize everything and pretend it doesn't exist. People used to know this, and I don't know what happened in the past five years or so to turn everyone into a bunch of jellyfish. Remember when a streamer got banned for punching a feminist NPC in Red Dead 2, and then Youtube had to reinstate the account after the entire internet revolted? It's the Streisand Effect. This happened in 2017 and the guy was accused of being a Nazi and such, complete with all the usual garbage outlets talking about it, even though the streamer in question had a bunch of videos from the game with him killing a bunch of NPCs in the KKK and so forth. His play style was him literally attacking every NPC in the entire game. Quick to react pro-censorship folks should be very, very careful what they wish for. Censored cultures are generally not good. Obviously there should be a proper amount of decorum and good taste, but what's going on now is absurd. And yes I got sidetracked to Django Unchained and censorship when talking about Red Dead Redemption 2, because this contest had a large number of bad matches and blowouts and I need other stuff to talk about. Hey, at least the censorship bit was kind of related. Welcome to Ulti's Post-Contest Analysis! Sidetracks optional. ## Ctes's Analysis This match would probably not have been a doubt half a year before. Red Dead Redemption is not as fantastic here as other places, but it’s still pretty good, it just doesn’t get any praise because its results are disappointing and not surprising to the common eye. The second one had a huge release. The FAQs for Rockstar games are pretty frequented here too and they remain on top of the charts for a long time. Even on GameFAQs, this match should not be in much doubt. However, when Animal Crossing: New Horizons just had one of the biggest launches of all time leading right up to the contest, suddenly New Leaf doing the impossible seemed like a possibility. Last contest was also one of our most Nintendo dominant contest to date with everything that appeared in Smash looking at least decent. Ironically, Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of two games ever with a launch better than or as good as New Horizons. They’re tough to compare because Nintendo released numbers for the first eleven days while RDR2 got numbers for the first two days. New Horizons certainly wins if you do a console split, then it probably also beats the \#1, Grand Theft Auto V. This obviously doesn’t matter much. New Horizons was the hottest game in the world during this contest, likely fueled by the lockdown, but also fueled by the game being a perfect game to play during lockdown. The match wasn’t really close though. The opening minutes were fun, because while Red Dead Redemption 2 clearly had the early bracket votes (and I’m calling it bracket votes since there’s no way board 8 favors a Rockstar game over Animal Crossing), New Leaf actually closed the gap for some minutes before RDR2 went ahead again. The first updates post the freeze weren’t big, but when a Rockstar game is leading at that point it’s very likely to win the match, and so it did, extending its percentage throughout the day. The main reason that New Horizons hype wasn’t enough to pull the upset is without much doubt simply that it wasn’t New Horizons competing. It probably helped New Leaf a bit, but the gap was way too big. Remember how awful New Leaf looked in the previous contest? Yes, it was SFF’d, but it also got Undertale rally spillover boosted. It was clearly a bottom game of the contest. It had a huge gap to close. It would be fun to see New Horizons in a contest right now. It’ll probably be alright whenever we get a games contest again. I’m not doubting it makes the field if it’s eligible, but I think the craze will be over by then. It will be remembered as a great game, but it’s during lockdown it had a chance to pull something like this off and likely be super easy to rally for. ## Safer777's Analysis Even though there was some fear that ACNL might win since the new AC game came out recently and it seems that it did extremely well and it is still talked about and make the AC franchise even bigger and has sold like a massive amount of copies, RDR2 did as expected and it won. I mean sure we do love some AC here but well against RDR 2? Eh not so much. Probably. However I do believe that if the new AC game was here it might have won. As for RDR 2 well it has managed to ship like 30.000.000 units and the game is out for like 1.5 years only so yeah. Kind of a big deal. Also pretty sure it is the best Western game ever made. So for the match. Well RDR 2 did as expected. I don't know if RDR franchise is strong since RDR1 barely lost from Persona 4 which we all thought P4 would win easily or their opponents are weak or something but still nice to see games like RDR 2 doing so good. It is one of these games that trully deservers the GOTD title. But of course it will not win. Eh. ## Tsunami's Analysis So, uh...Animal Crossing is legit, huh? This was a kind of underwhelming performance by what I presume, based on the prediction percentages for the first two rounds, is the casuals' favorite in Round 3. I mean, maybe it isn't, since the trio of New Leaf, Street Fighter V, and Dying Light really *shouldn't* have been able to stop it, while Portal 2 had to deal with Tomb Raider in round 1 and Kingdom Hearts III in Round 2. But we're dealing with almost 70% vs. barely over 50%. Unless Portal 2's R3 prediction percentage is over 75% of its R2 prediction percentage, one would have to figure that RDR2 would have the plurality even if Portal 2/Tomb Raider/KH3/Disco Elysium has the overall majority over RDR2/ACNL/SFV/DL. I'll admit, I screwed this one up in Oracle but not in Guru. I had RDR2 \> SFV in Guru, but I was impressed enough by New Leaf's win over SFV that I backed it in Oracle. Apparently SFV is just that bad. See, I told you that always picking against Capcom was a good idea! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8002&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=88) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Dark Souls vs (8)Rocket League 2020 _source: (1)Dark Souls vs (8)Rocket League 2020 (revid 86583)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, April 18, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 89 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 18, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dark Souls - 74.09% 50 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dark Souls - 72.23% - **User Votes:** Dark Souls - 6637 Rocket League - 1989 - **Anonymous Votes:** Dark Souls - 5692 Rocket League - 1578 If round one wasn't a huge warning shot, then this match certainly brought it home. Dark Souls was all business in this contest. Rocket League escaped from a great match in round one that entertained the entire board, but only one game gets to have their last match in a contest be a win so here we were. Dark Souls came close to joining that exclusive club of contest entrants that broke 80% in the first two rounds, but it was not to be. This was just another speed bump on the road to facing The Last of Us in the division finals, and Dark Souls was showing itself to be the clear favorite. I thought further about what the strongest sports game on this site is thanks to Rocket League, and I've got my answer. I think it's NBA Jam. Remember, we're not counting fighting games, Mario Kart, or "Mario X". We're talking sports games in the more traditional sense, like Madden, NBA 2K, or Tecmo Super Bowl and such. I think NBA Jam takes it. Does anyone actively dislike NBA Jam? Of course not. Very possibly the best announcing job ever done in a game, too. HE'S ON FIRE! ## Ctes's Analysis This was probably the result that made it seem like Dark Souls getting to the semi-finals was a real possibility. At least it’s the result that Dark Souls was capable of taking advantage of capable of taking care of the weakness Skyrim was about to indicate. The oracles predicted Dark Souls a fine bit lower than this. It looks really good here, and I’m surprised its prediction percentage is not higher. Perhaps both Rocket League and Dragon Ball FighterZ are casual bait to some extent? I can see that, I’m just surprised if it worked against Dark Souls of all things. At this point of the contest, we probably overestimated Rocket League and Dragon Ball FighterZ a bit though. Being the best sports game, the best non-Mario Kart racing game and the best non-Smash fighting game sounds like cool titles, but they all mean absolutely nothing here. Rocket League is a very fun game, I can easily play if for many hours, especially if playing with friends. It’s generally pretty well liked, but is it anyone’s favorite on GameFAQs? Highly unlikely. It’ll win matches against games no one care about, and it turns out having Dragon Ball in the title didn’t make us care about FighterZ but put it against a real contest threat and it rolls over completely. That’s what happened today. ## Safer777's Analysis So here nothing to say really. Soulslike games do really well in this contest which I didn't really expected and DS might be the strongest of them all since you know it is the game that created the term Soulslike. On the other hand RL barely won against a DBZ figthing game. And it has football on it so yeah. We don't like sports games because real gamers don't play sports. Right? So what is the strongest sports game here? I don't know. I guess nothing? Do we even have sports games in contests? So for the match. The only thing to notice is with how much DS would win. Above 75 would considered good and it won with above that. So yeah. Things as expected, Soulslike games are awesome, next. ## Tsunami's Analysis Let's just go back to laughing at the guy who said he was going to rally for Rocket League last round. This was a *huge* fall-off from the previous day's vote totals, and IIRC one of the main Tumblrs that started the whole Undertale fiasco in 2015 was a self-professed Dark Souls fan first and foremost. Why she decided to rally for Undertale instead of Dark Souls is beyond me, but whatever. Point is, Dark Souls is going to be filthy in this contest if it needs to be. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8003&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=89) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Yakuza 0 vs (4)Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain 2020 _source: (5)Yakuza 0 vs (4)Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain 2020 (revid 86584)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, April 18, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 90 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 18, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Metal Gear Solid V - 62.69% 50 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Metal Gear Solid V - 68.32% - **User Votes:** Yakuza 0 - 3713 Metal Gear Solid V - 4917 - **Anonymous Votes:** Yakuza 0 - 3065 Metal Gear Solid V - 4205 There was some buzz pre-contest about MGS5 potentially losing this match. It wasn't that Yakuza was some beast or anything, but some people felt that the Metal Gear Solid brand would fall off a cliff in this contest and open the door for an upset. Yakuza made this an interesting match early by winning the board vote, and in the first couple hours it was even able to pull out the occasional stall and update win. The fun ended there however, and Metal Gear Solid 5 would go on to easily win this match. It wasn't a godslayer blowout by any means, but a win is a win and MGS5 moved on. I have no doubts that the MGS brand is damaged beyond repair anymore, and that it could have gotten upset in a different spot in the bracket, but this was not the fourpack for that to happen. This was one of the weakest fourpacks in the entire contest, so Metal Gear Solid 5 was able to win it by default. I personally loved most of MGS5, but I can completely see why people would anti-vote it. The funniest part of Metal Gear Solid 5 winning this match is that it set up a rematch (lol) with Dark Souls. Remember this match from 2015? The hilarity of this setup was great. Just how far had Metal Gear Solid fallen? We were about to find out. ## Ctes's Analysis Yakuza 0 being a game with actual strength was a surprise to many this contest, especially after the characters all looked horrible last contest. We thought The Witness was simply so terrible that anything could blow it out of the contest. True enough, The Witness would end up near the bottom, but this is the match that put it out of contention for the bottom spot, we thought it could have. We fully expected Metal Gear Solid V to be an embarrassment to the once extremely popular franchise after everything that happened with Kojima and Konami back then, and yet the oracle consensus still had it more than 5% above what it got. Yakuza 0 surprised most of us today. Perhaps the characters making it in should have been an indicator that the game is now cared about. Yakuza 0 ends up looking good and like something we might want to bring back again, but I do think MGSV was a very good game for it look good against, so the x-stats probably overrate it. When the winning game is something so obviously anti-voted, the losing game will look better, it’s dead simple. MGSV is not anti-voted to extreme amounts or it wouldn’t be in round 3, but it definitely is to some extent. Look at the board vote. Yakuza 0 won that, MGSV didn’t start running away with the lead until the end of the freeze. It didn’t look back, but it shows. MGSV was also eliminated in round 1 of board 8’s Game of the Decade of the Year, ZaziGuado’s Game of the Decade board contest using the format of User of the Year. Board 8 hates the game and board 8 is among the biggest Metal Gear Solid fans you’ll find. It was because of board 8’s love for the series that I originally played the series myself, though Snake’s success in the contests helped. The point is that while MGSV is appreciated for its gameplay and name alone, the hardcore fans of the series might very well vote against it, and it might very well be enough to be what caused Yakuza 0 to break 40% today. ## Safer777's Analysis I adore the Yakuza series. Read my previous Yakuza 0 match analysis to see why. As for MGS 5 I do believe it is the least liked of the main MGS games. Strangely enough Y0 did amazing in Round 1 but it faced maybe the weakest game on the bracket. So yeah MGS 5 wouldn't lose it at all except with a rally. Or not even with that actually. MGS series is constangly getting weaker with all drama with Komani and the creator of the series. So for the match. Well MGS 5 won but I do believe it did worse than expected. Even I, I expected at least 60% here but it didn't happen. I guess a combination of Y0 beeing sligtly stronger than expected and MGS 5 beeing slightly weaker did that. Still a win is a win, am I right? ## Tsunami's Analysis Man Metal Gear has fallen hard. This is a very strong performance by Yakuza 0, showing that it's a game far stronger than its characters, who were nothing short of atrocious in 2018. This would set up a rematch of a somewhat debated 2015 match, except the only debate this time would be just how much more lopsided it would be (the 2015 match wasn't terribly lopsided at all--Dark Souls only won with 55.4%. I'd be surprised if it doesn't exceed that by a full 10%.) ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8004&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=90) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Batman: Arkham City vs (6)BioShock Infinite 2020 _source: (3)Batman: Arkham City vs (6)BioShock Infinite 2020 (revid 86585)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, April 18, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 91 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 18, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Batman: Arkham City - 55.25% 46 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Batman: Arkham City - 48.68% - **User Votes:** Batman: Arkham City - 5183 BioShock Infinite - 3445 - **Anonymous Votes:** Batman: Arkham City - 4305 BioShock Infinite - 2965 Ready for a joke? What do you get when you take the original Bioshock, put it in the sky instead of at the bottom of the ocean, make the writing worse, and insult the intelligence of your players? You get what you fucking deserve. Bioshock Infinite is not a *bad* game, but it's not a good one. Terraria wasn't able to take advantage of the newfound weakness in this series, but Batman certainly was. The two Arkham games have always performed well on this site, and scoring a 60-40 beating over a Bioshock was the latest example of this. The Batman games aren't likely to ever be top tier on this site, but they are solid midcarders that can beat most games before getting to the heavy hitters in brackets. Arkham Asylum made one contest, and Arkham City has made two. In those three combined contest appearances, Batman made round 3 in two of them. In the outlier, 2015, Arkham City had to go against a 90s all-star in Mega Man X. If you go and look at that contest's bracket, there are several fourpacks it could have won. To the point. We're long past time for character battles, if they even continue, to allow for any character that's ever been in a video game. Provided there are no licensing issues and such. It's just dumb to have a character battle on a video game web site without Batman, Joker, Spiderman, Thanos, Wolverine, and all the rest of it being eligible. It's the only way to make them unpredictable again, too. ## Ctes's Analysis Heading into round 2, this was expected to be a somewhat close match. Batman: Arkham City was the heavy favorite both before and during the contest, but the first round saw Batman get a very narrow win, lower than we expected, while BioShock Infinite scored higher than we thought. Of course, everyone expected Xenoblade Chronicles 2 to be better than Terreria, but both Xenoblade 2 and Batman were likely better than we thought. I’m sure a few additional people would have taken this upset, if the first Xenoblade had not just looked insane a few days before this match. The lesson was learned today. Xenoblade 2 was one of the games screwed the most over by bracket placement, as some had expected, and Terraria was just straight up awful. Batman: Arkham City won easily enough today that suddenly The Last of Us reaching the division finals didn’t seem like as big a lock at it was before, although that had more to do with its own match. BioShock Infinite actually ends up looking decent enough in the x-stats. The decline of that franchise could’ve been a lot worse, but there’s still far up to how well the original two did a decade ago. ## Safer777's Analysis This match is strange. We all thought that BAC did bad in Round 1 since it score less than 55 against Xenoblade Chronicles 2 BUT after we see that the original Xenoblade Chronicles did amazing we all think that XC franchise is actually decent now! Maybe even good! As for BI I do think it is a good game. It got amazing critical reception but it seems that it faded really fast from the gamers consience. Also this series seems to be dead now, since the last main game came out 7 years ago. I do wonder why? All Bioshock games sold well and really good critical reception. Eh whatever. As for the BA games the general consensus is:BA1 good, BA 2 perfect, BA 3 decent, BA really bad. Yeah strange how things change. So for the match. Well I don't think people were expecting BAC to lose. I mean as I said nobody really cares for the Bioshock games now since even the company seems to have abandon them. And BAC did won with higher than it did in Round 1. I do believe that XC2 has to be in the top 5 strongest Round 1 games that lost. ## Tsunami's Analysis Well, my Arkham City \> The Last of Us upset loves this result...but my Three Houses \> Xenoblade Chronicles not-upset is scared shitless! (No, I still don't know why I picked Arkham City \> Last of Us, and it's a moot point because I wouldn't have picked Dark Souls over the Last of Us, either, so I'd have lost the R4 points either way.) Arkham City did better against BioShock Infinite than against Xenoblade 2. Is Xenoblade 2 any good? I might have to check it out. The first one seemed like it was promising from a story aspect but I just couldn't get past the janky battle system. Give me a traditional turn-based RPG any day, but failing that, if you're going to give me an ARPG, *give me a goddamn attack button!* So, yeah, turns out BioShock isn't that strong any more. 2013 certainly provided some hints with Big Daddy losing to Lloyd Irving and the Infinite characters not being worth much of anything, but the series' decline was hidden by both games in the bracket (the original and Infinite) being in the SMRPG quarter. BioShock had a close loss to Division 8 champ MGS3, while Infinite had a decent match with Fallout: New Vegas, which in turn broke 41% on RE4. Arkham City is, apparently, still fairly decent, and I expect it to give a good match next round. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8005&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=91) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Diablo III vs (2)The Last of Us 2020 _source: (7)Diablo III vs (2)The Last of Us 2020 (revid 86587)_ ## Results **Round Two** Saturday, April 18, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 92 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 18, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Last of Us - 69.45% 50 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Last of Us - 75.20% - **User Votes:** Diablo III - 3207 The Last of Us - 5425 - **Anonymous Votes:** Diablo III - 2591 The Last of Us - 4679 The Last of Us taking out the trash and ridding this contest of Activision-Blizzard, the single worst company in human history. Not just gaming, either. The worst company *period*. Nothing will ever be worse, either, because there are still legions of idiots actually defending these people. See when Monsanto or Enron or Wells-Fargo or any other evil company gets caught acting as companies tend to act, the public turns on them. Activision-Blizzard gets caught being human trash cans *constantly*, yet out come the legion of sycophants to defend this garbage every single time. Blizzard will never get back to what they were in the 90s, folks. Get over it, accept it, and stop kissing the ring. Activison will never, ever allow that company to have things like "good ideas" ever again, and any time they're booted from one of these contests it's one of the best days of said contest by default. Blizzard has been trash for 20 years now. Deal with it. If you want a good comparison to how much I absolutely fucking *hate* this company, it's comparable to how much EDP pretends to hate the Philadelphia Eagles. I say "pretends" because EDP is clearly acting for the camera to get views. I'm not acting. I genuinely and truly hate every single thing about Activision-Blizzard, because that company in no way deserves to be in business. Independent of complete financial collapse of the company's assets, at least the public is *finally* starting to see the trash that is Blizzard for what it is -- indefensible human waste. To that end, thank you Last of Us for excising the final Blizzard tumor from this contest, though I will say when one compares this result to Dark Souls pasting Rocket League, it was very difficult to imagine a world in which Last of Us would be able to compete in that match. Allowing anything from Blizzard to get above 0% on you is bad enough, but 37%? That's a pretty big problem, and this match happened two weeks before the big leak that broke the internet. Don't worry, we'll talk about it at the appropriate time. For now, it was time to celebrate! Good riddance Blizzard, and fuck you forever. No company will *ever* be worse. ## Ctes's Analysis If you were one of the many board 8’ers with The Last of Us as the division winner in your bracket, but you had not yet lost hope in round 1 when Dark Souls clearly looked stronger than it was five years ago, this was the match where it became clear you were losing 8 points. The Last of Us underperformed quite a bit relative to what we thought. It was quite apparent that the game was not as strong as it was back in 2015. Dark Souls looked stronger than then, and the gap wasn’t too big to begin with. It was a sealed deal, and suddenly it looked more likely The Last of Us would drop to Batman: Arkham City than beat Dark Souls. I do think Diablo III is stronger than board 8 is ready to give it credit for though. The Last of Us probably doesn’t benefit from the contest title as much anymore as it would have had years back. Naughty Dog is in a weird place and the delay of the sequel probably doesn’t help much. Remember that this match happened before the leaks came. The Last of Us was huge when it came, but probably less so now, as it already hasn’t aged too well on some levels. Against something like Diablo III, it probably doesn’t gain much help from the forced voting here. Diablo is a bigger franchise name. Blizzard is in a bad place these days, but Diablo III is before things went downhill and a lot of the issues with Blizzard doesn’t apply to Diablo III. It was a fine game that simply didn’t reach previous series high. It ends up looking a good big better than I think much board 8’ers would have guessed it would. The Last of Us was fine today, even if perhaps a little bit weaker than in 2015. It just didn’t look like it could beat the boosted Dark Souls. ## Safer777's Analysis So D3 wasn't well received by the fanbase ESPECIALLY at the start where you could buy items in game from other players by spending real money! And this was legal too! However after the huge backlash they removed this option pretty fast which shouldn't have been in the game from the start. Diablo 2 seems to be the best Diablo game too. Plus after they announced this mobile Diablo game EVERY hardcore Diablo fan was dissapointed. I mean Diablo was always considered a PC series and to see a gatcha mobile game? Damn! Although that game isn't still out but it will suck. Now for TLOU is considered a GOTD by me and a lot of others. The game is excellent. The story and characters are top notch. Seriously. Play it you haven't. So for the match. Well obviously TLOU would win here, everyone predicted that based on Round 1 results. And it did as expected so what else to say? Just play the damn game. ## Tsunami's Analysis The Last of Us winning this match was never in question; faulty as the 2015 X-Stats may be, they suggest it to be slightly stronger than Diablo *II*. Now, Diablo III was not a terribly well-received game at all, so I'd expect the strength gap between Diablo II and Diablo III to be tremendous. We're only a few matches removed from a "III" losing to a game that its "II" beats *handily* in those X-Stats. I'm going to drag them out again: The Last of Us (2015g) VS Diablo 2 (2015g) The Last of Us has a strength of 27.36. Diablo 2 has a strength of 27.23. The Last of Us wins with 50.24% of the vote!  A win of 289 with 60,875 total votes cast. Portal 2 (2015g) VS Kingdom Hearts 2 (2015g) Portal 2 has a strength of 23.30. Kingdom Hearts 2 has a strength of 34.22. Kingdom Hearts 2 wins with 65.96% of the vote!  A win of 19,426 with 60,875 total votes cast. Diablo III is worth 36.72% on a game that Diablo II is worth 49.76% on, but KH III is worth 37.64% on a game that KH II is worth *65.96%* on. ...How? This isn't even about KH3 losing that match anymore, though I am still baffled by that; the idea of KH3 being worth less on KH2 than Diablo 3 is on Diablo 2 (pre-SFF adjustments) is alien in its own right. I'm sure there will be a lengthy diatribe on this PCA anyway since I think this is the last Blizzard game to leave the contest, and I have to say...Bobby Kotick [could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and not lose any supporters.](https://www.cnn.com/2016/01/23/politics/donald-trump-shoot-somebody-support/index.html) That's really all I can liken it to; Blizzard has its consumers by the balls. The "Disney just buys Squeenix" idea I proposed last round is looking better and better all the time. Someone has to save them from themselves, and the idea of Square's properties being part of the Disney/Marvel/Star Wars stable is oddly appealing. Though given what happened when they tried to have Kingdom Hearts characters as walkarounds at the theme parks, they might need to work out a few kinks. Costumed Moogles might be fun, though, assuming that any of the younger fans would even know what a Moogle was. *Tsunami notes: These write-ups were done in a big burst, and by the time I could see the replies to the KH3-Portal 2 write-up I'd already posted this group. I edited in the following:* I have discovered that, yes, KH3 really was that big a disappointment. Upon doing some research of my own, I discovered that, no worries, "the kiddies" would know what Moogles were. They were in KH3. Part of the problem was that they were the *only *Final Fantasy characters in KH3, though the inevitable rerelease only a year later is said to have more. Good lord Square Enix really needs to be saved from themselves. Doesn't change what I said about Blizzard, though. If Square fans were *half* as blindly loyal as Blizzard fans, KH3 beats Portal 2 easily and actually *might *be a sexy upset pick against Persona 5. Square releases a game and then makes you pay full price for what amounts to the same game with DLC, and their fans are rightfully pissed. They've been doing this over and over, too, with Kingdom Hearts. But Blizzard splits a single game into, essentially, four full-priced games on a regular basis, and their fans wouldn't have it any other way. Heh, I guess I see why the idea of Japanese and Western games of the same genres SFFing each other is so foreign. It's because the Japanese games' fans have *working brains.* ...Huh. Kind of unfortunate that that rant had to be in a match where the winning game was Western too. I'm not a fan of The Last of Us's entire genre, but I hear it's a really great game!  ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8006&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=92) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (9)Journey 2020 _source: (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (9)Journey 2020 (revid 86588)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, April 19, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 93 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 19, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Skyrim - 77.88% 51 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Skyrim - 88.32% - **User Votes:** Skyrim - 6752 Journey - 2158 - **Anonymous Votes:** Skyrim - 6259 Journey - 2281 It's not often when you can win a contest poll with 75% of the vote and come out looking badly, but remember, Skyrim's matches were not only about winning. It was all about going tit for tat with Witcher 3, and the leadup to this match included Witcher 3 holding Mass Effect 3 to 21.6% of the vote. Skyrim had to match that, at least, to hold serve. SFF or no SFF, there is no way anyone with an unbiased mind can compare that monstrosity Witcher 3 pulled off with Journey getting 25% on Skyrim and think Skyrim wasn't in a world of trouble. Even if you want to think the former was an SFF beating, it meant Witcher 3 was able to pull off Western SFF. There was no way around this. Skyrim was completely and thoroughly screwed. The game isn't weak or anything, and I could even argue it hasn't lost much strength if any which is a minor miracle given Bethesda's idiocy, but Witcher 3 was in total berserk mode this contest. Anything less than an A+ performance was going to lose to it, and Skyrim was putting out a series of A-. On top of that, it kept losing board votes. If round one wasn't a good hint into how that eventual semifinal would go, round two certainly was. It also got some minor hype trains going for Skyrim to potentially get tripped up by Nintendo long before the semifinals ever got here. Any way you look at it, Skyrim was in trouble. ## Ctes's Analysis This was the match that initially made Skyrim an easy target for most of the rest of the contest. The Subnautica result was one thing, only a few Bethesda anti-votes were needed to keep it from going higher then, but people had a tough time accepting this result and it didn’t help The Witcher 3 had looked extremely good a few rounds before. Journey finished at the near bottom of the 2015 x-stats and it was debated to be the weakest round 2 entry there was. The general consensus before the contest was that Skyrim was the favorite to each the finals. If it was still the case after round 1, it certainly wasn’t the case now, and on top of The Witcher 3 taking the title, Dark Souls beating Skyrim was now considered very possible. I was one of the people defending Skyrim at the time, but it wasn’t easy. I didn’t doubt The Witcher 3 would be the one to make the finals any longer, but I didn’t think this was as bad as people made it out to be. I’ll say once again that Skyrim was the Final Fantasy VII character of this contest. They always get where they’re supposed to, but it sure doesn’t look good getting there. The Bethesda anti-votes are a thing, that’s for sure. Skyrim has also become a victim of its own popularity. At least it seems that way to be. There are seemingly a group of people that find it cool to hate on the game, partly because Breath of the Wild and The Witcher 3 has overshadowed it in the latter half of the decade. This has had some bandwagon effect probably, it felt like people wanted to see Skyrim lose early and board 8 lacked the Skyrim fans to defend it. Still, most people are better than that and respect Skyrim. It’s a vocal minority. Then there’s Journey. The above doesn’t work if we really think Journey is as weak as 2015 project it to be, and I don’t! The 2015 x-stats project Skyrim to do about 5% better against Journey, although both are clouded by Undertale rallies. That’s not too big of a difference! Skyrim had room to be a little weaker and still easily get to the semi-finals and look good there and Journey had reason to be stronger than last time. It’s not good, but the game is mentioned in some Game of the Decade debates and during this contest it was made free for every person that owns a PS4. Not just the PS+ subscribers, but everyone. Sony’s way of telling people to stay home during the pandemic was by giving everyone the Nathan Drake Collection and Journey for free. That could help close that 5% gap a little more. Finally, Journey is probably a terrible game for Skyrim to look good against. It’s so vastly different and colorful in comparison. The Witcher 3 looked to be in its own league, but it also got opponents of similar fanbases to trash, Skyrim didn’t. I thought Skyrim looked fine already then, but there were people not understanding why we had such a hard time accepting Skyrim was just weaker. That wasn’t it! In the end, Skyrim looked fine and so Journey wasn’t as bad as we thought. There’s no point in seeing it in another contest, but it managed to get away from the bottom of the barrel where it used be, although it took most of the contest for the majority of people to see that. ## Safer777's Analysis Somehow we have this as a Round 2 match. Really? How weak was Journey's opponent? Extremely weak it seems! Well as I said before Skyrim is one of the most popular AAA games ever made and Journey is damn popular for an indie game. So for the match. Okay Skyrim won with a tripling. I mean is there anything else to say? I guess it is kinda low for Skyrim. Sure a tripling is always amazing but it should have finished higher. Maybe? I don't know. Well Skyrim is supposed to be the 2nd strongest game on the contest so I am not sure. We shall see of course. ## Tsunami's Analysis While a near-tripling in Round 2 sounds promising on paper, this was if anything a worrying performance for Skyrim backers. That it would win its division was of course still not remotely in question. And its 88.32% prediction percentage in this match was second only to BotW in Round 2. But The Witcher 3 managed to comfortably get the tripling over a presumably stronger opponent, and one round sooner for Skyrim's potential opponents, Dark Souls also got a tripling, albeit against what one would presume to be an even weaker game than Journey. It didn't quite seem like time to worry about it possibly getting upset by Dark Souls just yet, but it was absolutely looking like Witcher 3 might be the new favorite to reach the finals out of the bottom half of the bracket. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8007&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=93) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn vs (13)Mario Kart 8 2020 _source: (5)Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn vs (13)Mario Kart 8 2020 (revid 86589)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, April 19, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 94 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 19, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mario Kart 8 - 56.78% 45 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mario Kart 8 - 41.16% - **User Votes:** Final Fantasy XIV - 3457 Mario Kart 8 - 5451 - **Anonymous Votes:** Final Fantasy XIV - 3541 Mario Kart 8 - 4994 One day after getting Blizzard out of this contest, we managed to get rid of Final Fantasy 14. That meant two very good contest days for me personally regardless of any other result, and good riddance to all the garbage. You will not be missed. MMORPGs are such filth to me that this match actually had me cheering for a Mario Kart, of all things. I can't *stand* Mario Kart games, because they popularized the trend in game design of punishing skill, but at least they're not MMOs. "But Ulti! Final Fantasy 14 is the exception to the rule! You can't just hate all MMOs because of a few bad personal experiences!" haha mmo go lose Even if I was the type to give MMOs a chance, and I never will be, Final Fantasy 14 was so bad when it first came out that they had to blow up the world and start over. When your game's main endorsement is "well hey, it can't get worse", it doesn't exactly come off as a vote of confidence. You also need to understand the insane number of people I've met in my life who gave up their entire life to this trash. What really cemented it home for me was World of Warcraft, and these people have gotten no better since that game happened. I still remember being in community college in the mid-2000s when that game first came out, and it was insufferable. All the douchebag guys we all hate in everyday life would go around using actual World of Warcraft lingo to try and pick up girls, and the girls would all reciprocate to get free gold and such in-game. I can't remember a more embarrassing social display than how people acted right after WoW came out. "The game starts at level 60 bro, are you not a real man yet, why aren't you hitting up WoW in a top guild bro?" I was married by then thank god, but I can't even imagine growing up a nerd, getting made fun of for liking video games, then becoming an adult and suddenly the main way to get girls is video games. It's like fuck off bitch, all of you. Guys and girls. You all spent 20 years telling people that gaming is for losers and now you're pretending to like that culture? It's even worse now with those same idiots turning Twitch into a softcore porn site and simps throwing them hundreds if not thousands of dollars for badly -- and I mean *very* badly -- "playing video games" while showing cleavage. Imagine being such a loser that you donate to some thot's Twitch stream. There are some people on Board 8 that I have zero respect for, but I can't imagine anyone on here ever being *that* pathetic. Airquotes are obviously needed around "playing video games" here, because none of what Twitch thots are actually doing counts as playing video games. Go watch Kaceytron pretend to play League of Legends and try telling me that garbage is actual gaming with a straight face. I dare you. This meme really tells the entire story: Someone needs to make a version where it goes to 2020 and includes Twitch thots and their useless simps. Where did all this crap start? In MMORPGs, that's where. Not only has that genre stolen a bunch of my friends from me, but it almost single-handedly ruined gaming. I don't care how good people want to pretend Final Fantasy 14 is. I will always consider all of it to be trash. World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 11, Runescape, EVE Online, Phantasy Star Online, Everquest, Maple Story, Final Fantasy 14, all of it. It's all garbage. Actually, better yet: Every single game on that entire list and every single game that will ever *be* on that list is dead to me for life. Good riddance, Final Fantasy 14. You will not be missed. ## Ctes's Analysis People had such a hard time imaging Mario Kart 8 being any good that its round 1 victory against Uncharted 4 was thought almost entirely to be because Uncharted was terrible these days. Final Fantasy XIV looked very impressive in its round 1 victory and so a group of people were quite tempted by picking it to beat Mario Kart. Most people still went with Mairo Kart 8, but it didn’t seem like that many felt too good about it. Well, it turns out this match was the first part of Uncharted 4’s redemption and the next installment in the series of Mario Kart 8 annoying board 8 by having actual strength. It’s probably not much of board 8 that had difficulties accepting it, at least its board vote seems to indicate otherwise, but it was a group of contest experts, so it was still hilarious. For a match that made people feel uneasy, this was a huge victory, and Final Fantasy XIV was never in it. Mario Kart 8 was killing it from the moment the match began and was shooting above the doubling a while. It calmed down a lot throughout the power hour, but it still won very big for a somewhat debated match. Perhaps it didn’t even boost too much since last contest but was simply considerably buried beneath SFF from Super Mario 64. Despite failing to break 40% in a match expert gave it a chance in, Final Fantasy XIV ends up looking relatively good. It looked bad today if you had troubles thinking Mario Kart 8 could really be good, but that ended up changing. According to the x-stats XIV is the strongest Final Fantasy game in the bracket. It’s close enough to be within the uncertainties, but that’s crazy in itself! It’s almost certainly the strongest MMORPG today, after taking a few years to be worth anything and probably using its name a bit to achieve that. ## Safer777's Analysis Seems FF doesn't always wins. Okay it is a MMO and we don't care for these here. Also there are 8 Mario Kart games? Seriously? Damn! I still remember the original myself. So of course after the 1st Round MK8 was the favorite to win. Not that it wasn't the favorite before the contest started anyways. Strange thing is though that the whole Crew had MK winning with under 60. But it did score above 60. So I guess that FF 14 seems to be weak. So for the match. Well MK8 won as expected but high percentage and that we didn't expected. Okay it is freaking Mario but still. Man whatever happened with Final Fantasy? Every game was amazing and everyone like all of them. Now the last great FF game that everyone agrees it is good is FF X which came out in 2001! Seriously! That is the last FF game that the fanbase agrees it is good. Even the latest FF7 remake seems to be controversial at least among the people that have played the original FF7. So damn. Dragon Quest series getting better and better and FF keeps getting mediocre. Plus the prediction was low while everyone on Board 8 got this match right too. ## Tsunami's Analysis "Freaking Mario" strikes again, in an...upset? No, probably not. 41.16% looks like an awfully low percentage until you look back and remember that Mario Kart 8 was only a 56.02% bracket favorite in Round 1 against Uncharted 4. More likely, FFXIV was a decided underdog, but the debate as to who it would be facing made it so that the favorite could merely take a plurality. It still seems strange, though, that a Mario Kart game would be in R3. It shouldn't, though; Super Mario Kart went pretty much dead even with Super Metroid *twice* in the 2009 contest, their second match being decided by 56 votes back in the days where 56 votes meant it was probably undecided going into the final update. I don't even know what to say about this. Was it a good performance for FFXIV? A bad one? I feel like it's a good performance for FFXIV. MMOs have never been terribly popular here (probably; the only major one to get any attention is WoW and that's lolBlizzard) and Square seems to be struggling to gain the voters' love. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8008&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=94) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version vs (11)Rayman Legends 2020 _source: (3)Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version vs (11)Rayman Legends 2020 (revid 86590)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, April 19, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 95 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 19, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 72.69% 51 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 76.10% - **User Votes:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 6471 Rayman Legends - 2438 - **Anonymous Votes:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 6020 Rayman Legends - 2518 I've mentioned this a few times already, but they're called "one point upsets" for a reason. Rayman Legends pulled off a good one over Celeste in round one in one of the contest's best matches, but then round 2 came and it was time to enjoy the, uh.... benefits of making it into round 2. If anyone doubted that Pokemon HeartGold SoulSilver PowerCrystal CourageColor WisdomPrism wasn't a sufficient proxy for the original Pokemon Gold / Silver / Crystal, this match ended all of those doubts real quick. There was absolutely zero chance Rayman was winning this match, and that's okay. His success came in just getting to this point. This was a blowout big enough to raise alarm bells for the potential of Pokemon knocking off the Western heavy hitters later in this bracket, and for those playing the home game, this win meant Resident Evil 2, Persona 4 Golden, and Pokemon HGSS all easily made it into round 3. This added a lot of fuel to those who questioned the eligibility of those games. This also set up a round 3 match against Nier Automata, and apparently the Nier people thought that game had a chance to win that match. Um, have you guys not been looking at these contests or something? ## Ctes's Analysis Pokemon HGSS went through another round looking about as good as it was expected to. Following up on the victories of Resident Evil 2 and Persona 4 Golden, it seemed clear at this point that HGSS would not be a victim of its remake status. Although HGSS is still in another place than the other two. Not being downvoted for being a remake is one thing, but could it act as a proxy of GSC similar to what Persona 4 Golden was doing? It remained to be seen. Everything in its path so far were untested outside of meaningless GotY polls. It would go into its big third round match as the favorite, because most people expected Rayman to be better than Divinity, the latter being one of the games brought up in the debates of what was the weakest game to win a match. It was also rallied ever so slightly, but you had to make some bold assumptions for NieR: Automata to remain the favorite in that match. While things ahead looked to be tougher for HGSS after the first round, despite looking impressive in it, it was certainly the favorite to win now, if it wasn’t already. Rayman Legends get to lose in one the most boring round 2 matches of the contest, but the franchise can look back as this contest happily, as it got its first ever contest victory. ## Safer777's Analysis So a remake of the best Pokemon game ever here. Still I don't understand how this is the only Pokemon game that has entered this contest. Where is Pokemon Go? Pretty sure that Pokemon game was the one that people talked the most in the previous decade. So for the match. Okay obviously HG/SS would win here. RL BARELY won in the first match. Plus I don't think anyone cares for Rayman now. HG/SS score above 70 and that is the only thing that matters. Pretty easy victory and we STILL can't calculate how strong HG/SS is! How so many weak games entered this contest? ## Tsunami's Analysis Since this was an utterly predictable outcome, I'm going to instead use this space to talk about something interesting about all four matches today (also, this was the final day of four matches at once, which should be noted). There were still more registered than unregistered voters today, yet in all four matches, the *loser* got more raw votes from the unregistered voters than from the registered. Were we *finally* being noticed and "anti-voted"? It was hard to say; as Zen's screencapping topic would show, Reddit no longer seemed to have a hold on what would make us angry. Also I needed to mention that registered voters were still the majority on this day because I completely failed to notice that three days earlier, *they weren't*. Witcher 3-Mass Effect 3 was the only one of the four matches that day where both games got more than 50% of their raw votes from unregistered voters, while SMG2 was the only one of the four winners to get over 50% of their raw votes from the registered voters. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8009&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=95) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (7)Divinity: Original Sin II vs (2)NieR: Automata 2020 _source: (7)Divinity: Original Sin II vs (2)NieR: Automata 2020 (revid 86591)_ ## Results **Round Two** Sunday, April 19, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 96 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 19, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** NieR: Automata - 71.99% 51 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** NieR: Automata - 63.27% - **User Votes:** Divinity: Original Sin II - 2653 NieR: Automata - 6254 - **Anonymous Votes:** Divinity: Original Sin II - 2935 NieR: Automata - 5602 This match was hilarious. Not because it was a good or particularly close match or anything, but because Divinity rallied so hard. At the very beginning of the match, it looked like Nier was going to completely and thoroughly torch Divinity off of the map en route to a blowout in excess of 70-30. But after the initial voting, Divinity went and rallied it ass off, and though it made no difference whatsoever in the match, it did matter in the final percentages and extrapolated standings. What likely should have been a 72-28 beating turned into a 69-31 result, which actually kept Hearthstone from being at the bottom of the stats where it belongs. Divinity took its role as Contest Savior so seriously that it actually rallied in this match to keep the opponent it beat from finishing last in the stats! What a man's man! What a bro. Sucks that Hearthstone got to be the beneficiary here, but I see you working there Divinity. Good stuff. This set up what would end up being an incredibly annoying round 3 match between the Pokemon and Nier fanbases, and it ended up being every bit as awful as one might think. We'll get there, don't worry. With this, round 2 was in the books and the contest shifted to two matches per day instead of four. Star of the Round - Shovel Knight. Of all the indie hype in this contest, only Shovel Knight managed to make it to round 3. That deserves Star honors on general principle. Turd of the Round - Lots of, um.... wonderful manure to choose from here. I'm going to give it to Zelda: Link Between Worlds, because we'll never again be able to give a Zelda game Turd of the Round honors. (The actual Turd of the Round is Kingdom Hearts 3.) I only bother with stars and turds for the first two rounds unless something crazy happens, because the field is too weeded out by this point. On to round 3! ## Ctes's Analysis After what seemed to be a very impressive first round result against Bayonetta 2, this match sounded the alarm for the chances of NieR: Automata reaching the division finals. Divinity: Original Sin II was debatably the weakest game to make the second round and NieR was expected to better than this and needed to if it wanted to beat HGSS the following round. Especially considering that being a remake now didn’t seem to be a problem after all despite the contest title. Divinity made a rally attempt during the match. Although it obviously wasn’t very successful, it probably skewed the percentages a little bit. It might have bailed it out in a close match because it clearly brought some votes in, but I don’t think it’s more than 1% or 2% today. I’d imagine people stopped trying rather quickly, because it was so far behind it rightfully seemed impossible. It’s still worth mentioning when discussing how big a chance NieR had in the following match. Looking back, I suppose Divinity is exactly the type of game that we like here. We’ve seen Yakuza and even Ys do surprisingly well. Here’s another RPG and a very successful one on top of that. It seemed bad at the time, but I don’t think NieR looks all that bad here. Its hopes of reaching round 4 was always banking on HGSS being significantly hurt either by being a remake or not being one of the first two generations despite being a remake of the second one. Divinity isn’t fantastic here and it took the right opponent to win a match, but easily doubling it, especially considering the rally, was a fine result. ## Safer777's Analysis So there was a rally in this match in the first 10 minutes that it started on Reddit for DOS 2. But here is the problem. You can't really rally for this game. I mean the game is excellent sure but I don't think it has such a strong fanbase. Plus since the characters are created by you(okay it has some preset characters but nothing major)you can't even connect with the characters even though it is an RPG. The gameplay and the freedom is there though. Pretty sure the only RPG where you can kill EVERYONE and the game will still go on. But even I that I adore this game I would never vote for it against other games that I have played. I just don't know why, it doesn't feel like it. As for NieR Automata...I said some things in my previous analysis, check there. So for the match. Since there was a rally going on for DOS2 it did better than expected so it looked decent here. NieR Automata pretty sure people vote for it for 2B since she is hot. Okay that is only 1 reason actually.The game is damn good and the story makes you think but hey Android Waifus are the best Waifus. Or maybe that is me. Still the game is good. ## Tsunami's Analysis There were some doubts as to whether Divinity was actually decent or if it was just lucky to draw the hated Hearthstone in Round 1. This performance makes it look like...well, like it wasn't overinflated, at any rate. Yes, it did get a fairly lucky draw, but it got a better percentage than Rayman did against Automata's next opponent, and Rayman at least has name recognition. Then again, Pokémon probably has much better name recognition than Nier, so it all balances out. And no, the next round won't count as a Nintendo vs. Square match. Nier, and Drakengard before it, are published by Square Enix, but they aren't really made by them; they're made by a company called Platinum Games. Actually, the series seems to have gone through a bunch of developers; the first three games were made by Cavia, Drakengard 3 was made by Access Games, and Nier: Automata was made by the aforementioned Platinum. Does Breath of the Wild vs. Dragon Quest XI count as Nintendo vs. Square even though it's part of a franchise that began with Enix well before the merger? I feel like technically it does since it's a post-merger game. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8010&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=96) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (5)Final Fantasy XV 2020 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (5)Final Fantasy XV 2020 (revid 86592)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, April 20, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 97 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 20, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 76.97% 49 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 84.65% - **User Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 7648 Final Fantasy XV - 1820 - **Anonymous Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 7129 Final Fantasy XV - 1900 Zelda was dominant in the first two rounds, but it was done against lesser competition that this site wouldn't care about. This is the match where people realized Zelda was on the level with the shit-kicking badasses from the 1990s. Yes, I am aware the game was made in 2017. In terms of contest strength, it might as well be from 1998. We'll talk more about that in the final, but the very short of it is Breath of the Wild had *ridiculous* strength in this contest. There are three contest entrants in our history, and only three, that have managed to break 80% three times in a row: -Link in 2004 (beating CATS, Ganondorf, and Yoshi) -The Legend of Zelda in the series contest (beating Civilization, Mega Man X, and Metroid) -Breath of the Wild in 2020 We've had some good Zelda vs Final Fantasy duels over the years. Breath of the Wild vs Final Fantasy 15 was not one of them. The only "drama" in this match, if you can call it that, was whether or not Breath of the Wild would finish above 80%. There were a few updates, 21 of the 288 to be exact, where it was actually below 80. It did obviously manage to finish above that number and make history, which puts it on par with any character or game with 90s strength. With this one match, Breath of the Wild went from contest favorite to historically dominant badass. I know most blowouts are boring, but watching something be this dominant has a certain car crash quality to it. We're the same people that laughed all day long when Snake SFFd Tanner, after all. At this point, it wasn't whether or not Zelda would win the contest, but by how much. ## Ctes's Analysis This is one of the most impressive round 3 performances of all time and one of only three times that something has managed to crack 80% three rounds in a row. To no one’s surprise, the other two times also belong to the same franchise, Link in 2004 and The Legend of Zelda in the series contest. Both times also involved at least one SFF match though, making this one look even more impressive in comparison. Breath of the Wild was completely steamrolling all competition. Despite being the favorite to win the whole contest, it managed to exceed our expectations three rounds in a row. It’s insane. This performance is so dominant that everything in the fourpack Final Fantasy XV won suddenly looks extremely weak. Hollow Knights was thought to be among the best indie games, and it ended up way below the others in contention. Final Fantasy XV ends up significantly below Final Fantasy XIV and while the latter probably isn’t as disliked, it’s still and MMORPG and something not as many has played. Does it really do any better in this match? This looks off to me is what I’m trying to say. Is it really a coincidence that twice in a row we’ve seen the worst game of a round in x-stats being the game that faced Breath of the Wild? Is it possible that Breath of the Wild used forced voting and the title of contest to overperform these first three rounds? No one has respect for The Outer Worlds, Halo: Reach or Final Fantasy XV when it comes to what Game of the Decade is. Dragon Quest does have a more dedicated fanbase than that. I also thought that maybe, just maybe, there actually is some SFF here after all? It’s a stretch perhaps, but both franchises are historically very big and very exposed on this site. Usually, we’re split on them, but everyone played them. This decade, there has been absolutely no doubt about which one is better. Breath of the Wild might have a vocal group not liking it, but FFXV certainly does too. SFF might not be the right term, but I think something caused Breath of the Wild to look better than it usually would today. There has not been a single contest on this site, that didn’t involve The Legend of Zelda vs. Final Fantasy in some way. 2013 came close with Draven and all the Pokemon wrecking the bracket, but Sephiroth still got to face Midna and Vivi got to face Ganondorf. This contest obviously made it statistically more unlike with less entrants, but it’s not like it was only because of that. Not that it was the only match, but Link against Cloud was the obvious final match for many contests, although it became less and less debatable over time. These two franchises against each other have been a defining part of our contests and our site. Now look at what it has become. Final Fantasy XV is below the fodder line. It’s crazy how uneven it is today. Of course, Ocarina of Time vs. Final Fantasy VII would not be this big of a blowout at all, but it’s still a bit crazy to think about. One of them still has the quality of the 90s. The other one doesn’t. Ironically, the Final Fantasy game we’ve been the most positive towards in a long time is a remake of the most popular one. Final Fantasy is in modern gaming no longer a big name. FFXV wouldn’t be in this match if it didn’t have the franchise name to ride on. It almost didn’t make it here already. It’s a shame to see one of the best franchises of all time come to this. Pumping out VII to X in five years is so incomparably impressive and it’s sad to see that it can’t even spit out quality like that once in a decade any longer. ## Safer777's Analysis This percentage is from a Round 3 match. Seriously. Over 80% on a Round 3 match. It has happened before BUT we are talking 3 matches in a row where the same winner has over 80% wins in all of them. I checked some results and seems that only Link in 2004 had 3 matches in a row where he scored above 80, again in 2006 with Zelda series and that basically is. So congrats to BOTW for doing something that has happened only 2 other times ever! And all 3 times it has something to do with Zelda series/characters. Only in this site! And it might even reach over 80% on the Division Final Match! So yeah that is the thing we should keep here! Now we are talking about power! So for the match. Okay the only thing that mattered is how much BOTW would win and yeah NOBODY expected this much! Okay maybe 1 person expected it. Also another thing to hold, this is the WORST 1 VS 1 loss between Zelda characters/games against FF characters/games. So in this contest we have the worst 1 VS 1 loss for a FF game AND for a Zelda game too! Yeah Link Between Worlds lost with 64-36 from a Smash game! At least not even a doubling there, against maybe the 2nd strongest game. But a quadrupling? What happened to Square Enix? Why they can't make Final Fantasy games as they used to be? Now the best you can say about the FF games is that they are competent. Great eh? Also from what I have been informed is we have once again Zelda VS Final Fantasy which has happened in ALL other contests ever made. Even when we had Threeways and Fourways and Battle Royales and Tournament Of Champions we still have Zelda VS Final Fantasy even with the 2 games per series limitations which we had in this contest. This thing has been going on for 18 years. Tradition! So yeah amazing win for BOTW, really bad loss for FF 15. I guess at least a FF game managed to reach Round 3 and that is all the compliments I can give. Man even FF 7 Remake with all the hype would still barely score over 40 on BOTW. Probably at least. If only it had come a few months earlier to test this theory! Well if we ever have another GOTD contest we shall see I guess. ## Tsunami's Analysis Here, have a list. [ ](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/988-north-division-semifinals-mario-vs-donkey-kong) There you go. That's your full list of 1v1 contest matches in which a character, series, or game got quadrupled in Round 3 or later. Once in Character Battle 1, once in Character Battle 3, once in the Series Contest, and now here. The first three were all Nintendo vs. Nintendo, though, so this stands out even more starkly as a sign of just how far Final Fantasy has fallen. What an absolute embarrassment. Yes, Breath of the Wild was well-received even by Zelda game standards, but how can the juggernaut that Final Fantasy once was have been reduced to *this?* ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8011&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=97) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Monster Hunter: World vs (2)Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age 2020 _source: (3)Monster Hunter: World vs (2)Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age 2020 (revid 86593)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, April 20, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 98 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 20, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dragon Quest XI - 57.79% 46 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dragon Quest XI - 24.69% - **User Votes:** Monster Hunter: World - 4340 Dragon Quest XI - 5129 - **Anonymous Votes:** Monster Hunter: World - 4387 Dragon Quest XI - 4641 This match was the culmination of the entire debate over whether or not the winner of Monster Hunter's fourpack could beat Dragon Quest and make the finals of Division 1. I know the people reading this in a few years will think it's insane any of us ever thought Dragon Quest 11 could lose in this spot, but there are a few things to remember for those of us who were here live. First off, before this contest Dragon Quest had only ever been in three contests. In the series contest, Dragon Warrior got flattened in round one. In 2009, Dragon Warrior 3 got flattened in round one. In 2015, Dragon Quest 8 was up against Persona 3 in an 8/9 match, and 85% of the board thought Persona 3 would win that match. Dragon Quest 8 won, and then in round 2 Chrono Trigger completely flattened it. So we hadn't ever seen Dragon Quest show *any* contest strength. It was perfectly reasonable to think Monster Hunter: World or Sekiro could beat Dragon Quest 11 here. Not only was Monster Hunter a part of the big Capcom resurgence, but a lot of people thought Sekiro would ride the Souls train to big contest heights. When the match began, it was clear Dragon Quest 11 was a *very* legitimate game in these contests. It had almost 60% of the vote early, and though it spent the rest of the match bleeding percentage, Dragon Quest 11 was never in any danger of losing. This match was the quintessential example of a wrestling match where both guys come out looking like roses. Dragon Quest 11 easily won the match, but Monster Hunter: World looked very, very good in losing this match. Whether you supported Dragon Quest, Monster Hunter, or Sekiro, you could watch this match and feel good about your decision. Obviously Dragon Quest would get flattened by Zelda next round, but it was nice to see one of gaming's most important series finally make a contest run. The only small point of debate at this point is whether or not the Monster Hunter fourpack was weak, which is impossible to tell by a close loss, but we would get our answer next round. ## Ctes's Analysis For a game that was a lock to reach the division finals in the eyes of many of us, Dragon Quest XI had a small scare today. The match was not actually all that close, but Monster Hunter made a solid rally attempt and cut off a great deal of percentage from Dragon Quest. At the same time, it made all of itself, Sekiro, Bravely Default and Ni no Kuni look better than expected, which is hilarious when you consider the early debates of what was good and bad in those matches. Dragon Quest XI would end up doing a lot better on Breath of the Wild than Final Fantasy XV did, making them all look even better, as they would all finish ahead of everything in the top half of the division except of course Breath of the Wild itself. The match was as mentioned never close. DQXI looked safe right away and quickly had a lead of a few 100 votes, which basically means match over these days, but after a short while, the rallies of Monster Hunter: World significantly halted the increase of DQXI’s lead and made a good many cuts along the way before DQXI could start increasing easily again in the latter parts of the match. While a simple match that was easy to predict, it’s also a good time to appreciate the growth in two franchises that are currently at an all-time peak after being around for many years. Dragon Quest has been around a good deal longer than Monster Hunter, but the sixteen years Monster Hunter has is a lot too! Dragon Quest VIII winning a match in 2015 is the only time any of them ever had a victory before. Now they came into a contest seeded \#2 and \#3 and living up to those seeds! ## Safer777's Analysis So while we had a massacre on the previous match, we had a close match here. These are the matches that are nice to see. However almost everyone was with DQ 11 here to win, even the whole Crew went with it. The reason is that MHW had 2 close victories but against weak opponents and DQ had 2 big wins but against weak opponents too. But everyone agrees that MHW faced somewhat weaker opponents that DQ 11 faced so we all thought it would be close and it was somewhat. For me any match that is under 53-47 is close and that match was barely like that. So yeah DQ 11 was never in fear of losing. So for the match. DQ 11 started at the 5 minute mark with 59 actually and it fell to even 52.7 at once but yeah no problems. It was the favorite of the board and the Gurus to reach the division finals but it seems casuals picked something else since the prediction percentage was damn low. So yeah once again DQ 11 reaching the division finals. I mean it is amazing because we have seen a DQ game on 2006 which lost in Round 1, once again in 2009 which lost in Round 1 too, again in 2010 which you guessed it! it lost in Round 1 again and in 2015 which BARELY won the first round match and it lost in Round 2 easily. So yeah huge thing that a DQ game managed to reach a division finals! And everyone agrees that DQ11 is the best DQ of them all. The series keep evolving. Unlike another RPG series that is from the same company and keep getting worse and worse. ## Tsunami's Analysis It didn't look like it'd be getting any more palatable for Breath of the Wild's detractors in Round 4, either. This very site, despite being generally quite knowledgeable about video games, frequently mistakes Monster Hunter for a WRPG, which should tell you just how obscure it is since it's actually created by one of the "Big Five" (you know, the five companies with a Noble Niner to their credit), namely Capcom. Dragon Quest was always well behind Final Fantasy in popularity here in the United States, but it's still a well-known and well-respected franchise. Only getting 53.27% on Monster Hunter: World is, quite frankly, absolutely pitiful. It's not like vote totals had dropped, either, though it'd be easy to be apathetic about this day. Seems strange to think that Nintendo's more dominant than they've ever been, but at least on this site, that seems to be the case. The rest of the Japanese contingent, or at least its old guard, are just struggling to stay relevant. ...wait, ***what?!*** 68 Dragon Quest XI 5580 64.99% 98 Dragon Quest XI 2120 24.69% This was the stealth "ha-ha casuals" moment. I almost didn't even bother checking prediction percentage because DQXI's path had seemed so set in stone. Over 40% of brackets had MH:W/Sekiro/BD:FF/Ni No Kuni beating DQXI? And MH:W was above 50% in prediction percentage in Round 2, so that's clearly largely on it. I'd honestly have been less surprised by that low prediction percentage if its R2 prediction percentage had been lower, because Walking Dead seemed like a casualbait pick, but that's as clear as day: more people picked DQXI to lose in R3 than to lose in R1 and R2 combined. Gurus, meanwhile, had an 81.69% prediction percentage on this match. It's good to know we can still embarrass the casuals once in a while, and it helps make this result make more sense; Monster Hunter: World was most likely the favorite. DQXI's R3 prediction percentage was just 38% of its R2 percentage, so flip that around to 62%, multiply by MH:W's R2 prediction percentage, and you get a rough estimate of 33.16%. There's no better way unless Allen were to actually release the pick data for all matches rather than just the percentage correct, so that's all I can do. Project. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8012&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=98) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mass Effect 2 vs (4)Horizon Zero Dawn 2020 _source: (1)Mass Effect 2 vs (4)Horizon Zero Dawn 2020 (revid 86594)_ ## Results **Round Three** Tuesday, April 21, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 99 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 21, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mass Effect 2 - 58.29% 52 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mass Effect 2 - 37.49% - **User Votes:** Mass Effect 2 - 5109 Horizon Zero Dawn - 3963 - **Anonymous Votes:** Mass Effect 2 - 4563 Horizon Zero Dawn - 4114 Was Mass Effect 2 weaker than expected, or was Horizon Zero Dawn far more legit than expected? Yes. Both things are true. I have no doubts whatsoever that an entire series gets punished, even if only a little bit, when the parent company goes south. Mass Effect 2 probably did suffer a percentage loss across the board thanks to people not liking Mass Effect 3's ending or Andromeda. I think this had more to do with Horizon being legit though. Most people thought Borderlands 2 would be the second game in this match, but Horizon Zero Dawn gave us a good bit of justice instead. The sequel to that performance was this match, where even in losing Horizon looked incredible. Mass Effect 2 is a wonderful game and Board 8 loves it and no one denies this. No arguments here. But if you haven't played Horizon yet, I hope this contest clued you in to give it a shot. It's an open world action RPG where you run around shooting robot dinosaurs. You can't get much cooler than that, my friends. I dare say if you liked Mass Effect 2, Horizon is right up your alley. Us fans don't always hype this game up for no reason. It's really good, please play it! Unfortunately, 127 of the 128 games in this contest went out on a loss, so everyone had to bow out eventually. Horizon getting 45% on Mass Effect 2, the prohibitive division favorite and a game truly deserving of the title of "Game of the Decade", on its way out was another proud papa moment. It was another data point for those who believed Mass Effect 2 was primed to be upset in this contest, too. It was also more proof of how *stacked* 2017 was. Presented without comment so as not to step on the toes of Wall's project: His writeup on that year will be far, far better than anything I could ever come up with. And 2017 deserved every single little bit of the love Board 8 gave it during this contest. I don't quite think we understood how stacked that year was pre-contest, but man did we learn it as things played out. ## Ctes's Analysis Another round of Mass Effect 2 easily getting the job done despite being the second most shaky \#1 seed, ahead of only Grand Theft Auto V. Mass Effect 2 began the contest looking terrible against Resident Evil 7, then beat up Fallout 4 by a lot more in a match that had people worry and finally easily takes care of underrated game Horizon Zero Dawn and manages to go into the division finals as the favorite despite everything that happened so far. The final percentages here are misleading too. Mass Effect 2 was looking to finish above 58% before all the Bloodborne rallies started to come and significantly favor Horizon. Horizon Zero Dawn still had a really nice contest run that gave it some deserved attention. It came out a few days before Breath of the Wild and was vastly overshadowed. We’ve talked about many times how 2017 was the year of the decade by a significant margin. Tons of franchises had their biggest game in a long time that year. Horizon, being a new IP, and being a pretty good game but nothing groundbreaking, stood very little chance against all that. In its GotY poll here, it did manage to easily beat NieR: Automata for second best PS4 game behind Persona 5, an impressive showing. Since then, Aloy got into the previous character battle as a high seed but lost to a character from Overwatch, and the game has been talked little about. It was however remembered fondly, it would seem. It had its issues, people preferred the backstory parts to the present story and its open world mechanics were deemed inferior to many other games coming out at the time, but I’m glad it doesn’t mean the game can still be enjoyed. In a Game of the Decade setting, we talk a lot about the most influential and revolutionary games. We talk a lot about what games started certain gaming trends or did them best. Sometimes something comes out that does neither of that but it still very enjoyable. That makes it easier to forgot, especially if it’s something that had no pre-existing fanbase, but it does not mean the game should be disliked. Horizon is a perfect example of such a game. ## Safer777's Analysis After the previous results there was some fear but still everyone picked ME 2 to win here even though with less percentage that expected but still. So ME 2 did won BUT there was a rally for the other match that I will discuss in the other match. Without the rally ME 2 probably wins with like 58 which was what I expected too. So for the match. Well ME 2 did win as everyone predicted but because the rally strangely enough favored HZD more it did score more than expected. Still I didn't even expected for HZD to do that good. It is an exclusive and it is an open world game like so many that we have seen. Plus no sequels so it isn't even a franchise. As for ME 2 maybe the best space game of all time. Single player at least. The game is excellent. HOWEVER my self I like ME 3 slightlly more because of the multiplayer. So many hours and so many friends I made there! Fun times. Still all went as expected. ## Tsunami's Analysis And suddenly, Fortnite's blowout loss looks decent. Last round, I said that based on the 2015 X-Stats, HZD beat Borderlands 2 convincingly enough that it theoretically had a chance against ME2, but I figured I was just illustrating how far Borderlands 2 had fallen (and yes, ME2-BL2 is a "legitimate" comparison because they were both in SMRPG's quarter, which means they can be compared to each other without having to account for Melee's rallying, Undertale's rallying, or OoT SFF-stomping ALttP). I didn't think Horizon Zero Dawn would actually put up this good a fight! This was, of course, good news for Skyrim, because we weren't questioning the idea that BL2 would have fallen and as such, ME2's poor percentage suggests that it, too, has fallen, which would then suggest that Witcher 3's blowout of ME3 isn't as impressive as it first looked. On the other hand, "as impressive as it first looked" would've put Witcher 3 potentially on BotW's level, at least until it broke 80% on a main line Final Fantasy in round 3. So this was far from a done deal. ...Goddamnit Allen you've got some explaining to do. As per usual, since I'm not familiar with a lot of these games, I looked up HZD to see how it managed to do so well. Sure enough, it was not the genre I expected it to be based on its name. It is, in fact, yet another of these ARPG's that are lighting up the bracket, and not a military game like it sounds like it ought to be. Which was fine, until I noticed that *that's* the game that...wait...never mind, that was an Overwatch character that HZD's main character lost to in R1 in 2018, not a Fortnite character. I thought Allen was getting cutesy again, like when he had Ninja Gaiden take on Halo in the first GotD after Ryu H's upset of Chief the previous winter. But I got my casualbait games confused. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8013&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=99) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Resident Evil 2 vs (2)Bloodborne 2020 _source: (3)Resident Evil 2 vs (2)Bloodborne 2020 (revid 86595)_ ## Results **Round Three** Tuesday, April 21, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 100 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, April 21, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Resident Evil 2 - 52.27% 39 for - 13 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Resident Evil 2 - 32.58% - **User Votes:** Resident Evil 2 - 4699 Bloodborne - 4374 - **Anonymous Votes:** Resident Evil 2 - 4051 Bloodborne - 4619 What a match to have for the contest's 100th match, eh? This was by far the best match of this entire contest. It had everything. High stakes, lots of hype leading up to the poll, a ton of controversy, a bunch of trolls trolling each other, a bunch of whining, a bunch of rallying, and some far-reaching consequences. It's also the easiest photo finish match to analyze in the history of these contests. Resident Evil 2 won because the mods on r/Bloodborne mysteriously and inexplicably disallowed rallies midway through the poll. Had those rally threads been allowed for the entire match, Bloodborne wins by around 1000 votes. Maybe more. Had those rally threads never happened, Resident Evil 2 wins this match by about the same amount. That was the singular and obvious deciding factor here. Read on if you want the juice, but that's really all you need to know. In the leadup, Resident Evil 2 wasn't tested much. It easily beat some anime VN thing in round one, and easily beat Doom 2016 in round two. It was clear RE2 meant business in this contest, and had a boost from a mid-contest series release at its back. Bloodborne's path, while similarly easy, was a bit different. It had a simple 2-15 match in round one, and easily beat Fire Emblem Awakening in round two. But during that Awakening match, rallies took hold on the Bloodborne subreddit for some inexplicable reason, allowing it to beat Fire Emblem easier than it perhaps deserved to. On both sides, everyone figured the match would be close and everyone figured rallies would play a part. Everyone was definitely right on all points, and we were in for one hell of a match here when the poll finally decided to start. Of course a match like this would start **two hours late**, because what's a classic match without a dumb controversy thrown in? What the hell? There was apparently a site glitch with a site update paired with the contest switching from four matches per day to two, and it caused the poll not to start. Amazing. When this thing was being delayed, most of us figured it would be delayed for 24 hours. Nope! The poll started just after 10 PM EST, and... inexplicably kept going. No delay, no announcement, nothing. Seriously, Allen? You did a good job in this contest, but you massively botched this match. To put in perspective how stupid it was to just not delay the poll by a full 24 hours, we hadn't had a 2+ hour delay to start a contest poll since Sonic vs Samus all the way back in 2002 -- 18 years ago! Largely because of that match and a few other controversial matches with much smaller delays, the poll start times were automated. Any glitches since then, such as in 2004 when Jill Valentine versus Ryu Hayabusa got taken over by CATS, resulted in full 24 hour delays. But no delay here, for some reason. This delay also affected Mass Effect 2 versus Horizon Zero Dawn, but it didn't affect that match so who cares. Some people might say this match result is tainted, much like how people to this day do not feel the Sonic/Samus 2002 match was legitimate. I don't personally think it's a tainted result, but it was still *very* dumb not to delay it. When the poll got going and some trends materialized, Bloodborne got some early bracket votes, and then Resident Evil 2 started wresting control after the initial freeze. After a small bit of Bloodborne resistance, Resident Evil 2 started climbing overnight. There were some stalls and cuts here and there, but overall Resident Evil 2 had clear control of the match and was climbing fairly easily. It won the evening, it won the midnight hours, and then as the overnight vote started.... the match hit a stall point. Europe is apparently not a fan of Resident Evil 2, so things stayed deadlocked until around 4 am. America voted for Resident Evil 2, and Europe was voting Bloodborne. Things stayed in the 350 range for awhile, with Resident Evil 2's lead peaking at 400. And then it happened. r/Bloodborne had a very widely seen rally thread go up, and Bloodborne was off to the races. It was the most obvious and effective rally in this entire contest outside of the ending of Shovel Knight vs Octopath Traveler. That 400 vote lead that Resident Evil 2 had? Gone by 6 am, and Bloodborne just ran right past it en route to taking full control of this match. Had things continued like this, Bloodborne would have easily won. It was *flying* in this poll, and there was a vote swing of almost 600 votes in about 4 hours during the dead zone. This match was as over as over could be, and then..... poof. Gone. Just as quickly as the rally happened, the mods on the sub inexplicably deleted the threads and banned them for the rest of the match. Resident Evil 2, seeing an opportunity to turn things around, quickly pounced. Bloodborne had a ton of momentum and a lead near 200 votes, and though some word of mouth would remain for Bloodborne for the rest of the poll, it was nothing compared to a dedicated rally thread being there. This allowed Resident Evil 2 to come back, and come back it did. For the next few hours in the morning, Resident Evil 2 went through the painstaking process of erasing Bloodborne's 200 vote lead, and tied it at around 10 am. This trend favored Resident Evil 2, right? ...nope! When people think of insane stalls and ties in contest matches, this is the gold standard that everyone cites: For about 12 hours starting at 8 am, that match was *agonizing* to watch. That magic will never, ever be repeated. The stakes were insane, the match was insane, the hype was insane, and on top of all that, you had two titans in pure deadlock for half the match with live updating going on. On top of *that*, Chrono Trigger didn't get buried by the day vote against a Zelda game. Ultimately, the night vote showed up to end that match. The stall was great, but once Chrono Trigger took the lead at night, we kind of figured the match was over. Resident Evil 2 and Bloodborne, thanks to the final ten hours of this poll, belong in any discussion among all-time classic matches in these contests. At 9:40 AM EST, Bloodborne had a 9 vote lead. This match stayed completely and thoroughly tied, with some small blips, for the next **ten hours**. When it looked like Resident Evil 2 might finally make a push to build s lead, Bloodborne smacked it down. When it looked like Bloodborne might finally take a lead, Resident Evil 2 smacked it down. It was a joy to watch it all unfold, though I will say that in spots like this during contests, there's usually one entrant that looks better while the other is holding on for dear life. Bloodborne was definitely the one holding on for dear life here, because almost every push to actually take a lead was going RE2's way. That is, until the final two hours. It was here where Bloodborne, not Resident Evil, kept trying to build a lead and Resident Evil was holding on for dear life. It just kept going like this, update after update, hour after hour, until everyone looked up and went oh crap, we only have two hours left! As things started to wind down, it looked like Bloodborne was going to take this thing. It built a lead of 30, which seemed insurmountable, but RE2 fought back yet again. Things were tied yet again with less than an hour left, and Bloodborne yet again tried to win this match. It built up a lead of 26 with only 30 minutes left, and given the trends of the match, it really did seem like this was all she wrote. But then Resident Evil 2 knocked the lead down to 10 with 30 minutes left, and it was anyone's game from here. This is when Moonroof clutched up and handed Resident Evil 2 this win on a silver platter. In matches like this, Board 8 usually decides the winner. It is *very* rare in a photo finish for the Board 8 favorite to lose the match anymore, and Resident Evil 2 is clearly who the board was pulling for. Someone or someones was eventually going to step up, and that guy was Moonroof. He made a post in the stats topic about having about 70 votes ready to go for Resident Evil 2, and though people in there mocked the guy for making this claim, there's an old saying. Show me the receipts. Well I saw the receipts with my own two eyeballs. Hate on Moonroof all you want, but he is 100% legit on this. He had the receipts, I saw them myself, he delivered around 70 perfectly legal and legitimate votes, and as the match flopped over the finish line with two exhausted competitors, it was RE2 that came out on top and saved a whooooooole lot of our brackets. On a personal level, Bloodborne is my favorite game in this bracket and seeing it lose like this was just *brutal* to watch. But my bracket had Resident Evil 2 in it, and we've all gone with bracket over favorite in matches like this before. It was nothing compared to me having to cheer for Metal Gear Solid to beat Final Fantasy Tactics, of all things, but it was similar. There's a lot to unpack here, so let's start with the easy stuff. Rallies decided this match. That is not in debate. I covered that at the beginning. Moonroof is legit. If you don't like the guy, that's on you. Too bad. Even without him, I think Board 8 would have boosted RE2 to the finish in other ways. There were just too many people pulling for it here. The two hour delay combined with the rallies and the stalls gave us a weird 2020 baby version of Sonic vs Samus 2002 crossed with Chrono Trigger vs Link to the Past 2004. If our vote totals stay where they are, this is the best type of match we can hope for moving forward. I know some of you treated this match like watching your own open heart surgery and you had zero fun with it whatsoever, but in time you'll come to appreciate just how great this match truly was. And if you were cheering for Resident Evil 2, all the better! The contest did not stop here however, and the show must go on. Resident Evil 2 was now firmly the main contest bandwagon, and with Mass Effect 2 looking ripe to get beat and secondary bracket entries just around the corner, Resident Evil 2 \> Mass Effect 2 was a juicy, juicy upset special. I know I took it in the oracle bracket, and I regret absolutely nothing. As for Bloodborne, I don't think this match means this is the last we'll ever see of it. It put on one hell of a show here, and remember, five years ago it lost to Final Fantasy 12: That is a real poll that actually happened, and it gets more ridiculous every time I look at it. Bloodborne went from that to coming one rally away from beating Resident Evil 2 when RE3's remake came out mid-contest. This is the kind of match where it sucks that someone had to lose, but if you're going to go out, you might as go out in style. Bloodborne will be back I think, and hopefully when it does, it will be boosted by a sequel. Hey From Software, we want Bloodborne 2. Get on it, guys. In conclusion, it was nice feeling like we were back in the early 2000s again. Shout out to Resident Evil 2 and Bloodborne for giving of the match of the contest! It was all downhill from here. We had some good matches in the closing stretch, but nothing like this at all. Hopefully those of you who weren't here back in the day looked at this match and appreciated what we used to have. Contests used to *all* be exactly like this. Enjoy it when you can, my friends. ## Ctes's Analysis Today was a very hyped match, because while Resident Evil 2 was the clear favorite before the contest began, Bloodborne had showed itself capable of successfully rallying, even while being in front, and that made a good amount of people take Bloodborne instead. The match would end up being the most memorable match in the contest because it had everything. Resident Evil 2 won in the end, giving us the division final we expected, but Bloodborne sure made it seem like there was no nope at time. Everyone was ready to cast in their votes when the match came up, but once the clock hit the matches didn’t change. This technically affected four matches. The division 1 ones were running late and there was another match also being delayed, but none of those results were affected by this at all and probably ended almost the exact the same way. The division 1 ones in particular, since they weren’t on the front page anymore. This one however became very controversial because of it. Everyone was looking intensely at the match in the beginning, but we quickly paid less attention as it became clear it wasn’t just a small delay. After a while, people expected it to simply not start for another day. Two hours passed without the polls going up, as it broke the record Sonic vs. Samus had all the way back in 2002. Unless the match ended up not being close at all, there was no longer any way this one would feel legit to everyone, and spoilers, it did end up being close as excitement was there down to the final updates. It’s ironic how many of the times we’ve had poll delays, it ends it a wire to wire match. This match was one of only two of the contest to come down to the last seconds, although a third one came close too. Sonic vs. Samus was also incredibly close. Jill Valentine vs. Ryu Hayabusa was eventually reset and was very close both times. Link vs. Draven wasn’t delayed but still had downtime hours and a lot of people believe it flipped the result. Mario vs. Crono was started early and wasn’t ended after 24 hours. If we had the votals we used to have, this one would absolutely go down as an all time classic that we’d be talking about for years to come. It turned out the poll delay was due to a glitch caused by now having two matches a day instead of four. It’s a huge shame, especially because it would hurt our already bad votals for not just this day but also seemingly days to come. It’s what happens. It’s a shame, but it’s fair. The decision to not run the matches the following day and have them run for a full 24 hours is a lot more controversial. It would have been the right thing to do, but I’m sure Allen thought it was an equal disadvantage for both games. Board 8 seemed to think it would harm Resident Evil 2 the most, as it was expected to be able to build a good lead before Bloodborne inevitably rallied and began cutting. It’s tough to call because Bloodborne wasn’t able to put up a thread on time either. The belief that it didn’t change the outcome was naïve though, but I’m thinking Allen hoped it wouldn’t end up as close as it did. No one would have minded if this had happened one of the many days where we had a group of matches that weren’t exciting to follow at all. The easy way out would be to just have a day off, but I suppose Allen wanted everything else to be on schedule. In any case, the match began surprisingly about two hours and ten minutes later than intended. Bloodborne won the board vote in big fashion, which might seem surprising considering Resident Evil 2 is better here than most places and that most of the board had it in their brackets, but it’s likely the delay at work. We didn’t make out as many of the early votes as we usually do and the votals at the freeze were generally lower to confirm this, but the word quickly spread to everyone that stayed around. Bloodborne’s lead wasn’t huge either. It was ahead in the opening minutes and kept it until the freeze, but it was never a lot, and everyone correctly expected Resident Evil 2 to run away with it from there. True enough, the lead change happened at the next update and Resident Evil 2 would slowly build a lead from there. It wasn’t too easy though. While Resident Evil 2 was clearly stronger on natural strength, Bloodborne was already proving itself once more. As much as the board liked to criticize Fire Emblem this contest, Awakening no longer looked so bad. Its possible Bloodborne had some momentum going into the round, but it would have won the previous match regardless, so any bandwagon was probably not there, though it might pick it up if it won today. Fast forward about four hours and Resident Evil 2 has expected its lead to near 400 votes. A good amount that would give it some buffer if the rallied came, but not enough for anyone to feel safe. The biggest lead of the entire match would be a lead of 390 in this time. This was deep into the night hours and Resident Evil 2 suddenly had a tough time extending its lead any further. It seemed to be geography at work. Resident Evil 2 was doing better in the now mostly sleeping North America, while Bloodborne was doing better in Europe. For a while the match stalled around a 350-vote lead for Resident Evil 2. This is when the Bloodborne rallies started mattering. They came late because of the poll delay, but they came, and they started gaining traction now. Bloodborne cut off about 100 votes in an hour and gaining traction at the same time. Things went even faster in the next hour where Bloodborne removed 200 votes instead. With 14 hours to go, Bloodborne was only 47 votes behind and had a super powerful rally behind it. It looked over at this point. People were trying to get similar rallies for Resident Evil 2, but it proved a lot more difficult. Not only could they not gain the same kind of traction, but it seemed like the Resident Evil forums were a lot more split on the match and seemed to like both things. The Bloodborne forums, however, were a lot more passionate about their game and it showed. Two updates later the match had the first tie of the match and the Bloodborne went up. The hour that started with Resident Evil 2 being 47 votes ahead ended with Bloodborne being 176 ahead. A fair share of people stopped paying attention. It seemed like counter-rallying was impossible and that Bloodborne would only extend its lead. We had seen Bloodborne capable of successfully rallying when ahead, so it was expected that it would only keep gaining from here and end up winning the match easily. It was reasonable at this point to think Bloodborne would keep it up, gain momentum, win the division and lose to Breath of the Wild, because there are some things a rally of this caliber can not do. Then the match took a big swing. The Bloodborne subreddit chose to disallow rally threads and removed the successful one that was already there. At least one of the mods there took that decision and that person is the main reason Bloodborne ends up losing. If he had just kept it there a little while longer, it might have ended differently. If he didn’t remove it at all, Bloodborne obviously wins no doubt. Even if they disallowed them moving forward, Mass Effect 2 vs. Bloodborne might have been a really good match, because again, no doubt Bloodborne bandwagons from here if it pulled it off. The fans might very well have found other places to rally in the meantime, because again, they’re very passionate about their game. Those are all what-if things. What happened is that the Bloodborne rallies were removed and Resident Evil 2 was suddenly in the match accord to no doing of its own. Natural trends were in Resident Evil 2’s favor and it started slowly cutting right away as you expect. From one moment to the next, people went from thinking Bloodborne was a lock to win to thinking Resident Evil 2 was a lock to win it. It was a bumpy road down to take the lead, but it was the same thing when it was building a lead early on, so it all seemed fine. Bloodborne would stall or win some updates, but everything was going in the direction Resident Evil 2 wanted. North America was beginning to wake up as well. But Bloodborne was hanging on somehow. Resident Evil 2 removed 100 votes off the lead a lot faster than it neared in on the lead and when it finally got close, Bloodborne didn’t let it happen. Bloodborne was down to a 9-vote lead and everyone expected Resident Evil 2 to take the lead, but it didn’t, instead Bloodborne gained and Resident Evil 2 had to cut some more. Then Bloodborne had a 3-vote lead and the exact same thing happens. Finally, Resident Evil 2 takes the lead with a single vote and extends it to 21 the next update, but Bloodborne still refused to give up. It cut and took the lead again. Resident Evil 2 took it back quickly but couldn’t get anywhere with it and soon we had the second tie of the match before Resident Evil 2 took the lead again with a mere 4 votes. Everyone had so safe in a Resident Evil 2 victory a short while ago, but for whatever reason, it couldn’t run away with the lead like we thought it would. The match was exciting for literally every single remaining update except possibly the last very few. It was worth checking in at any point. For the next five hours, Resident Evil 2 would have the lead at any point, but its lead would never be bigger than 62 at its best point and would be as low as 4 votes. It seemed like everything could happen. It became more and more apparent that Resident Evil 2 would not run away with it, despite all of North America being awake again and despite the rallies being removed. This was a great match in itself but remember that all the controversy of the poll delay was being discussed the whole day too. It gave a crazy and nostalgic feel. One side was arguing that Resident Evil 2 was the one hit by it, because the GameFAQs core favored it and at any time of the matches people were coming in surprised to see the matches actually being up, which suggested that some people never came back to see it. On the other hand, Bloodborne might have teared things apart with its rallies for a longer time if the match wasn’t 2+ hours short of a full 24. With less than three hours to go, Bloodborne took the lead again, it was only by 4 votes, but it really highlighted that it was anyone’s game. There didn’t appear to be any trends to favor either game, we seemingly just had three hours of nail biting ahead of us. Over the first of those three hours, Resident Evil 2 made another attempt to build something, but it didn’t get anywhere, and Bloodborne removed it again. Then the tables turned. For many hours Bloodborne had been the game desperately hanging on, but now it took the lead and actually kept it a bit. Resident Evil 2 was the one desperately hanging on now. Bloodborne couldn’t get anywhere, but when Resident Evil 2 almost had the lead, Bloodborne ran away. This continued for most of the remainder of the match, until the match had its third and final tie with only 25 minutes to go and that’s as much of a photo finish match as you can ask for. The match wasn’t just good on paper either. This was a match where people had stronger feelings than in the other close matches so far. Most people had a clear favorite today. It wasn’t Mario vs. Crono levels of board explosion, we’re probably too old for that now, but it still had FFDragon seemingly needing a Resident Evil 2 victory for mental reasons and it all fueled the atmosphere with excitement. The match would perhaps anti-climactically end with Resident Evil 2 winning by 88 votes, a bigger lead than it had at any point ever since the Bloodborne rallies were active, but I don’t think anyone felt truly safe until it was over. The second to last update had Resident Evil 2 rise from 39 to 59 and I’m sure that basically sealed the deal in the eyes of many, but this match had been so crazy that we needed to look and poll and look at the next matches starting. What happened there in the end then? How did Resident Evil 2 suddenly take it so easily when it couldn’t get anywhere for many hours? It’s not something it seemed like everyone could agree on, but the short answer is most likely that the board favored Resident Evil 2. That absolutely matters in photo finishes like this one. Resident Evil 2 was the game that a majority were ready to go out and rally anybody for. When it’s this close everything matters. People texting their friends to vote and such. It looked like every single vote could make a difference and so such things happened. It’s the best explanation. The 88 votes seem like a lot, but if it enough people were doing it, or if the people doing it was just effective enough, it decided the match. I think Resident Evil 2 having the greater support from the people following the match to the end is what decided things here. The post-match explosion wasn’t very big and it’s a large reason as to why this match doesn’t get close to contending for greatest match ever despite being fantastic. Once it was over, we quickly moved on. The game the board felt should win managed to win. You could argue that Bloodborne was more deserving of a top 16 spot in a Game of the Decade contest. You could argue that it was hurt more by the downtime. You might be right in both cases, but the board was pleased with the victory. In a match without rallies and without downtime, it seemed clear this would have been the result and that means it was pretty widely accepted. I don’t think Resident Evil 2 gained much momentum from winning this match, as Bloodborne likely would have. It would not enter the division finals as the favorite, but most people thought it had a chance of pulling the upset. If there was any doubt prior to this match about whether it was hurt by being a remake, it was perfectly clear now that it wasn’t. It might not win without the remake of Resident Evil 3 releasing mid contest, but for a well-established game and franchise I also think it’s possible it didn’t make a difference. Bloodborne being this legit even without rallies also helped fuel the Dark Souls \> Skyrim upset hype that had been growing throughout the contest. Despite all the controversy in this match, it was a ride, it was enjoyable, and you can hate rallies as much as you like, but we need matches like this every now and then, so let’s enjoy the ones we get, regardless of how things went down and who you rooted for. This rally wasn’t contest breaking and it wouldn’t have changed more than two matches at best if they weren’t removed mid-match. The delay is unfortunate but screw that too. It was part of the reason as to why this match felt so great to follow and reminded us of the days where the contests peaked. ## Safer777's Analysis First things first. This match and the previous match lasted 22 hours only because for the first 2 hours there was a problem with the site and the matches just didn't start. The admin did came and explained what happened but still the previous 2 matches started just fine. So I do wonder what exactly happened. But hey this thing happened so that is I guess. Now the Crew was split too here because not only these 2 games had similar results PLUS Bloodborne had a rally in the previous round even though it didn't really needed it since it would have won anyways. But anyways the winner wouldn't have more than 52 here, that much everyone agreed on it. So for the match. Well as I said after 2 hours the matches finally started BUT a rally was posted on Reddit for Bloodborne. Still even with that RE 2 was winning with more than 52 for a few hours, as most expected from either game anyways. The highest lead that RE 2 had was 390 votes after around 6.5 hours that the match started. But I guess by then the rally really caught on by then and Bloodborne started cutting fast. After about 3.5 hours there was a tie. Then Bloodborne did managed to go ahead. The highest lead that it managed to build was 177. HOWEVER eventually the rally got deleted on the subreddit. Who knows why. So Bloodborne started losing steam. So after about 4 hours RE 2 caught on and eventually pass ahead! For a few hours the maximum lead that RE 2 had was around 60 votes and then Bloodborne started cutting ahead. No rally but I guess enough people caught on by now that they started voting for it anyways. For some hours the games went back and forth and no game could expand its vote lead. I mean the highest from both games was like 25! Yeah damn close! With around 30 minutes to end the match there was like a 10 vote difference only!  So yeah it seems that everything would end on the last update. But then one guy, I think his name was Moonroof said that he had a lot of RE 2 votes to bring in for the last update. Of course nobody believe him. But then in the end RE 2 won with 88 votes! So yeah I guess this guy somehow pulled it off. No cheating, no foul play, everything legit. So without the rally RE 2 wins with around 52 as most expected anyways. Still amazing match. BUT there is a controversy unfortunately. As I said the match got delayed for around 2 hours. So when the winner wins with like 88 votes EVERY vote counts and who knows how these 2 extra hours would affect the match? Still best match of the contest so far. I am amazed that Bloodborne is so strong. A Soulslike game and an exclusive too. RE 2 was lucky that RE 3 had come 2 weeks before the match and the RE hype is still big. So yeah amazing match. And rallies are always good, no matter what people say. Still if that rally hadn't been deleted from Reddit Bloodborne would have won for sure. But as I said once again amazing match. This reminded us of the good old contest days! Bloodborne has come really far from losing to damn FF 12 eh? Yeah Souls game did amazing well in the contest. Hope they continue to do well. ## Tsunami's Analysis What the... It wouldn't be a contest without at least one completely batshit match--the more controversial, the better. In this contest, matches had been starting at 8 PM Eastern, 5 PM Pacific. When 8 PM rolled around to close out the previous day and put a merciful end to Breath of the Wild's beating of Final Fantasy XV, we got...nothing. Nothing at all. The match didn't start. And didn't start. And didn't start. Finally, a little bit over two hours past the scheduled start time, Allen and crew noticed the issue and fixed it. At 10:11 PM, Bloodborne jumped out to a 10-0 lead, but by the freeze, RE2 had bled the percentage quite a bit, and it would take the lead on the second update. It would stumble a few times during the first hour, but closed out the delayed hour one with a massive win, over half of what its lead already was, to wind up at 152 votes ahead after an hour. It would get that lead to 231 in just another 20 minutes, and by half past midnight, it was up by over 300 and continuing to be the one that would spike a big update every so often. Its lead would peak at 390 at 2:25 AM, but it was still 372 at 4:10, at which point the roof began to fall in. Over the next hour, Bloodborne cut double digits on ten of the twelve updates, with one of the remaining two also being a single-digit cut and the last being only a single-digit win for RE2. The following hour wasn't any better, and it ended with the match being tied at 8 hours in. The momentum would continue, as it took Bloodborne just 40 minutes to build a 179-vote lead of its own, but then support tailed off; that was as high as that lead went. RE2 retook the lead at 5 minutes to 11, by a single vote, then pushed the lead to 21 on the next update, but Bloodborne forced a stop after that, then took most of it back and was back in the lead by 11:20. This didn't last long, with RE2 retaking the lead at 11:30, then seeing the second tie of the match on the 11:50 update. RE2 didn't allow Bloodborne to turn that tie into a lead change, however, winning the next update and pushing its lead out to 55 at 12:25 PM. Bloodborne would halve that lead over the next 45 minutes, but RE2 laughed it off and spiked a 25-vote win at 1:25 to push its lead back to 60. They'd trade some big swings after that, but it was never enough to get Bloodborne into the lead. Until it was; at 5 after 5, with just under 3 hours left in the match (because, yes, Allen had already told us that the delayed start wouldn't affect the end time), Bloodborne retook the lead, by just 4 votes. The next update would be another stall before RE2 retook the lead. This lead would last an hour; at 6:15 PM, the percentages sat at 50-50, but the votes showed a 2-vote lead for Bloodborne. Half an hour passed, and the lead was up to 30; another half hour, and it was down to just 3. The next update went decidedly in Bloodborne's favor, however, expanding the lead to 24, and it would tack on two more on the next one before RE2 turned it around, winning the next two updates by 16 and...10. With just 25 minutes left in the match it was once again tied. But there was no let up from Resident Evil 2; it won all five of those remaining updates, four of them by double digits, to win by 88 votes. Outside rallies? Well, yes, probably, but the other reason why the shortened match time was such an issue was that for the first time this contest, and just the fourth time since we started having the registered user bonus, the loser of the raw votes *won*. Bloodborne had a 568-vote advantage with unregistered users but a 325-vote disadvantage with the registered, and while the math *still *doesn't come out right (28 RE2 votes and 34 Bloodborne votes were not properly doubled, which again tells me that the "registered votes" column is being done automatically and that Allen is manually adjusting to make sure only accounts that were created in the proper time frame get the benefit of doubled votes), it's enough to flip the match. And no, raw votes weren't higher from unregistered voters than registered, either. If there were rallies, the rallied voters were, at the very least, GameFAQs members. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8014&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=100) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (5)Marvel's Spider-Man 2020 _source: (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (5)Marvel's Spider-Man 2020 (revid 86596)_ ## Results **Round Three** Wednesday, April 22, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 101 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 22, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 69.19% 51 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 52.13% - **User Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 6011 Spider-Man - 3248 - **Anonymous Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 4627 Spider-Man - 3027 Having a day to relax and unwind after the insanity that Bloodborne and Resident Evil 2 gave us was nice. Division 3 is just what the doctor ordered. Smash was guaranteed to beat Spiderman, and Mario Odyssey was guaranteed to beat Shovel Knight. There would be no surprises here; all that mattered was the final percentages. Depending on how you feel about Spiderman's strength, this was either par for the course or a Smash underperformance. We'll get to this more next round, but this was a mixture of Spiderman being stronger than everyone thought and a Smash underperformance. You don't undershoot your oracle consensus by 6% without something weird going on, and I'm of the belief that Smash has gotten to the point where it gets anti-voted. Stingers stole my thunder a bit here, and that's okay, but I truly believe the hardcore Smash nuts are the single worst fanbase in all of entertainment and it's the cause for all these underperformances. I would legitimately and truly rather hang out with *anyone* else, and my biggest regret in my entire gaming life was ever sticking up for these people. I went back and reread some of my old stuff, and the Brawl fans were right. I should have seen it back then. It's not that Brawl is the better game, because it's just not, but Brawl represented the better fanbase. They're actually able to play a Smash game and have fun. Hardcore tourneydouche Smash idiots sucked the fun out of this series a long time ago. To put this in Board 8 terms, Nick is a cool guy that any of us would love to be around. He was on the Brawl side. That should be enough really. Is Smash crazy strong on our site? Of course it is. But there is a growing subset of people who will hate that fanbase and that series for life, and will never vote for it. It's not *all* of the fanbase, but it's enough of them. There are only so many stories like this people can see before they finally say fuck it and sour on these idiots: (not mentioned is the two Bayonetta players being doxxed, harassed, and being sent death threats despite only being teenagers) There are only so many videos like this people can see before they finally bail on taking Smash seriously: There are only so many stinky weirdos with no social skills one can be around before they're done. Did you guys know that these losers tried to get cheering banned at tournaments? You know, like the nutjobs who think clapping should be banned? There was a big movement for it. Did you know these morons once tried claiming Brawl Meta Knight is more broken than Street Fighter 2 Akuma, because "the esteemed Smash community" says so? The word esteemed belongs no where near these people. I could go on with countless examples and talk about this for weeks. Smash started as a fun party game. What it's turned into is anything but, and I have a vicious disgust for people who ruin things I enjoy. If every tourneycrab acted like Stingers, Zero, or Hungrybox it would be one thing. Most act like Inui, and if you play Smash in *any way* other than "OMG GOTTA PREP FOR TOURNAMENTS GUYZZZZ" they have actual manic fits. I don't blame anyone for anti-voting Smash games in these contests. I don't blame anyone for hating its fanbase. I just wish I had seen it sooner. I still love the series to death, but I have to separate the games from the fanbase to enjoy Smash games anymore. You Brawl fans were right all along. ## Ctes's Analysis This match seemed to be the main reason why Super Mario Odyssey \> Super Smash Bros. Ultimate became such a popular upset pick in second chance brackets despite almost everyone picking Ultimate without thinking twice about it beforehand. The reason is that people had such a hard time believing Marvel’s Spider-Man to have any strength, especially after it meant Minecraft would have to have strength itself. Ultimate would go into the division finals as the favorite, by not nearly as big a favorite as it was before the contest began. The popular opinion was that Super Mario Odyssey looked better every single round. Most people knew it wouldn’t come down to that however and it’s probably why Ultimate still remained the favorite. That match would ultimately come down to preferences within the Nintendo fanbase. In the end we also learned Marvel’s Spider-Man is legit! Just like the Batman games. I honestly don’t understand why that was so hard to accept. It was very successful and well-liked. It might not be the favorite games of a lot of people but that doesn’t mean it can’t be strong. It looked good enough in the Game of the Year polls, beating Dragon Quest XI and Red Dead Redemption 2 while losing to God of War. Sure, such a poll is not the best indicator, but a lot of the same people took God of War’s result that year at face value. It might have gotten a 1v1 result, but it’s pretty clear Spider-Man validated what it did then. Unfortunately, it had a very predictable bracket path, but it could have damaged good brackets if placed elsewhere. It’s like that with a lot of games. ## Safer777's Analysis So after an okay match and the best match of the contest we had 2 snoozfests. Oh well. This is bound to happen anywas. In both matches the winner was known for sure and nothing could undo it. Okay except huge rallies but yeah. So for the match. So of course Ultimate won BUT it did worse than expected. Everyone expected at least a doubling but it didn't happen. Ultimate is Top 5 in this contest so it is not that it is not strong or anything. Plus the hype for a Smash game lasts until the next Smash game comes out so yeah. I guess Marvel's Spiderman is stronger than we expected. From what people that have played it say it is actually an amazing Super Hero game. So that is. As I said before in the next Character Contest we need ANY character that has ever appeared in a video game! Spider Man VS Mario! Now that would be fun! ## Tsunami's Analysis After the madness of RE2-Bloodborne, Division 3's pair of obvious outcomes were somewhat of a breather. Both of these matches had over 50% prediction rates, and the fact that they were as low as they were was, quite frankly, pure anti-favoritism at work; just six Gurus out of 142 picked wither one of these games to lose, and none picked both. There was a case to be made that Odyssey had once again outperformed Ultimate, but Shovel Knight, mainstream as it may be, is still an indie game, and Spider-Man is, well, easily one of the three most mainstream superheroes out there. Yes, the recent proliferation of superhero movies and TV shows has brought a number of other heroes into the limelight, but let's be honest, Spidey still probably only trails Batman and Superman for recognizability. Also, as a PS4 exclusive, it's a good candidate for antivoting the Nintendo dominance--and at this point, Nintendo still was perceived as absolutely dominating this bracket, even when it was really just a handful of games (these two plus BotW) and the other Nintendo games still in it largely had soft paths thus far. So it's tough to say which game had the better outing. This was absolutely a good showing by Spider-Man, though. Allow characters originating from other media into CBXI, Allen! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8015&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=101) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (6)Shovel Knight vs (2)Super Mario Odyssey 2020 _source: (6)Shovel Knight vs (2)Super Mario Odyssey 2020 (revid 86597)_ ## Results **Round Three** Wednesday, April 22, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 102 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, April 22, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Super Mario Odyssey - 71.50% 51 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Super Mario Odyssey - 51.49% - **User Votes:** Shovel Knight - 2467 Super Mario Odyssey - 6797 - **Anonymous Votes:** Shovel Knight - 2183 Super Mario Odyssey - 5471 One is an accident, two is a problem, three is a trend. This made three rounds in a row where Super Mario Odyssey looked better than Smash Ultimate. We all knew Shovel Knight was never going to make a match out of this and was simply happy to make it this far, but Mario beat it so badly that there was legitimate cause for concern if you picked Smash Ultimate to win this division. **Round 1** -Smash 83, Tekken 7 17 -Mario 86, Mortal Kombat 11 14 **Round 2** -Smash 64, Link Between Worlds 36 -Mario 71, Devil May Cry 5 29 **Round 3** -Smash 64, Spiderman 36 -Mario 73, Shovel Knight 27 It's almost impossible to look at these results and think Mario wasn't the stronger game, not to mention what happened in the series contest: I guess you could still favor Smash if you take the Zelda result super seriously, and think Tekken 7 is stronger than Mortal Kombat 11, *and* think Spiderman is undervalued. Those are all possible, but I think the explanation for next round is much easier than all that. We should take a second to give Shovel Knight some props instead of mere passing this off as a Cinderella run ending. It was the only indie game to make it into round 3; none of the other 287 indie games in this bracket pulled that off. Mad props to Shovel Knight for making it into the final 32. That is not an easy accomplishment at all. ## Ctes's Analysis This is one of the most boring matches in the contest as Super Mario Odyssey was always going to win very easily and the match can’t even be used as a good indicator for anything because of possible overlap between these two games that may or may not be there. Shovel Knight gets the honor of being the only indie game to get this far in the contest, which is something. It’s not necessarily the strongest, most people seem to think that honor goes to Cuphead or Stardew Valley. Shovel Knight would end up below several layers of SFF, so it’s hard to determine. One interesting this about this match is the lack of a rally. Everyone remembers when the creators of Shovel Knight, Yacht Club Games, tweeted about the match against Octopath Traveler making Shovel Knight win a battle of rallies. The comments to that tweet pointed out that Super Mario Odyssey was ahead and correctly recognized that it would be a tough match. Yacht Club Games responded to that saying “We can’t give up! Not even if pitted against our beloved mustachioed main man!”. They made it pretty clear they were going to attempt once more. Did anyone expect it make the match interesting? No, of course not. The gap was way too big and the affect of the tweet had already slowed down a good bit by the end of the previous match despite coming up with an hour to go. I did however expect them to try and cut off a significant chunk of percentage and finished somewhere between 30% and 40%. They seemed dedicated, but nope, they never tweeted about the match. I don’t know if they simply forgot, it would be my best bet. No one cared to remind them because why would we, it wouldn’t matter. Even if it had made no difference, it sure was anticlimactic. ## Safer777's Analysis So in the previous match of Shovel Knight it got a rally litteraly at the last hour of the match and managed to barely win. But against SMO? Yeah no chance. Pretty sure for the Mario fans this is the best Mario Game since Galaxy 2. So yeah. Even it had gotten a rally since the 1st minute it couldn't win except...no, no chance no matter what. So for the match. Of course SMO won easily and it did as expected. Duh. The one thing to notice is that before the contest Ultimate was considered the favorite to beat Odyssey but now Odyssey is the favorite! Hey Mario vs Mario! The match we all want! Also Shovel Knight was the only indie game to reach Round 3. Not even the most popular indie game in the world, Minecraft, managed to do that! ## Tsunami's Analysis After the madness of RE2-Bloodborne, Division 3's pair of obvious outcomes were somewhat of a breather. Both of these matches had over 50% prediction rates, and the fact that they were as low as they were was, quite frankly, pure anti-favoritism at work; just six Gurus out of 142 picked wither one of these games to lose, and none picked both. There was a case to be made that Odyssey had once again outperformed Ultimate, but Shovel Knight, mainstream as it may be, is still an indie game, and Spider-Man is, well, easily one of the three most mainstream superheroes out there. And make no mistake: Shovel Knight *is* mainstream. ZenOfThunder has been keeping a topic screencapping various posts, be they on this board, our associated Discord, or on Reddit (or anywhere else people might talk about the contest, but there haven't been that many of those), and Shovel Knight was a name that came up in replies to rally topics involving completely different games. It's got a hell of a lot of respect. All in all, though, it was tough to tell which game would have the advantage next round, which was really the main story for both of these matches taking place on the same day, which is why I literally copied half of my write-up from the previous match into this one. I initially was planning on just writing a single write-up for the both of them, but I decided that wouldn't be fair to Spider-Man or to Shovel Knight. I feel like the "half a shared write-up" gets the point across well enough, at any rate. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8016&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=102) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Grand Theft Auto V vs (5)Persona 4 Golden 2020 _source: (1)Grand Theft Auto V vs (5)Persona 4 Golden 2020 (revid 86598)_ ## Results **Round Three** Thursday, April 23, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 103 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 23, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Persona 4 Golden - 48.69% 21 for - 30 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Persona 4 Golden - 14.01% - **User Votes:** Grand Theft Auto V - 4827 Persona 4 Golden - 4698 - **Anonymous Votes:** Grand Theft Auto V - 3783 Persona 4 Golden - 4637 This was the first round 3 match featuring a Grand Theft Auto game or character in 17 (!!) years, since way back in 2003 when Tommy Vercetti beat Kite and Donkey Kong before bowing out to Mega Man. In any other contest, round 2 has been the hard cap. GTA has a very dubious contest history on this site, and though it has a massive fanbase, very few people in that fanbase are on this web site. It's an interesting dichotomy that's led to GTA never truly scoring blowouts, but never really getting blown out either, all while occasionally being on the receiving end of some hilarious upsets. Here are the famous ones: Japanese RPGs and anti-voting are the GTA kyptonite, apparently. Oh and while a lot of people won't consider Pokemon RSE over GTA4 an upset, a lot of people were floored that anyone cared about a Pokemon game past generation 2. But leading up to this match, GTA5 just felt different. It's become very clear that on this site, Grand Theft Auto 5 is the one game in that series with true, legitimate strength. Yes it eats anti-votes, but it's still able to buck a lot of the trends that killed GTA in the past. Given Persona 4 Golden is a Vita title that struggled mightily with Red Dead Redemption, it looked as if this year, GTA might *finally* be able to break through the concrete ceiling, break into and through round 3, and maybe even win a division. It was right there for the taking. It's hard to imagine Grand Theft Auto getting a better opportunity than this one, guys, and it *still* didn't happen. I know the final result looks close, but this match was never in doubt at any point. Persona 4 won the board vote, and though it built up a lead extremely slowly with all of the usual bumps, stalls, and minor cuts, Persona 4 was able to take that board vote and methodically march to the finish line with a 600 vote win. There were only two points during the entire match where it looked like Grand Theft Auto 5 might make a game of it. Once was late in the evening when it shaved almost 150 votes off of a 400 vote lead, and the second time was the morning vote. Persona 4 had a lead of just over 600 at the time, and GTA5 managed to shave almost 200 votes away. Under normal circumstances there would be drama there, but this is Grand Theft Auto against a Board 8 darling. Even if this match got super close, there is no chance Board 8 wouldn't have rallied their balls off to hand this win to Persona. The end result was Persona 4 moving on, and Grand Theft Auto having to wait until its next opportunity. Again. But if not now, then when? Barring GTA being handed a laughably weak division intentionally, this was the perfect setup. As it stands, Grand Theft Auto 5 would be the one and only 1 seed to not last until the finals of its own division. For those playing the home game, all three remakes made it into the final 16 of this contest. We can argue about the legitimacy of Resident Evil 2 all day, but no one will ever convince me Persona 4 Golden or Pokemon HGSS should have been in this contest. I'm no GTA fan by any stretch, but Vita games behaving like they have the strength of the original game goes against the spirit of a contest like this. But it is what it is, and this would set up a wonderful match between Persona 4 Golden and Xenoblade Chronicles for the divisional title. "But Ulti, you haven't done the writeup for Xenoblade and Fire Emblem yet. You're kind of spoiling it there, buddy." If anyone at this point of the contest thought Three Houses was beating Xenoblade, they're out of their damn mind. ## Ctes's Analysis This match would be the final match of the contest where the consensus of what game won going into the match would not be the correct one. Grand Theft Auto V was expected to win this match because Red Dead Redemption had almost beaten Persona 4 Golden and GTAV was expected to be better. Others were thinking that they wouldn’t perform too differently indirectly against something like a Persona game and that Persona 4 Golden would win again because of it, but GTAV was the popular pick today. This was the match that decided Last Man Standing after not a single user got anything wrong since Dragon Age dropped the ball. Four users had been competing since then and three of them picked GTAV today. The winner, Agent_M, only survived here because he played it safe for future rounds. The match had some similar trends to the previous edition of Persona 4 Golden takes on a Rockstar game. Persona would win the board vote, but then not really get very far. GTAV actually did better than Red Dead Redemption did at that point, probably because it had more bracket votes. Persona was 45 votes ahead and the freeze and the match stood still for a couple of updates after that, then Persona took off, and it was a good bit faster than it was against Red Dead Redemption, indicating that perhaps GTAV won the board vote, at least relative to the rest of the match. Persona 4 took off a lot faster than the first time once it got going, though GTAV would cut and stall a bit. Once Persona 4 had neared in on about 400 votes, GTAV would make a fine comeback attempt by cutting a bit more than 100 votes off in an hour, but it didn’t go further than that and Persona 4 descended once more. The final attempt from GTAV came when had just passed the 600-vote lead. GTAV would stall for a while and then make a run for it with plenty of time to go. It managed to cut off about 200 votes this time, but it made less and less progress every hour and eventually time was running out and Persona 4 began gaining again and won by almost 600 votes, making GTAV lose by more than Red Dead Redemption did. It was never truly exciting and despite the comeback hours, no one really doubted Persona 4 would win once the match was on. The last round taught us that. If it came down to it, Board 8 would definitely bail out Persona 4 once more. Not many believed it stood a chance in the division finals, though we’d learn it absolutely did. I am not doubting that Persona 4 was stronger in round 3 than round 2. It does not necessarily mean Persona 4 would have lost to GTAV in round 2, but I think a lot of us were too quick to just accept that Red Dead Redemption was the stronger Rockstar game. It had definitely caught a bandwagon in the next round, and I think it begun already here. I’m not saying it’s impossible Red Dead Redemption is the stronger one, but I don’t think their matches against a game that clearly boosted by beating them settles any debate, and there’s just more reason to think GTAV is the stronger game. It’s the bigger franchise even on this site, and it was significantly stronger last time too. We’ll probably never know for sure, because this is the best chance we’ll ever have of two Rockstar games meeting, and hey, this is the furthest a Grand Theft Auto game has ever gone in a contest, although Tommy Vercetti has also managed round 3 before, which was top 16 and not top 32 because of a smaller field. It’s the first \#1 seed to fall and the only one that doesn’t fall to the others, but that hardly makes it a flop in my opinion. GTAV might have been the favorite to the division finals, but that’s because people didn’t expect Persona 4 Golden to be a perfect Persona 4 proxy and thought it would be hurt from being a Vita port of a 2008 game. Beating Cuphead so easily when a lot of people were scared it could drop then was what it needed to do to not embarrass itself relative to the site we’re on. ## Safer777's Analysis After the previous P4 match which it barely beat RDR nobody knew what to expect. RDR and GTA are similar series by the same company. Hell everyone is calling RDR series GTA with horses anyways. But neither of these games is well liked here on Gamefaqs. However we all hypothesized that GTA is slightly stronger as a series so yeah tough match to predict. The Crew was split too and nobody had the winner with above 53. Basically anything could happen. A rally could affect everything too. So for the match. Well as you can see once again P4 manages to win barely BUT it did better than it did RDR. Does that mean that in this site RDR series is stronger than GTA series? Well according to the results seems so. But it is like that? I don't think so personally even though the stats say different. GTA 5 still has so many people playing online and RDR 2 is still popular so it is not that we have forgot any games. So why I think so? I just don't know. GTA series is just the archetype for open world games so I just value that above all else. Obviously there were always open world games but GTA 3 made them REALLY popular. Also no rallies and such to make us adjust stats and such. Also P4G the only Vita game to reach the division finals AND the lowest seed of them all too! So damn! Persona series is legit now. That is good. Still GTA 5 is one of the few games that trully deserve the GOTD win. Also I don't mention the user/non users bonuses in any match but here the users voted for GTA 5 much more than they voted P4G which is hilarious for our site! Is GTA 5 that liked here??? Also the prediction percentage was damn low. Makes sense since casuals always back GTA in the contests. If P4G won the division finals it would be one of the lowest prediction percentages ever! ## Tsunami's Analysis If we needed any more proof that "Reddit" is not a single unified entity, this was it. While rally topics for the other match on this day, and just about every other day, were calling us "weebs" for advancing P4G over GTAV, the Persona fanbase was trying to "buttdevastate" us by advancing it. And looking at the numbers...the Persona fanbase had it right! While Golden didn't reprise its feat of having more unregistered voters than registered, it was again really close between the two, while GTAV had a *lot* more support among registered voters than unregistered and actually took the registered voting block by 129 votes--not nearly enough to overcome the *massive* advantage P4G enjoyed with the unregistered voters. Just over 14% of brackets got this right, the second straight round in which more than half the brackets that had advanced it this far had picked against it. If this trend kept up, a P4G win in Round 4 would probably be among the least predicted matches of all time. Oh, and if you're looking for a long blow-by-blow of this match, don't bother. Persona 4 Golden's lead was 386 by quarter past 10--just a few votes shy of the max lead in RE2-Bloodborne, at the time of day that match was having its freeze. GTAV would spike a huge update win not long after that--in fact, it was the largest swing of *any* update, including those early ones that are typically larger due to the higher vote totals--but P4G controlled this match from start to finish. While it didn't challenge the record that it had set the previous round (max lead of 458), it again made the top ten of that list, with its maximum lead at 616. Two consecutive wins in which it never trailed, and the largest lead it had in either match was 616. But would it be able to clutch out another win? Also, this *was* considered an upset with Board 8 as well, no matter how you slice it. 52.11% picked GTAV to win this match to just 32.39% for P4G (although it should be noted that if you take it as "winner of Match 77" vs. "winner of Match 78", this *was* considered a debated match, 54.23% for the former; GTAV was just a far easier pick to reach this point), and the Oracles favored GTAV 30-21. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8017&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=103) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Xenoblade Chronicles vs (2)Fire Emblem: Three Houses 2020 _source: (3)Xenoblade Chronicles vs (2)Fire Emblem: Three Houses 2020 (revid 86599)_ ## Results **Round Three** Thursday, April 23, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 104 - **Match Date:** Thursday, April 23, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 54.51% 45 for - 6 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 16.70% - **User Votes:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 5686 Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 3859 - **Anonymous Votes:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 5034 Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 3388 Xenoblade looked better than Fire Emblem for two rounds straight, and this is the match where it came time for Fire Emblem to get the asswhipping that was clearly coming. A lot of people would end up calling this match an SFF beating, and there may have been some of that, but I think something else was at play here. We've seen the power of anti-voting in contests with vote totals this low. Just ask Draven, Sans, Undertale, Dota 2, Grand Theft Auto, or Master Chief. When that stink is on you, watch out. Fire Emblem, and specifically Fire Emblem: Three Houses, getting added to that list might seem a bit out of place, but remember that the Smash Bros fanbase is largely made up of spoiled, whiny, insufferable idiots who somehow have the money for video games but can't ever afford water, soap, a gym membership, or deodorant. To understand what happened to Fire Emblem here, we have to go back 14 years to May of 2006: In 2006 Sakurai, the creator of Smash Bros, launched the **DOJO**. It was a masterful piece of marketing, and it was used to slowly spoil content and get people worked up into a frenzy for the upcoming Super Smash Bros Brawl. This has continued in Smash games all the way through today, and they've even added DLC characters, season passes, and incredibly well done videos on the internet outside of the **DOJO** environment to keep this hype going to a wide audience. It's worked out beautifully. Smash Ultimate has sold something like 20 million copies, far and away the \#1 fighting game ever. Part of this is due to the incredible hype videos: On top of that, they do a wonderful job with these DLC character videos as well. Even *costumes* have people freaking out: "Ulti, didn't you call Smash people the worst fanbase in entertainment like two writeups ago?" Yes, but there are plenty of good ones left. I specifically mean the losers who are incapable of playing any of those games for fun. Anyway, all of the hype over the past 15 years has helped Smash become what it is today -- with one exception. Fire Emblem. It's been a long-standing belief that there are way, way too many Fire Emblem characters in those games, and that the characters they do pick are always main characters that all get made to play the exact same way. Sword, disjointed hitbox, keep people from getting in, rinse and repeat. It's been the same gameplay for 20 years, and the old joke is that all of the Fire Emblem characters are just different versions of Marth. I wish I could say these people are wrong, but they're completely right on this one. And yet with all of that, *nothing* prepared people for the absolute shitstorm that would come from this video: Smash fans get hyped for ANYTHING, but see how that video has 40% dislikes? These people lost their damn minds over this reveal, so of course Three Houses was going to fold like an accordion the second it faced anything decent. Was this match SFF? Maybe. But there was 100% confirmation of anti-voting going on. Three Houses looked like garbage all contest long, and finally it went up against a game in Xenoblade that could take full advantage. The true shame here is twofold. One, Xenoblade didn't get the credit it deserved here for going on a deep contest run. It was more blame being thrown at Fire Emblem than anything else, which is a shame. Xenoblade deserves to get some love here. And two, Smash Bros aside, Three Houses did absolutely nothing wrong. It's a *wonderful* game, and got such a raw deal here. You take Fire Emblem, a series known for choking as-is, and add anti-votes to the mix? Watch out. This match all but cemented Fire Emblem as Turd of the Contest, and set up an awesome match for the Division 4 final in Persona 4 Golden versus Xenoblade Chronicles. And by the way, I *knew* Three Houses would choke. You can go check my guru bracket. Smash fans were going to bury this game first chance they got. ## Ctes's Analysis Only the people insisting on sticking to their bracket, or the people having a lot of faith in a specific type of Nintendo hierarchy thought Fire Emblem: Three Houses still stood a chance in this match. The board 8 favorite to make top 8 lost big time today and mass eliminated gurus. Despite Xenoblade Chronicles looking vastly superior for two straight rounds, oracles still thought it would win by significantly less. Xenoblade went from just being praised and given a chance to go far to people now supporting the idea of it actually being a top 8 game here and not just being fortunate to get there because of being in an easy division. That claim is also helped by Xenoblade being a board 8 darling, but this really did seem like a performance of that caliber. It’s hard to judge. This match could very easily have some SFF influencing the result, but while we have a lot of data on how some of the biggest Nintendo series, Zelda, Mario, Smash and Metroid, affect each other, we have nothing when it comes to Xenoblade and Fire Emblem. Pokemon seemingly not being hurt by Nintendo SFF as much proves that it’s not necessarily a hierarchy question. The easiest way to compare these two is exactly what made Three Houses the overwhelming board favorite to begin with. Xenoblade and Fire Emblem: Awakening shared an opponent in 2015 and lost by basically the same amount. Three Houses was expected to be a good bit stronger than Awakening as it was the bigger release and the console game. I’m having my doubts about that though. Awakening was a long-awaited breakthrough for the franchise and saved it certain death and it came out in what was arguably the biggest year of the 3DS. Three Houses however did not have that savoir role. Instead it got a villain’s role by providing a character as the final character of the first Smash Ultimate fighters pass which otherwise consisted of only third-party stuff. A blue haired swordsman on top of it. I don’t really think there’s much of a difference in strength between Awakening and Three Houses, and I’m not even sure Three Houses is the stronger one. If you think it is, it’s definitely not a belief you should think is certain. There’s simply a limit of how much I think Xenoblade can have boosted as well. It had its Smash exposure and the definite edition was still on the horizon. Time and a bit more exposure could definitely help the game, I absolutely think it’s stronger and I really love that it is, but there has to be a limit. I believe it had some good opponents in the first three rounds to look good against. It would go to the division finals as the major favorite. Three Houses was probably SFF’d a bit, but most of all we just overestimated it a lot this contest. It’s popular opinion that Fire Emblem is the turd of the contest, but they lost to two of the games that boosted the absolute most between contests and when we look at the end of the contest, Awakening doesn’t look particularly worse and Three Houses just isn’t as much stronger than it as we thought it would be. ## Safer777's Analysis So XC is not only legit but maybe star of the contest. I mean people barely had it reaching Round 3 and now it seems that it will win the whole division. Who could have thought of that? I do wonder why. I know there will be a remake of this game for Switch soon but still this franchise never did any good in contests. But now man it does so well. I don't really know why. Maybe some fans can explain it? On the other hand we have FETH. This game made amazing sales for a FE game, got a character from it in Smash in like 6 months where no other game has done it, DLC is keep coming out, the game is constantly on Top 3 of the Switch board and the hype is still going on strong and people say it is the best FE game of all time too. 3 Routes BUT you don't need DLC to play all of them unlike Fates, all are just in the game and you can play any route when you feel like it! So for the match. XC won easily. So what happened? I don't know. XC even overperform, the crew had it on average 56 and it even managed to score above 60 for a while. So once again I am not sure. FE is really popular now, everyone knows about it. The one thing that I see people say is that it is a SRPG and these never do well against the traditional JRPG's. Could this be it? Maybe? But still so bad? I mean pretty sure before the contest FE3H was the favorite to win the division. So yeah. FE sucked in this contest and it should have done good since as I said the hype is still going on strong. So damn. Well congrats to XC for coming this far and maybe even winning the divsion which barely anybody expected. I mean look at the prediction percentage! Almost similar to the previous match! ## Tsunami's Analysis At 16.7%, the prediction percentage on this match wasn't much better than the previous one, but surprisingly enough for a 1 in 6, it's harder to conclusively call this an upset. Yes, it was less than half its prediction percentage last round, and yes, FE3H had a better R2 prediction percentage to begin with. Xenoblade was *barely* picked to advance to this round by half the voters that picked it in Round 1 at all, so it had a pretty low percentage going in here. Unlike the last match, however, everyone on Board 8 knew going in that their brackets were screwed--Three Heroes had 73.24% of Guru brackets, a far better percentage than GTA V had, but those same 51 Oracles that had ruled 30-21 in favor of GTA V were *45-6*in favor of Xenoblade in this match. The "Nintendo domination" was just a myth. And yes, I know Xenoblade is considered pseudo-Nintendo in its own right. Doesn't matter. Fire Emblem is seemingly Nintendo's biggest rising star right now, but this match showed just how steep a climb it has to make. It should of course be noted that Persona 4 finished ahead of XBC in 2015 straight-up. If you use GTA V's strength as a barometer, the results are even more stark. GTA V outright breaks 60% on Awakening in 2015, and the general consensus after this match was that contrary to our expectations, Three Houses wasn't any stronger than Awakening. If that's the case, Golden's got this in the bag. I'd be a lot happier about this if my bracket wasn't already shot from mistakes elsewhere, because that's one surprise run that I actually called correctly! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8018&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=104) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (4)Super Mario Galaxy 2 2020 _source: (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (4)Super Mario Galaxy 2 2020 (revid 86600)_ ## Results **Round Three** Friday, April 24, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 105 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 24, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Witcher 3 - 61.29% 50 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Witcher 3 - 65.39% - **User Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 5488 Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 3768 - **Anonymous Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 5372 Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 3094 ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8019&num=2) \* [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=105) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** For five minutes, this had the potential to be one of the funniest matches of the entire contest. Here was Witcher 3, pasting fools from the west through two rounds, finally going up against a big-name Nintendo title and falling flat on its face. Through the first five minutes of this poll, it was outright tied, and it truly did look like the first two rounds were fool's gold. "Yeah that's cute Geralt, but this is GameFAQs, call me when you show up against Mario or Link." And then the next few updates hit, and it became clear we were dealing with a whole new breed of contest badass. Embarrassing Assassin's Creed Odyssey or Mass Effect 3 is one thing. Embarrassing Mario is something else entirely. In a way, it was almost more impressive for Witcher 3 to finally get punched in the mouth before returning to blowout mode than it would have been for Geralt to just steamroll into the finals. On this site, you don't have your stripes until you beat a major Nintendo contest entrant. For this match to be tied at the freeze and end up a 60-40 blowout was awesome, though it did give some hope that maybe this thing was beatable before the final. Quick note on Galaxy 2 before we move on. The two Mario Galaxy games get hyped up every time they're in a contest, and neither one of them ever *really* comes through in a debated match. Here are some examples: I'd mention the Twilight Princess loss, but I don't recall anyone really saying Galaxy 1 could win that match. The point here is in hearing people talk about these two games, you'd think they were on the level of Mario 64 or better. They *should* be at that upper echelon of Mario games, but they're crippled by the awful motion controls and disorienting perspective. For everything those games do well -- and when they're on, they're both incredible video games -- it can't be overstated just how much people detest motion controls. It's the tragic flaw in two otherwise brilliant games, and we see that play out in these polls. The second either one of those games can fold, they usually do. ## Ctes's Analysis This is one of those matches where both games manage to look impressive magically. The Witcher 3 once again proved it was not going to have any trouble anytime soon. A few people feared a Nintendo game would run wild where they were kept out, similar to what Super Mario RPG did in 2015 and Galaxy 2 was an obvious candidate. It didn’t get close. The Witcher 3 showed its mortality, but still broke 60% against a huge fan favorite game that is often depicted as the 3D Mario of best level design. At the same time it was the first time it was down to earth, and it’s probably what kept people believing it could be upset by Persona 5 or Dark Souls, although it was probably more often than not that people just wanted to see it happen. Super Mario Galaxy 2 would need to have boosted since 2015 where it was fine but nothing spectacular, otherwise The Witcher 3 might be in trouble later on. Given how the first two rounds went, no one really doubted both boosted. Ironically it was right next to The Witcher 3 in the x-stats back then, which just proves how much stronger The Witcher 3 has become. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is criminally underrated in its seeding. In pure strength it’s most likely a \#1 seed, the x-stats suggest this, even after adjustments. It’s also even more unfortunate by not being placed in an eight pack it could upset out of. It would scare most \#1 seeds more than this and outright beat some of them. It would beat every single \#2 seed and \#3 seed except most likely fellow Mario game Super Mario Odyssey. Mario’s punishment for once again being set up as a contest villain in 2018 was perhaps the most ridiculously unfair bracket placement of a franchise ever. Regardless of that it makes me happy to see Super Mario Galaxy 2 get the respect it deserves when we look at contest stats in the end. The board seems to feel the same because this match was dead even until the update after the freeze. Although it feels like a late 00s game, it came out in this decade and it’s my favorite Game of the Decade by a decent margin. It perfects 3D platformers and the few games of all time that I believe I like better are all really hard to compare to because they’re so different from it. I could spend a lot of time praising the game, but there’s not much contest analysis in that. ## Safer777's Analysis So the first real match for Witcher 3. The previous 2 opponents were 2 WRPG's which are open world and such so all are kinda similar. But now facing against one of the best Mario games of all time. Much more difficult of course. So people said that anything above 60 would be good to have this game reaching the final round. And guess what, it did score above 60. Barely. So for the match. At the 5 minutes mark the games were TIED! Damn! But Witcher 3 won with like 60! So raising by 10 percent without a rally a gainst a main Mario game has to be some kind of a record! So yeah Witcher 3 is legit. Man imagine the hype when we see the first info for Witcher 4. Yeah they had said back then that they wouldn't make another one, but let us be real, only people who hate money wouldn't do that. So yeah. The Witcher 3 is the open world game that all other open world games compare themselves too. From 2011 to 2015 it was Skyrim, from 2015 it is The Witcher 3. It still hasn't been surpassed. Yeah the game is that good. Just play it if you don't have it. Oh and also NO microtransctions and 2 expansions, 1 of them lasts longer than more modern games. Yeah, imagine that! I guess companies can still do that! Wihout really caring that much about money, and caring most about the players! Greed is bad companies. I know! ## Tsunami's Analysis Well, what do you know. "It's Freaking Mario" still has *some* juice after all. After the godstomping that Witcher 3 put up in Round 2, it looked like it was a near lock to make the Finals, but it's clear that Mass Effect 3 was just horribly overrated. Which, granted, was inevitable given that it was Undertale's R1 opponent, but...okay, let's just try to figure this out. Let's assume that Octopath \> Undertale *wasn't* anti-votes due to what Undertale did in 2015, and it's just that weak. I think I kind of like that better, not because I want it to be weak, but because I'd like to think that it'd be treated more like L-Block than Draven. I know *I* for one am far madder about Draven in 2013 than Undertale in 2015. Undertale's cool; the whole deconstruction of "random encounters are there to level grind on" is pretty awesome. But if you consider Undertale just that weak, it's certainly possible that Mass Effect 3 slaughtering it before the rallies came really wasn't that impressive, especially when you consider that Undertale's natural strength probably would've been even *lower* in 2015 because of how new it was. Yes, games tend to get weaker as they age, but Undertale's an indie game, which means it relies on word of mouth to get noticed and build a fanbase. For a lot of us, the 2015 contest was our first exposure to Undertale. Anyway, this was the match that killed my Guru bracket, because hype backlash. I absolutely loathe SMG2, but it seemed to be fairly well-regarded here, at least in comparison with SMG1 and SMS. So it not being as hated as I'd like it to be tricked my brain into thinking it was really well-loved. Also, this is OldFAQs, so a Wii game seemed like a safe bet, the way an N64 game won the first GotD. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8019&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=105) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Fallout: New Vegas vs (2)God of War 2020 _source: (3)Fallout: New Vegas vs (2)God of War 2020 (revid 86601)_ ## Results **Round Three** Friday, April 24, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 106 - **Match Date:** Friday, April 24, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** God of War - 58.11% 52 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** God of War - 48.88% - **User Votes:** Fallout: New Vegas - 4108 God of War - 5148 - **Anonymous Votes:** Fallout: New Vegas - 3854 God of War - 4616 This is going to be an incredibly biased writeup, but I don't care. God of War 2018 is about Kratos learning to become a good father, when in the entire series leading up to this game he was little more than an angry, mindless killing machine. It's incredible character development, and I can't wait to see more from this series. As a longtime series fan and product of a broken home myself, I found God of War 2018 very, very touching. Why bring this up in round 3 of a contest? Well not long after this contest ended, Shad Gaspard died while swimming. A riptide carried him and his son out to sea, and we later learned that as this happened and a lifeguard showed up, he told the lifeguard to save his son first. Gaspard's body was found on the beach a few days later. Who is Shad Gaspard, you may ask. He's a former pro wrestler, and he was the guy who did the motion capture for Kratos in God of War 2018. Meaning the dude who Kratos is now modeled after died because he was being a great father. I know a lot of people on the internet aren't religious, but God really does work in mysterious ways. You cannot make up a story like this. On a much, much, much less important note, this is the first time anything related to God of War got past round 3 in a contest. Kratos came close in 2007, but L-Block's bandwagon got in the way. New Vegas, you're a fine game and your time may come, but the right game and the right story was told here. No two ways around it, pal, but at least your loss was respectable. This set up a divisional final where God of War had zero chance of winning, and that is perfectly okay. These contests aren't only about winning the entire thing. If some new people check out God of War 2018 because of it making a deep contest run, that's all I can ask for. Seriously, go play this game if you haven't. ## Ctes's Analysis God of War was never going to lose this match, but Fallout: New Vegas wasn’t the worst upset if you were desperate to find one. Fallout is traditionally a stronger series than God of War here. Judging from the Game of the Year polls however, the new God of War would be a good step above the others and it’s not like they were that bad. The first one did reasonably well in the first Game of the Decade. If would go to the division finals looking good enough to challenge a few division winner favorites, but The Witcher 3 had removed all hope of an upset. This would have probably been closer if Bethesda didn’t screw things up so badly in the latter half of the decade. New Vegas is by all means not the game to get screwed the most by that as the game was developed by Bethesda and made by a bunch of the same people working on Fallout 3, the series peak. It does however carry the name of a series that isn’t exactly the most well liked in the eyes of people any longer. Fallout 4 wasn’t too good and Fallout 76 flopped horribly. I don’t think it’s a big enough difference to put God of War in danger, but the board vote indicates that it happened. It’s fun to think about whether or not there’ll be any Fallout in the next Game of the Decade. New Vegas is from 2010 and it’s the last one people truly enjoyed. The series is at a critical point at the moment and I doubt it’s the first thing Bethesda wants to fix. It might just be better to focus on Elder Scrolls and whatever else and new Ips before trying to follow up on Fallout again, if they ever should. Bethesda needs to regain some trust from the people before a new Fallout hits the market. ## Safer777's Analysis So for this match almost everyone had God Of War winning. Even though FNV is the best Fallout game, Fallout 3 is the strongest game. Since Fallout 3 made Fallout series REALLY popular. So the question was how much GOW would score to look good. Everyone agreed above 55. And it did just that. Barely. I think I said the same thing somewhere before too? Yeah. So for the match. So of course GOW won with no troubles but something strange happened. When in the previous match Wither 3 started at 50 and ended at 60, GOW started at 60 and ended at 55. Yeah I don't get it. No rallies and such so I am not sure. Don't get me wrong, GOW did really well here, I just I am not sure why that happened. So next match should be really good I believe. Also FNV is legit too, unlike Fallout 4. Man Fallout 76 really messed up the Fallout series. Also I believe this is the first time ever that something related to God Of War reached a Division Finals. And with a better bracket placement it could win a division too. But against Witcher 3? Yeah no chance. Well still if you haven't played GOW for PS 4 just do it. The game is way too good. ## Tsunami's Analysis Wait, was this an actual Round 3 match that happened? I honestly barely remember this, and the idea of one of these games making Round 4 on GameFAQs seems strange to me. Still, I'm not really surprised that God of War won, because it's entirely in line with the apparent shift in the site's tastes. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8020&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=106) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Persona 5 vs (5)Sonic Mania 2020 _source: (1)Persona 5 vs (5)Sonic Mania 2020 (revid 86602)_ ## Results **Round Three** Saturday, April 25, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 107 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 25, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Persona 5 - 65.16% 50 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Persona 5 - 63.69% - **User Votes:** Persona 5 - 6052 Sonic Mania - 2869 - **Anonymous Votes:** Persona 5 - 4979 Sonic Mania - 2347 I saw Sonic Mania getting made fun of a lot for eating a turbo blowout in the late rounds, which is just grossly unfair to Persona 5 here. I don't think people quite understand just how crazy strong the Persona series has gotten on this web site, or how rabid that fanbase is. If you skip ahead and look at KP's adjusted stats (https://pastebin.com/Pxt3zA8g), he has the game right at the strength of Dark Souls, and we can all agree Dark Souls made a big leap from 2015 to now. The Persona series has made a much, much bigger leap. I'm going to keep posting this poll to hammer this point home: Pretend that poll happened in this contest, and it was Dead Rising 2 versus Persona 4 Golden. My over-under on the oracle consensus would be Persona 4 with 60-65% of the vote. Maybe higher. This wasn't some LOL SONIC match. This was all Persona flexing some newfound muscle. This contest had a series cap of 2 games. For those playing the home game, only one series in this contest got both of its games into the final 16 -- Persona. It was an eyelash from getting both games into the final 8, too. Persona in this contest accomplished what no other series could. Not Zelda, not Mario, not Dark Souls, none of it. RESPEK THE NAME. ## Ctes's Analysis It was perfectly clear after this match what an awfully weak four-pack Sonic Mania came out of. The game clearly didn’t belong in round 3. It did however serve the purpose of giving people hope that Persona 5 stood a chance to reach the semi-finals, which gave us some more fun in the latter half of the contest. Persona 5 had just the right opponents to look better than it possibly was in round 2 and 3 and it was second place in our GotY polls in 2017 on top of that, where everything looked to be stronger than expected. If its match in the division finals were ever in doubt, it definitely wasn’t any longer. Sonic Mania feels weird, honestly. If it wasn’t a Sonic game, I’m sure a lot of people would praise it a good bit more. It’s a pretty fun game. I like to think of it is an equivalent to if Super Mario’s only good games post the 90s were New Super Mario Bros games. They’d be enjoyed, but Mario overall wouldn’t be the same because the newer games had nothing on the classic ones. Sonic Mania is probably stronger due to its name than it would have been without it. It would need to drop a lot to not reach this point, but I’m sure it performed better because of Sonic still has an iconic status. I think it’s funny to think of what games our Noble Nine comes from and see where they are today, obviously not counting Smash Bros which features seven of them. A lot of them haven’t kept up the level, in fact only two of them has games as good as ever, but unlike most others, Sonic actually had a better Game of the Decade than the previous one where only Sonic Adventure 2 got in and somehow managed to lose to lose to Street Fighter IV. So hey, Sonic actually moves forward! ## Safer777's Analysis This match was pretty easy to predict. Sonic Mania is one of the weakest games to reach Round 3. And Persona series is super legit now as I have said multiple times plus the enhanced version of Persona 5 recently came out, the main character got into Smash, we will have a spin off P5 game too so P5 is still very revelant. So yeah Sonic Mania was lucky to reach that far. Hey at least a Sonic game reached this far! So for the match. So everyone had Persona 5 winning with at least a doubling and guess what. It won with barely a doubling so all are as expected. Also we have 2 Persona games out of 2 Persona games in this contest to reach division finals! The only series to do that in the contest! Not Zelda, not Mario! Damn who could have expected that a few years ago? I still remember in the previous contest 2 years ago when Joker who was a 2 Seed lost to Claire Redfield who was a 15 seed in the first match! If you check my analysis for that contest I and everyone else agreed that Persona was damn weak until then. But now it is really strong. Strange how things work. Even the prediction percentage was huge for P5 for Round 3! ## Tsunami's Analysis Ah, now this is more like the Sonic we know and love. Horribly outmatched against anything with an ounce of strength. Mania is a return to the series' roots and was actually quite well-received by the fanbase that stuck with the series, but the damage has already been done; I'm pretty sure Sonic is an anti-vote magnet now. Which is not to take anything away from the legitimacy of Persona 5's wins; anti-votes alone don't cause doublings unless you were fairly close to able to do that anyway. But yeah, it's hard to have much faith in Sonic for anything anymore. Even the casuals knew it; Persona 5's 63.69% prediction percentage was *fourth* among the sixteen winners in Round 3. Its 95.07% prediction percentage with Gurus was, uh...tied for fifth. With *Skyrim*. I'm happy about this. I haven't played Persona 5, because I so rarely buy new games these days (and have enough of a backlog that I won't run out of new stuff to play any time soon), but I love the Shin Megami Tensei series as a whole and the Persona sub-series sounds like it'd be even further up my alley. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8021&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=107) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Portal 2 vs (2)Red Dead Redemption 2 2020 _source: (3)Portal 2 vs (2)Red Dead Redemption 2 2020 (revid 86603)_ ## Results **Round Three** Saturday, April 25, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 108 - **Match Date:** Saturday, April 25, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Portal 2 - 54.00% 46 for - 4 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Portal 2 - 23.57% - **User Votes:** Portal 2 - 4765 Red Dead Redemption 2 - 4156 - **Anonymous Votes:** Portal 2 - 3925 Red Dead Redemption 2 - 3401 This is the match that knocked me out of the guru, and I truly couldn't care less. A big weakness I've always had is having way too much faith in new stuff in contests, and I figured Red Dead Redemption 2 would have a bunch of crazy strength behind it. Whoops! The final score was very close and respectable, but Portal 2 easily won the match to validate all of the beliefs about its true strength being hidden all these years. Props to those who saw this all coming. There were a few spots in this match where RDR2 was able to make some prolonged stalls, but it never made a push to do much in the way of actually winning this match. With its loss, this meant Rockstar's exit from this contest and the exit of casualbait titles altogether. One day I'll remember to stop having any faith in any of them, regardless of how popular they are off-site. This set up a very interesting match between Portal 2 and Persona 5 for the division title, and with a lack of reliable data on either it had the potential to be a very unpredictable match. ## Ctes's Analysis In what was a pretty good division half, Portal 2 managed to come out on top. Every match had the guru favorite winning, but you could make a decent argument for every game that won round 1 getting to the division finals. Portal was favored by only 50% of people, which is the most, but not that great in a chalky cookie cutter bracket like this one. Portal 2 is one of the leftover games of the previous decade. It was released in 2011 of course, but I mean that if you tried to group games together by era, Portal 2 belongs with its predecessor in the previous decade. Portal not being very relevant any longer is one of the main reasons why as many people hesitated to pick it here. There was fine reason to think it was not at peak strength any longer. The Portal games’ performances in 2015 looked weaker than how the first one had performed previously and GLaDOS looked a good bit weaker in 2018 compared to 2013. Then there’s Red Dead Redemption 2, the upset most people went with today and clearly also the best one. The game released to universal appeal in 2018 and the franchise is probably at all time peak. If you look at the 2015 x-stats, the Portal games look no better than Red Dead Redemption. Yes, both Portal games were clouded by rallies from Melee and Undertale, but even so. It was reasonable enough to expect Portal to continue to decline and RDR2 to be stronger than the first one. You only needed one of the things to be a little bit true for the upset to look likely. In fact, I’m sure more people would have picked RDR2 if the match had been more talked about. Most people probably looked at the match and thought it looked like something Portal would win on GameFAQs and didn’t think more about it. The match had a bit of early excitement. Portal 2 had the lead from the start but struggled to run away with it initially. People expected Portal 2 to have the bracket votes and it’s a big deal on board 8. On top of that, Rockstar games tend to not do so well with the board vote. The first Red Dead Redemption and GTAV had both made some decent comeback attempts later in the day, so maybe if RDR2 could keep it close early on, it stood a chance. It turned out Portal actually struggled the most initially and as end of the power hour drew near, it would take off and set the match in stone. I’m guessing Red Dead Redemption actually had the most bracket votes, it’s likely only board 8 Portal 2 was the favorite on and even here it wasn’t by that much. Turns out Portal 2 didn’t really decline or if it did, the Game of the Decade title kept it up again, perhaps even stronger than in 2015. It’s been mentioned in Game of the Decade debates in a lot of places and perhaps that helped it out today. I still believe Red Dead Redemption 2 is stronger than the first game, it makes sense for it to be. The adjusted x-stats kept it below, but I disagree with some of the decisions regarding division 4. I think Xenoblade should have been adjusted down a bit and Persona 4’s rallies and bandwagon effect certainly wasn’t adjusted for as much as I believe it should. I hope and expect to see Red Dead Redemption 2 back again. ## Safer777's Analysis So this match everyone predicted it would be really close. And it was close but not as much as people expected. Still who could have expected Portal 2 of all games to reach a division finals in this site? RDR series is decent here it seems after we saw how both games performed. Both RDR games had close losses too! However pretty sure in every other site RDR 2 beats Portal 2. At least I think so. So for the match. Well the match was close but Portal 2 was never in danger. So what does that say for Portal 2? At least for me it says that we still like this game even though it is 9 years old by now and the Portal series is dead. Yeah imagine you are a company having Portal and Half Life series and doing nothing with them. So yeah a good match even though nothing exciting happened. Funny thing is that in the previous games contest 5 years ago Portal 2 lost in the very first match even though it was the favorite to win too. So yeah. So is the game stronger now? No. I mean why it should be when we had nothing Portal related since then? I guess it was just lucky with the matches. Also I always thought this game was a PC game and then got ported to consoles, but no, it got released in PC and all consoles at the same time. Same with Portal 1 actually! I don't know why, but I always count Portal as a PC series. I guess since Valve makes games for PC mainly I thought that too. So I can't even say a PC series reached the division finals. Still nice match. I mean from losing to Round 1 in the previous contest to reaching the division finals in the next contest without having anything new and no rally is truly glorious. And it even has a shot to win the division too! Of course the prediction Percentage was low since well I guess casuals saw RDR 2 and went with that. ## Tsunami's Analysis If you ever wonder why the leaderboard always seems to be dominated by Gurus, here's why. Portal 2 wasn't the overwhelming groupthink favorite that a lot of games were (fully half the matches in R3 had the favorite holding over *90%* of Guru Brackets), but it was still the clear favorite, with 50% on the dot. Remember, that's as the culmination of an eightpack; 50% is still a pretty good figure. With the casuals, on the other hand, this was an upset. Just 23.57% of brackets got this right, coming off a 50.55% R2 prediction percentage, and the fact that the former figure is less than half the latter is generally the most telling sign that it's an upset. The next factor is to consider what the opponent's prediction percentage was, to see if the true "favorite" had in fact lost earlier. No dice; RDR2 had a 69.82% prediction percentage in R2 (then again, look at the fourpack it was in). That really doesn't leave much room at all for anything else to have been the favorite. So, score one for the Gurus (but not for me because I had KH3 in my bracket and RDR2 in the Oracle. Seriously, where is Portal 2 getting all this strength from all of a sudden?) ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8022&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=108) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Dark Souls vs (4)Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain 2020 _source: (1)Dark Souls vs (4)Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain 2020 (revid 86604)_ ## Results **Round Three** Sunday, April 26, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 109 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 26, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dark Souls - 64.22% 49 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dark Souls - 56.17% - **User Votes:** Dark Souls - 5533 Metal Gear Solid V - 3135 - **Anonymous Votes:** Dark Souls - 4405 Metal Gear Solid V - 2707 Did you guys know that these two games had a match in round 2 in the 2015 contest? In case you didn't know, don't worry, that poll was posted somewhere between 500 and 176,000 times in the leadup to this match. For a bit of context instead of just directly comparing that match to this one and thinking we were all stupid back in 2015, MGS5 came out in September of 2015 and the Fall 2015 Contest was announced just over a month later. 75% of the gurus picked MGS5 to beat Dark Souls that year, for several reasons. MGS5 was a hot, new release in a series this site loved at the time, and Dark Souls was still relatively brand new. Before the 2015 contest, this was the entirety of what we had to go off of for Souls in contests: That's it. One match. I'm frankly still blown away by how easily Dark Souls won that match in 2015, and I love seeing how far Souls has come since then. That contest, paired with KP constantly telling me to check the games out, is why I finally gave in and played Demon's Souls in 2016. I'm glad I did! I became a huge series fan, and it's more proof that when KP tells you to play something, you fucking go play it. No questions asked. The man's recommendations are peerless. Let's fast forward to now. A lot has changed in gaming since 2015. Konami went all fuck-all on us, and the Souls series, along with Western RPGs, has become *the* defining gaming trend of the decade. In 2015, 75% of gurus picked Metal Gear Solid 5. In 2020, all but one guru picked Dark Souls to win here. The lone holdout didn't even pick MGS5. He picked Rocket League. That's.... pretty good insight into how far Metal Gear Solid has fallen around these parts, actually. This match was never going to be in question. The only thing to know was exactly how far Metal Gear Solid 5 fell. The answer, as we now know, is 8%. That's a pretty crazy drop in only five years, but I think we're all smart enough to know that it's a combination of both the Souls series going up and Metal Gear Solid going down. How much of that 8% gets assigned to either factor is anyone's guess, and I doubt it matters much anyway. Who is their right mind going to pick anything related to Metal Gear Solid in a debated match anymore? ## Ctes's Analysis This match had the honor of being our only repeat of the contest, which does not often happen, but then we had a Game of the Decade contest happening five years after the latest games contest instead of a year later like the first one did. As such it was not exactly exciting. Last time they met, Metal Gear Solid V was the favorite, but Dark Souls managed to pull off the upset in a 55-45 match. No one thought Dark Souls could drop it this time. Even if you didn’t think Dark Souls boosted the slightest bit, there was no way Metal Gear Solid V would be even the slightest bit stronger. The best it could hope for was to not drop any further. The difference is almost 8%. I expect most of it to be Dark Souls boosting. The Souldborne games have continued to grow in popularity, and more importantly, we had seen countless times by now that the title of the contest coupled with the forced voting helped certain games and Dark Souls is among the most defining games of the decade. I don’t expect Metal Gear Solid V to drop that much. It might sound weird, but the game was simply not as well received as the others in the franchise at any point. Nothing has actually happened since last games contest. Though it’s hard to imagine Metal Gear Solid V not dropping at least a little bit. Then franchise name helps it a bit, but it should grow weaker as time goes by. I believe what happened with Kojima and Konami especially centering around Metal Gear is among the most unfortunate and frustrating things to happen to the gaming industry. There’s a good chance that all four of the first games would place in my top 20 games of all time. They’re that great. There was plenty of reason to think Kojima could make more Metal Gear masterpieces if all that didn’t happen. Even if they wouldn’t all be A++ games, I hate to think of what could have been. ## Safer777's Analysis So the exact same match happened in the previous contest 5 years ago and DS won with 55 there. And back then MGS 5 had recently come out so yeah no chance here. So of course DS won with an even higher percentage than expected. As I said before people care less and less for MGS series as time moves on. So for the match. Well as I said before the match was pretty easy to predict since MGS series has gotten weaker when DS series has become stronger. Funny thing is that for the fandom of the MGS series they consider MGS 5 at the bottom. I do wonder why. I mean it is the latest game so it has to be good right? Plus strange how in almost all series here in Gamefaqs we usually consider the newer games to be not as good as the previous ones yet we still buy them of course. It does makes sense right? But yeah Souls like games are really popular and the gaming community likes them. So there are a lot of people who are not filthy casuals it seems. Now why MGS series keep falling though? Sure the main guy that made them left but still we are talking about a legendary series with MGS 1 considered a Top Tier PS 1 game and a game that influenced so many other games. In a few years I expect the MGS games to be jobbers then? The prediction percentage was really high too. ## Tsunami's Analysis Dark Souls's prediction percentage of 56.17% feels awfully low here, considering this is a rematch of a match it won fairly comfortably in 2015 and MGSV *was* the favorite to make it this far. Still, I suppose it can't be helped; it was only at 72.23% to win in R2, and MGSV was lower than that. Still, the Oracle predictions are very telling as to what our expectations of these games' trajectories have been. In 2015, Dark Souls beat Metal Gear Solid V with 55.4% of the vote in a match where Oracles were fairly split on who'd even win, favoring Dark Souls a mere 45-42. In 2020, the *lowest* prediction anyone made for Dark Souls was 57.24%, and that person avoided last place because three people picked Dark Souls to break 70%. It's clear that Dark Souls was where it was at. But who would win the Dark Souls-Skyrim and Dark Souls/Skyrim-Witcher 3 matches? Only time would tell (oh, and I guess there was probably still some support for The Last of Us \> Dark Souls, but it was waning quickly.) ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8023&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=109) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Batman: Arkham City vs (2)The Last of Us 2020 _source: (3)Batman: Arkham City vs (2)The Last of Us 2020 (revid 86605)_ ## Results **Round Three** Sunday, April 26, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 110 - **Match Date:** Sunday, April 26, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Last of Us - 54.08% 46 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Last of Us - 58.13% - **User Votes:** Batman: Arkham City - 3873 The Last of Us - 4795 - **Anonymous Votes:** Batman: Arkham City - 3195 The Last of Us - 3918 For anyone who still thought The Last of Us had a prayer to beat Dark Souls, this match was a good indicator that it was completely screwed. By now, it was clear that Dark Souls had boosted. The Last of Us, meanwhile, didn't move in strength much if at all between 2015 and 2020. Batman: Arkham City (2015g) VS The Last of Us (2015g) Batman: Arkham City has a strength of 25.17. The Last of Us has a strength of 27.36. The Last of Us wins with 54.00% of the vote! A win of 4,873 with 60,875 total votes cast. The Last of Us did as expected here against Batman, but it needed to do so much more than "as expected" given Dark Souls wasn't playing around this year. On top of that, one would assume that The Last of Us 2 hype would help out the original in this contest -- we've seen sequel hype matter a lot in the past -- but it simply wasn't materializing this contest for The Last of Us. And all that has to be taken into account *before* "it" happened. See the date on this poll? April 26th, 2020? Learn that date, because 4/26/2020 is the last day in human history where The Last of Us, Sony, or Naughty Dog would have any respect whatsoever. On April 27th, that would all change. ## Ctes's Analysis Before the contest, The Last of Us winning the division final was one of the most popular upset picks. It’s ironic how it came closer to not even getting there than actually pulling that off, though we were already expecting that after the previous round. If we look at the 2015 x-stats, The Last of Us actually won by more than it was supposed, so I think we had just forgotten about Batman: Arkham City before the contest. Of course, there are reasons to think that result would have changed but were plenty of times in this contest where we only looked at 2015 stats and didn’t consider how things could have changed. In fact, picking The Last of Us to win the division final is a perfect example of that. It’s possible people thought The Last of Us would be consistent with a sequel coming right up, but thought Batman would fall off since it’s no longer as relevant. It turns out both superhero games this contest were pretty decent, however. They look to be close to equal indirectly, makes me wonder how a direct matchup would go. We’ll probably never find out. The match started out being pretty intense. Bracket votes weren’t there today, perhaps because people had started to be out of prize contention or perhaps because they didn’t think it would be needed. If you believed the early part to be bracket votes, The Last of Us was in even more trouble though. It was behind the whole freeze, basically. It was close, but Batman was ahead and The Last of Us couldn’t quite take the lead. It did in the next update, but only by a mere three votes, it would quickly take off though. Despite a few stalls and cuts from Batman, TLoU never really looked back eventually winning the match with ease. What a board vote that way though, and I think it’s mostly Naughty Dog not being very popular any longer. It should be noted that this match happened just before a lot of The Last of Us 2 was leaked to a massive internet outrage. I wonder how much that would have changed. There are quite different opinions on how much that damaged The Last of Us. I doubt myself that it would have changed more than 2500 votes, but it certainly would have given The Last of Us a bigger scare. ## Safer777's Analysis So the consensus for this match would be that it would be really close with TLOU winning since it faced stronger opponents than BAC. And the match was close, but not as close as expected. Once again I will say that TLOU is a game trully worth of the GOTD. Play it. So for the match. Well TLOU won as expected with higher percentage than expected. In the previous contest it won only 1 match and then it lost yet here it is in the division finals. Nice work for sure. My opinion of both games are amazing. BAC is the best Batman game ever for sure and TLOU even though doesn't have anything special for the gameplay wins via story. I mean there will even be a TV series on HBO soon enough! Damn! Castlevania had to wait decades to get one and it is animated too! So yeah TLOU is great and you should play it if you haven't already. As for BAC I didn't even expected to do that good. Still nice to see games that trully deserve greatness to do good. I guess if the HBO series was out TLOU would do even better since we see the same happening with Witcher 3 via the Netflix series. ## Tsunami's Analysis Obligatory "Allen allow licensed characters into CBXI." After Arkham City seemingly laid an egg against XBC2 in Round 1, it would've been tough to figure it being able to perform this well here, but then it went out and got a better percentage on BioShock: Infinite than it did on XBC2 and everyone realized that XBC is just kind of legit. The Last of Us had a fairly easy path to this point, so this was not even a lock, but for the most part B8 had this pretty well pegged; the Oracle scores were fairly tightly packed together and they were all pretty good. I guess maybe TLoU never really gained traction on GameFAQs? From what I hear it's a masterpiece. Then again, the whole "video games as art" thing never really took off here. That's probably why the later games in the MGS series aren't as strong as the earlier ones, too; Kojima got too artsy. MGS would make a great movie series, or TV series. The Last of Us would make a good movie, too. Weren't there plans to do just that at one point? Whatever happened to them? Yeah, it kind of entered development hell around 2016. But in March of 2020, it was announced that a TV series was in the planning stages at HBO. So there you go; TLoU is getting its screen adaptation. Probably. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8024&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=110) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (13)Mario Kart 8 2020 _source: (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (13)Mario Kart 8 2020 (revid 86606)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, April 27, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 111 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 27, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Skyrim - 63.46% 49 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Skyrim - 69.25% - **User Votes:** Skyrim - 5773 Mario Kart 8 - 3710 - **Anonymous Votes:** Skyrim - 5054 Mario Kart 8 - 3243 A few matches ago, we had a funny first five minutes between Witcher 3 and Mario Galaxy 2, where Galaxy famously had Witcher 3 tied at the freeze before getting buried. If ever there was a time for Skyrim to prove it still could make the final, this was it. Instead, we got a repeat performance. If you take the Witcher 3 vs Galaxy 2 match trends and put it up next to Skyrim vs Mario Kart 8, you get practically the exact same match. It's cute and funny to look at and such, but it also meant more confirmation of the obvious -- Witcher 3 was a cut above Skyrim for this entire contest. If only we knew that going in, huh? For the first five minutes of this poll, Mario Kart 8 made a match of it. For the final 23 hours and 55 minutes, Skyrim buried Mario Kart 8 to survive and advance. I'm happy Mario Kart 8 booted the MMORPG trash out of this contest, but it doesn't mean I enjoy any of the Mario Kart games. I just hate them less than I do MMOs. To that end, it was nice seeing Mario Kart 8 gets its teeth kicked in. Screw all of those games for life. The one and only thing that sucked about Mario Kart finally leaving this contest was our last high seed making its exit. I'm a huge fan of underdog runs in the NCAAs and seeing these tiny midmajor schools make deep runs, so when a high seed starts going off and making runs in our contests I tend to enjoy it. With Mario Kart 8's loss, it meant these seedings for the division finals: -1 vs 2 -1 vs 3 -1 vs 2 -5 vs 3 -1 vs 2 -1 vs 3 -1 vs 2 -1 vs 3 Had GTA5 not dropped the ball, it would have been all 1 seeds versus 2s and 3s. Allen did a great job with seeding this year, clearly, but it was almost *too* good. The reason we knew Skyrim was screwed is because in a hypothetical Galaxy 2 versus Mario Kart 8 match, 100% of gurus would pick Galaxy 2. As they should. This wasn't like the entertaining Tekken 7 versus Mortal Kombat 11 debate that popped up after round one because of what was going on with Smash Ultimate and Mario Odyssey; everyone and their mother knew Skyrim was done for. ## Ctes's Analysis This is the match that truly made Skyrim a big target and had people thinking it would be the weakest division winner in this half of the bracket, with a very few even thinking it could lose the next round. A group of us were defending Skyrim’s performance against Journey, but there certainly weren’t many people left defending Skyrim after today. I only remember myself and Lightning Strikes stepping up for Skyrim, though I’m not saying there couldn’t be more. People really couldn’t find the reasons to believe Skyrim would still be in the elite. Let’s first put some numbers on the table. The 2015 x-stats project Skyrim to get 76% in this match. Over 15% more than it got today. Mario Kart 8 was behind Super Mario 64 SFF back then, but they lost to the same game. Despite many thinking Skyrim disappointed against Journey in the previous contest, oracles overestimated it be roughly 2.5%. Skyrim did the same against Mario Kart 8 as The Witcher 3 did to Super Mario Galaxy 2, further darkening Skyrim’s chances of making the final. The 2015 stats also show Metal Gear Solid V well above Mario Kart 8 as well, so Skyrim looked a good deal worse than Dark Souls in the eyes of many too. Now, it’s time to pull out the Skyrim defense force again. First of all, Mario Kart 8 is near the bottom of the x-stats because we didn’t adjust for Mario Kart 8 at all. It drew Super Mario 64 and nothing was done about it. I think that’s largely forgotten. They’re both Mario games, that match is loaded with SFF. It could be 65-35 without it and it wouldn’t surprise me. Against something completely different Mario Kart 8 gets its appreciation but against perhaps the most respected game in the franchise and the biggest 3D Mario by a good margin, the fanbase has a favorite. That’s before we even consider how Mario Kart 8 has all the reason to boost significantly. We’ve talked about before how I believe Mario’s strength is determined partly by the current status of Nintendo. In 2015, Mario Kart 8 was a Wii U exclusive and that contest took place well after the peak of the Wii U. Do you know how low the peak of the Wii U was? Since then, Nintendo is perhaps bigger than they’ve been since the N64 or at the very least since the early DS/Wii years. Furthermore, Mario Kart 8 was released on Switch. People like to use Tropical Freeze and Bayonetta 2 as examples of why that might not matter too much, but those are different stories. Mario Kart 8 wasn’t just released on the Switch, it also sold significantly more copies than any Switch game and is one of the very best selling games of all time. Everyone appreciates Mario Kart 8 and Skyrim is the perfect opponent for it to show that against. The spin-off franchise is huge, and Mario Kart 8 is widely regarded as the best one. At least it is if we remove our nostalgia goggles when looking at Super Mario 64. People also tend to forget that after the initial board vote, Skyrim rises to the sky after the board vote, perhaps even to the outer rim. But Skyrim was behind for more than a minute and it was barely ahead at the freeze. It rose to heaven from there, but that embarrassment had already hit it, and people rarely look much at the match after it’s over. I’m sure a good bunch of people thought Skyrim looked worse because it was at 55-56% when they looked despite it ending above 60%. I don’t actually need to defend Skyrim on the other side of the contest, because it went on to prove that it was still quite strong, even though The Witcher 3 was stronger. Mario Kart 8 therefore also ends up being a lot stronger than what the general consensus was and what its seeding indicated. It’s the most underseeded game of the bracket, getting a \#14 seed when it should have easily been a \#3 seed at the least. Mario Kart games have been in contests before, but they literally always run into other Nintendo games. That has happened every single time until now. Mario Kart Wii beating Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is the only match the series has had without other Nintendo games and that was the Wii edition facing a DS game after the Wii stopped being too popular here. It really is a shame Super Mario Kart didn’t get to participate in the year of SNES appreciation 2015 because if really was on par with Super Metroid it would have looked beastly that year. I have believed Mario Kart had always had a bit more to show than it got the chance too, and as everyone knows I also believed Uncharted 4 was better than most people thought it would. ## Safer777's Analysis Okay this match was strange. Not because we didn't knew who would win, I mean Skyrim is in Top 5 Contest games for power of course. And almost everyone has it reaching the semifinal match and a lot have it reaching the final match. So yeah no worries there. The problem was what percentage it should have to be considered the favorite to reach the final match. But in my opinion no matter how Skyrim would win here, it would be considered bad except if won with like 70. So yeah don't know what to say. So for the match. Okay obviously Skyrim won, duh. The Crew had it around 65 BUT the Oracle had it around 60. So does that mean this is bad? I am not sure. I think it is okay. Not good but not bad either. Tough to judge. The game is almost 9 years old by now. When it came out oh man the MEMES! And the sales too. And the critical reception too. All amazing. Plus it has been ported to everything. If something is capable of playing Skyrim it is in that system. Yeah some kind of ported record. This is why they don't want to make another game. Even on this site it is always in Top 3 and even in Steam is in Top 10 after all these years. So yeah people still play this thing. A lot of them it seems. As for MK 8 I don't know anything, but it seems to be really good. The game came out in 2014 but had an updated version at 2017. Why they didn't make a new game I am not sure. So as I say again I consider it an okay result myself. The prediction percentage was huge too. 2nd highest of Round 3 actually. So yeah people still think this game is legit. And well it is actually, but how it stacks to other games here? Especially Witcher 3 So Witcher 3 scored 60 against Mario Galaxy 2 and Skyrim scored 60 against Mario Kart 8. What you consider better? Yeah I think we all know the answer. Plus something else. ALL division finals were 1 seed vs 2/3 seeds EXCEPT one division which we had a 5 seed instead who barely won too. You know in the previous contest we had in 2018 how many 1 and 2 and 3 seeds reach the division finals? 10 out of 16. In this contest it was 15 out 16. Do you know how many 1 and 2 seeds won the division in 2018? 1! Just one! How many 1 seeds won their division in this contest? 7! A record! 2018 contest was the worst seeded contest ever! And 2020 contest was the best seeded contest ever! ## Tsunami's Analysis Hey, remember back in Round 1 where someone suggested that voters would only view "Mario Kart 8" as being the Wii U game instead of including the Switch's "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe" and that as such, it might not even get past Uncharted 4? I really hope that one got archived in Zen's topic. I don't think it did. That's some quality wrongness right there. I mean, ignoring the fact that this site has always been pro-Nintendo and as such, a Wii U exclusive vs. a PS4 exclusive probably favors the former...voters aren't stupid. I guess maybe the fact that there were remakes in the bracket might have colored that person's judgment? I guess it's a fair point. There had long been arguments that "Mega Man" represented *all* iterations of Mega Man, not just Mega Man Classic, until X was finally allowed in as a separate entrant. I can even understand the logic that CJayC used for excluding X; it's a slippery slope, since technically most Links are different entities. Just at the time of the first Character Battle, you already had Zelda/Zelda II Link, ALttP/LA/Oracle Link, and OoT/MM Link, and by Character Battle II, they'd already been joined by WW/PH Link *and* Four Swords Link. And Mario Kart is surprisingly strong here. We'd seen it before with Super Mario Kart going toe to toe with Super Metroid twice in 2009, and that was SFF. This performance feels kind of bad for Skyrim, but it honestly isn't really. At 69.25%, Skyrim's R3 prediction percentage was second only to Breath of the Wild's...84.65%. Which means the percentage that picked against it was 30.75% to 15.35%, a little more than twice as many. Yikes! BotW was looking to be one of the most predictable winners ever. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8025&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=111) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (3)Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version vs (2)NieR: Automata 2020 _source: (3)Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version vs (2)NieR: Automata 2020 (revid 88238)_ ## Results **Round Three** Monday, April 27, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 112 - **Match Date:** Monday, April 27, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 53.04% 35 for - 14 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 48.25% - **User Votes:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 5023 NieR: Automata - 4463 - **Anonymous Votes:** Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 4097 NieR: Automata - 4197 This was perhaps my least favorite match of the entire contest, because the worst parts of two different fanbases acted like shitheads for 24 hours. First off, apparently this was some wildly debatable match even though 75% of gurus picked Pokemon here for obvious reasons. I don't know how or why, but the Nier fanbase all thought Automata was going to win this thing easily. Guys, have you not been paying attention to these contests for the past 10 years or so? Pokemon doesn't really lose unexpected matches anymore. Happiness is directly related to expectations in life, fellas. Anyone experienced will tell you that. So right off the bat, all the ingredients were there for a powder keg. To the credit of the Nier faithful, this match was close for about an hour and they had rallies ready to go. But about 45 minutes in, the floodgates opened and Pokemon finally broke through. It climbed fairly quickly in the evening and midnight vote to build up a lead close to 600, and held serve overnight. When the morning vote came and it looked like Nier might make a go at things, to the tune of cutting 100 votes off the lad, it turned out to be fool's gold. Pokemon would rebound, win the morning and day votes fairly easily, and ultimately win by 1000 votes. Remember Rock Band vs Deus Ex, when Deus Ex scored an upset win but the entire board was flooded with topics about how Deus Ex wasn't winning by enough? This match was the inversion of that, and it went both ways. The board was a total shitshow during this match, and it even bled into the stats topic a little. The worst part is both of these fanbases acting all sanctimonious and virtuous about their games and trashing the opponent. How about this -- you both suck. Pokemon fans *do* get that their fanbase is loaded with perverts and furries, right? Nier fans *do* get that a main selling point of Automata is 2B having her ass hanging out while looking like an underaged girl, right? "But she's a robot, bro!" Piss off. This entire match, which was far better than expected, sucked to watch because of fans on both sides acting so obnoxious. The Nier fans acted a lot worse, but both of them are to blame here. Thankfully we booted them out of this contest as of this match and everything else was smooth sailing save the final. This brought round 3 to an end, and it was all the home stretch from here on out. For those playing the home game, the final 16 was: -5 Action/Adventure games (Resident Evil 2, God of War, Portal 2, Dark Souls, The Last of Us) -4 Nintendo games (Breath of the Wild, Smash Ultimate, Mario Odyssey, Pokemon HGSS) -4 Japanese RPGs (Dragon Quest 11, Persona 4 Golden, Persona 5, Xenoblade Chronicles) -3 Western RPGs (Mass Effect 2, Witcher 3, Skyrim) Very good mix! I know a lot of genres bleed together now, but still. Pokemon is also a JRPG, God of War could be considered a Western RPG, etc etc. Not the point. The point here is the final rounds were very varied. This was a good decade for gaming, my friends. My only issue here is all three remakes waltzing into the divisional finals, but we're long past the point where that could have been corrected. It is what it is. "I'm not going to lie: stats and discussions board realizing Pokemon hentai rallies were **also** a thing was one of my favorite parts of the entire contest. Whatever happened afterwards, it was pretty damn funny to watch, even if it was pretty stupid." -Ytterbicide ## Ctes's Analysis This match managed to stay exciting up until a bit into it. There were people thinking that Pokemon would have an easy time after the first few rounds, but there were also people thinking that a Pokemon game from generation 4 would start doing worse once it faced actual competition. The debated had been centered mostly around the strength of Pokemon HGSS before the contest, but the performances of NieR: Automata were obviously considered too now. The Bayonetta 2 result was the most discussed of them. People had a hard time believing in SFF in that match and without it, Automata (and Divinity) looks really good, though it requires you to believe Bayonetta 2 had boosted a bit from the first contest. What kept Pokemon HGSS as the favorite was probably that remakes had so far done as good as we possibly thought they could be. Resident Evil 2 and Persona 4 Golden were both still in the competition. They clearly wouldn’t have been if people anti-voted them for being remakes. Persona 4 Golden especially shows that it’s fine being a remake. Though not all of us, a good amount of people picked Automata to the division finals in their brackets because of lack of faith in Pokemon. There was not much reason to have that any longer. The match wasn’t without excitement initially, although there was never a point where Pokemon HGSS was not in the lead. They were neck to neck at first, until Pokemon very slowly build a small lead before the freeze. Pokemon would only gain from 30 to 38 the next update and Automata made a small cut after that. That gave people hope, because Pokemon usually has the board vote and bracket votes might be on its site too. It would gain from there, and while the match had a bunch of updates in a row that looked good for Automata, it was clear pretty fast in the overall picture that Pokemon wasn’t losing this. Pokemon HGSS and Automata probably both had a good amount of bracket votes and are both good with the board too. Board 8 seems quite into NieR, so it makes sense. I’ve seen people say that NieR: Automata was a disappointment after it could not win this match and HGSS went on to easily lose to Skyrim. It probably doesn’t help that it looked weaker than Mario Kart 8 when people had such a hard time accepting strength of Mario Kart 8, but it looks just fine at the end of the contest. I picked Automata today and I didn’t have expectations higher than this for it really. No, the reason Automata lost as I see it, had more to do with Pokemon HGSS being worth almost as much as we thought it could. It’s the perfect combination between nostalgic fans and hardcore fans and being a remake didn’t hurt it at all. The Automata upset being as popular as it was depended on Pokemon being weaker that that. I hope and expect to see Automata back in a contest again, I could see it coming back stronger when the franchise has more exposure. ## Safer777's Analysis Hentai rallies! Oh yeah! Okay there were some but in the end they didn't managed to mean much. Why? Pokefear baby! Even the crew was split here and most favorite NA but they should have learned by now that you can't really stop Pokefear! But let's be serious here. The match is strange. We have in this contest 3 games that are basically not from this decade of gaming. Resident Evil 2, Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver and Persona 4 Golden. And RE 2 and Pokemon HG/SS are from the 90's! But ALL these games managed to reach the Division finals and all of them barely did it actually. I do believe that is because most don't really care if these games are remakes/ports/enhanced/reimagines/proxies or anything you want to call them. I mean for example if you like RE 2 wouldn't you also play the other version too? And like it too? Mostly at least? So yeah. BUT are these versions stronger than their original versions? That is the big question and I don't know honestly. I don't really believe it to tell the truth. They seem to be kinda their own thing? So yeah not sure. So for the match. As I said the Crew was split and most favored Nier. I checked the Oracle and most favored Pokemon HG/SS. I checked the Guru and most favored Pokemon there. So yeah this match was a toss up, especially after the previous rounds. But once again Pokefear prevailed. The crew doesn't like Pokemon mostly but hey Pokemon is awesome! Now I have played all Pokemon games and all versions and remakes too and I have played Nier Automata too and I didn't know what to vote myself too. But in the end I went with Pokemon HG/SS. The 2nd generation of Pokemon is still considered the best and the remake of that one is way too good. Imagine if they could remake Gen 2 with the new things that Sword and Shield had! Man that would sell like crazy. Speaking of new Pokemon games we had 7(!)new series coming out since 2010 and only 1 of them was a remake. Basically we had 4 generations since then. And the only Pokemon game we had was a Generation 2 one! Yeah. We are awesome? Also technically Soul Silver/Heart Gold came out in 2009! In Japan at least. As a huge Pokemon fan I have to say that all generations are good and yeah even the latest one which supposedly a lot of fans quit or something broke record sales. I mean Sword and Shield have already sold more copies than most previous generations. Fastest selling Switch game! In like 6 months! And we have for the first time ever paid DLC. Expansions. Okay these aren't out yet. Eh. And a fun fact that I haven't noticed. NO pokemon game ever has above 87 on Metacritic! Huh? I mean so many games have above that yet not even 1 Pokemon game? Doesn't really matter, I just point that out. As for NieR it did really good. It almost came close to reach the Division Finals too and it lost a really close match. Who could have expected a series like this doing so good? So end of round 3. The round was good and by tradition in Round 3 all weak games get eliminated so all the good stuff remain. Same happened here. Out of all these games that remained most of them can trully say they are GOTD material. Also in this round we had the best match of the entire contest. Plus out of the 8 division finals half of them were a toss up. So yeah at least decent stuff in the contest. ## Tsunami's Analysis Nier actually managed a slight win with the unregistered voters, but it wasn't enough to even come close as HG/SS managed to win by over 1000 votes. The most interesting thing about the match was that said lead didn't break 1000 until the literal final update. It entered that update with a lead of 999, though, which is fun. Certainly a lot more fun than 1018. It really does amaze me that HGSS was able to get a 3-seed while the rest of the series was shut out of the bracket entirely. I'm not complaining about the first half, because HG/SS was amazing, but the Pokémon fanbase couldn't manage to get a 14-16 seed for the Gen 5 games? Were B/W and B2/W2 splitting nominations or something? Gen 5 really did end up as the forgotten generation. I feel like this is at least in part because of Gen 6 being the first generation to have a unified worldwide release, which meant that outside of Japan, Gen 5 had a really short lifespan--2011 for Black and White, 2013 for X and Y. Wait a minute... Pokémon Black/White release date outside Japan: March 4(EU)/6(NA)/10(AU), 2011 Pokémon X/Y release date: October 12, 2013 Span of 947-953 days. Pokémon Red/Blue release dates: NA: 9/28/98 AU: 10/23/98 EU: 10/5/*99* Pokémon Gold/Silver release dates: JP: 11/21/99 AU: 10/13/00 NA: 10/15/00 EU: 4/6/01 The Japanese release date for Gold/Silver is irrelevant, but I included it because lol at R/B being out in Europe for less than two months when G/S came out in Japan. But dang! Gen 1's lifespan outside of Japan is even shorter than Gen 5's. 748 days in NA, and a mere 549 in Europe. Wait, wait, there's more. Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire: NA: 3/19/03 AU: 4/3/03 EU: 7/25/03 885 days in NA, the longest of the three, and 840 in Europe. Gen II's shorter, too, though it at least gets a pass because in North America and Australia, it was the most recent generation for three "Holiday Seasons", whereas 1 and 5 both only held that status for two. Though I guess that does explain one thing--Generation IV was the *longest* generation in every region, even Japan. Wait, scratch that...Gen IV was *only* the longest Generation in Japan. Everywhere else, Gen III beats it out. Which means the real surprise isn't that there aren't any Gen 5 games in this bracket, it's that ORAS didn't get in as well. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8026&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=112) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (2)Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age 2020 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (2)Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age 2020 (revid 88597)_ ## Results **Round Four** Tuesday, May 5, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 1 - **Match \#:** 113 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, May 05, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 75.41% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 76.59% - **User Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 6336 Dragon Quest XI - 2626 - **Anonymous Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 5096 Dragon Quest XI - 2278 After an incredibly stupid delay to set up a gimmick secondary bracket entry phase (seriously, that stuff needs to stop), the home stretch began. And with it... MATCH PICS!! I love me some picsmithing, and as usual the gang killed it. I'm only going to pull rank on the wiki once, beyond that I don't care what image you guys use for the articles. It isn't often that a game looks good when only getting 30% of the vote, but Dragon Quest 11 went out of this contest like a man's man. In a match where most people thought Zelda would finish in the mid to high 70s, and perhaps even break 80% again, Dragon Quest 11 actually walked right up to the Anton Chigurh of this contest and slapped it across the face. Zelda actually struggled to just break 70% in this match, and it took the actual morning and day vote to ultimately get it done. Mad props to Dragon Quest 11 here. This was still a 70-30 blowout at the end of the day, and putting on a show like this was impressive. If you had told me pre-contest that any Dragon Quest could potentially double any Final Fantasy game on this site, I'd have thought you were nuts. Yet in a direct match based on direct results through Zelda, Dragon Quest 11 could have doubled Final Fantasy XV. That is so good. All this said, Zelda still broke 70% four rounds in a row, which is some incredibly rarified air. Here is the entire list of everything to ever pull that off: -Link in Summer 2002 (beat Little Mac, Strider, Jill Valentine, and Scorpion) -The Legend of Zelda in the Series Contest 2006 (beat Civilization, Mega Man X, Metroid, and Metal Gear) -Link/Ganondorf in the Rivalry Rumble 2011 (beat Arthas/Illidan, Amaterasu/Orochi, Mega Man/Wily, and Alucard/Dracula) -Breath of the Wild in Game of the Decade 2020 (beat The Outer Worlds, Halo Reach, Final Fantasy 15, and Dragon Quest 11) There's a common theme there. I'll let you guys figure out what it is. Two notes. -Link and Ganondorf finished over **75%** in its first four matches, which is a record that could only ever possibly be broken by Link or his series. -In the 2010 character battle, Link finished over 70% in four of his first five matches, but he's not eligible for this record because Mega Man X held him below 70% in round 3 that year. He finished 3% short. We all knew Breath of the Wild would win this contest easily, but I don't know that we knew it would be *this* easy. ## Ctes's Analysis It’s to the surprise of no one that Breath of the Wild would continue to completely dominate the competition even this late in the contest. It did however do so significantly less than it did in the first three rounds. It went from breaking 80% three rounds straight to barely breaking 70%. That speaks volumes about Dragon Quest XI and it’s incredible how good you can look despite failing to break 30% in a match. Board 8 underrated DQXI by more than 5% today after underestimating it in the other rounds. It makes the whole upper division look almost unbelievably weak compared to the lower half. Something was off. We’ve talked a lot about how the contest title combined with the forced voting has caused more blowouts than usual and have caused the top games to perform even better than they would have otherwise. I believe the same thing happened to Breath of the Wild up until this point. Final Fantasy XV might be a previous Game of the Year winner, but this is the first time Breath of the Wild faced something that it actually cared about. It’s not to take any credit away from Dragon Quest XI, the contrary actually, but there’s no way the top half of the division is as bad as the stats suggest. As I stated last round, it’s no coincidence the weakest game in both round 2 and 3 according to the x-stats is the one that face Breath of the Wild. It took a game that actually have a big fanbase and that people believe deserves to be here to stop Breath of the Wild from taking 80% of the votes. It’s amazingly weird to see Dragon Quest succeed where Final Fantasy couldn’t. Being of the same time, there wasn’t a huge difference at first, but throughout the 90s Final Fantasy established itself as one of the biggest franchises of all time and without a doubt the biggest franchise on this site. Dragon Quest was rather niche and continued to be so. Not that everyone didn’t know how much that had changed, but Breath of the Wild striking down both of their main games from the last decade just makes it so clear. Of course Dragon Quest XI would have its strongest game come out 2017. It says a lot more about Final Fantasy than Dragon Quest, but it’s still clear that Dragon Quest is more legit than ever. It loses big time today, but it ends up looking like it deserved its seeding. ## Safer777's Analysis So finally after like 10 days of not having the contest, we have finally the contest. So okay obviously BOTW would win. I mean the game is favorite to win the whole thing and without a rally it will not lose. What else to say for prologue? So for the match. Here is the thing. People had BOTW winning with around 75-80 but it won with 70 and that was barely too. I mean for a few hours BOTW was under 70 too. Pretty sure nobody expected that. Personally I also had BOTW to 80. Why? Because DQ games never do well in this site plus they were not popular until a while ago. I say they were not popular because now with DQ 11 the DQ series is thriving. It has characters in Smash plus this game smashed sales and even the updated version did really well. I don't know if DQ11 is the highest selling DQ game, but it is at least the 2nd best in sales. So yeah. Still this result is nice. It means that there are stronger games from other series that can beat BOTW, just not in this contest I believe. Still BOTW the favorite but with lower percentages than we expected. Also check out the prediction percentage. Not even strong games that won in Round 1 didn't had that high percentage! ## Tsunami's Analysis Return of the colons! So the 2018 contest had a hiatus after Round 4 to set up the Second Chance Brackets, perfectly timed to allow for Thanksgiving break. This contest had a hiatus after Round 3 for no particularly good reason. It killed momentum, and it shows in those vote totals; barely over 25000 votes after, um...wait, that's actually higher than the Division 6 and 7 semfinals were? Huh, I guess it just looks bad because Division 8's semis scored so highly. Well, it was also a rather precipitous drop-off from BotW's R3 match against Final Fantasy XV, and that benefited DQXI immensely. One round after putting up 80.25% on FFXV, BotW was held to just 70.22% against DQXI. A Dragon Quest game outperforming a Final Fantasy game by that much? It's very strange, and I have to stop and try to figure out how it happened. The obvious answer, of course, is anti-votes. The Legend of Zelda dominates every contest unless a rallied entrant stops it, and even Draven was barely able to pull it off. The deeper into the contest you get, the more it'll get anti-voted for being too strong. But Final Fantasy is about the only series that *can't* benefit from this phenomenon, because the only times Zelda has lost without a rally being involved--2003's character battle, 2004's Games Contest, and technically the Villain contest but Sephiroth was *expected* to win that one, to the tune of the highest prediction percentage for a champion ever--it was to Final Fantasy, or more specifically Final Fantasy VII. Combine that with FFVII being the game that put GameFAQs on the map, courtesy of the late Kao Megura, and for the longest time there was a *perception* that "Final Fantasy Always Wins", even though in reality it's only managed a few sparse wins over The Legend of Zelda. (It might also help that we do Character Battles far more frequently than Games Contests and each numbered Final Fantasy game is a separate continuity while the Legend of Zelda has the same few characters in every game, even if technically the Link and Zelda are usually different individuals with the same name each time, so Final Fantasy characters dominate(d) the brackets even though they rarely win out in the end. Wait, hold on, let me do some math...yeah, Final Fantasy VII *alone* has put more characters into Character Battles than the entire Legend of Zelda series. FFVII: Cloud, Sephiroth, Tifa, Vincent, Aerith, Zack, Cid, Barret, Midgar Zolom Zelda: Link, Zelda, Ganondorf, Midna, Tingle, Epona, Groose 9-7 in favor of FFVII. So the sentiment is understandable even if it's wrong.) That said, this is an outstanding performance by Dragon Quest XI. Is it possible that the series is finally gaining traction outside of Japan? It has to be noted that a lot of people were surprised by how well its characters did in 2013; Slime was closer to 1st than to 3rd in a match it had no business winning, and DQV Hero burned a lot of Expert Challenge pickers with his second place finish even though it should've been somewhat obvious that Aerith was going to annihilate Rinoa with SFF, because that's just what FFVII does to other FF games and this isn't one of those "FF-not-VII leads can still hang with FFVII not-leads sometimes" situations; this was like vs. like. And a lot of people's analyses of that even acknowledged that fact, and still picked Rinoa to beat Hero because they were just that low on Hero's strength! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8027&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=113) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Mass Effect 2 vs (3)Resident Evil 2 2020 _source: (1)Mass Effect 2 vs (3)Resident Evil 2 2020 (revid 88595)_ ## Results **Round Four** Tuesday, May 5, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 2 - **Match \#:** 114 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, May 05, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Mass Effect 2 - 51.77% 43 for - 10 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Mass Effect 2 - 20.82% - **User Votes:** Mass Effect 2 - 4630 Resident Evil 2 - 4341 - **Anonymous Votes:** Mass Effect 2 - 4013 Resident Evil 2 - 3361 Given the bandwagon Resident Evil 2 had built up leading into this match, I am convinced that the contest intermission hurt its chances to pull the upset here. I'm not saying Mass Effect 2 wouldn't have won anyway, but momentum is a real thing and those dumb delays that happen now really kill it for underdog runs. Outside of one match, Mass Effect 2 looked vulnerable for this entire contest. Resident Evil 2 meanwhile was coming off of an incredibly grueling, emotional win over Bloodborne and could have ridden football-like momentum through Mass Effect here. Didn't happen. If you ever talk to a professional athlete, and I've met about 50 of them from working various odd jobs, they hate all the TV timeouts and reviews and such in major sports. It kills the momentum. It kills the flow. I think that is a huge factor into what happened here. When this poll started, Mass Effect 2 had 52% of the poll, and then the poll just... stayed there. You can see the final result. This was the poll for the entire 24 hours. Resident Evil 2 never made a push to do much of anything, and this was certainly a far, far cry from the Resident Evil 2 we had seen in earlier matches. We can't confirm one way or another if the intermission helped Mass Effect 2 here, but it certainly didn't hurt it. It meant for a rather dud ending to Resident Evil 2's impressive contest run. I do have to say that I'm not upset about Mass Effect 2 winning a division though, especially with all of the nonsense that poor series has gone through. It was nice to see one of them finally break through a win a division, even if the means were debatable. ## Ctes's Analysis The battle of the sequels was one of the matches in the final phrase that had people split the most. Both games had a good case of making it through today. Mass Effect 2 looked really good in the previous two rounds. Everyone had accepted at this point that Resident Evil 7 was simply a lot better than people gave it credit for, but that could also mean good things for Resident Evil 2. It seemed like a case where many people simply went with whatever game their gut feelings told them to go with. There were people very confident in both games. Taking Resident Evil 2 to win here was always a good late round upset pick. Look at how it dealt with a rallied Bloodborne, which beat Awakening even before rallies. Mass Effect 2 is projected to easily win those two matches in 2015, with ~55% against Awakening and ~58% against Bloodborne, but look at how much stronger Bloodborne is now. Even if you believe Mass Effect 2 is undervalued in the 2015 x-stats, you can also believe Andromeda hurt the name. Resident Evil 2 took care of a rallied Bloodborne, so it was certainly within striking distance. Furthermore, the original Resident Evil 2 was in 2015 and is projected to beat Awakening with less than Resident Evil 2 beat Three Houses in Game of the Year. We've been through GotY polls, but certainly a 1v1 poll is worth a little bit and I just want to state that the upset was clearly possible. The match opened with much excitement. The games were dead even for the opening minutes until Mass Effect 2 started being every so slightly ahead. Then it jumped ahead by quite a bit at the first update and very quickly climbed above the 200-vote lead. Resident Evil 2 would then stall quite a bit, cutting the percentage Mass Effect 2 had from almost 55% to almost 51% as the lead was cut from 250 votes to below 200 in a very few updates. It couldn’t keep it up though. Mass Effect 2 began climbing again and this time it didn’t look back at all. It has been suggested that the break hurt Resident Evil 2’s chances here because it won the very close match with Bloodborne that would have given it a bandwagon. I seriously doubt it’s the case though. Resident Evil 2 was always the favorite to make the division finals, Bloodborne just made it a lot closer that people thought. Usually such things come from big upsets and that match wasn’t really that. Besides, if it did get something of a bandwagon, the break shouldn’t make much a difference. The people that followed Resident Evil 2 vs. Bloodborne closely enough definitely remembered it, but a lot of people just voted in the match and saw Resident Evil 2 won, which was largely expected. I believe the match was decided mostly by the contest title. It’s pretty clear that Mass Effect 2 was not hurt by andromeda or the third game or anything. Shepard looked a lot worse last character battle and Mass Effect 3 was killed, but in the light of the contest people remembered what Mass Effect 2 how did gaming, how big a deal it was. It would be the oldest game to reach the top 8 only barely being a game of the current decade. It’s nice that after the franchise quickly became an all-timer and seemingly dropped it rather quickly again, Mass Effect 2 would be remembered as the great game it was. Resident Evil 2 ended up being as good as you could hope it is despite being a remake, Mass Effect 2 was simply better than it looked in 2015. The remake discussion shouldn’t concern Resident Evil 2 much really, because it’s different enough that it deserves its spot for sure, while the other two can be discussed. The previous Game of the Decade contest had Resident Evil 4 get further and it was praised as one of the absolute best and most influential games of all time. The series isn’t at that point, but Resident Evil 7 was more like than we thought, and the recent three remakes have shown that they’re still capable of making fantastic games, so perhaps there’s hope for future entries after all. ## Safer777's Analysis Nice match here. Before the contest ME 2 was the favorite to win the division and as the contest went on things became shaky but still ME 2 was the favorite. Even the whole Crew went with ME 2 here with around 52 win and guess what, it did just that! In the previous RE 2 match there were some rallies against RE 2 but still RE 2 managed to hold on and it did won. Still this result seems to indicate that RE 2 is almost similar in strength to Horizon Zero Dawn and pretty sure nobody before the contest started would think of that. So for the match. Things were somewhat stable for all hours. So yeah really close match but ME 2 was never in fear of losing. Seems ME 2 is still strong even though the latest ME game sucked and the franchise is pretty much dead now. Maybe this will be the first game that manages to avoid a doubling against BOTW! Also check out the prediction percentage here. Around 20 here and almost 77 for BOTW. Yeah everyone knows that Zelda always wins. Still hope someone manages to take it down. Also I still prefer the original RE 2 for personal reasons. Plus ME 2 in this contest started with beating a RE game and it ended with beating a RE game because yeah it stands no chance against BOTW of course. ## Tsunami's Analysis Our second GotY vs. GotY match of the contest pitted the 2010 and 2019 winners against each other, and while normally you'd just say "OldFAQs" and pick the 2010 game without a second thought, the 2019 game was a remake of a 1998 game, and as we all know, when in doubt, pick the closest thing you can to 1998. That meme started in the Years Contest itself, but it probably held true for the most part in 2015 as well, aside from Undertale matches. It certainly explains away a lot of the strange "upsets", although back then we were just calling it "Year of the SNES". This match was briefly on the list of 25 closest wire-to-wire matches where the loser never led...for a few minutes, until I noticed that HGSS-Nier had been closer and hadn't been put up there yet. Which is better than the few *hours* I expected it to be there, since a match in progress at the time was looking like it could outright break the record! But we'll talk about that when we get there. Back to this match, where it was plainly evident that nostalgia is the route to success for these old companies. Capcom's learned that here; RE2Make was a huge hit and they've already followed it up with RE3Make here in 2020. I'd say that we can expect an RE4Make by 2022, but they literally just ported the original RE4 to Switch in 2019. Then again, the Switch is notably absent from the list of consoles that RE2Make and RE3Make are on, so I guess maybe Nintendo's still being looked at as the "little brother" the way it was in the "WiiS2/PS360" era. So yeah, RE4Make for the PS5 and Xbox Series X, coming to stores in 2022. Book it. Square seems to be learning that lesson as well with FF7R. Sega kind of is as well with Mania, but they're so far gone that nobody seems to even care. Nintendo, of course, keeps doing their own thing, but a lot of their recent output has been aimed at trying to recapture what people loved about their earlier games rather than continuing to innovate--just look at the two Zelda games in the bracket, or even FE:A. And Konami...doesn't really care, because their profile is so far diversified beyond just video games. Apparently they *did* try to produce a Metal Gear Solid movie back in the mid-00s, and it completely fell through by 2010...but there was a new version put into the works at Columbia Pictures (owned by Sony) as early as 2012, and as of the end of 2019, a draft of the film is complete. And it's got Hideo Kojima on board! Which brings me to the question, who the hell owns this franchise? Konami did put out Metal Gear Survive in 2018, after Kojima was no longer with them, but apparently they can still go around Konami for the film? Well, at any rate, I've long felt that with MGSV wrapping up the Big Boss arc, going as far as to end with the lead-up to the Outer Heaven mission, that Metal Gear Solid 6 should just outright be a remake of the original Metal Gear. Honestly that's something that Konami could do even without Kojima; it wouldn't be the first time (non-canon NES port, anyone?) But of course, nostalgia couldn't measure up to Mass Effect 2, still an incredibly strong game and likely one that's only bolstered by the later entries in the series being disappointments. This was a 52-48 match pretty much the whole way through, which makes it especially ridiculous that it even came close to being on a "closest wire-to-wire matches" list. Maybe if I have some spare time I'll archive binge the poll updater and craft a wire-to-wire list that's based on percentage rather than raw totals; the lowered totals make the current lists drastically favor the most recent contests. Doesn't make the possibility of a new record any less exciting, though! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8028&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=114) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (2)Super Mario Odyssey 2020 _source: (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (2)Super Mario Odyssey 2020 (revid 88593)_ ## Results **Round Four** Wednesday, May 6, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 3 - **Match \#:** 115 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, May 06, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 51.70% 38 for - 17 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 40.52% - **User Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 5122 Super Mario Odyssey - 3944 - **Anonymous Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 4799 Super Mario Odyssey - 3980 RSFF is an incredibly rare thing in these contests, but we have seen it happen before. There may be other examples, but these are the two that jump out. I am thoroughly convinced Smash Ultimate RSFFd Mario here, because you can't convince me that Mario wasn't more impressive than Smash in all three rounds leading up to this match. Tekken 7 being stronger than Mortal Kombat 11 is just goofy. Link Between Worlds being held under 40% is impressive, but Devil May Cry 5 being held under 30% is better. We all saw the same thing and agreed. Yet come match time, Smash not only wins but wins *easily*. Something isn't right here chief, and it wouldn't be the first time something "off" happened with Mario when put up against Nintendo in a match. I wish I had a better reason than RSFF for this match, but it's the best explanation I got. Look at every other big match this contest where one game clearly looked stronger going in. Dark Souls \> Last of Us. Witcher 3 \> Skyrim. Xenoblade \> Fire Emblem. Even Skyrim \> Pokemon. I could go on. In all of those matches, that game that looked better going in won the match. The one exception was.... this match. Right here. Something screwey happened, and I feel like RSFF is the best explanation given how the rest of the contest lined up. Nothing else makes much sense. I know it's hard to believe, but the idea of Smash actually being the stronger one all along is even *more* hard to believe. "With the disclaimer that I'm a pretty big skeptic of RSFF in general: I don't think that's what happened here. To me, it's far more likely that Smash is indeed stronger — after all, it was the favourite going into the contest for good reason — and what we saw is simply that there are more people who vote against Smash than Mario when both face weak competition. Smash faces some anti-votes both from people who hate its fanbase (which you're more than aware of) and from fighting game fans who dislike that Smash takes attention from what they see as more pure examples of the genre. Meanwhile, nobody hates Mario Odyssey, not even people like me who consider it one of the weaker games in the series. Combine this with the format forcing everyone to vote and I suspect the effect is significant, enough to obscure the truth." -NeoElfboy ## Ctes's Analysis This was perhaps the most hyped match of the ones that were in the second chance part. Before the contest began, almost everyone picked Super Smash Bros. Ultimate because Smash has been bigger than Mario on every single Nintendo console since the Nintendo 64. The original Super Smash Bros was a good idea not yet truly experienced with, while Super Mario 64 is one of biggest games of all time and by far the strongest 3D Mario. On the Camecube, Melee easily beats Sunshine, the latter being a disappointment to many. On the Wii, the controversial Brawl easily beats Galaxy, and the fourth game is easily better than both 3D Land and 3D World as they never even appeared in a contest. Ultimate is the best selling Smash game, so the Nintendo hierarchy should do its work. Super Mario Odyssey had a few supporters before the contest, but no one really listened until Odyssey looked better than Ultimate every single round leading up to this match. Tekken 7 and Mortal Kombat 11 are similar enough except Mortal Kombat has always been the bigger deal of the two franchises here. Ultimate couldn’t SFF A Link Between Worlds and strugged with Marvel’s Spider-Man while Odyssey killed Devil May Cry 5 and Shovel Knight. Suddenly it was time to listen to the Odyssey supporters. A lot of people picked Super Mario Odyssey in their second chance brackets, because it didn’t look impossible at all. A lot of arguments in favor of Super Mario Odyssey were actually cases against Ultimate. Brawl is perhaps the most hyped game of all time and would have won the first game of the decade if not for some late round backlash. Since then, the games have been iterative. They add more things but doesn’t get a lot better. Ultimate has polls where it’s voted the best Smash game, but when the series is as iterative as it is, maybe it wouldn’t matter much. In 2015, Smash 4 was thought of threatening FFVII because it’s historically big and added Cloud, Ryu, Mega Man and Bayonetta amongst others, but it didn’t get close at all. It was being said that people buy Smash games because of the spectacle and the celebration of tons of various franchises rather than the gameplay. Sakurai himself have said that Ultimate is not simply a fighting game, but a celebration of gaming. When Ultimate came out the “Everyone is here!” was a huge selling point. Snake and Cloud returned contrary to what everyone believed, and every single other character returned to the field with them. Obvious new additions such as Isabella and Inkling came along with big fan demands such as Ridley and King K. Rool and third-party characters continued to come with Castlevania, Persona 5, Dragon Quest, Fata Fury and even Banjo & Kazooie now being in. There are great new single player modes, but that doesn’t seem to be the main draw any longer. Smash is a multiplayer game at heart, and we’re no longer a site that plays multiplayer with our friends, partly because we’re older. We’ve seen various multiplayer games declining in strength. People argued Smash was less and less about gameplay and more relevant because of how endearing a franchise it is and all the cool videos they make, which makes it universally loved but also means it wont complete with the top like it did a decade ago. Finally, there are its poll results, not just in this contest, people liked to point at the match against God of War for the title of Game of the Decade 2018. Ultimate looked vulnerable in those and there is only so good it could get without also boosting God of War up a lot, which judging by the contest so far didn’t seem right. The poll in talk happened right after Ultimate released and the hype was still crazy: That was a lot of cases against Ultimate, but it still got to this point with ease. Let’s go over why Odyssey was thought to make the difference. It has polls that back it up as the strongest 3D since Super Mario 64. Unlike Smash, Mario is not an iterative franchise, so it mattered here. The Galaxies are loved but they have the Wii to drag them down while Odyssey on a console that everyone loves right now. Galaxy 2 looking so good until now just meant Odyssey should be even better. Odyssey was a huge deal and it’s exactly what we love on this site. It was very hyped and lived up to every last bit of it. It helped get Nintendo in a positive light again that it hasn’t been for 20 years. Super Mario Odyssey has no Game of the Year polls to back it up, but that hardly mattered when it shared its only one with Breath of the Wild. Ocarina of Time killed Super Mario 64 in 2004, but then the latter came back in 2009 and beat Chrono Trigger when it shared the poll with Yoshi’s Island. Those parallels were drawn. BotW/Odyssey/Ultimate felt like a modern day OoT/Mario 64/Melee. When Zelda and Mario are at their best they will beat even the best Smash game. Brawl could defeat the Mario and Zelda games of that generation (and it did!), but it would have never challenged peak Zelda and Mario. Odyssey felt like peak Mario again. Nintendo aced their first party titles in the latter half of the decade. The hierarchy has shown itself ridiculous in the past, but lots of people all contest were expressing that they didn’t think Odyssey would beat Ultimate but that they wish it would. Well, if enough people think so, it might just do that. A final point in Odyssey’s favor people brought up was not as big but still worth mentioning. In 2015, Melee rallied past GameFAQs biggest darlings Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VII. We’ve seen Draven and Undertale getting punished when returning to the field again. Most of the site aren’t loud about it, but still votes against them on principle. Now, Ultimate is not Melee, but perhaps this could transfer to Smash in general and could explain why Smash couldn’t reach the poll highs that Odyssey could. If Ultimate began rallies too, there would definitely be a lot of people counter-rallying Odyssey against it. That’s a load of evidence in Odyssey’s favor, but Ultimate was still the favorite. Let’s first go through a few things that didn’t end up being relevant. The first one is bracket votes. Ultimate absolutely had those and it could make a difference worth a few percentage points, although the second chance brackets might lessen those because Odyssey was slightly more popular then and most people knew they weren’t going to win the ordinary bracket challenge. Secondly, despite what I said before, if Ultimate actually went ahead and rallied in a close match, most people did know it would hard to anything against. The Smash community is if anything else very active and very online. They may like to swear off aspects of their game a lot because a great part of the fanbase is straight up awful, but seeing them bail their game out of stuff like this was within imagination and that’d be terribly hard to counter. People sided mostly with Ultimate because it felt right. The hierarchy is so well established, and we saw as late as the latest Character Battle how much Smash matters in our contests. Ultimate isn’t mentioned in a lot of Game of the Decade discussions. The game took a good formula and improved it. It celebrated a bunch of franchises while it revolutionized none. It’s why it wasn’t destroying stuff on the levels of the other top games of the bracket. It doesn’t have the same respect votes that Odyssey among other titles gathered from the forced voting and the title. It’s just really lied in general. I’m not doubting that Ultimate beats God of War by more if the poll wasn’t called Game of the Year. I’m not doubting Ultimate looks better in a contest not titled Game of the Decade and all its opponents honestly has at least as much claim to such a title as Ultimate. It’s not the most influencing game ever, it’s just really well liked. Most people expected the match to be over right away. Whichever game prevailed it likely would struggle because of the SFF involved in the fight. True enough, the match was over it mere seconds. Ultimate was ahead from the start and while it was slow to get going only a single update in the match gave real hope to Odyssey fans. That was the update after the freeze. Odyssey cut the lead from 64 to 44 and when you expect Ultimate to the bracket votes, that could mean things, but it didn’t. Ultimate went up to 103 the next update and by the end of the hour it was already above 400 votes. All that hype about Odyssey was for nothing, it lost as easily as we thought before the contest began. The hierarchy was obviously a thing, but people tend to forget why that hierarchy existed in the first place. People really do love Smash Bros. Perhaps we’re not as vocal about it as we used to be, but Smash would not be able to continue to get us hyped everyone single game if we weren’t all going to play it. They get us hyped because we loved it. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a rare exception in the final part of the contest to a trend. Breath of the Wild, The Witcher 3, Dark Souls, Skyrim, Mass Effect 2 and so on. They’re all here not only because they’re good but also because they’re praised for all they’ve done for the gaming industry. That clearly made some of them more dominant than they would have been otherwise. Ultimate does not get the same boost, but it’s still one of our favorite games of the decade. People never explain how they think it deserves it, but I saw Ultimate on the top of a lot of people’s favorite lists during the contest. It’s a game that’s here because it’s our favorite, not necessarily because it’s the best and that distinction is important. It’s so much more than a multiplayer game to its fans. I want to make it clear that I believe Ultimate deserves to be here as much as any other game. It doesn’t matter that it didn’t improve too much on the formula, the formula is nearly perfect and it’s a fantastic game. When that is said, Super Mario Odyssey got screwed so severely by bracket placement. I’ve complained slightly about this before, but this is the time to do it right. Mario had a fantastic decade. Super Mario Odyssey deserved to get further that this and Super Mario Galaxy 2 deserved to get further that it did. I realize that people are accusing us of always having Nintendo vs. Nintendo finals (or Square, but they were out of the question this decade), but this was just ridiculous. Mario has been fed to Link many times and it’s always lame. Last contest Mario and Samus were actually put opposite of Link and they didn’t get to him. Sure, Zelda was part of the reason, but in the end it was Cloud. Ultimate and Odyssey would have exactly on interesting match this contest, this one, and you could argue they had none. The winner here would lose to Zelda. Both games could have had very interesting bracket paths, but they were instead just here to take each other out instead. I wouldn’t be surprised if Odyssey would have been \#1 seed, but that they were set up to not have too many Nintendo first party games in the top 8. Not saying it necessarily happened, just that it wouldn’t surprise me. Nintendo were screwed so much by this bracket because apparently delivering top class games for many years deserves punishment. Even if you grow tired of seeing something like Super Mario RPG reach the top 4, could we not punish the Nintendo game that is actually universally praised, loved by everyone and generally regarded as an all time great? Odyssey doing good wouldn’t be a typical GameFAQs kind of deal. It would certainly not have beat The Witcher 3. It might beat the other division winners in the lower half, but we wont know. It’s as ridiculous as giving us Melee vs. Brawl in the top 16 last contest. Even if we did end up getting a Nintendo vs. Nintendo finals. So what? We’d have a more interesting path there if we didn’t have them run into each other, and let’s be real, the finals were perhaps as uninteresting as it has ever been regardless. Mario had both his games in the top 8 of the x-stats this contest, yet they made top 16 and top 32. What a waste. But let us give our respects to our favorite mustached plumper, because Mario is currently about as good as it has ever been, and such consistently of dominating a genre during the lifetime of an industry is about as impressive as it gets. ## Safer777's Analysis Now this match was debatable and I am not sure why. Sure the Hierarchy or something. BUT here is the thing. EVERYONE likes Smash because it has something for everyone. The game is way too good. In fact even me which I never play 1st party Nintendo games(except Pokeymanz)want this game to win the whole thing. Yeah because man it really has everything for everyone! You are bound to have favorite characters there, no matter what. So even the Crew was split with Smash the slight favorite. But everyone knew that it would be a close match and it was a close one, but not as close as we expected. So why it won with an okay win then? Because as I said Smash Ultimate is way too good and even Odyssey is really good too, pretty sure for a Nintendo fan and for most fans in general if they had to play only 1 game most would pick Smash. This is what I believe at least. Or RSFF! So for the match. Okay Smash won and had no problems at all the whole match. The prediction percentage was okay for a division final too. Over 40 for this far is good actually and for a debatable match, at least pre contest debatable match. Still nice match. Hierarcy seems to not work against Smash! Unless it is a Zelda/Mario game from the 90's of course. ## Tsunami's Analysis This was a very hyped match, and it only grew in hype when Odyssey outperformed Ultimate just about every step of the way leading up to the match. The common belief, however, was that the Nintendo hierarchy would assert itself when it mattered, and that's exactly what happened. Back in 2009, Brawl \> Galaxy was considered an upset. We're smarter than that now. This was just a nice cozy 56-44 win that we could all put aside while we watched the fireworks going on in Division 4 at the same time. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8029&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=115) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (5)Persona 4 Golden vs (3)Xenoblade Chronicles 2020 _source: (5)Persona 4 Golden vs (3)Xenoblade Chronicles 2020 (revid 88591)_ ## Results **Round Four** Wednesday, May 6, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 4 - **Match \#:** 116 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, May 06, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 54.86% 52 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Xenoblade Chronicles - 6.29% - **User Votes:** Persona 4 Golden - 4484 Xenoblade Chronicles - 4585 - **Anonymous Votes:** Persona 4 Golden - 4445 Xenoblade Chronicles - 4336 This was it, boys. The hardest match of the entire contest to predict pre-contest, and our contest's last truly great match. Both came in on incredible runs, both had a ton of momentum behind them that even a contest intermission couldn't squelch, and both of them had perfectly even cases to be made for winning this thing. Before getting to the match, I'd like to discuss what is now commonly known as "The Yoblazer Test". He probably shouldn't have spilled the beans on this, truth be told. Because I hate myself, I started rewatching Game of Thrones. Early in season one, Jamie Lannister is talking some trash to Ned Stark about fighting and tournaments and such, and makes fun of Ned for not fighting in them. "I don't fight in tournaments, because when I fight a man for real, I don't want him to know what I can do." I doubt Yoblazer ever gets season one'd, but he went and fought in a tournament -- that is, told everyone on The Show -- what The Yoblazer Test is. Every contest, there is one, maybe two things capable of going on an incremental lucky bandwagon run from out of nowhere and going maybe one round farther than it probably should. The way to do this is to see if something can win a round or two easily, then win against things of similar strength through luck and the bandwagon effect. His best call ever was Super Mario RPG in 2015. Let's have a look and see how many gurus picked it to make the semifinals: (By the way am I blind or just dumb? Did yoblazer not enter the guru that year?) It's an insane call at first glance, but if you use The Yoblazer Test it makes perfect sense. If you had Mario RPG beating Oblivion, well why not take it to beat GTA5? If that win happens, well at that point you already know the game is stronger than Chrono Cross or World of Warcraft, and from there that thing was off to the races. How could Resident Evil 4 beat a bandwagoned Mario RPG late in a contest? And if you have it getting that far, why *couldn't* it turn around and beat Metal Gear Solid 3? It's beautiful logic, and I half hope he never shared it. There's a difference between thinking upsets could happen and knowing which one or two bandwagons are most likely, and that's why Yoblazer is the best to ever do it. Frankly his legacy top 50 finishes should be added to his guru score. No offense to Swirl or anything, but no one is better than Yo at this. There's a reason for that. To the point. Xenoblade Chronicles was the perfect Yoblazer Test candidate this contest, and you could possibly give that title to Witcher 3 depending on whether you thought its run would be a bandwagon or a boost. Had Persona 4 Golden and Xenoblade faced off in rounds one or two, Persona 4 Golden probably easily wins. But because it happened in the divisional finals, after Xenoblade built up momentum against Splatoon 2, Overwatch, and Three Houses, and after Xenoblade Remastered hype was in full swing, it was the right choice if you had it getting this far. What was going to beat a Xenoblade backed by bandwagon love, Nintendo, and remaster hype? Grand Theft Auto 5? Persona 4 Golden has a rabid fanbase and all, but that's a lot of things to ask of it. When this match started, the bandwagon effect was on. The match was close, but Xenoblade was just better. It jumped out to a 50 vote lead early, and then used the rest of the evening to build up a lead of 200. This is when the Persona fandom's rallies started popping up all over Reddit and getting their own momentum going, and that 230 vote lead got knocked down to 150 fairly quickly. But here the thing with bandwagons. They are very, very hard to beat unless you are considerably stronger than they are. Persona 4 Golden was just too similar in strength here. Xenoblade was able to smack away the multi-layered rally attempt, and back up it went as we got close to midnight. Try as Persona 4 may to come back in this match, Xenoblade just wasn't having it. When the overnight vote came and Europe started waking up, Xenoblade ever so slightly increased its lead all the way up to 350. This felt like enough given the match was a rock fight, but then the morning came and Persona 4 had one last big push left. For the final 12 hours of this match, Xenoblade had to hold on for dear life. It wasn't getting a ton of rallies all over a bunch of subreddits. It didn't have the full Board 8 love behind it. It wasn't being boosted by hentai. This was all bandwagon effect and remake hype. Even the usual Nintendo ability to win the morning and day vote wasn't coming through this time around. As this match kept inching along, Persona kept shaving and rallying, shaving and rallying. For most of the past 12 hours, if Persona could just get one push going it probably could have come back, but Xenoblade just kept fighting it all off, like Deadpool blocking bullets with swords and such. As Persona kept pushing, Xenoblade would come up with these random updates of +10, +30, +25 out of nowhere to keep itself alive. *Finally*, with two hours to go, the rallying efforts for Persona reached a fever pitch. With two hours left, the lead was at 230. Then Persona started pulling off these crazy updates with Xenoblade stalls mixed in. 10 votes gone. 20 votes gone. 25 votes gone. With an hour to go, the lead was down to 100 and it looked like Persona was going to clutch its ass off after all. Persona got the lead down to 80 pretty quickly, and then.... Xenoblade was pushed once too many times and said enough of this shit. It kicked Persona 4 into the pit of death, held serve at 80, and ultimately won this poll by 111. This doesn't sound like much, but think of the craziness of everything it had to fend off. Board 8 likes Persona games a *lot* more than Xenoblade. All of the rallies were in Persona's favor. Persona even had some bandwagon magic of its own. But in the end, Xenoblade had just a little bit more. I don't usually bring up the double vote user bonus, as I think it's incredibly stupid to give such a dumb gimmick any legitimacy, but there were two matches in this contest where the double bonus actually reversed a match result and nullified the effects of a rally. One was Resident Evil 2 \> Bloodborne, and you guys can debate the legitimacy of that shitshow to your heart's content. Personally, I think the two hour delay not extending to 24 was bull. The other was this match. Xenoblade \> Persona 4. Did you guys know Persona 4 wins by 8 votes without gimmicks? This lends a lot of credence to my Yoblazer Test theory. If this was a round one match, Persona 4 easily wins. But it was a divisional final and the site was bandwagoning Xenoblade enough for it to win. It was an incredible match, a joy to watch, and the last truly great match of this contest. Much like Resident Evil 2 vs Bloodborne, it sucked someone had to lose. It really did. Persona will be back and busting brackets next games contest though I'm sure, because these fans are cockroaches and I mean that as a compliment. They cannot be killed, they can live entirely off of postapocalyptic Twinkies, it takes divine intervention to beat them in a close match, and it took *all this* for Xenoblade to hold it off. Hell even had this match happened in round *three*, Persona likely wins. But it happened when it happened and the result was what it was. Xenoblade didn't win this match so much as survive it, but a win is a win is a win. Scoreboard. Go look at it. Xenoblade's run was clearly coming to an end in the next round, but that's okay. This thing went from losing in round one to winning a division, and with remaster + sequel hype who knows where it goes from here? Last point before I move on. Only two gurus correctly called Xenoblade's path on top of getting all three matches in the Shovel Knight fourpack right. One was Ngamer64. The other was... Me! I would have finished something like top 10 had I stuck with my gut and picked Witcher 3 to make the final, but I am in no way salty about how I did. When you're on a list with Ngamer and no one else, it's something to be proud of. I'm super happy for him, too. He killed it this year. Ngamer gets the deeper audio version because he is **MANLIER** than Ulti is. Moving on. ## Ctes's Analysis Not many of us expected this match to deliver as much as it did. Most of us took Xenoblade without thinking twice today. The logic most gurus used before the contest was that the winner of Xenoblade vs. Three Houses would win the division. Three Houses had some previous polls making it look like it should be the clear favorite to get here, as Xenoblade and Awakening shared an opponent in 2015, but most Three Houses supporters had acknowledged from the start that Xenoblade might as well do it instead. As soon as we saw the games in the field, it became clear Xenoblade would be the game to reach this point instead. The prediction percentage is the lowest of the contest. Casuals had GTAV, RDR or maybe even Overwatch winning this one. Mostly the former two, they were close enough for a bunch of experts to pick them as well with good reasons. Most experts knew the Nintendo games would have a real chance of winning the division. We remember things like San Andreas losing to Golden Sun and GTAV losing to Super Mario RPG. Picking the winner of the Nintendo showdown today was the expert move, but we sided with the wrong one because we trusted previous stats too much. As such, only a very few actually had Xenoblade going out of this one. Then there’s Persona 4 Golden. As much as we thought we would see another edition of GameFAQs Nintendo RPG darling beat a Rockstar game, another RPG stole that show and beat them both instead. People expected P4G to be a proxy of Persona 4 with some level of quality but not many expected that it would basically be a perfect proxy. It’s a Vita game, and there is no way it would have been here if it hadn’t also been a beloved Playstation 2 game. Yet here it was and so the division came down to two niche RPG series that are becoming mainstream in recent years. For as much as we believe this bracket is the most mainstream we’ve been in a long time, this division final was about as stereotypical GameFAQs as it gets. Xenoblade might have been on some hype train at this point. Some loud board 8’ers loved the game looking so good as it did while getting this far, but make no mistake, those were the people that always voted for it to begin with mostly. Whatever boost it had this contest, it had it from the start. There’s only so much you can bandwagon from beating Three Houses, especially when everyone was just trashing Fire Emblem and giving that much of the reason. No one was trashing Metal Gear Solid when Shadow of the Colossus was on a bandwagon, no one was trashing Kingdom Hearts or Wind Waker when Starcraft was on a bandwagon (at least not rightfully based on their performances). Those things happened because the games got further than most people believed they would, Xenoblade doesn’t have the same thing going for it because after round 1, literally all of us would have picked it to reach the division finals and probably win it too. Beating Overwatch might have given it a little bit, casuals were more likely to pick that, but Overwatch isn’t as big as any of the two Rockstar games P4G beat to get here. Persona 4 Golden is the game that was riding the bigger bandwagon to get there. Beating Rockstar games grants you that, in particular when even most experts had you losing before this point. Xenoblade “upsetting” Three Houses is a case where you think “oh, I guess I had the wrong Nintendo game winning that”, Persona 4 Golden getting here is a case where you think “s\*\*\* this Vita remaster is beating up some of the most critically acclaimed games of the decade, it’s hilarious”. If you don’t believe me try looking at the x-stats. You should take those with a grain of salt of course, but things look off if you believe Xenoblade is the game on a bandwagon here. In particular, the first Red Dead Remption being that high looks off. Make no mistake, Persona 4 was already on a bandwagon last match because “It beat a Rockstar game! Wouldn’t it be funny if it beat another?” and that absolutely fueled things to make it even stronger now. I’m not doubting for a second after seeing how good Xenoblade looked from the beginning that it wins this match easier if nothing had caught a bandwagon. It’s just legit now. It had gotten tons of exposure and trailers for its upcoming definitive edition on the definitive Nintendo console was releasing right around this contest. You can argue that it SFF’d Splatoon 2, but it certainly gained no momentum from winning that match and it slaughtered Overwatch way beyond our expectations too. Xenoblade 2 looks really good at this point despite not getting out of round 1. It all adds up, Xenoblade is just legit now. Xenoblade had to fight for its life today in what would be the last truly exciting match of the contest. Xenoblade struggled in the opening minutes, but eventually slowly got rolling, but Persona fans were not going to give it an easy time at all. That fanbase proved this match that it’s perfectly capable of rallying. Xenoblade was just never allowed to close the match. The first time it tried reaching for a 200-vote lead, it almost dropped to 100 instead. Then it got above 200 it was dropped down to mid-100s instead. Repeat that for a few times before Xenoblade went over 300. The match looked close, but it also looked like Persona 4 Golden could never really make a run for it. Xenoblade looked safe because natural votes were in its favor. That was all until P4G made its biggest rally attempt of the match near the end. It stalled when it was just above 300 votes away for a good bit, then cut down to below 300 votes for a long time as Xenoblade was holding on for its dear life. When it got close to 200 very suddenly, it looked like it just might pull if off but these surges of votes from rallies never last that long so Xenoblade held on once more. The biggest scare came in the end. With two hours to go Xenoblade was ahead by 232 votes, but with an hour to go it was only 99 votes ahead. Persona fans were really passionate and tried really hard and it came as close to paying off as you could hope for. At this point it looked like they might just pull it off, but Xenoblade managed to hold on in that last hour eventually winning the match by roughly that amount. If you want to know how successful Persona 4 rallies were today, it actually wins the match without the registered user bonus. It would then win by 8 votes. The only other time this contest where that happened was with Resident Evil 2 vs. Bloodborne where the latter with its rallies also would have won without the bonus. It would certainly have been on a monstrous bandwagon if it got out here, bigger than Xenoblade would be for having its name in the top 8, that’s for sure. Persona 4 came just short today, but man what a contest run it had. Its run is easily one of the most entertaining parts of the contest, I have to give it that. When that is said, I’m glad Xenoblade won today, I think it deserves to be that one odd one out in the late rounds the most. Board 8 has both joked and been serious about it being Game of the Year in five different years this past decade. The Persona franchise deserves a lot of praise and we’ll get there, I promise, but I’m happy the Vita port and proxy would not be that odd one out-game, however good it might be. We can eagerly await to see what Persona 4 is capable of next contest, but while Golden gave us a more exciting contest, it probably shouldn’t have been here to begin with. Persona already had top 8 representation in a game that actually deserved it. It just feels nicer having Xenoblade get there too. ## Safer777's Analysis Man this match. So okay. Since P4G BARELY won against RDR(seriously 50.8)and against GTA 5(seriously 51) and XC won easily against all its opponents we all picked XC to win here since well we knew that RDR and GTA 5 aren't that strong here on Gamefaqs. Plus both these games are JPRG's and even though the Persona name is more recognizable from what I have heard the XC franchise is doing damn well, it is getting more popular, a new remake will come soon and the fans petitioned for something to come out and it did I believe. Yeah XC seems to get more and more popular. The whole crew picked XC too. So for the match. This match at the 5 minute mark was at 45-55 which is what we expected. But as the match kept going on, the percentage started to change. After 2 hours it was 48-52 and after 4 hours it was 49-51. So yeah we had a match. After about 19 hours the percentage was 49.5-50.5. So yeah P4G kept gaining but extremely slow. But then the rally that was posted for P4G seemed to gained traction. So P4G started cutting like crazy and after a while if the trends continuing that it seems that it would win with like 20 votes. Seriously nobody was sure what it would happen! Damn! But somehow XC managed to hold on and never fell above 80 votes in lead. So the highest lead was 342 and the smallest was 80 and eventually XC won with 111. Also once again the User double bonus was in effect. Why we still have this I am not sure. BUT if we remove it P4G wins with like 10 votes which would be the ultimate close match! But why XC hold on I am not sure. Maybe people really like this game right? And the bandwagon effect too! It had no rallies either and we like Persona series more too! This mach was one of the closest wire to wire matches where the loser never lead either. If P4G had won it would have break so many records. Only a few more rallied votes and it would have done it. Still in 3 out of 4 matches, P4G won 2 of them with like 2% difference and the one it lost it lost with like 0,5% difference! Can you say clutch? I bet you can! If it had won it would have reached the final 8 and it would be the first time ever than a Vita game did so well. In fact I believe it is the first time ever than a Vita game does so good too! Damn! So yeah XC just refused to lose it seems no matter what. Also check the prediction percentage for XC. Like 6! One of the lowest ever for a divsion winner that is non rallied too! I think it has to be in Top 5, maybe even Top 3 for sure. I mean even Alucard back in 2018 which nobody expected to win the division had 8.7%. IF P4G won here though it would have the lowest prediction for a Division winner ever though since in the previous round it had 14, while XC had 16.7. So yeah. Oh and in case you wonder most of us had FE3H winning the division. Yeah we make huge mistakes too. Still these kind of matches are always nice to see and both games did really well. ## Tsunami's Analysis So where do we start? In Round 2, Persona 4 Golden led Red Dead Redemption from wire to wire, but never managed to establish a terribly large lead; at 458, it was a new record for smallest max lead by a wire-to-wire winner, breaking the record set by Ike \> Proto Man in 2013--which, it should be noted, was a *12*-hour match. It then followed that up by taking a second space in that category's top 10 with a wire-to-wire win over GTA V with a maximum lead of 616. But Xenoblade's no stranger to wire-to-wire dogfights, either. While it was broken three times during the Legends'/Losers' Bracket segment of the 2018 contest, Xenoblade's loss to DKC2 in 2015 was at one point the record holder for closest wire-to-wire 24 hour match, with the largest lead being 290 votes by *Xenoblade*. So there was definitely a good chance that we'd see something exciting, especially since there wouldn't be much bracket voting to get in the way; P4G's R3 prediction percentage was 14.01% and XBC's was 16.7%. Xenoblade jumped out to the quick lead, going up by 100 in just half an hour and requiring less than two hours to push it above 200, but it took a while for it to increase much beyond that, falling into a pattern of ebbs and flows. By early morning, it had gotten into the mid 300s...er, the low-to-mid-300s...well, anyway, at the halfway point of the match, the lead was at 342, which would turn out to be its peak. That right there was good for a tie for \#10 on the closest wire-to-wire matches list (1v1s only). And it looked like it was probably going to get that record for a wire-to-wire winner without any trouble, because P4G wasn't really doing much more than stalling things out; XBC's lead crested above 300 for an update at 10 minutes past noon, and it was 274 at 3 PM, five hours from the end of the match. 25 minutes later, it was down to 222, and it kept dropping. Xenoblade recovered somewhat, and had the lead at 232 with two hours to go...but one hour later, it was down to 99. The comeback was real; there was a pinned rally topic, and P4G was going to pull off another ridiculous win. Except...it didn't happen that way. XBC won the next update, then lost a couple, then won three in a row. The last hour was just a giant stall, and it was Xenoblade with the big final update to push its lead back up over 100. The record was secure. But I can't help thinking that there was another record this match should've been chasing instead... P4G 4484 **4445 8929 **13334 **XBC 4585 **4336 8921 **13445** *Are you kidding me?!* Yeah, this match was fun and all, we were expecting a lit final hour based on the penultimate-hour comeback...but without the registered user bonus, this becomes a legitimate final-update F5-er. 8 votes. 8 measly votes, which would've been just one away from the 1v1 record. Even with the registered voter bonus (which flipped the match, mind you), it still squeaked into the *overall* top 25 with its final margin of 111, comfortably landing in the 1v1 Top 25 at \#13. And that wasn't the only list where this match was \#13 among 1v1s and \#25 among all matches. Xenoblade' prediction percentage of 6.29% landed it at those exact same spots on the list of biggest surprises of all time. Normally this would be the point where I'd say "6.29% is less than half of 16.7%, so this was an upset", but I don't think it's necessarily applicable here. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to find out that P4G's prediction percentage was below 5.27%, which would be the equivalent percentage of 14.01%. These games were both considered underdogs all the way back in Round 2, though XBC's prediction percentage was at least *close* to half of its R1 prediction percentage, and they were both considered underdogs again in Round 3. So, yeah, of course most people who picked Xenoblade to reach this match thought it would lose; most of them likely had it facing GTAV or RDR. I mean, I *do* expect that "top half winner" was a favorite over "bottom half winner" to take Division 4. Just looking at those prediction percentages, it wouldn't surprise me to think that Red Dead Redemption had the second-highest prediction percentage to win this match in spite of the game it's trailing being its would-be R3 opponent. It's just a shame that this would likely be the only entry on the "most surprising results" list for the entire contest. XBC itself was done for next round, of course, leaving only the second semifinal as a match that would likely have that much debate--and even then, the fact that the apparent favorite to win it isn't the one that's going to get its prediction percentage depressed by a debatable quarterfinal match, even that should be able to get the requisite 10% prediction percentage to avoid the lists. Oh, yeah, I guess that's a thing to note. With this match, the cutoff to make the 1v1-only list fell below 10%, with Auron's division title from 2018 (9.97% prediction percentage) falling to \#25. Can't lol at the casuals on this one, though; only 9.86% of Gurus got this right. That percentage would've been even lower if P4G had won (which was my selection, for the record), though even if the Guru favorite had won, it'd only be 44.37%. And that favorite was...Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Which I guess is still a possibility for who the casuals' favorite was, but I'd still bet theirs was GTAV. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8030&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=116) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (2)God of War 2020 _source: (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (2)God of War 2020 (revid 88589)_ ## Results **Round Four** Thursday, May 7, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 5 - **Match \#:** 117 - **Match Date:** Thursday, May 07, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Witcher 3 - 58.18% 53 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Witcher 3 - 51.77% - **User Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 5956 God of War - 3194 - **Anonymous Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 5256 God of War - 3075 After a small blip for one update against Super Mario Galaxy 2, Witcher 3 went back to its roots in this contest, namely beating up Western games so badly that people were calling for SFF as the reason for all these beatings. God of War's job was just making it up to this match; our boy Kratos was never going to win it, and that's okay. He finally made it into the fourth round. It's hard to argue against SFF as the reason Witcher 3 kept going berserk against other Western games, but the concept of "Western SFF" is pretty much brand new as of this contest so it's hard for a lot of people to believe. I get not buying it, but by this point of the contest people had seen Witcher 3 in action thrice and it was *still* overshooting its oracle consensus. This time, it was a 6% overshot. In round one it was an 8% overshot, in round two it was 9%, and here it was 6%. The only round where it didn't *wildly* (ha) overperform was against a big name Nintendo game. If that isn't proof that Witcher 3 is a Clint Eastwood esque king of the west, I don't know what is. Oh and spoilers, this would make four times in a row Witcher 3 was better-looking than Skyrim. How does that one saying go after three, anyway? One's an accident, two is a problem, three is a trend, four is.... what? Has that saying ever even gotten to four? ## Ctes's Analysis We didn’t really need any more evidence at this point that The Witcher 3 was going to reach the finals without breaking a sweat, but here we are. Witcher 3 made a complete joke of God of War today, it looked like it didn’t belong here at all. Picking God of War in this match looked like a somewhat reasonable upset before the contest if you used previous polls a bit much, but Witcher 3 did its best to make you looks ridiculously stupid for picking that. God of War looks too bad today though. Unless you were ready to accept the upper half of the division being ridiculously good or the lower half being ridiculously bad, something was off today. I was among the first to believe some kind of SFF here, similar to what happened to Mass Effect 3 and maybe even Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. God of War is a Playstation 4 exclusive, that is the console Witcher 3 is biggest on. Maybe it’s bigger on PC now, but that shouldn’t matter on GameFAQs. They also have similar demographics. Then thrown against each other with “Game of the Decade” written above them and forced voting and Witcher 3 will overperform. It doesn’t have too be all that much to make everything seem a lot more reasonable. God of War looked pretty good so far. I tried to explain this several times in the stats topic, but what everyone got from it was “Western SFF”. Let’s be real, that’s not what was suggested, but that’s what caught on. I mean, I’m sure someone suggested it, but I was quoted saying the idea of Western SFF sounded stupid. Eventually this term caught on, it was short and sweet, but let’s just make it clear how misleading that is. I’m absolutely not saying Witcher 3 could SFF whatever games come outside of Japan and I’m not sure anyone initially was, but it was eventually spread that I’m sure we’ve made people believe that by now. It doesn’t even make much sense because Witcher 3 is from Poland, that is, closer to Japan that to California where Santa Monica is based. That’s the developers of God of War in case you don’t know. I get it’s a short a sweet term, but could we not name things misleading names just because of that. Regardless of that, SFF happened here, but people definitely overshot it. I think God of War was adjusted a bit too high in the x-stats. God of War has been overrated the whole contest because of that one poll against Super Smash Bros. Ultimate where it got more than 55%. People were ready to accept lots of weird things before not taking that poll at face value. Smash Bros isn’t trying to make new exciting formats, it’s trying to perfect what it is and show love and exposure to all kinds of things. It’s an easy game to overperform against in a poll that says “Game of the Year” or “Game of the Decade” for that matter. We’re far from the days where Smash Bros games are dominating such things. On top of that, do we ever learn not to take regular polls to face value? It’s like we only learned not to take 10-way regular polls at face value. Regular polls are a fine indicator of contest strength, but you should be ready to discard them as soon as a contest match points against it. Does anyone remember Final Fantasy VI vs. Final Fantasy VII? That match happened in a regular poll and in a contest match not too long from each other. Neither result was close, but the winner was different. Why was it that didn’t reach us to always take regular polls with a grain of salt? It’s a shame God of War had to go out in such a humiliating way, but something had to draw Witcher 3 here I suppose. God of War is totally worthy of a top 16 finish, however. It’s a fantastic game which did not only bring life back into the franchise of one of Sony’s biggest mascots but is also the best game in that franchise and I am so darn prepared for more if it comes. ## Safer777's Analysis So this match was strange. Obviously we all had Witcher 3 winning here. The Crew got around 57 on average too. And if you see, it reached almost 65. And no rally here. Damn! Nobody expected this high. So what exactly happened here? I will tell you. So for the match. The thing that MAYBE happened was SFF. Or Same Fanbase Factor as the old people like the regulars call it. What exactly is that? It is when games/characters from the same series or similar series fight each other. For example Mario and Link. They are both really strong. But when they face each other Link always trashes Mario badly. Why? Because if you like Nintendo you like both of these characters BUT you will like Link more so more chances to vote for him. Same with series. FF 7 and FF 6 are both realy good games and beloved. But when they face each other FF 7 always dominates. Why? Because if you like the FF series you will like FF 7 mostly above the rest so more chances to vote for it. Now you may say, but Safer W3 and GOW aren't the same series and don't have the same characters! True that. BUT they are similar in a sense that they are both western open world games with similar structure. So if you like western open world games you are likely to like W3 more, so more chances to vote for it. So that is what happened. I guess. Hey I am not saying that I know everything! Also amazing victory for W3 no matter the reason too. Still I am not sure. I mean everyone would pick GOW to beat SMG 2 for sure. So yeah MAYBE the reason is SFF. I know that I said in my previous analysis that I don't believe in it but now I am not so sure. Whatever the reason Witcher 3 won easily and is damn strong. Man this game. Play both of these games if you haven't! ## Tsunami's Analysis Well this was a fairly predictable blowout. Over 50% of all brackets had The Witcher 3 here, with Gurus in particular calling it at nearly an 80% clip and almost two thirds of the Gurus that missed it having instead picked The Witcher 3's opponent from the previous round. ...Correction. Predictable result, yes; predictable blowout, maybe not so much. There's no exact data on the Second Chance brackets, which were something vaguely resembling the Oracle except you could only pick whole percentages and there was no option to pick a winner with 50% (which meant that a truly perfect score was impossible because such a pick would've been required to get the maximum 50 points from Xenoblade-P4G), but looking at the Oracle...Witcher 3 was the unanimous choice to win, but 51 out of 53 Gurus went under on the percentage, 44 of them by at least 5% and all of them by enough that the two that went over had the top two predictions. I guess it just seemed obvious to me because I *was* the highest pick and thusly the second-place finisher in that match. All in all, the Oracle Consensus was 6.30% lower than Witcher 3's actual score. Wait, hold on... Match \#33 - The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt *vs* Assassin's Creed Odyssey Consensus: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 76.65% Result: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 84.07% Match \#81 - Mass Effect 3 *vs* The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Consensus: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 69.09% Result: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 78.40% Match \#105 - Super Mario Galaxy 2 *vs* The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Consensus: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 61.29% Result: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 60.60% ...Okay, so there was at least one match where Witcher 3 was fairly close to expectation, actually coming up a tad short. Ironically, it's the one where there were the most people picking it to lose outright. But that's still the third time in four rounds where The Witcher 3 vastly outperformed expectations. At this point, it was more or less taken for granted that the Guru Contest would be decided by Dark Souls vs. Skyrim; Witcher 3 making it to the finals and losing was more or less set in stone. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8031&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=117) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Persona 5 vs (3)Portal 2 2020 _source: (1)Persona 5 vs (3)Portal 2 2020 (revid 88587)_ ## Results **Round Four** Thursday, May 7, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 6 - **Match \#:** 118 - **Match Date:** Thursday, May 07, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Persona 5 - 57.28% 51 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Persona 5 - 29.22% - **User Votes:** Persona 5 - 5226 Portal 2 - 3924 - **Anonymous Votes:** Persona 5 - 4854 Portal 2 - 3478 I honestly thought Portal 2 might be able to make a match of this with all the momentum it had built up to this point, but Persona 5 was absolutely having none of that stuff. This match was reasonably close for one update, but after that first five minutes Persona 5 just beat Portal's ass all over the place for this entire match. No comebacks, no momentum, no mercy. Just a cold, hard, swift asswhipping as Persona 5 marched right to a division win. I know neither game in the Persona duo won this contest or anything, but for my money the Persona series and Witcher 3 are tied for Star of the Contest. With the Smash Bros series giving Persona newfound strength and respect, on top of that series growing more and more each year, it has nowhere to go but up. When and if we get Persona 6, it has a good chance to slide into whatever we want to call the tier right below Zelda's top games. Speaking of stars of the contest, this win set up a match between Witcher 3 and Persona 5. Few things in these contests are more fun than two white-hot entrants dueling, so we were all hoping the match would live up to the hype it was getting while this was all going on live. (Spoilers: lolno.) I don't want to leave this writeup without giving Portal 2 some love, purely because I love the game but also because getting this far in a contest should mean something. So without further delay... You won't find many villains more likeable than GLaDOS. ## Ctes's Analysis There was at no point of the contest any real doubt of what game would make it out this division. Sure, some gurus tried to get a hot upset here, but Persona 5 was a lock to get past this point from the start. The fifth main installment in the series would be what finally pushed the series to what you would call mainstream and a while after the releasing it would even have Smash representation on top of that. Probably helps that it was released as Persona 5 and not Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5 because that has always screamed “some cult Japanese thing” to casual owners of a Playstation, unfortunately. The main reason is of course just that it’s a really good game. The beginning of this match was very weird. Persona has consistently had great board votes. Portal usually has too, though against Kingdom Hearts III, it boosted after the board vote instead. Then this match begins right another match featuring a Persona game ends. That other match had the Persona game rallying quite heavily by the end of this match and I’m the general Persona subreddit stickied a rally thread and while later changing the title to show this match instead of the other one. Yet the first minutes were the worst for Persona 5 in the match. Well, the first minute was great, but Portal 2 looked like it was in this match all the way up until the freeze. It was actually ever so slightly closing the gap in the end. Then 10 minutes into the match, it was all over and Persona 5 never looked back. That seems weird. I mean, maybe board 8 just really loves Portal 2 as well or maybe some rally backfire happened, though that seems unlikely. What does seem likely is that the rally thread wasn’t affecting this match all too much early on, because it was somewhat out of fuel near the end of the Persona 4/Xenoblade match and it would be a bit before people on reddit noticed a title change. The votals at the freeze are slightly better than the other days, but they had been growing each day already so maybe that’s natural. Then I’m just left finding it weird that the hierarchy here is Kingdom Hearts III \> Portal 2 \> Persona 5, I would’ve guessed it the other way around, but alright, it’s not too important. Persona 5 likely does slightly worse without the rally thread but it’s nothing noticeably. I’m glad Portal 2 managed to get here despite the off chance it would have declining further throughout the decade as it hasn’t been relevant for a while and the memes are far beyond existing at this point. It’s nice the contest title is taken seriously. It’s probably the final time we’ll see one of the Portal games doing so well, so let’s enjoy that for a while. ## Safer777's Analysis So this match. Not only we all knew that Persona 5 would win but it would win with around 57 according to average predictions. And guess with how much it won! So yeah. So for the match. Everything as expected. Still strange to see Portal 2 reaching the Division Finals. Still the game is beloved even though the series has been abandoned by the creators. Eh. Persona series has become a beast in the last 2 years since the previous contest. Don't know why but man even P4G lost the match by like 110 votes. So yeah. I know we like JRPG's here but damn! Still nice to see another JRPG series doing really good. Imagine if P4G had won the division too! Persona series would be the most dominant in this contest! Only 110 votes and we would see that! ## Tsunami's Analysis This, on the other hand, was predictable no matter how you sliced it. Almost as well predicted by Gurus as the previous match, with Oracle percentages bunched up right around the actual outcome (50 out of 53 Gurus were within 5%, most of them dramatically so), casual prediction percentage...29.22%? Ah, well, it's a Round 4 match, so a high prediction percentage would be odd. Even Skyrim and Witcher 3 barely cracked 50%...Huh. Nope, P5's prediction percentage last round was 63.69%, so this constitutes an upset for the casuals. See, I knew they'd screw this one up! And Portal 2's prediction percentage last round was 23.57%, coming off a 50.55% prediction percentage the round before, so...the true casual favorite in this match was Red Dead Redemption 2? It did have one of the highest R1 prediction percentages, and an R2 prediction percentage nearing 70 entering the match against Portal 2 and its prediction percentage barely above 50. ...Although it'd have to retain a fairly good percentage each round to still have the plurality; P5 and RDR2 had similar R2 prediction percentages but then P5 barely lost *anything* from R2 to R3. 73.69% to 63.69%. LOL Sonic Mania, almost no one had it (or Super Meat Boy, since it seems like Mania wasn't favored by much) beating Persona 5. Incidentally, had Persona 5 made it all the way to the finals, we would've had our first two-time Guru champion...by tiebreaker over another past Guru champion. The last point of divergence between the brackets of Rivals Contest Guru winner SuperNiceDog and CBVIII Guru winner Dr Football was the Division 4 final, where Football had the Cookie pick of Three Houses (already eliminated one round earlier) and SND had Xenoblade. Once Xenoblade won, they were guaranteed to finish with identical scores, and would have beaten out everyone else if Persona 5 were to win two more matches. Dr Football appeared to still have the better tiebreaker, though, which is maybe ironic since SND's win came in a gimmicky contest so easy to predict that the Battle Challenge required an Oracle component hastily tacked onto its finale to break all the ties. (Relatively speaking, of course; even that year didn't have a single perfect Guru, though SND wasn't the only one with but a single wrong pick on a 1-point match.) They weren't even the only past champions still alive at this point--Skyrim defeating Witcher 3 in the semifinals (yes, Witcher 3 specifically; a win over P5 would've given it to someone else) would have given the win to Villains Contest winner yoblazer as long as the overall champion wasn't Smash Ultimate. Guru Contests, it seems, are much like the World Series of Poker Main Event--it's really hard to win it twice, but you tend to see the same names making deep runs. But on the other hand, it's still possible to fluke into a deep run, like when I was still alive with a mere 5 matches left in 2013. I'm still mad as hell that it wasn't two matches left--I already knew that my bracket was doomed by then because Vivi's nonsensical upset of Mario meant that a literal second Pokémon character had won Division 8, but come on, we'd seen Mega Man underperform 1v1 against Zero in 2004 and get LFFed into a loss against Weighted Companion Cube in 2008. The Guru stats even back this up; Charizard was heavily favored there. Huh, maybe that wasn't a fluke? My bracket was good enough to still be alive at that point if the cookie pick came through. How'd I manage to put together a bracket that strong, given my usual track record? ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8032&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=118) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Dark Souls vs (2)The Last of Us 2020 _source: (1)Dark Souls vs (2)The Last of Us 2020 (revid 88585)_ ## Results **Round Four** Friday, May 8, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 7 - **Match \#:** 119 - **Match Date:** Friday, May 08, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Dark Souls - 56.64% 51 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Dark Souls - 30.19% - **User Votes:** Dark Souls - 5353 The Last of Us - 3667 - **Anonymous Votes:** Dark Souls - 4213 The Last of Us - 3335 Before we talk about the elephant in the room, let's set the stage here. Some fun with numbers: Dark Souls (2015g) VS The Last of Us (2015g) Dark Souls has a strength of 25.11. The Last of Us has a strength of 27.36. The Last of Us wins with 54.11% of the vote! A win of 5,006 with 60,875 total votes cast. There isn't much reason to think these are fraudulent numbers. Dark Souls got like 30% on Link to the Past that year, and Last of Us got 40% on Kingdom Hearts 2. There is only so much adjusting that can be done there, and at a certain point if you think Dark Souls looked better anyway in 2015 then you're just adjusting the numbers around until you see the result you want. There was nothing wrong with looking at 2015 and picking The Last of Us to win this match, especially if you thought The Last of Us 2 hype was going to boost the original up. Even if you thought Dark Souls would go up due to the respect factor and the name of our contest (as well you should have, this was perfectly good logic and Souls was the decade's biggest story along with open world stuff), it had to go up enough to beat The Last of Us potentially being boosted by sequel hype. Oh it got boosted by sequel hype alright, but not in the way anyone was expecting pre-contest. One day after The Last of Us's match with Batman where it struggled a bit, Naughty Dog and Sony announced *another* delay in The Last of Us 2's release date. Now for the record, coronavirus has affected a lot of things in 2020 so delays on entertainment are understandable, but this game was originally supposed to come out on February 21st and the first delay was announced in October of 2019. A second delay was announced on April 2nd and corona was directly cited. Okay, sure, makes sense. We all understand that. But the announcement of a third delay really started to piss people off, and it happened right in the middle of this contest on April 27th. At that point, it isn't coronavirus causing the delays and we all know it. More on that in a second. On the *same exact day* that yet another delay was announced, all hell broke loose at Naughty Dog and the entirety of The Last of Us 2's plot was leaked and posted online. At first, it was widely believed that this was done by a disgruntled employee who was sick of the conditions there. And who could blame them? But as it turns out, the leak was done by a hacker who used an older game to exploit a server security weakness. I could go on an incredibly long rant here about how Naughty Dog legitimately treats their employees like slaves, but Jim Sterling covers this one far better than I ever could. Don't worry, this video mentions absolutely nothing about what's in the leaks. All he talks about is how and why they happened: Whether the leak was an inside job or not, the fact that everyone believed at first that it came from someone pissed at a crunch tells the story, doesn't it? What's even worse is what's actually in the leaks, so let's just get to it. I will not discuss any of them here, even with spoiler tags, out of respect for anyone who doesn't want to know them. Instead, here is a video with a very safe thumbnail. If you want to know what's in the leaks, watch this video. If not, skip past it. **WARNING: THIS VIDEO PROBABLY SPOILS EVERYTHING THAT'S IN THE LAST OF US 2!!! WATCH AT YOUR OWN RISK!** I asked a mod whom we all love and respect if this video was safe to post, and he confirmed that it is. Here you go: I won't bother getting into how I personally feel about what this all means in terms of the series plot, because I already said I'm not talking about the specifics here. Just know that I liked the original quite a lot and that my opinion pretty much lines up with what everyone is saying on the internet. And believe me, you can't go *anywhere* on the internet right now without people talking about this. Naughty Dog fucked up, and they fucked up *badly*. What I do want to talk about here is the thorough and swift rejection of the SJW filth that's been infesting entertainment. Last decade was the rise of that puke, but this decade is seeing the public reject all of it at an alarming rate. "But Ulti, everywhere I look online people are happy about diversity and such! And Captain Marvel made over a billion dollars so lol you!" Social media in no way reflects the real world, and people need to learn this lesson. Don't let Twitter produce your show or control your opinions. If social media or going viral meant jack shit, we would have had President Bernie Sanders 300 times over by now. As for Captain Marvel, good example! I'm glad someone brought her up. Thanks, Hypothetical Guy. She is a wonderful example of audiences being smart, because people know the difference between well-meaning diversity like Captain Marvel or the Tom Holland Spiderman cast and the garbage The Last of Us 2 is trying to pull. You can have the opinions Brie Larson or Tessa Thompson have. Free country, free speech. Go nuts. The problem happens when you try to fight discrimination with discrimination in entertainment despite the audience, including most of the *women* in your audience, outright telling you to fuck off. Girl power and diversity based on merit are very, very good things. Forcing it at the expense of others (13 Reasons Why and the constant misandry being a great example) is where the problem starts, and I don't get how people don't understand the difference. I could name 100 female characters, probably more, who are strong, amazing, great female characters who aren't in their roles to check off diversity boxes and tell everyone men suck all day long. Hell this writeup is going to be long anyways, so let's do it. What's 100 extra lines on a wiki page, anyway? This is right off the top of my head in no order whatsoever. I won't cheat, look at any lists, nothing. You can make strong, cool, and lovable female characters without ever going the moronic "all men suck and we must check off as many diversity boxes as possible" SJW route. -Captain Marvel -Wonder Woman -Beatrix Kiddo -Sarah Conner pre Dark Fate -Commander Shepherd -Tifa Lockheart -Ellen Ripley -Princess Leia -Buffy -Jill Valentine -Presea Combatir -Sheena Fujibayashi, and don't ask me to spell her last name correctly -Rita Mordio -Judith -Scully (the real reason X-Files was popular!) -Elaine Benes -Althena from the Lunar games -Khaleesi -Cersei Lannister -Catherine Tully -Brienne of Tarth -Black Widow -Arya Stark -Xena, Warrior Princess -Katniss Everdeen (book version, the movies do her no justice at all) -Lara Croft -Padme (yeah I fucking said it, do not @ me) -Clarice from Silence of the Lambs -Miranda Lawson -Tali -Kasumi -Celes -Yuffie -Yuna -Rikku -Ashe -Lightning -Fang -Charlotte Flair -Becky Lynch -Shayna Baszler -Ronda Rousey -Sara del Ray -Sarah Stock -Portia Perez -Cheerleader Melissa -Kris Statlander -Toni Storm -Bianca Belair -The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo -Maeve (Westworld) -Dolores (Westworld) -Bayonetta -Juno -Mulan -Ariel -Monica -Phoebe -Rachel -13 from House -Olivia Benson (the girl from Law and Order SVU with the big chin) -11 from Stranger Things -Jessica Jones -Catwoman -Maria from West Side Story -Mimi from Rent -Christine from Phantom of the Opera -Beatrix from Umineko -Beatrix from Final Fantasy 9 -Pepper Potts -Terra Branford -Ada Wong -Edelgard -Lyndis -Corrin -Undyne -Cammy -Chun-Li -C. Viper -Trish from the DMC games -Trish Stratus -Elizabeth Swann -June from Handmaid's Tale -Lucina -Tharja -Byleth -Sothis -Hilda -Petra -Ingrid -THUNDER CATHERINE, I MEAN COME ON HER NAME IS LITERALLY **THUNDER CATHERINE** FFS -Shamir -Rhea -Titania -Jill -Celica -Azura -Camilla -Anna -Micaiah -Sakura -Rose -Elena -Juri -Kerrigan -Meryl -Samus -Zelda -Palutena -Gamora -Do female Pokemon count? -How about generic female characters when I get to create my own, like in Skyrim or Dark Souls? This should be around 100 or close to it. Yes, there are a lot of Nintendo, wrestling, JRPG, MCU, and Street Fighter characters. Welcome to what most of my entertainment time has gone towards! I could go on for quite awhile here with naming great females who aren't pushing stupid agendas, but do you get the point yet? If you're a great character, you're a great character and people will just like you for being you. No one who isn't completely out of their mind is walking around, looking at the world, and going "X is represented in this piece of entertainment, and by enjoying X you must hate all of Y". I've been trying to find the right words to prove my point here for years, and that Upper Echelon guy really did a perfect job. No one worth interacting with looks at Samus and goes "well by liking her, you must hate any female who isn't white". "Actually I really loved Gamora's character arc in the Marvel movies, plus Zoe Saldana is an incredibly talented actress. You don't star in three different 2 billion dollar movies by accident." "Yeah but she plays up to black stereotypes." "Uh, she's Puerto Rican and Dominican, plus she was born in New Jersey so it's neat having someone from my home state star in the movies." "Shut up cis amab racist, they should have cast black MTF trans POCs." This is an actual conversation I've had with someone, and thankfully she was laughed out of the room. This stuff just does not sell, which is why these people go on social media to spread their BS; they just aren't accepted anywhere else. A great recent example is that idiot who is embarrassing the new Twitch Safety Council by pretending to be a deer, with the irony of all ironies being an MTF transsexual who now claims to be a deer but is always on stream wearing antlers. News flash -- female deer don't have antlers, genius. Are you telling us you're simply a moron, or are you you telling us that you're full of shit and that everyone is right to want you off of Twitch? This guy puts it best. It's the Emperor's New Clothes. Thankfully, even the internet is rejecting these people at record numbers. Or how about the SJW idiot in New York yesterday who called the cops on a black dude for walking her dog off leash? I refuse to link to the video, but the short version is her dog is off leash in a park in New York, he asks her to leash it, and she freaks out and *literally* says she'll call the cops and tell them an African is threatening her and her dog. Her words, not mine. Oh, and during the entire phone call she is quite literally **lynching her dog**. That's why I refuse to link to it or even say the dumb bitch's name. The good news here is not only did more SJW trash expose the entire movement as being the *actual* intolerant racism of our time, but the entire internet banded together and gave her exactly what she deserved. I could rant on that story alone for another 5000 words, but I'll keep it short. Conservatives get accused of being racist 24/7, yet the actual intolerant racists in our culture are always exposed as being these liberal SJW Karen types. Political donations are public, lady. Of course you virtue signal for equality and then turn into a plantation owner the second a black guy isn't following your orders. Anyone that's honest with themselves and pays any attention at all knew this already, but we're getting way off topic here. I just saw that story today and it made me sick, plus it's related to my overall point of SJWs being garbage, but all of them are being rejected from our culture in all mediums these days. Back to the point. Men have been saying they don't want this SJW nonsense in gaming for ages, especially if you're going to tell us how much we suck and how you want us dead all day. The issue was never needing great female characters. We all love them. The issue is, like I said, forced diversity and tearing others down while you do it. You cannot fight discrimination with discrimination and be morally correct in any way. Now women are on board with hating it all too, thank God, so the entire SJW nonsense is going to collapse in epic fashion. When even women aren't buying what they're selling anymore, when you lose the folks with the most buying power in our culture (women), the jig is up. This is why no one went to see Men In Black International, Birds of Prey, Ghostbusters 2016, Charlie's Angels 2019, Batwoman on CW, and a whole slew of other things. Gaming is still in the beginning stages of getting rid of this garbage, in large part because the medium is so young and naive, but we *are* getting rid of it. The one good thing about this shitshow with The Last of Us 2 is the momentum for getting the SJW vomit out of video games has hit a breaking point. Again, I won't mention anything specific in the leaks, but they're so awful and it's done in such poor taste that even the people Neil Druckmann is trying to cater to are telling him what a piece of trash he is. Dude fucked up hard. This video is safe to watch. It has no spoilers in it whatsoever. Scout's honor. Have I mentioned that Druckmann is so woke that he fired a woman from out of her position as head writer at Naughty Dog? I hope the irony isn't lost on people here. And even after all this BS and all this nonsense and all this controversy, it *still* gets so much worse. How do you guys think Sony and Naughty Dog reacted to all this? By going full Barbara Streisand, of course! Youtube, and most social media really, has a means to protect privacy and protect content from theft. You submit a DMCA complaint, and poof. The issue is because these social media sites are so huge, the process is often automated and leads to erroneous deletions of legitimate content. Did Sony and Naughy Dog respond to this controversy by diffusing it, issuing any apologies, anything? Of course not. They scoured the internet and submitted a bunch of falsified DMCA claims. Some of them were legitimate so as to get rid of videos playing the actual leak. That was fine. But they also flagged people who were simply *talking* about the leaks or covering it like a news story, which is why a bunch of content creators had to put legalese in their videos threatening lawsuits. Rather than try to cover all of the fraudulent deletions, this screenshot should suffice. Yes, Sony actually DMCA'd themselves. That is a real tweet that you can still see as of this writing, though I imagine they'll eventually delete it entirely. But trust me, for the wiki readers who see this in a few years, this actually happened. Be warned if you actually look it up though, as there are spoilers in the comments. It should also be noted that Sony went way, way overboard. Entire channels were deleted and they also struck down harmless memes that spoiled nothing. Does it get even worse? **Of course it does.** Sony and Naughty Dog have even gone so far as to blatantly submit false review scores to try boosting the game. Don't worry, this video is spoiler-free. He's using numbers from a couple weeks ago. We're up to about 3100 scores as of this writing, and the game still has a perfect rating on the Playstation store. I've said this many times, but the only reviews in gaming that tell the truth are word of mouth reviews and/or people who are 100% independent. People paid to write reviews for companies and these aggregator web sites are manipulated on the professional side. There are far too may examples to list, but this aggregate score is literally impossible. Review copies haven't gone out yet and there is no way 3100 people have preordered the game on the store just to give it a 5 star rating. This has all been one of the biggest scandals in gaming history -- the story truly is that nutty, and the game isn't even out yet, just wait until June -- and one of the biggest stories of a gaming company fucking up you'll ever see. The story isn't even over yet, which is the crazy part. tl;dr version - People don't want SJW trash infecting entertainment anymore, yet somehow even the legendarily awful levels of the actual SJW trash did not match how bad Sony's attempt at damage control has been. Which brings us to the actual match. In *The Art of War*, Sun Tzu discuss the tactics and strategy used that allowed his army of 10,000 to conquer an army of 100,000. One line from the text is very valid here: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." Dark Souls never had to actually "win" this match. It just had to sit there and wait. The Last of Us botched this entire build so badly that we were about to see one of the biggest contest collapses in our history, and this might legitimately be the biggest mid-contest fail we've ever had. I'm too lazy to try looking it up to compare it to anything else, but by the numbers I'll be shocked if anything tops this. We played fun with numbers during the last round's writeup for Batman vs Last of Us, but just in case anyone forgot: Batman: Arkham City (2015g) VS The Last of Us (2015g) Batman: Arkham City has a strength of 25.17. The Last of Us has a strength of 27.36. The Last of Us wins with 54.00% of the vote! A win of 4,873 with 60,875 total votes cast. Last of Us would end up winning with 55.24%, so we can safely say adjustments and whatever else was done in the 2015 stats for these two games was accurate. Let's bring up the original fun with numbers from the beginning of all this one more time: Dark Souls (2015g) VS The Last of Us (2015g) Dark Souls has a strength of 25.11. The Last of Us has a strength of 27.36. The Last of Us wins with 54.11% of the vote! A win of 5,006 with 60,875 total votes cast. Dark Souls clearly went up between 2015 and 2020, that much is obvious, but the exact amount is anyone's guess. Thankfully, we know through Dark Souls vs MGS5 that we have 8% to work with. 8% can be split up for a Dark Souls boost and MGS5 deboost however anyone wants, but here's the point. You could give that entire 8% to Dark Souls and it turns this into a 54-46 match. Obviously it wasn't the full 8%, but you can see where I'm going with this. When this poll started, Dark Souls beat the *piss* out of The Last of Us. It was well over 60% for a very long time here, and only a slight percentage bleed with the day vote gave The Last of Us any shred of dignity whatsoever on the way out of this contest. Let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that of the 8% we talked about earlier, we split it right in half. 4% Dark Souls, 4% MGS5. Pre-leak, we had evidence The Last of Us hadn't moved, so 4% from Dark Souls would have made this a 50-50 type of match that Dark Souls probably would have won in the 52-48 range. Maybe 51-49. In the actual match, Dark Souls won 58-42 and it could have *easily* been more. Do you guys understand how thoroughly ridiculous it is for a game to deboost by nearly 10% mid-contest in under 2 weeks? I'm not upset The Last of Us Lost this match -- though I am quite happy I was out of the guru by this point because losing on this garbage would have been beyond dumb -- because all evidence leading up to this pointed to an easy win for Dark Souls. What I am upset about is just how brazen and stupid Sony, Naughty Dog, and Neil Druckmann have been with all this. It's one of the worst displays of self sabotage I've ever seen from a gaming company, and it *almost* rivals the idiocy of Activision-Blizzard. This is an ongoing thing, so I doubt it's the last we'll hear about the indefensible shitshow this all is. Seeing it play out live in a contest was nuts, too. Like people wanted to **punish** The Last of Us here, and who could blame them? In the end, both games deserved what they got here. The Last of Us deserved to get its ass kicked, and Dark Souls also deserved to win a division. Let's not toss that aside. A contest called "Game of the Decade" would be borderline fraudulent without something related to Souls making the final eight, and having it be the flagship of the franchise made it awesome. This would set up a potentially incredible match between Dark Souls and Skyrim, provided Skyrim was able to get past Pokemon. In the end, game developers, be smart and listen to your fans. Don't be trash like Disobedient Canine. Be more like From Software. Post-Release Update It was every bit the shitshow I predicted, right down to critics loving the game and players hating it. Most of the so-called professional reviews are due to an embargo where reviewers were not allowed to discuss Abby at all under threat of industry blacklisting. I've said for many years these so-called professional reviewers are paid off SJW trash, and this game is the most blatant example of it. The Last of Us 2 is SJW trash, and 100% relies on emotional manipulation and outright lying. But what can you expect from the braindead idiots out in Seattle? ## Ctes's Analysis This match had not really been in doubt since round 2 where The Last of Us failed to look impressive against Diablo III and Souldborne in general looked to be better than ever, but man, for such a popular upset pick as The Last of Us winning here, it sure didn’t come close at all. Now under normal circumstances this would be a tribute to another fantastic game of the decade leaving the contest and all that, but this was not normal circumstances. The Last of Us part II had been delayed three times by now, which was not exactly a popular decision to begin with. Then a day after its previous match a new and final release day would be announced, but it would also be the day the world collapsed when the game was leaked to the internet. We’re talking lengthy videos. There’s gameplay and there are cutscenes. A lot of it was out there. This is always unfortunate, but we were still a good while off. It’s different that when this happens because some employee is a jerk. Information spreads rapidly fast these days and it has ever since been dangerous to be anywhere on the internet. Comment sections of Playstation threads that had nothing to do with the game became danger zones. Hell, I’ve seen people say they were spoiled on Smash forums. It was everywhere. The Last of Us has certainly been the talks of the internet these past months. This matters in this match because the internet really hated what they saw. I won’t go into details about what’s in there, no aspects about it either. It’s a very interesting discussion for another time, but I don’t think it would appropriate here. What we need to take from it is that it exploded the internet with negativity. Everything they’ve uploaded since has had liked/dislikes and comments disabled. There was that one video from Neil Druckmann where he passionately spoke about the game vaguely and told people to look forward to it that and 75-80% of people disliked it. It was insane. On top of everything, it was initially believed that the leak happened by an employee that was tired of his working conditions, a rumor which was believed by most because it’s not the first time we’ve heard something like that happening with Naughty Dog. Eventually we learned it was not why the leak happened, but I’m mentioning it because it certainly fueled the fire of burning hate coming in the direction of The Last of Us. This would hurt the game’s already bad chances of making it out of this match. Fortunately, it was not getting out of it in the first place, so the many people that had their brackets die today at least can’t blame this. How much the leaks damaged it is tough to determine, but we can try to look at it. Before the match, a few people went as high as thinking 15%. That’s pretty clearly not the case, but it’s reasonable to expect some backlash even here. Batman: Arkham City vs. The Last of Us went almost exactly as the 2015 stats suggest it would. Dark Souls vs. Metal Gear Solid V had Dark Souls winning by 8% more than it did in 2015. The Last of Us is projected to get about the same on Dark Souls as on Batman in 2015. These are the important things. The last of them is obviously the reason why The Last of Us was picked by as many as it was. It had a sequel coming and it had claim get far in a contest of this title. Even it Dark Souls was slightly stronger, it could still happen. Let’s begin with the 8% difference in Dark Souls vs. Metal Gear Solid V. I’ll credit almost all of that to Dark Souls and I’ve said so before. There’s not really much reason for MGSV to decline further, maybe a little bit but the whole Konami and Kojima incident was already past us back in 2015. The relevance of all that drama back then might even upweight that Metal Gear Solid is less relevant today. Dark Souls and Soulsborne in general are however one of the most memorable things of the decade. They have boosted a good bit this contest and are more popular than ever. It would not surprise me if Dark Souls just grew that much by itself. If we accept that the match would be about 54-46 in favor of Dark Souls. Most people probably expect Dark Souls and MGSV to split that a bit more. Most people also believed The Last of Us had already declined a bit before the leaks though, and that’s an important point. I believe so too. It just didn’t look that great, especially if you consider how many of the big games seemed to boost from the contest title and the forced voting. The Batman match suggests that The Last of Us was constant from 2015 to now, but it’s not hard to imagine that Batman just declined a bit as well. I mean, those games were a much bigger deal in the beginning of the decade than they are now. It would not be terribly surprising. I’m thinking that’s the case, because I doubt the leak is much more than a few points of percentage. Most of our site is a bit older than most of the whiny “fans” on the internet. Most of our site know that The Last of Us was still a good game despite of what happened and there are probably also many people trying to avoid the leaks and not judging things based on what little things they hear. This was a big deal of course, but the people complaining always seem like a bigger group than they are because they’re loud. There’s only so much damage I see the leak doing here. It’s impossible to know exactly, but I think it’s less than it seems most people think. The Last of Us is in no way as big a deal as it was when it came out. Those games also never were as big here as everyone else. It’s similar to how Uncharted was a bigger deal in general than our site suggests. The finalists at this point are all games that are big on our site. The game has aged fine in some areas but not as well in others. We’re past the zombie craze of the early part of the decade, and a lot of the in-game mechanics feel outdated already. That’s how it is with games like that, unfortunately. I can see it and Batman declining a few percentage points and thus the leak only mattering a few percentage points. When all that is said and done, The Last of Us deserves some respect. The game is great, I still think it’s fun today. They took some very bold decisions that paid off. I’m not as big a fan of the ending of the game as most, but that was a huge deal. The game had depth and was a fantastic presentation. Also, in a decade of open world games and very long stories I seriously have to appreciate the few of the gems that can be played in a few days. I have a much harder time getting through all the games I want to these days and it’s not just because I’m busier. We would go into a highly anticipated Dark Souls vs. Skyrim match without truly learning more about Dark Souls today because there are too many uncertainties regarding The Last of Us, but Skyrim redeeming itself made it look like we were in for quite a match! ## Safer777's Analysis Check Ulti's analysis above! This guy sure can write! Damn! So this match was somewhat debatable when we had our contest break BUT something crazy happened. Someone leaked gameplay videos and story videos from The Last Of Us 2 and man the Internet went crazy. Not only the story seems stupid, at least for me, but the worse thing is what the developer of TLOU did. Basically striking down videos on Youtube for people that just were discussing the spoilers. They didn't even had gameplay in their video, just some people talking around and Naughty Dog went after EVERYONE! So yeah people don't like Naughty Dog now, including me. I mean just discussing stuff and someone coming and saying no you can't do that! Go away! I am just talking! I mean just people sitting and talking and the video is taken down? Seriously. So we all thought it would affect the match. Well... So for the match. DS was expected to win with around 55 and it did slightly better. So yeah I don't think this leaked spoiler thingy affected much. Probably. Although people were expecting DS to win by less so maybe it did affected things a little. People just like TLOU 1. When TLOU 2 comes out we will see the reactions there. There will be pretty bad. SJW thingy! You shall see! I am not sure why I see so many SJW thingies around since nobody seems to like these things but that is USA for you. As for DS damn. This game is damn strong here. I would never expected that to tell the truth. People are hardcore! So yeah all the Soulborne games are legit. ## Tsunami's Analysis Time and again, we've seen that hype often trumps an actual release when it comes to strength on this site. We saw it in 2008, when Brawl disappointed so many Melee fans and led to all of the characters that had seemingly boosted in 2007 due to being in trailers falling back to earth, and we saw it in 2010 when Golden Sun pulled an upset in the first GotD on the release date of its disappointing sequel, Dark Dawn. (Though while I certainly had issues with the harsh difficulty spike after a certain spoilery event and the inability to return to areas earlier in the game to pick up anything you might have missed, my biggest gripe is that whereas Lost Age ended with a vague sequel hook that took seven years to deliver, Dark Dawn ended on a *clear* To Be Continued and we haven't gotten anything in over a decade.) Technically, we even saw it back in the very first Character Battle, given how poorly regarded Super Mario Sunshine is. So when the long-awaited The Last of Us 2 got a bunch of scenes and gameplay footage leaked not long before this match, it should've been fuel for a major upset, right? *Wrong*, because what was leaked depicted the game to be absolutely execrable, with the internet exploding and the general consensus being outrage at the creators themselves, considering it to be contemptuous to their fans. Uh...yeah, you keep posting your clickbaity titles, guys. I say "depicted" because not long *after* this match, it was confirmed that what the hackers (yes, this was the work of hackers, not anyone affiliated with Naughty Dog) leaked was in fact fully outdated. That's not how gameplay will actually work in the finished version, and the scenes...well, what type of *real* gamer wants plot spoilers, anyway? That takes half the fun out of it! So in the end, it all added up to the fans getting *massively *trolled, and the general consensus was that this would've made this number unreliable, and that TLoU was destined to underperform here. Which, uh...kind of means this should've been a pretty close match? With these types of vote totals, it would only take a couple thousand votes swinging the other direction to outright flip this match, even less if those were registered voters. (Remember, swinging the votes means subtracting them from one side *and* adding them to the other. So the entire 4250-vote lead would in fact be turned by a mere *1063* registered users that voted for Dark Souls having instead voted for The Last of Us. Though given how low the total number of voters is, that actually *is* a large figure.) Still, in a match that seemed prime for Dark Souls to overperform, it only got 58.30%. Oracle consensus: 56.64%. An overperformance, yes, but not a huge one. Seeing as how Dark Souls had fewer brackets taking it to the semifinals than *either* of its two potential quarterfinal opponents, this was definitely considered a discouraging result for Dark Souls fans...which made it an *encouraging* result for just about every Guru, even the eliminated ones, with the exceptions of Seginustemple, Xeybozn, and Agent_M, each of whom had a route to victory contingent on Dark Souls winning the next round. Xeybozn and Agent_M both needed Smash Ultimate to win it all, with Xeybozn specifically requiring Witcher 3 \> Dark Souls in the semifinal while Agent_M would win it if Dark Souls either lost to Persona 5 in the semifinal or made the finals and lost to Ultimate directly; while Seginustemple was the lone Guru to take Dark Souls to win it all--but had enough mistakes elsewhere that the *most likely path for this*, defeating Witcher 3 in the semifinal and Breath of the Wild in the final, would not be enough. If Dark Souls made the final and lost to anything other than Smash Ultimate, or if it won it all specifically by defeating Witcher 3 and Breath of the Wild, the Guru Champion would be a troll account that had entered both the Guru and their official bracket under the name COVlD-19. That's a lowercase L, mind you, not an uppercase i, but the intent is clear. Most people were calling this "the darkest timeline", and so the prospect of Dark Souls \> Witcher 3 was not something we were looking forward to. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8033&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=119) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (3)Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version 2020 _source: (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (3)Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version 2020 (revid 88583)_ ## Results **Round Four** Friday, May 8, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Division 8 - **Match \#:** 120 - **Match Date:** Friday, May 08, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Skyrim - 54.16% 49 for - 3 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Skyrim - 53.66% - **User Votes:** Skyrim - 5338 Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 3685 - **Anonymous Votes:** Skyrim - 4635 Pokémon HeartGold / SoulSilver - 2914 This writeup will seem like a short letdown after the last one, but the last match's writeup took me three days to do. Give me a break :p There were a few matches in this contest, namely this one, Witcher 3 vs Mario Galaxy 2, and Skyrim vs Mario Kart 8, where a western titan went up against a Nintendo game of decent strength, but not *titanic* strength. These matches played out in exactly the same way -- a small struggle early where it looked like Nintendo might make it interesting, followed by the western titan flexing some muscle and winning the match in 60-40 fashion. A *lot* of hype was given to Pokemon in the leadup to this match, because Skyrim looked prime to be picked off in an upset, and Pokemon is a master at winning matches like that. Things were interesting when the poll started, but unfortunately for Pokemon, that's all she wrote. Even with Skyrim looking slightly weaker this contest than in 2015, it was still more than strong enough to get rid of Pokemon. I have no problem with the first three Pokemon generations, but given how the fans of this game acted against Nier Automata I was happy to be rid of them one round after we got rid of the Nier ass brigade. This would close out divisional play, and from here it was 7 main contest matches plus a single bonus poll. I'd love to build suspense up here as if we were wondering things live, but there was no way Breath of the Wild wasn't winning this thing. Still, journey not destination and such. This match also booted out the last of the three remake games, which was frankly nice to see. Resident Evil 2 getting in I can accept, but not Persona 4 Golden or Pokemon HGSS. Regardless of how strong the games were and how well they performed, it was unfair for them to get in. It was nice to see them not winning divisions over more deserving games. On to the final rounds! ## Ctes's Analysis Skyrim had had a rough contest up until this point with everyone targeting it for looking bad. Almost no one thought it would actually lose today, but it was underestimated by quite a bit, almost 6% by oracles. This would be Skyrim’s big redemption match. Beating Witcher 3 was out of the question a long time ago, but that didn’t mean Skyrim had to be significantly worse. After trying to defend Skyrim for a couple of rounds it was such a relief to see. This wasn’t even a fanboy thing, I have never played Skyrim and I love Pokemon HGSS, but being seemingly right is always nice and it sure seemed like it now. Although Skyrim needed to beat Dark Souls to truly confirm how legit it still is, along with how Journey, Mario Kart 8 and Uncharted 4 all being better than most people gave them credit for. The opening moments were of course hilarious as always. HGSS took the lead instantly and kept it for a bit. Then they were tied for a while, but Skyrim took it. For a little while, it looked to be somewhat close despite not being in doubt, but then Skyrim took off and never looked back, rising in percentage over the whole course of the day. We love Pokemon. We do not love Bethesda. I’m sure Skyrim wouldn’t be as big a favorite against Dark Souls if they met before Skyrim got to show off here, but it would actually end up being one after all. You had to be pretty stubborn to still insist Mario Kart 8 couldn’t be good at this point. Still, the match was hyped and everyone expected the guru contest to be decided with that match as the final three matches all seemed obvious. It’s part of the reason why it’s such a shame that only those three are up alone. The quarter finals are very often more interesting than the semi-finals. At the end of the contest, HeartGold and SoulSilver probably didn’t act as proxies for Gold and Silver. At least they seem significantly weaker. Skyrim is projected to beat GSC in 2015, but not by much. 51.79% to be exact. Everyone agrees that Skyrim is weaker now. That means no matter how you adjust things, the remakes are a good bit below. It’s not too surprising if you know the fanbase. They treat remakes as new entries and Pokemon fans consider these games part of generation 4 and not generation 2. They’re much more loved than the original fanbase among hardcore fans, but our site will not care about anything past generation 2 as much as the first two. I’m sure no one would have expected FireRed and LeafGreen to be as good as RBY if they had been in the first Game of the Decade. RBY looked so good in 2009 that it would have probably beat everything in the first Game of the Decade, and I’m sure no one would pick FireRed and LeafGreen to do that. In this way, Pokemon is quite different from the other remakes in the contest. I don’t mind them being in, but they probably should not have been. I don’t think it’s as clear a case as Persona 4 Golden. While it’s the same story line, it also comes with all the general changes they made fom gen 2 to gen 4, which were a lot. I also don’t mind them getting this far because they were the only Pokemon representation in the bracket. They represent how good Pokemon was at the beginning of this generation. It’s a huge shame that the more casual approach recent Pokemon games have had come at the expense of the quality that fans loved from Platinum to Black 2 and White 2. Pokemon is definitely a victim of its own popularity. Quantity matters more these days. It’s more important for them to spit out new entries constantly than to give us games that feel polished and good. I’m sure that only one Pokemon game appearing is a decision made to have a more diverse bracket. It’s the absolute biggest confirmation that Allen wanted variety regardless of whether or not a series cap at exactly two games was put in place. The Pokemon fans were split sure, and it hurt nominations sure, but no way one of them then took a \#3 seed while the others saw less nominations than Baba is You and Subnautica (no disrespect to either). There’s just no way. For some random trivia, HGSS being the one to get the most nominations and therefore be chosen to represent the series, means that Gold and Silver and their remakes have appeared in every single game contest to date. If you count HGSS as the same game, it’s the only game to accomplish this because two of our five contests have been Game of the Decades. It sure lucked out being the representant both now and in 2004 where it was the only Pokemon game in the bracket. The way things are going now, Pokemon won’t be worth much in a decade. The new games anyway. Hopefully they find some middle ground, but as long as we all buy whatever they put out, and I shamefully will, then they can care less and less about polishing their games. ## Safer777's Analysis So this match. Last chance for Skyrim to see if it is truly legit. Because it is legit, but how much? Pokemon HG/SS did really well to reach this far which I didn't really expected to tell the truth. So people had Skyrim winning with around 55. And it scored 60. So yeah. I don't know. So for the match. I am not sure. Man things are crazy. Seriously. This results shows that Skyrim is super legit strangely enough. Yeah as Skyrim goes it becomes more legit? I don't know what is happening to tell the truth. Maybe it was just unlucky with all the previous results. Or something else? Nobody can figure it out, at least not yet. Also this prediction percentage was the 2nd highest of this round. Only 3 games had above 50 in this round, these are BOTW, Witcher 3, Skyrim. And it seems Skyrim has higher prediction that Witcher 3 which it does make sense, since before the contest it was the favorite to reach the final round.  So end of Round 4. In this round all remakes lost so that is fine. Hey they all reached the division finals which is amazing. Also out of 7 1 Seeds that reached the division finals 7 of them won! Yeah as I said above perfect seeding. ## Tsunami's Analysis And with this, all three of the remakes of older games were eliminated shy of the Elite Eight--but all three had only just been eliminated this round. Given this board's penchant for things that are old, is it any wonder that they all made the Sweet 16? (I mean, sure, a bunch of other games in the bracket had updated remakes, but their originals were also in this decade--like Mario Kart 8 (Ultra) and Xenoblade Chronicles--or was XBC a straight-up port? I don't even know.) But that said, all were worthy candidates. The original GSC pulled 45% on Melee before Melee started rallying to make it a 60-40 match; Persona 4 did better on Twilight Princess in 2015 than it did in its third-round exit to RE4 in 2010, and Resident Evil 2 straight-up won the GotY polls for 2019. Speaking of which, if you count these remakes as being ways of "cheating" and getting older games into this contest, then Pokémon GSC is the only game to have been in all five Games Contests. (It's one of 11 games that had been in all three BGEs and the first GotD; obviously there are far more that have been in all three BGEs.) Skyrim's performance here was solid, nearly breaking 60% and outperforming Dark Souls against what was presumed, in the wake of the disastrous TLoU2 leaks, to be a stronger game. But it *was* still a remake and therefore something that "didn't belong in this contest", and a handheld game to boot, so there would be doubters. But let's be real here--saying GSC and HGSS are the same game is like saying that Ultimate is just Smash 4 with an expanded roster. Same goes for FRLG and ORAS to the games *they're* remakes of, though maybe not so much for any future remakes because honestly, the changes in each generation past the fourth have largely been minor rebalancing issues and weird gimmicks. I'm not saying I *dislike* the changes, though I'll admit I'm none too happy with LGPE and SwSh "GO-ifying" the series, but stuff like Triple Battles, Mega Evolutions, Z-Moves, and Gigantamax is not the same as Gen 2 splitting the Special stat into Special Attack and Special Defense and introducing held items, Gen 3 introducing Abilities, or Gen 4 making it so that each individual *move* was designated either Physical or Special instead of it being determined by the move's *type*. Those were all very big changes, and as long as they don't try to use a Dragon-type move on a Pokémon that *used* to not be Fairy-type, I'd imagine that someone familiar with Gen 4 battling would adapt *relatively* quickly to later generations compared with someone only familiar with Gen 1--or for that matter, that same person trying to go back *to* Gen 1. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8034&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=120) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (1)Mass Effect 2 2020 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (1)Mass Effect 2 2020 (revid 88581)_ ## Results **Quarterfinals** Saturday, May 9, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 121 - **Match Date:** Saturday, May 09, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 67.51% 46 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 64.65% - **User Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 6173 Mass Effect 2 - 2856 - **Anonymous Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 5345 Mass Effect 2 - 2487 I know the 2015 stats are totally all kinds of nutty, but, um... Ocarina of Time (2015g) VS Mass Effect 2 (2015g) Ocarina of Time has a strength of 47.95. Mass Effect 2 has a strength of 25.58. Ocarina of Time wins with 73.33% of the vote! A win of 28,400 with 60,875 total votes cast. Getting nearly 70% in round *five* is completely insane, and it helps prove the theory (though I doubt it's a "theory" at this point) that Breath of the Wild is a 90s strength video game plopped into a bracket that in no way had a prayer of matching up. Breath of the Wild might one day be challenged in a normal contest against games like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 7, Ocarina of Time, Pokemon RBY, and the rest of the 90s heavy hitters, but for this contest we were living in the Breath of the Wild Invitational. It sucked to see Mass Effect 2 go out like this, but like I've said many times, only one game gets to end its run with a win. I would like to give a bit of love to Mass Effect 2 on the way out the door, because getting into the final eight shouldn't have a thoroughly unceremonious end. All the way back in 2011, I played 1 and 2 back to back. I loved 1, but I *loved* 2. 2 takes everything 1 does, flips it around, turns it all up to 11, and is one of the few games ever made that can be classified as "perfect". The entire reason butthurt idiots were so mad about 3's ending is because 2 was so good. It had the best characters, the best voice acting, the best gameplay, the Collectors were a truly terrifying villain even if they were a literal Aliens ripoff, and probably the best overall story. And yes, contradiction guy, I know it's just a glorified rail shooter. Fuck off. Very, very, very few games can match Mass Effect 2's brilliance. If for some insane reason you haven't played it or its series yet, you need to. Don't let it scoring 32% in some poll fool you. Mass Effect 2 is universally loved. Quick note about this match is that two matches per day were still happening, which is *massively* dumb. Winning a division should mean getting the spotlight alone. ## Ctes's Analysis The fifth match in the contest and Breath of the Wild once again easily achieves the doubling but still declined in percentage from the previous round. This time the oracles actually underestimated a bit, but I guess what we underestimated was Dragon Quest. The Witcher 3 does its best to look impressive each round and it does, but it’s just clear every time that Breath of the Wild has a match that even a solid rally from The Witcher 3 would not put it near Breath of the Wild. Fortunately, the second chance bracket being an oracle type of challenge meant that we had reason to follow a match like this. Mass Effect 2 is just happy to be here. It achieved everything it could hope for by winning its division and breaking 30% today was what it could have hoped for. It’s a clear step ahead of GTAV and a clear step below the rest of the \#1 seeds, so it’s a good choice for something to be fed to Breath of the Wild. It had already entertained us plenty up to this point. Mass Effect as a franchise is a done deal now, so it’s great to see that we fondly remember the second entry in the series. This was the game that made it as big as it was. Remember how much stronger Mass Effect was in 2010 than in 2009 because this game had come out? How much better Shepard looked after this game came out? It’s fantastic. They really nailed what they were trying to accomplish. I mean, the first one is good, but this is the one that really caught us. The series has been through a lot since then. The third game came out to a very mixed reception among fans. I personally love most of it, but I agree with the common critique of the story not being rounded off properly. DLC fixed some issues, but fixing things through DLC doesn’t redeem everything. They still dropped the ball a bit then. Andromeda came out years later to completely kill the series though. A huge shame they couldn’t create another fantastic trilogy, but what can you do. At least Mass Effect 2 having success today proved that the series reached our hearts back then and despite almost coming out in the previous decade, we showed that respect 10 years later. ## Safer777's Analysis So after BOTW barely scored 70 on DQ 11 we lowered somewhat our expectations and BOTW had an average of 65 winning percentage here. But guess what. We got fooled. In fact it barely did any worse than against DQ 11. That seems to be that DQ 11 is similar to ME 2. Also according to this DQ 11 beats even RE 2. Pretty sure nobody would have taken this before the contest. Man DQ is super legit now. I am glad for it. Hope it continues to do even better. So for the match. Well BOTW won and it even scored above a doubling. This is one of the best dominant performances ever in a contest. I mean this game has reached the semifinal and it scored above 70 in all games and even in this one it even managed to stay close to that. Zeldafaqs, am I right? And as I said above it did better than expected. Guess we can atrribute that to ME 2 beeing weaker too which does makes sense too. The game is old, the latest game sucked and nothing else has been announced. Still it did managed to reach that far which is great. Just play ME 2 if you haven't. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8035&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=121) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (3)Xenoblade Chronicles 2020 _source: (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate vs (3)Xenoblade Chronicles 2020 (revid 88579)_ ## Results **Quarterfinals** Saturday, May 9, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 122 - **Match Date:** Saturday, May 09, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 62.62% 46 for - 0 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 28.79% - **User Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 5471 Xenoblade Chronicles - 3559 - **Anonymous Votes:** Smash Bros. Ultimate - 4495 Xenoblade Chronicles - 3343 Outside of the early parts of one match, the entire final eight of this contest really felt like one big dud and it all played out like mop-up duty. Just for fun, here is every contest where the final seven matches (so quarterfinals and on) was a dud. 1v1 only: -Villains Contest -Rivalry Rumble -Best Year in Gaming -Game of the Decade 2 Of the seven matches that closed out this contest, only one could even *remotely* qualify as "good" and it surely wasn't this match! For those playing the home game, this is the only normal contest we've ever had where the final three rounds blew. The only drama in this particular match was whether or not Xenoblade would hold Smash under 60%. Smash was just over 60% to start, and the Europe vote helped Xenoblade keep this under a 60-40. That's all she wrote. Given how strong Smash Ultimate is going to be on this site for many years, this was a very respectable way for Xenoblade to bow out. It definitely capped off its bandwagon with a good showing, and you can't ask for much better than that from a game that was clearly never going to be on par with the contenders. And make sure you all buy Xenoblade Remastered! ## Ctes's Analysis Except for the Breath of the Wild matches, this was the least exciting match of the second chance challenge. Not a single serious bracket had the winner of division 4 beating the winner of division 3. It doesn’t matter what permutation of Ultimate, Odyssey, P4G and Xenoblade we had today, the upper game would win easily and prepare itself for the biggest SFF slaughter in a long time. Xenoblade did better than we expected of it though, about 3%. It’s definitely better than almost all of us gave it credit for before the contest, but I think it got a bit too much credit today. I’ve praised the game a lot this contest and I personally love it, but let’s take a step back here. The idea was that Ultimate SFF’d Xenoblade today and therefore Xenoblade was likely better than this indirectly. An idea which I’m not personally a huge fan of, because that doesn’t really consider the bandwagon Xenoblade was on at this point quite enough. No matter the size of whatever bandwagon Xenoblade might have had already, it certainly was on one now. Xenoblade getting to this point of the contest was the biggest surprise judged by prediction percentage by a good amount. That’s the main material used for making a bandwagon. This reminds me a lot of the Mario vs Charizard match 10 years ago where Mario won by a good bit below 55-45 because Charizard was on a huge bandwagon by that point and had used a game release to each that point. It’s a good comparison because except for L-Block, Draven and Undertale matches, Charizard winning a 1/8 final match is the only match ever to have a lower prediction percentage than Xenoblade going so. Back then everyone knew Mario would have beat Charizard by more than that under normal circumstances. People didn’t exactly discard the idea of Xenoblade being on a bandwagon as much as they didn’t believe it mattered more than SFF. At least many felt that way. I disagree with this and I believe the stats overestimates Xenoblade because of it. Why are were so sure that there was SFF here again? I’m sure it’s partly so that some part of the x-stats look better, like Three Houses being better than Awakening for instance, but they’re covered up by layers of rallies and SFF matches on top of the uncertainties that come with it to begin with. Regardless of how you adjust here, something will look weird. It’s like that when we’re this late in the contest. Fixing one thing here will just break something else. Instead of looking at the x-stats, I’ll look at this match in itself and say I just don’t really think Ultimate would SFF Xenoblade by much if any amount. Sure, Xenoblade is a Nintendo game represented in Smash the Nintendo hierarchy doesn’t reach that far out. It’s mostly the first party titles and characters that work that way and even those can divert from the norm. What’s mostly consistent is the SFF between the strongest Zelda, Smash and Mario things. Metroid is often like that too but has shown resistance before. Let’s bring up that Mario vs. Charizard match again. Does anyone think that had SFF? Pokemon has often been immune to Nintendo SFF. I don’t see why Xenoblade should be all too much different. At the very least, we should be open to the possibility. In any case, it’ll be very interesting to see Xenoblade back in the contests in the future. It was a lot stronger this time and next time it will have a Switch release to help it as well. It’s definitely the biggest outlier in our top 8 games, but division 4 was almost certainly going to be the division to give us that from the start. Cheers to Game of the Year 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016 and soon 2020. ## Safer777's Analysis So 2 Nintendo games here and we all know the hierarchy. XC star of the contest obviously. I don't think anybody disagrees with that. Nobody expected to do that good. One of the lowest percentages winning division finalists ever too. At least for a non rally, non multi way matches. Yeah XC was beasting in this contest. So for the match. Well obviously Smash won BUT XC did better than expected. Very few expected to go above 40 and yet it did managed to do just that. I think the future is looking good for the contests for XC because I am sure that something new has been announced for the series so it only can become stronger. Plus how many people before the contest had it reaching this far? Like 6% only. And I think like 2 Board 8 people had it reach thus far. Still nice results for XC! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8036&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=122) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (1)Persona 5 2020 _source: (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (1)Persona 5 2020 (revid 88577)_ ## Results **Quarterfinals** Sunday, May 10, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 123 - **Match Date:** Sunday, May 10, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Witcher 3 - 56.03% 44 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Witcher 3 - 39.23% - **User Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 5249 Persona 5 - 3874 - **Anonymous Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 4711 Persona 5 - 3946 This match was a clash of the titans, because both games came into it firing on all cylinders and ready to go to war with anything. When this type of hype happens and the match is actually good, the potential for contest magic is there. These two games both flattened their divisions, so the only thing left was to jump into the octagon and fight to the death. And for a good little while, it looked like this would be the first match of this entire contest where something actually stared Geralt in the face and felt like fighting back. I honestly regret not making peace with the Persona faithful sooner, because you guys are legitimately a very lively, fun bunch. It's my own fault, really, because anyone should be able to go "oh well Sir Chris likes this so OBVIOUSLY it must be cool". Actually, check that, Chris likes World of Warcraft so this is invalid logic :p But seriously, waiting until Joker made it into Smash Bros to actually like Persona was super dumb. These games all have ridiculous board votes for a reason, and Persona 5 was *not* fucking around when this thing started. It had something absurd at the beginning like 80% of the vote, but such a thing did not last. Witcher brought it back almost immediately, and then we all figured this would be Witcher 3 vs Galaxy 2 all over again. It sort of was, but Persona 5 did not go gently into that good night. It raged. Raged against the dying of the light. And yes it's lame to go all Dylan Thomas in a PCA, but seriously, I need to find material *somewhere*. Round one was blowout city and had something like 3 good matches total, then the contest got good until the divisions were decided, and then it was back to blowout city. Puke. Persona 5 did not get swamped like Galaxy 2 did. It was able to keep this within 50 votes for almost half an hour, and at the 30 minute mark when it looked like Witcher 3 would go berserk, Persona hit us with a 20 vote update. "Hell yeah, we might have a match!" And *then* Persona 5 got swamped, but not in a godstomper kind of way. It went out with, all things considered, a respectable 57-43 loss. Witcher 3 in this contest was just on a completely different level from 126 out of 127 of its potential opponents, and there is no shame in going out as the first game to hold Witcher 3 under 60%. Persona will be back, and it will be stronger. That's just what this series does. ## Ctes's Analysis This match had been hyped a lot throughout the contest, a lot more than it should have. The Witcher 3 looked like a clear favorite to the finals every passing round, but Persona 5 proved to be strong and that’s all it needed to do for people to feel like it had a chance. Most people took The Witcher 3 to win rather easily, but Persona 5 had a vocal minority of people believing it could do this and a large group of people hoping it could. The fans are incredibly passionate about their game. A few times so passionate it annoyed me which is unusual, but at times it was borderline obnoxious. It seemed like Persona 5 could only do well. I see the franchise mentioned as the star of the contest often, and I mean, Persona 4 Golden impressed sure, but the fifth one? It did good, but when something does exactly like almost everyone expected you to every single round and that is completely in line with pre-contest expectations, then I’m not going to call that star of anything. The most annoying part was that it was praised every single round as if it exceeded any expectations. People were thinking it would be a challenge for Witcher 3 to get out of this match. Witcher 3 looked overly dominant every round and it was only enough for people to accept it was the favorite today despite, you know, being the guru favorite to win this match. You didn’t see Dark Souls or Skyrim treated that way. Witcher 3 won this match easily despite Persona 5 rallying a bit and the reaction was that Persona 5 looked so impressive going out despite not living up to the expectations of challenging Witcher 3 at all and looking like the weakest of the division winners in this half of the bracket. There were so many claims that both games here were better than the two in the next match and that this match would be closer than the semi-final. Being happy your favorite games does well and hoping they do better is everything these contests are about, and that’s cool, but let’s not go from there to acting like Persona 5 did anything we didn’t think it would. Alright, with that out of the way, let’s switch to positive thoughts. I hope you all know that I’m targeting a small but loud group here. Persona 5 deserves a lot of respect for how far it advanced the franchise and for how good a game it is. It’s pretty clearly a top 8 game in the bracket and that’s far from where it used to be. It has moved out of obscurity and placed itself as a top franchise with the latest game being a huge success. Now that aspect of it is impressive. The passionate fans made as big an attempt as they could. From when the match began, Persona 5 rallied full force. It looks to be around 600 votes give or take by the end of the match, but it seemed like full force at first. On top of that, Persona 5 has a fantastic board vote and Witcher 3 does not, so the opening minutes were entertaining. When the match opened, Persona 5 stormed out the gate leading big time and it kept the lead for a few minutes. Then they were tied basically the rest of the time until the freeze. Witcher 3 would gain next update, but after that it stood still for some updates. The board vote was definitely still in full effect. Witcher 3 made two decent jumps at the :30 and :35 updates, and it this point it seemed like the board vote and rally rush was over and that Witcher 3 would rise to heaven. I made that claim myself in the stats topic. The next thing that happened was the opposite. Persona 5 cut from 83 to 61 and suddenly I looked stupid lol. You can imagine you something like the stats topic reacted to such an upside judging by some of the earlier paragraphs here, I’m sure, but it looked like there was hope at that point if you thought the rallied could be kept up. Then Witcher 3 doubled its lead next update and that was the match. Witcher 3 rose a lot from there, especially once rallies stopped being effective and people realized victory for Persona 5 was out of the question. I’m excited to see the Persona games in future contests. I’m not sure there’s much point of anything before the fourth one returning. We had high expectations for the third one in 2015 and it completely failed to live up to them. Persona 5 especially will be fun to see in the regular field again. I really hope Atlus can keep up the level of quality. It’s impressive how large a jump they’ve done with every game up until now, hopefully that continues. ## Safer777's Analysis So this match was pretty much set on stone. There was a small chance that Persona 5 could do it because of a rally or because out of the 4 games we had in the semifinals, since we had 2 matches going on at the same time, 3 were WRPG's so Persona 5 was sticking out like a sore thumb. Alas it wasn't meant to be. So for the match. Witcher 3 had really no problems beating Persona 5 easily. In the 5 minute mark it was winning with around 51.3 and kept rising the whole match which is impressive. So yeah Witcher 3 dominated and it is not like Persona 5 is a slouch either. Still Persona series really did damn well in this contest. So yeah the series will keep rising. But man imagine when Witcher 4 comes out. They hyping will be out of this world. So yeah strong performance from Witcher 3 and it seems it is a lock for the finals. The game is damn popular and still reigns supreme in how a game should be made even though 5 years have passed after it has come out! For Persona series I don't need to say anything really. Both games did damn well, and P4G wasn't in this Round for like 110 votes. So yeah. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8037&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=123) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)Dark Souls vs (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 2020 _source: (1)Dark Souls vs (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 2020 (revid 88575)_ ## Results **Quarterfinals** Sunday, May 10, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Quarterfinal - **Match \#:** 124 - **Match Date:** Sunday, May 10, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Skyrim - 52.42% 38 for - 7 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Skyrim - 35.31% - **User Votes:** Dark Souls - 4345 Skyrim - 4781 - **Anonymous Votes:** Dark Souls - 4042 Skyrim - 4614 I *love* Skyrim, so don't take this writeup the wrong way, but it just kills me that Skyrim won this match. Had Dark Souls pulled this thing off, Ngamer64 wins the guru contest and I think the contest outright. There aren't many people who deserve a contest win more than that guy does, and I hope no one disagrees. On top of The Show, on top of his web site where he hosts the guru contest and the x-stats and the calculator we've come to all know and love, he's also done a TON of work on the Board 8 Wiki. I was really pulling for the dude hard, and.... damn. For a good long while, it looked like his gamble had a shot. Picking Dark Souls to beat Skyrim at this spot was such an intelligent pick. The other reason this match kills me is actual gaming preference. Before this writeup, some of you asked me to explain why I love Souls so much. Will do. I started gaming in the 80s on the NES, and most games were fucking *hard* back then, especially for a very young child. Zelda 1 and 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1 and 2, Mario 1 through 3, Crystalis, The Guardian Legend, a bunch of Mega Man games, Ghosts n Goblins, Yo Noid, Balloon Fight, Kid Icarus, Punch-Out, Contra, and even Battletoads. I beat all of those games as a kid, and probably some others I'm forgetting. I won't bore people with my story of growing older and games slowly becoming easier and easier and easier to the point where it was a joke. We've all lived that story by now. There were some hard games here and there, but nothing like the feeling of beating some absurd NES game as a kid. And then Demon's Souls came along. It was the first game I had played in a long, long time that brought me back to my childhood. It wasn't that I hadn't played good games or anything, but the experience of Demon's Souls almost had me lost for words. And then the damn motherload happened. I love Demon's Souls, and it did **nothing** to prepare me for how absurdly good Dark Souls is. Death matters? A huge interconnected world? Indirect storytelling? RPG elements and the game never actually gets easy? What the hell? I could wax poetic about the Souls series for literally years, so I will simply link to my review and move on: It's not my best work, but I've never updated it because I like to look back and see how far I've come as a writer over the years. The very short of it is Dark Souls is a once in a lifetime experience, defined a generation, and made me feel like a kid again. And by the way, those same words are used by everyone who loves Breath of the Wild. That game didn't flatten this contest by accident. It's a really, really, really good game. For those reasons and because I was rooting for NG so hard, this match murdered me personally in cold blood. But hey, there can only be one winner. When this thing started, Dark Souls was *right there*. The match was outright tied for what felt like forever, even though it was only 35 minutes. Then Skyrim won an update by 50, and that seemed like the end of the road for Dark Souls. But no, Dark Souls had to sit there and fight back before getting buried again. And then it fought back *again* before getting buried *again*. And then to make it even worse, Dark Souls looked like it was going to come back once and for all. It brought a 120 vote lead down to 40, so of course Skyrim buried it yet again, and Dark Souls fought back yet again. It was like watching an underdog in some sport fight their asses off even though they knew they were outmatched. When the poll got past 11, Skyrim finally decided to go "F this shit" and end this match, turning a 100 vote lead into 200 in all of 30 minutes, and after one final last gasp from Dark Souls, where our boy cashed all the souls in and made one final run at Paarthurnax, Alduin, and all 13 daedra, Dark Souls fell. Skyrim increased the percentage from 51% to 52 overnight, and that was that. It was an incredible first few hours, but Skyrim would ultimately win by almost 1500 votes. It was a wonderful match between two games I will be in love with for the rest of my life, but I just love Dark Souls that much more. This was also arguably the best match picture I've ever submitted, too. **PRAISE THE SUN!** I'd mention how Skyrim did well below what it needed to to match Witcher 3's performance, but I feel like that goes without saying at this point. Next round, we would finally get that match and see how it played out on screen. By the way, here are the seeding matchups for the final eight, presented without comment: -1 vs 1 -1 vs 3 -1 vs 1 -1 vs 1 ## Ctes's Analysis The final interesting match of the contest. Dark Souls pulling off the upset here had been hyped for a long time. First it was clear that Skyrim wasn’t getting past Witcher, but then it looked like it might not even get past here for a while. If Skyrim didn’t tear apart Pokemon HGSS like it did, Dark Souls might have been the favorite today, at least it would have had more supporters I think. It did still have people supporting it and I doubt people felt safe picking Skyrim. The match delivered for a while. Dark Souls and Skyrim have both had pretty awful board votes, although Dark Souls did better against Metal Gear Solid V and The Last of Us. It would be interesting to see which game had the worst one. Skyirm was the safe bet because it a lot more throughout the day than Dark Souls did, but only time would tell. The match was basically tied for the first five minutes. Next update Skyrim jumped up to a 51-vote lead in what could have been in, but Dark Souls had a lot more fight in it. Dark Souls that back all the way down to 15 and then they stayed there for a bit. The lead would at no point change, but Dark Souls made a push that made it seem like it would a lot of times. Skyrim quickly rose to near 100, but Dark Souls cut it down to near 50 again. Skyrim takes it all back and more in a single update and Dark Souls cuts most of it away again. That was basically the match. It took Skyrim more than three hours to finally take off, until then Dark Souls kept the lead below 100 for a long time. If the Persona 5 rallies mattered, they were probably in favor of Dark Souls, but it’s hard to tell due to the rallies being the most affective in Skyrim’s worst hours. Skyrim interestingly took off the quickest with the morning vote. The match ended up being fairly close, but Dark Souls didn’t really ever manage to make a match of it despite giving hope a few times in the first hours. This match eliminated the COVlD-19 guru bracket, which had eliminated lots of people and would win if Dark Souls could reach the finals. It was later revealed to be made by Polycosm, who managed to make a better bracket with the alt despite having Skyrim winning today in his own one. There were talks about whether entering twice should have any punishment, because it’s not actually allowed. Poly hadn’t imagined the alt would be one of the last brackets standing, it ended up getting more attention than anticipated. I don’t think anything should be done about it, other than declaring second place the winner had the alt actually won. As long as it doesn’t become a thing, it was fine for once, it entertained a lot of us. It would also be today that it was perfectly clear azuarc would win since the last three matches really weren’t in much doubt. Skyrim would end up redeeming itself a whole lot and do as thought of it, although nothing to do about The Witcher 3 being leagues ahead of what was expected of it. Dark Souls also looks very good here, even if it didn’t win. It’s hard to determine exactly how it would compete with the big Switch games not named Zelda, but it certainly proved that its seeding was deserved. The game had come a long way, had major influence on the decade as a whole and is just really good. Respected by casuals and hardcore gamers alike, it would not only do well itself, but FromSoftware looks really good and hopefully they keep the pace up. Dark Souls will be fun to see back in a regular contest because it’s a lot stronger than 2015 indicates, hopefully the contest title didn’t do too much of that! ## Safer777's Analysis Now this match was strange. The whole Crew went with Skyrim too but everyone said that Dark Souls could do it too. We all though that too. Skyrim was the favorite but Dark Souls winning would be not suprising too. I mean we all understand that Skyrim has gotten weaker and it makes sense because it is a 9 years old game and we still don't even have anything new Elder Scrolls after all this time! Come on! And Dark Souls is the game that created the get good meme AND the souls like term so 2 of the big gaming things at once! Damn! Also Skyrim is THE open world game. Sure Witcher 3 might look more impressive BUT Skyrim doesn't have a main protagonist so you can really roleplay there. Plus man there have to be like 500.000 mods for that game and the game is constantly in Top 10 played games in Steam and is in Top 3 in this site all these 9 years. Plus I think it is every console ever made? So yeah Skyrim is still really damn popular. So for the match. Suprise the match was really close! In fact in the first 30 minutes we even had Dark Souls winning by a bit too! Both games were around 49.5-50.5 for the first 3 hours with Skyrim barelly winning. So yeah we had a match. BUT after the first 3 hours Skyrim just took off and never looked back. Sure we had a few cuts here and there but at the end Dark Souls couldn't do it. Still I would NEVER expected that before contest for Dark Souls to be that close to Skyrim. A combination of Dark Souls having gained in power and Skyrim dropped in power. Still Skyrim did it at the end so that is all that matters. Seems Dark Souls got an arrow to the knee! See what I did there? Eh? Yeah that was stupid. But anyways seems Skyrim can't beat Witcher 3 like that but eh what can you do? Still before contest it was the favorite game to beat Witcher 3 and now is the underdog. Funny how things change. Also in this Round Witcher 3 FINALLY surpassed Skyrim in correct prediction percentage so it seems a lot of people had Dark Souls reaching the Semifinals. Crazy. What I mean is that in all Rounds before this one BOTW was 1st in Correct Prediction Percentage, Skyrim was 2nd and Witcher 3 was 3rd. BUT now it seems that Skyrim and Witcher 3 reversed places. Strange how more people had Witcher 3 reaching the semifinals match than Skyrim. People believed in Dark Souls a lot it seems. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8038&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=124) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 2020 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (1)Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 2020 (revid 88654)_ ## Results **Semifinals** Monday, May 11, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Semifinal - **Match \#:** 125 - **Match Date:** Monday, May 11, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 64.13% 46 for - 1 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 48.81% - **User Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 6316 Smash Bros. Ultimate - 3133 - **Anonymous Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 5571 Smash Bros. Ultimate - 2395 "That was the update of the contest." -Yoblazer33 I don't think I've ever based an entire writeup around one update, but it's kind of justified here. All of us knew Zelda would flatten Smash Bros in this match, and though it sucked to see these two locked in for a semifinal path when the bracket came out, seeing this match happen live made the placement make sense. This thing as a final would have blew. Believe it or not, this match was under a 60-40 at the freeze! Smash was getting some love, maybe Zelda was getting anti-voted for being the obvious winner, who really knows. It was a 98 vote lead for Zelda at the freeze, and maybe, just maybe, this would be a reasonable semifinal. And then Zelda goes "okay that's cute, thanks for playing buddy", increases from 98 to **255**, and that was that. See you next time, Smash. You had a great run, but Zelda is a whole different animal. It was also nice seeing the Smash fans get what they deserve, I'm not gonna lie. It isn't often that semifinals have blowouts like this. Originally I was going to bring up the list of every semifinal match 60-40 and above, but I think pulling up the ones to finish 65-35 or over paints a much better picture of how hard it is to do what Zelda did here. A similar pattern emerges. Respect **The LAW**. ## Ctes's Analysis This is the sixth out of seven rounds and Breath of the Wild has still managed to double everything in its path so far. Granted, this is a bad case of SFF, but it still just shows how absolutely dominant Breath of the Wild is. We’ve seen Ocarina of Time brutally kill other Nintendo games in similar fashion before, so it shouldn’t be a huge surprise to anyone, even if we did predict the match a bit lower than this. For our first solo match of the day, it’s rather anti-climactic and the prediction percentage is sky high for a semi-final. Breath of the Wild had started being hurt by its own popularity at this point. The power hour was by huge lengths its worst time of the day. I mean, Smash usually has a good time there, but this was rather insane. Ultimate was above 40% the whole time until the freeze happened, then it lost almost 5% the next update. It continued to decline the whole day until Breath of the Wild was well above the doubling. It’s incredible to think this was somehow the “worst” performance for our contest winner so far. Breath of the Wild has the anti-votes, but it also has the votes from the people who look at the contest title. Ultimate is such a huge game, but when people read “Game of the Decade”, they think of what games have been inspirational and innovative while simultaneously being top quality. Ultimate is only the latter of those things. It’s why it’s performances haven’t looked as dominating as you could expect. I’m sure it doesn’t do as badly as this under normal circumstances ether. Ultimate absolutely deserves to be here though. It doesn’t matter that it didn’t win as many awards, it’s a popularity contest first and foremost and Ultimate is just really good. I don’t think we’re appreciating quite enough what we have right now. The everyone is here deal is huge, we might never see a game be such a huge celebration of gaming again and I’m sure it’s part of the reason Sakurai is doing a second fighters pass, other than simply being forced to do it. Let’s get as many things into this game as possible, we might never have them all together again. A game that makes us fight as Mario, Link, Samus, Pikachu, Snake, Cloud, Sonic, Mega Man, Pac-Man, Bayonetta, Joker, Banjo & Kazooie, Simon Belmont, Ryu, Dragon Quest Hero, Terry Bogard and every other Nintendo character you can think of on top of the ones I mentioned sounds like something out of impossible not too long ago. Remember how crazy everyone went when Snake was released. People have run out of real suggestions for Nintendo characters at this point and that company has been with us for the lifetime of the industry. The roster is insane, let’s appreciate that. It wouldn’t be good on that alone, of course. The game has basically perfected what it is, and that’s a huge part of the reason why it’s not as innovative as the rest of the games getting far in ther bracket. Melee was still the biggest competitive scene when Smash 4 was the most recent one, that’s no longer the case, Ultimate surpassed it. The game sold phenomenally too. It’s one of the most perfect games for what it’s trying to be. ## Safer777's Analysis Do I need to say anything here? BOTW against a Nintendo non Zelda game. Hierarchy to the maximum here. BOTW would win with at least a doubling everyone predicted and yeah it makes sense. I mean what else could happen here? Even though Ultimate is the 2nd strongest Smash game(at least I think so)it stood no chance here. I mean it couldn't even avoid a doubling here. Damn it man. I know BOTW is really good but seriously we are talking about Ultimate the best selling fighthing game of all time plus everyone likes it. But well Hierarchy once again. So for the match. Well BOTW won with above a doubling. In a semifinal match. At least Smash barely did better than ME 2 against BOTW so that is something I guess. So yeah. What else to say? I guess only really weak Zelda games don't stand to hierarchy but then again I guess this is the same with all series. They all have weak games once in a while. The only good thing I can say is that BOTW will not be the most dominant winner ever since in Years contest 1998 won the final match with the doubling but that can't be done here. So there you go. Oh and if you don't know what Hierarchy is, here it goes:Zelda\>Smash\>Mario\>Xenoblade\>Fire Emblem. So that is. But once again when we see a Semifinal match where the winner scores above a doubling...It has happened a few times before and ALWAYS it has something to do with a Zelda game/character. Too strong! ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8039&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=125) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 2020 _source: (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt vs (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 2020 (revid 88655)_ ## Results **Semifinals** Tuesday, May 12, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Semifinal - **Match \#:** 126 - **Match Date:** Tuesday, May 12, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** The Witcher 3 - 55.68% 45 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** The Witcher 3 - 21.57% - **User Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 4880 Skyrim - 4173 - **Anonymous Votes:** The Witcher 3 - 4691 Skyrim - 3383 The time had finally come for Witcher 3 to go out there and prove what it had shown us all contest -- it was a stronger game than Skyrim. I said pre-contest that the only way for Witcher 3 to win this match is for all of the following to be true: -Witcher 3 had to boost from Netflix -Witcher 3 had to boost from the respect factor due to this contest's title -Witcher 3 had to overcome a potential disparity in the Western RPG fanbase, which is fairly tight-knit about what they like -Witcher 3 had to boost from the Switch port more than Skyrim -Skyrim had to have a Bethesda deboost due to the company acting like a bunch of idiots All five of this happening seemed unlikely to me, which is why I picked Skyrim. And yet you can go right down the line: check, check, check, check, check, all with ease. Netflix was likely the biggest factor, but the other stuff all happened as well. Skyrim tried to make a show of it early, but it would find out the hard way that slow starts meant nothing for Witcher 3 in this contest. This thing was close for 30 minutes, and then.... swamped. Skyrim never stood a chance, and we all saw it coming for this entire contest. Three of the final four games in the field are open world RPGs, so it's fitting that this contest would be decided by Breath of the Wild, Skyrim, and Witcher 3. Skyrim may have lost this match with ease, but I don't think it takes away from how well Skyrim did in this contest -- being weaker than Witcher 3 doesn't mean it did badly -- and it certainly doesn't mean Skyrim didn't leave a lasting legacy on gaming. For a lot of people, Skyrim opened the door to the world of open world gaming, and I don't give a toss what anyone says or how games did things better later; Skyrim is an all-time great game. I know it's cool for the internet to hate on it and all, but I don't care. Skyrim deserves every amount of the love it got when it came out, and I hope people aren't holding Bethesda against it. This would set up the final that we all saw coming right from round one. Zelda versus Witcher 3. ## Ctes's Analysis The very hot upset pick which looked to be the favorite since the first round and grew basically every round since then finally happened. As it looked like, The Witcher 3 would have little trouble beating Skyrim to secure its spot in the final match of the contest, a feature it by all means deserved to achieve. The match was never truly in doubt, but both games today had had significantly bad board votes up until this point for whatever reason. On top of the fight for the spot in the finals, they’d also fight for who had the worse board vote. It turned out Witcher 3 won both of those. Skyrim lead for a very short moment, but Witcher 3 couldn’t close the match at first. It was only 15 votes ahead at the freeze and Skyrim managed to cut that down to 6 at the next update. Witcher 3 pulled that up to 13 again and then basically doubled its lead for a couple of updates as it rose to the easy victory we all thought it would have. It surprises me that Witcher 3 has such an awful board vote that it could do to Skyrim what Skyrim had done so far. It’s pretty clear to me that the board has a lot more respect for Witcher 3 than for Skyrim and while most of us favored Skyrim before the contest, I’m sure everyone had Witcher 3 in their second chance bracket, which would be the one alive at this point. A lot of us went perfect there. I suppose Witcher 3 does best in Europe, but even so, this seems weird to me. There’s a possibility that Witcher 3 SFF’d Skyrim a bit here. They’re both from the same genre and played by the same people where Witcher 3 is viewed as having evolved on a lot of things Skyrim did. Skyrim is already third in the x-stats before that SFF so it certainly ended up looking better than it seemed at first. Ultimate and Super Mario Odyssey were SFF’d to a point where we can’t tell how they’d do against Skyrim, but we thought that before the contest too. In the end, Skyrim managed to look basically as good as most of us thought, it’s just that Witcher 3 boosted from a variety of different things. The Bethesda anti-voting exists, but it seems minimal enough, I suppose it doesn’t hurt Skyirm a lot. It wasn’t an issue then. It’s no coincidence that the Game of the 2010s came down to these two open-world games facing another open-world game. Breath of the Wild, Witcher 3 and Skyrim are the pinnacle of a genre that has largely dominated this decade. Not only has the most popular games been huge overworld games you can spend hundreds of hours in, games have been criticized for being linear more than ever before. Skyrim deserves a lot of that praise. Maybe it isn’t the best of the genre at the end of the decade, but it sure influenced it the most. Open world games would not have been as big today if Skyrim hadn’t existed, that’s for sure. It could only underperform relative to expectations this contest, but perhaps next contest it will be an underdog instead and can surprise us. It’s impossible to tell if we’ll know more of the next Elder Scrolls game then, but we’ll certainly see Skyrim again. ## Safer777's Analysis This is it. The true final match. Yeah okay there was a final after that but let's be real, the instant the bracket appeared there were only 2 things that everyone knew. BOTW would win and the contest winner would be the one that correctly predicted the winner of Witcher VS Skyrim. These were the obvious things, barring a rally of course since well nobody can predict rallies. Now before the contest Skyrim was the favorite for like 7-3 against Witcher but when we reached this match Witcher 3 was the favorite for like 10-0. Yeah things changed a bit eh? Okay first things first. Both of these games are amazing and they are really top tier and they both REALLY deserve GOTD title. In fact I think Watch Mojo did a top 10 of best games of decade a few days before this match and the top 3 games they chose were BOTW, Witcher 3 and Skyrim. So yeah. Even on this site we reached the same consensus. Skyrim came out in 2011 and man oh man. It was HUGELY popular. I mean like everyone played and liked the game and the memes. Man the memes. How many are there? In fact the most famous ones, the one about an arrow, has appeared even in TV shows and a lot of other places. After that Skyrim ported to EVERY console that has ever been made. Seriously, if something can play Skyrim you bet your ass Skyrim has been ported there. Even now it is in top 10 most played games on Steam and even on this site it is constantly in Top 3. So yeah really popular. Plus the mods. An infinite amount of them. But one thing that Skyrim does better than everything else is roleplay. What I mean is there isn't a predetermined character there so you can put any race you like and any gender you like and do what you like. Kill everything, save everything, be a saint, be a devil or whatever. So yeah Skyrim is amazing. HOWEVER the story and characters aren't really memorable. I mean I know this is the nature of the game but still. So for Witcher 3. This game. Oh man. Okay it is amazing. You should play it. Witcher 3 is in a lot of systems too, but not as many as Skyrim. It came out in 2015 and it blew everyone out of the water. Geralt, the main character, is amazing. The setting is amazing. The characters are amazing. Witcher 3 does the story and the characters MUCH better than Skyrim since well everyone is established and has a unique personality. Seems fair since well there are so many books and novels and we are at the 3rd main game so it does makes sense right? But it is not just that. Even the sidequests are amazing. Plus it has 2 expansions which are bigger than most modern video games. Yeah even the expansions are amazing. Plus in a lot of quests your answers do affect the outcome and even the ending. HOWEVER you can't be a really bad guy in this one. You can't for example go and kill everyone since Geralt isn't like that. But that doesn't really matter anyways in the grand scheme of things. So yeah both games are amazing and you should play them. I mean if you haven't played them you can't trully call yourself a gamer. So for the match. Witcher 3 won easily with above 55. But why this happened when in pre contest Skyrim was the favorite? Well as I said Skyrim is really popular BUT we haven't heard ANYTHING about a new Elder Scrolls game since 9 years. We have 5 main Elder Scrolls games by now and the previous longest release between 2 main games was 6 years. Now we are at 9 years and we don't even have a release date for the 6th one! I know that since 5 is damn popular they aren't in a hurry to make a new one but still. People always want new games from established franchises. It makes sense. Okay we do have a MMORPG but nobody cares for this. Single player it is where it is. So yeah obviously people care less and less for Skyrim each year since I mean how long can you play it and care for it? Just give us the next one already. Now you may say Witcher 3 is 5 years old so it is now like it is new too right? Yeah BUT here is the thing. They DID announced a new game where everyone says that it is the Witcher 4! Probably. Okay maybe? Nobody knows that. BUT even without that there was an event a few months ago that REALLY boosted Witcher popularity. There was a Neflix series for Witcher and man oh man. Netflix said that this series was their most successful series of all time and broke all kind of records. I have watched that too and yeah it is amazing. There are only 2 problems with the series, Geralt doesn't use the Signs much and the timeline is wonky if you don't really know the series. But other than that it is amazing. When the series premiered the people that played Witcher 3 on Steam were MORE than when the game first came out. Yeah the series really helped the games and now Witcher is mainstream and a lot of people know at least the basics. So that is it won easily. More relevant. Plus Witcher games are from a non American company that have never done anything shady and are against micro transactions and everyone loves them. Seriously I haven't seen anyone saying anything bad about them. Elder Scrolls game are from an American company that was respected and well liked but after Fallout 76 everyone hates them or at least doesn't like them. Oh and they LOVE microtransactions and shady practices. I mean paid mods! My favorite! So a combination of all these made Witcher 3 winning easily. Still as I said Skyrim is strong but as time passes less and less relevant. Amazing victory for Witcher 3 of course. TLDR version. Witcher 3 had a HUGE Netflix Boost Show(seriously MORE people played Witcher 3 on Steam AS the show was going one than people played the game when it first came out! If you know your stuff a game is ALWAYS played more when it first comes out). Both are open world games but Witcher 3 does the story and characters better. Plus people hate Bethesda(including me)for not announcing new Single Player Fallout and Elder Scrolls games and the whole fiasco with Fallout 76. And even though Skyrim is played a lot it is less relevant now than Witcher 3 for sure. EVERYONE loves the developer, CD Projekt Red, of Witcher 3. Not only it became the BIGGEST video game company in Europe BUT NOBODY has anything bad to say about them. Seriously. They NEVER do do any bad things, no microtransactions, no shady practises, nothing. Just making good games! Yeah apparently it still happens! Seriously. So yeah. A combination of all these things.  ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8040&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=126) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 2020 _source: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (1)The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 2020 (revid 88656)_ ## Results **Finals** Wednesday, May 13, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Contest Final - **Match \#:** 127 - **Match Date:** Wednesday, May 13, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 59.87% 51 for - 2 against - **GameFAQs Prediction:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 37.14% - **User Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 5877 The Witcher 3 - 4131 - **Anonymous Votes:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 5296 The Witcher 3 - 5184 Simply because I feel like posting one final list, here is every tournament final we've ever had. I'm cheating with a couple contests, but so what? No real reason. Just felt like pulling this all up. Final matches are generally boring, if not screwey. Very, very few of these matches have been any good, and usually by this point we already know what's winning the contest -- even in years where the winner is out of left field. Undertale and Draven stick out, but when going through those contests live we knew what was coming. In this final, we all knew Breath of the Wild was going to cap off its run with a win -- only final percentages mattered. When the poll first started it looked like Zelda was going to deliver another giga-beating and deliver a swift 60-40 asswhipping to Witcher 3. 60-40 in a final, if you look at the list here, is a *huge* blowout. It's very hard to get much better than that in the finals of a contest. But once Witcher 3 weathered the early storm for a few hours, it did the unthinkable. No, it didn't win the match or come close -- but it *did* make Breath of the Wild look human, which hadn't happened in this contest even once to this point. "Even a god-king can bleed." -redrocket With the assistance of Europe and the fanbase *rallying their balls off*, Witcher 3 was able to turn a 60-40 blowout into a very, very respectable loss of 56-44. Breath of the Wild proved itself at or close to Ocarina of Time's strength for this entire contest, and Witcher 3 actually made it look mortal. I know the fans of Witcher were upset, but this is legitimately an amazing accomplishment. As a random side note, the Witcher series just passed 50 million units sold after only three games. To put that in perspective, it took the Resident Evil series 683 games to get 100 million in sales. All that said, this contest was the Breath of the Wild Invitational, and though a lot of people are tired of Zelda always winning contests, that sentiment tends to not be there as much when something gets to win for the first time. People were happy about Link in 2002. People were happy about Majora's Mask. People were happy about Breath of the Wild. Hell, people were even happy about Ocarina in 2009. It was such a mismatch though compared to the rest of the field that I can't wait to see this thing up against some 90s games. The obvious duel we need to have is Breath vs Ocarina, but I would also love to see it against Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 7, Link to the Past, Pokemon. and so on. All in all, this was a decent enough contest, though the vote totals blew. There was just one more thing to take care of... bonus match! ## Ctes's Analysis The final match of Game of the Decade II came down to this: Aside from such things, the final match of these contests is very rarely exciting, and this is no different. I don’t mind though, as long as the rest of the contest has been good, this is just another match. Breath of the Wild was absolutely never going to drop this match. The result you see is performed by Witcher 3 on steroids. Maybe it could’ve pulled something similar off in any losing match today, I don’t know, it didn’t in 2015, but I’m willing to bet making the final match helped. It’s easier to rally for the final of a contest than anything else. Witcher 3 rallied perhaps more than any other game has done in the contest. It could have flipped a lot of matches. Who knows how it would have went if these two were closer on natural strength. Breath of the Wild could probably counter and the match would have been very different. As it was, Breath of the Wild was never in danger. Let’s just try to put things in perspective here. The Witcher 3 had just shown that it would lose the board vote against even Skyrim, but Breath of the Wild is also pretty bad with the board vote. Any obvious winner to the contest is. Link himself does notoriously bad in the opening minutes because we’re so tired of seeing him in these contests. It’s hard to tell what won the board vote today, obviously, but I’d honestly bet most of the board wanted Witcher 3 to win despite how bad it looked until now. It’s entirely possible it didn’t favor any of them in particular. In any base, Breath of the Wild was close to 60% at first and went well above it a bit after the freeze, which does suggest the typical early vote boost for the non-favorite. Then look at where the match ended. Witcher 3 did everything it could to make a match of this, rallying as hard as it could. There were few cuts and stalls, but the lead never stopped growing on the large scale. Witcher 3 teared percentage apart though, especially in the night hours where Europe matters the most. The game is from Poland and it shows. It’s a lot bigger there than in NA where Breath of the Wild won big. It’s difficult to determine if Witcher 3 is the second strongest game in the bracket before rallying but it absolutely is with them. Breath of the Wild got almost 68% on Ultimate with SFF. Breath of the Wild looked to get well above 60% before all the Witcher rallying, but the Europe hours would have obviously still happened. If Witcher 3 also boosted from being in the final, then it looks pretty close to Ultimate. It’s a shame we didn’t get a third place bonus match, it would’ve taught us a bit. We would need a direct match to figure this out, but it’s for certain that Witcher 3 wins the match, it’s probably a lot easier to rally for and even a small one could do the difference. No one noticed initially because we just click on our favorite game and vote, but when you clicked on one of the games, but didn’t finalize your vote yet, the moon from Majora’s mask would hover over the picture of the game you didn’t pick. Allen had to come into the stats topic and tell us, but it was a really cool little Easter egg which teased the bonus match. The Witcher 3 did lose today, but it is without a doubt the star of the contest in my eyes. I don’t see how it could be anything else really, unless you want to pick Breath of the Wild for being even more dominant than we thought, but everyone knew it would have an easy time. Witcher 3 wasn’t even favored to get this far. Not only did it manage to get here, it creamed all competition, completely neglected rallying against it and then blasted a very successful rally out itself. It’s almost definitely the strongest Western game on the site, that wasn’t exactly a big feature before this decade. I’ve seen people suggest it as a top 10 game overall, that’s probably a good bit too much, but it’s high up there for sure, and could possibly rally its way to top 10 given the right circumstances. Breath of the Wild is a good contender for most predictable contest winner yet, though it has been a lock many times before. In the end it let something get closer to it than Link did in 2018, but he also didn’t have this big a rally against him. It has not been in doubt what would win this contest at any point since Breath of the Wild released in 2017 and I’m sure people expected it even before it came out. A lot of that has to do with the fact that it’s a Zelda game of course. Majora’s Mask clearly shouldn’t have the best game in the field in 2010 but won the contest regardless. Zelda is that dominant here. It’s more dominant now than ever through a mix of releasing a game this well received again 19 years after Ocarina and Time and the only things that could rival the Zelda franchise declining due to lack of relevance. We can hope, but I seriously doubt that a well liked remake of the first 10% of Final Fantasy VII is going to come close to closing that gap. Breath of the Wild did not only win because it’s a Zelda game though, while it certainly helped its case I’m sure. This decade it’s not just us, it’s generally accepted as the best of the decade. Take a look here: Breath of the Wild did significantly better than anything else on average. It’s incredible how well received the game is. The Legend of Zelda is not big here for no reason and Breath of the Wild reminded us all that. It’s not universally liked obviously, but nothing really is. The people against it are a vocal minority. It’s hard to deny how big a game it is and it absolutely deserves its title. Congratulations! ## Safer777's Analysis This is. The Final Match. After all this time it came down to this. Who would win? Okay let's be real from Day 1 we all knew BOTW would win barring a rally. So the only question was which game would be here. Most had either Skyrim or Witcher 3. As I said in my previous analysis, Witcher is damn popular now and had no trouble against Skyrim. So we all thought how it would do here. The Crew had BOTW winning with around 58 and most people that BOTW would win with around 60 too. But as you can see this didn't happened. So for the match. Witcher managed to score above 44 which to tell the truth nobody expected this high. I had BOTW winning with around 60 too. So yeah Witcher 3 did really good here. I would like for it to score above 45 but hey. Also one curious result. BOTW in USA had around 60 but in UK around 45! In fact in most countries Witcher 3 did won. So yeah Americans REALLY like Nintendo. I am not sure why. Sure Nintendo did really well with NES back in the day but decades have passed since then. And yeah their first party games always do well but still when people think which console to buy pretty sure they think either PS or Xbox and then a Nintendo console. At least here. I guess since Americans have more money than most they just buy everything? Eh whatever. So yeah. We all knew the winner but still it would be hilarious if another game had won. Now some said that the developers of Witcher would rally because they had it said back in 2015 but seriously, you think anyone would care for a contest in this site? The last time someone really cared was back in 2015. Sure we had some rallies too and some of them affected the results too but really small ones. Pretty sure the developers have you know anything else better to do. Also the final match had the most votes which is around 30.000. BUT don't be fooled the registered users have double votes. So it is closer to 20.000 actually which is amazing for this site too! I mean we started with 14.000 votes which is what we are used too. So it is true that the contest does bring people to this site and that is good I guess. Man I still remember when in some old contests even boring matches had like 80.000 votes. Still seems that the site is very slowly losing people but it can continue going on for a lot more years since us regulars we just can't leave. So anyways to recap congrats to BOTW and congrats to Witcher 3 too that kept fighthing untill the end. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8041&num=2) - [Oracle Match Results](http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=127) • **Previous Match**       • **Next Match** --- ## The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask vs The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2020 _source: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask vs The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2020 (revid 88657)_ ## Results **Bonus** Thursday, May 14, 2020 ## Ulti's Analysis - **Division:** Bonus - **Match \#:** 128 - **Match Date:** Thursday, May 14, 2020 - **Oracle Expectations:** Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 53.04% 27 for - 7 against This was the clear and obvious bonus poll to have for this contest, and good *lord* did Breath of the Wild show up. This was just a beating right from the jump, and Majora's Mask never stood a chance. A lot of people are calling this match SFF, but I'm not so sure. The Zelda series tends to not SFF itself. Here are some great examples: Those matches weren't SFF, so why does this bonus poll have to be? Because Majora's Mask got embarrassed? I truly think Breath of the Wild is just this good. All the evidence is there already. A crazy boost for Link two years ago. An even crazier boost for Zelda two years ago. The game having strength fit for the 90s, which is the decade this site is still stuck in. It's the new hotness. Everything lines up toward this being a legit match, and Zelda only really SFFs itself in fourways. But it's a bonus poll at the end of the day and these are all lighthearted, so who really knows. We definitely need another catch-all games contest with no gimmicks or BS to find out though. Just throw everything in a normal bracket of 128 and let it rip. I'm also very happy Allen didn't turn around and have a poll between Ocarina and Breath of the Wild. *That* match needs to happen with money on the line. And with that, another contest in the books! I guess we'll see you all in ten years when Game of the Decade 3 happens, assuming this place is still around then. ## Ctes's Analysis We would get a bonus match this contest, as we often but not always do. People had been asking for this one a while, so Allen was nice enough to provide it to us. It felt right. Game of the 2000s vs. Game of the 2010s. Typically, a match between two Zelda games, though interestingly, it’s the two Zelda games being mostly different from the rest of 3D games fighting today. We were given more picture fun, as picking Majora’s Mask would have the moon slowly covering Breath of the Wild just like in the final but picking Breath of the Wild would instead have a major cuckoo cover the Majora’s Mask picture. It’s nice to see Allen is still getting some fun out of these things. Breath of the Wild was the overwhelming favorite to win this match. Majora’s Mask was always a weird winner while Breath of the Wild was an obvious one. Even with all the Zelda-drones, Majora’s Mask probably loses that contest to Brawl if not for the active campaign against the latter. Look at how easily Breath of the Wild handled the Smash game of this decade. It looked pretty clear the whole contest that Breath of the Wild would be up there with the absolute best games and Majora’s Mask is unfortunately not quite there. At least not when Ocarina of Time is also in the field. It won easier than most anticipated though, making everything from the previous decade look very weak. It would do bad with the board vote once again but rise a good bit from there. When you remember the rest of the results Breath of the Wild had, then it’s clear enough Majora’s Mask is very good, and it’s clear that we had a weak field this decade aside from the very top. I could spend a good while praising the actual game, but let’s keep that for another time and stay on its contest strength here. Getting a percentage like this against Breath of the Wild is very good, and Majora’s Mask had all the SFF in the world to worry about. It’s probably not the worst beatsown since the games are far apart in time and are quite different considering they’re from the same series, but it’s SFF regardless. I’m also guessing that this being a Game of the 2010s bonus match with Breath of the Wild coming out fresh as the winner, it overperforms a little bit. This was the contest match that made sense, but Breath of the Wild against Ocarina of Time would’ve been a more interesting match. Most would probably pick Ocarina of Time there, but Breath of the Wild did come fresh off of winning a contest, so it might look really good. Breath of the Wild is basically the modern Ocarina of Time. The highly acclaimed Zelda game that is often regarded as the best of its time. Majora’s Mask was never that. On the other hand, it’s good that we’re saving Breath of the Wild versus the biggest games for an actual contest and not a bonus match, so it’s a good thing we didn’t see Ocarina of Time today. We’ve seen that the title of the contest has boosted games, but it looks like Breath of the Wild could be a top 5 game of all time here, which is impressive for a game that recent. Majora’s Mask it up there and Breath of the Wild beat it rather easily, while A Link to the Past struggled a bit beating it in SNES dominant contest. That suggest it’s better than that, but keep in mind 3D Zelda games likely SFF each other more than a 3D Zelda SFFs a 2D Zelda and that none of two had just won a contest back then. This match did what it was supposed to, make us excited for an eventual Best Game Ever IV where we get to see this mostly untested field against all our usual juggernauts. Contests are rare enough these days though and who knows what other ideas we need to get through first. ## External Links - [Match Updates](http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/drupal/node/22?matchnum=8090&num=2) • **Previous Match**      • **No Next Match**