LogFAQs > #939388495

Bust Analysis continued:

As for the game that didnt even follow its set path look man. I mentioned this in the 2014 write-up, but you cant, just CANT convince me that Undertale would have dropped its match with Octopath Traveler if it werent for its run in 2015. For every one GameFAQer that ended up playing it and enjoying it because of that contest, there were ten that were awash with anger that it beat Ocarina and Melee and Pokemon and god I dont even remember what else was fodderized by it. That contest was one of the catalysts of the the Undertale fanbase is toxic meme, and that image is another big reason why people would be inclined to antivote the game even if they had 0 awareness of our contest specifically.

Honestly, though? Is Undertales fanbase really THAT much more toxic than other high-profile games? Smash does extraordinarily well in our contests despite having perhaps the WORST fanbase of all time. What about the venomous intra-generation strife of the Pokemon and Final Fantasy fanbases? Do I even need to mention Sonic?

Ranting aside, with voters being forced to vote in all matches, you can bet your ass that many of those that hadnt played either game voted against Undertale on impulse. Mind you, this isnt to entirely excuse the games performance. It should have been strong enough that it could weather these antivotes, at least against fckin Octopath. It was an easy pick to win this fourpack, and Shovel Knight winning produced one of the lowest pick rates of the entire contest at around 18%. Whatever the reasons may be, Undertale burned a LOT of people, myself included. And as it turns out, none of those games could even dent Mario Odyssey, so all that drama didnt even produce an interesting result. Oh well.

Headliner Analysis:

But lets turn from a game that didnt get anywhere in bracket and was swiftly forgotten, to a game that did get somewhere, and caused a LOT of ruckus doing so.

People were not ready to be impressed by Bloodborne. Losing 55-45 to FFXII wasnt going to be swiftly forgotten, not by the experts. Unfortunately, sometimes our experts spend too much time with their noses in the numbers that they fail to look up and notice where the winds are blowing. A lot of what I said about Dark Souls rise applies to Bloodborne. While it doesnt have the same claim to innovation and influence that Dark Souls does, it has that same fantical following that preaches for it everywhere and anywhere they can, and many of them calling that style of game Soulsbourne has certainly helped the games profile. Its edge over Dark Souls is the fact that its exclusive, so not only do you have the Souls fans evangelizing for it, but you have Sony fanatics bandwagoning along with them.

It came into the contest with a shiny 2 seed and an opponent that was easy to flex on. Blops, as I mentioned in my 2010 write-up, was one of the more baffling inclusions in the bracket, possibly a result of Allen feeling that the best-selling series of the decade had to show up SOMEWHERE. It certainly got blown out like a game that didnt belong, with BB putting down a big dick 80% on its ass. This wasnt like the blowouts that were happening on the same day; DOOM putting 86% on INSIDE and RE2 pushing Danganronpa 2 down with 83% certainly looked incredible, but Bloodborne was putting a big number up on a game with an actual brand. Yah CoD attracts antivotes like no other, but its at least a game that people actually recognize, and Blops has some nostalgia going for it as one of the oldest games in bracket.

This was when people were alerted that Bloodborne was actually going to be a threat, a game that was gonna justify its seeding. I covered its match with Fire Emblem Awakening in my 2013 write-up, noting that if you hold FE constant, BB was around 8% stronger than it was in 2015. Incredibly in itself, but what started REALLY getting people nervous about their brackets was how even when it was in the lead, and comfortably at that, it mustered what turned out to be one of the meatier rallies of the contest. The thread that triggered the rally had gotten more than 700 upvotes, which Im fairly certain is the most upvotes any Reddit post about the contest had gotten (correct if Im wrong here, and no Im not counting hentai rallies).

And so, its match with RE2 was one of the biggest tossups of Round 3. Even if these games were perfectly matched, BB would end up having the edge thanks to its clear ability to rally votes. And so began the BEST match of the contest, bar none. This one was a real you had to be there moment. It was pretty much the only match where we were seeing regular lead changes, where neither game almost ever had a triple digit lead, where we well and truly could not pinpoint who was gonna stumble across the finish line. The Stats thread was in an uproar; a lot of the experts had figured RE2 would win this match pre-contest, and this was one of the only rallies that REALLY threatened to tank their brackets; as such, a LOT of anti-rally sentiment was popping up, and we had to have our weekly discussion about the merits of rallies. Personally? I like em. Even started a couple, with my P4G thread in r/Vita getting 300 upvotes, making it one of the bigger rally threads of the contest that wasnt hentai. Dont see how you can hate this decaying website getting a spotlight cast on it, I thought that was one of the points of these contests!

Not gonna poke that bear too much, though. What really made this a legendary bout is that these were two games a lot of people care deeply about. This wasnt Celeste and Rayman (both excellent games, mind), where a lot of people hadnt played either. RE2 and BB are big-time contenders, and even people who had one game in their brackets were cheering for their actual favorite to pull through. Hell, I was one of those people; I had RE2 winning, but Bloodborne pulling the upset would have been AMAZING.

Eventually, if my memory serves me correctly, the subreddit where the BB rallies were being posted banned those threads, and the user Moonroof claimed he could gather enough votes to put RE2 over the finish line. And well, RE2 did win with 88 votes, which was actually one of the biggest leads of the day. Whether he was bullshitting or not, the match did end with the games further apart than they spent most of the day being. Despite only making it to Round 3, which puts it behind a lot other headliners, Bloodborne made a splash this contest, no doubt about it. If the inevitable PS5 remaster has it run without the ridiculous frame stuttering, expect another 8% boost!

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