LogFAQs > #938722353

Match 114: Mass Effect 2 vs. Resident Evil 2

ME2 13236
RE2 11992

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!

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Also known as Cyberchao X.