LogFAQs > #936621386

Match 23: Devil May Cry 5 vs. Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze

DMC5 14856
DKTF 11020

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 of both of the fourway contests, 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.

Match 24: Super Mario Odyssey vs. Mortal Kombat 11

Odyssey 22245
MK11 3631

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!

---

Also known as Cyberchao X.