LogFAQs > #939287911

Round 1 Division 3 Day 5
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 82.98%
Tekken 7 17.02%

Prediction Percentage 93.92%

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 Ultimates 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 dont think anyone here will deny that the Smash Bros franchise can boost things prerelease more than anything else. Weve seen characters clearly boosting significantly due to be revealed for Smash. Weve even seen that happen mid-contest before with Sonic being the key example. Even so, theres 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.

Theres also the argument that the site has shifted away from multiplayer games. While Smash has had good single player, its always a multiplayer game first and foremost. We dont really see games that are primarily multiplayer doing well here much anymore. Ultimate is considered a celebration of gaming more than its considered a fighting game by Mr. Sakurai himself, and theres 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 wouldnt 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 its also extremely unreliable. Tekken 7 is all the things we talked about before, so it doesnt 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 its 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 dont 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 its tough to conclude anything from, so wed just have to wait for now.

Lets 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 thats a perfect picture of how theyve 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 wouldnt be surprise if Tekken 7 was slightly stronger at least indirectly. We cant 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. Its far past its prime. Tekken 7 however is actually rather good! I wasnt a big fan of the story mode ending, but it wouldnt surprise me if I was in a small minority and story mode has never been Tekkens 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 wont rule out that the gap between those fighting games have closed!

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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.