LogFAQs > #939335397

Round 1 Division 3 Day 6
Devil May Cry 5 57.41%
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze 42.59%

Prediction Percentage 70.37%

Im 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 didnt 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 its 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 Kongs 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 shouldnt 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 wasnt even close! Not that its a huge win, but for a debated match, its 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 doesnt 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, thats 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 didnt help it as much as it should. I still dont think its the full explanation. Ive 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 its 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 doesnt explain everything. Its still possible I suppose, but I think were left with Donkey Kong Country just being really bad, and that we clearly overestimated the strength of that franchise today because Donkey Kong isnt 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 doesnt mean his games are any better.

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Guinness Book of World Records is the name of the diary that belongs to azuarc, the winner of the Game of the Decade II guru contest.