LogFAQs > #939805838

Contest Quarterfinal: (1)Dark Souls vs (1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

(1)Dark Souls - 12732 [47.32%]
(1)Skyrim - 14176 [52.68%]
Total Votes - 26908
Prediction Percentage - 35.31%

I ''love'' Skyrim, so don't take this writeup the wrong way, but it just kills me that Skyrim won this match. Had Dark Souls pulled this thing off, Ngamer64 wins the guru contest and I think the contest outright. There aren't many people who deserve a contest win more than that guy does, and I hope no one disagrees. On top of The Show, on top of his web site where he hosts the guru contest and the x-stats and the calculator we've come to all know and love, he's also done a TON of work on the Board 8 Wiki. I was really pulling for the dude hard, and.... damn. For a good long while, it looked like his gamble had a shot. Picking Dark Souls to beat Skyrim at this spot was such an intelligent pick.

The other reason this match kills me is actual gaming preference. Before this writeup, some of you asked me to explain why I love Souls so much. Will do. I started gaming in the 80s on the NES, and most games were fucking ''hard'' back then, especially for a very young child. Zelda 1 and 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1 and 2, Mario 1 through 3, Crystalis, The Guardian Legend, a bunch of Mega Man games, Ghosts n Goblins, Yo Noid, Balloon Fight, Kid Icarus, Punch-Out, Contra, and even Battletoads. I beat all of those games as a kid, and probably some others I'm forgetting. I won't bore people with my story of growing older and games slowly becoming easier and easier and easier to the point where it was a joke. We've all lived that story by now. There were some hard games here and there, but nothing like the feeling of beating some absurd NES game as a kid.

And then Demon's Souls came along. It was the first game I had played in a long, long time that brought me back to my childhood. It wasn't that I hadn't played good games or anything, but the experience of Demon's Souls almost had me lost for words.

And then the damn motherload happened. I love Demon's Souls, and it did '''nothing''' to prepare me for how absurdly good Dark Souls is. Death matters? A huge interconnected world? Indirect storytelling? RPG elements and the game never actually gets easy? What the hell? I could wax poetic about the Souls series for literally years, so I will simply link to my review and move on: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps3/606312-dark-souls/reviews/162813

It's not my best work, but I've never updated it because I like to look back and see how far I've come as a writer over the years. The very short of it is Dark Souls is a once in a lifetime experience, defined a generation, and made me feel like a kid again. And by the way, those same words are used by everyone who loves Breath of the Wild. That game didn't flatten this contest by accident. It's a really, really, really good game.

For those reasons and because I was rooting for NG so hard, this match murdered me personally in cold blood. But hey, there can only be one winner. When this thing started, Dark Souls was ''right there''. The match was outright tied for what felt like forever, even though it was only 35 minutes. Then Skyrim won an update by 50, and that seemed like the end of the road for Dark Souls.

But no, Dark Souls had to sit there and fight back before getting buried again. And then it fought back ''again'' before getting buried ''again''. And then to make it even worse, Dark Souls looked like it was going to come back once and for all. It brought a 120 vote lead down to 40, so of course Skyrim buried it yet again, and Dark Souls fought back yet again. It was like watching an underdog in some sport fight their asses off even though they knew they were outmatched.

When the poll got past 11, Skyrim finally decided to go "F this shit" and end this match, turning a 100 vote lead into 200 in all of 30 minutes, and after one final last gasp from Dark Souls, where our boy cashed all the souls in and made one final run at Paarthurnax, Alduin, and all 13 daedra, Dark Souls fell. Skyrim increased the percentage from 51% to 52 overnight, and that was that. It was an incredible first few hours, but Skyrim would ultimately win by almost 1500 votes.

It was a wonderful match between two games I will be in love with for the rest of my life, but I just love Dark Souls that much more. This was also arguably the best match picture I've ever submitted, too.

'''PRAISE THE SUN!'''

I'd mention how Skyrim did well below what it needed to to match Witcher 3's performance, but I feel like that goes without saying at this point. Next round, we would finally get that match and see how it played out on screen.

By the way, here are the seeding matchups for the final eight, presented without comment:

-1 vs 1
-1 vs 3
-1 vs 1
-1 vs 1

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