LogFAQs > #940015396

Round 2 Division 6 Day 22
Portal 2 62.36%
Kingdom Hearts III 37.64%

Prediction Percentage 50.55%

Kingdom Hearts III was a semi-popular upset pick taken by a good number of gurus. Kingdom Hearts has traditionally been stronger than Portal here and the third one was untested, as it did not appear in any Game of the Year polls. Portal also looked weaker in recent contests as it did a decade ago when it was a huge phenomenon everywhere. However, Kingdom Hearts III was not received too well for various reasons weve been through before. You had to hoping it could ride on its name to victory and that was always a longshot. We saw how well it worked out for the game thinking they had their own characters and didnt need Final Fantasy anywhere. Its the same thing here really, and besides, Portal is quite the name here as well. Oh, and I know thats not the main reason the game wasnt too well liked, but it all counts.

The first round definitely made Portal 2 look like the favorite today, as shown by very few oracles picking it. True enough, it had little trouble, though we underestimated it a good bit. Kingdom Hearts III did best with the board vote, surprisingly. Despite not being too well liked here either, we still appreciate the franchise as a whole it would seem, because we sure used to love Portal too. It was close for a few minutes. Then it was basically over, but if you believed Portal 2 had all the bracket votes, you might have still had hope at the freeze, because Portal couldnt really run away with it until that point. When the next update came it was pretty clear that Portal 2 was not going to break a sweat winning the match though.

I think at the end of the day, this wasnt really a matter of which franchise we think the best of a decade later, but just the games competing. Portal 2 was loved, and Kingdom Hearts III had a mixed reception. In a Game of the Decade setting, Portal 2 is still remembered despite being very early. The first Portal was good and did impressive last Game of the Decade too, but the second one took the good idea and really built upon it. I saw the name being brought up in many Game of the Decade discussions, it probably benefits a bit from the contest title, similar to what Mass Effect 2 seemed to do.

Portal 2 goes into the third round as the big favorite, although it depended on how much a boost you thought Animal Crossing. Kingdom Hearts ended up looking fine, but its a huge fall from grace. Both games were among the biggest games last decade. This one barely made it out in time to enter this and after so many years of waiting, it wasnt even that great. The future is not to bright for Kingdom Hearts. They pumped out handheld games and countless remasters up until the release of this game because it was hyped by the misleading title of it being a mainline Kingdom Hearts despite being a sequel to one of the handhelds that more casual fans probably thought of a spin-off. If they want to make up for this with another release in the future, they probably cant get people to buy everything again, because it wont be as anticipated. We might very well have seen the effective end of the franchise, but Kingdom Hearts II will probably continue to be a decent entry in these contests and Sora is probably still somewhat strong.

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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.