Board 8 > ~*Ultimaterializer's Post-Contest Analysis!*~

(+) Yeah! (+)

Into the spiderverse and SOTC are both really good.

im not here to argue about it either lol, Ulti is in the HEAVY minority on this one. Taste is taste tho. I get it.

Warcraft 3 is also good, but not as good.

Into the Spider-verse is far from just a B8 darling, though I think I know what Ulti was going for there.

Of all newer blockbuster movies to be ripped to shreds though, would never have expected that one. I feel as if superhero movies that represent a popular character well end up becoming overly elevated though, see Joker.

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PostContestUlti posted...

I refuse to believe you people actually like Into the Spiderverse, Shadow of the Colossus, Umineko, and Snakes on a Plane as much as you say you do.

Indifferent on SotC (gorgeous game, shit controls), loved Spiderverse, went into Snakes on a Plane knowing it was gonna be bad, and Umineko's not my cup of tea. Just not into the whole visual novel thing.

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Never seen Spiderverse. Never played SotC because Ico sucked so much. Never played Umineko. Snakes on a Plane is really lousy.

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SOTC's controls I rarely had a problem with, but they do have a bit of a learning curve.

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Played/completed SOTC for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Really, really enjoyed it. Was a refreshing experience compared to the busy games I usually play. You can actually enjoy your surroundings without fear.

And I loved the fact that you can revisit the remains of the colossi you have slain

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https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/community/Ultima_X/contributions/reviews

Those are not all 1s and 10s, lmao

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I've written up through half of division 4's round 1. I'll give the guest speaker until 10 or 11 or so, if nothing happens I'll data dump.

Maybe we'll hear something before round 2! Here's hoping.

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Ulti is so right about Minecraft... it came out in 2009.

They should have let League of Legends in this.

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evidence

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It would've lost in round 1 anyways.

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so it should have been Minecraft Pocket

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SuperNiceDog posted...

Ulti is so right about Minecraft... it came out in 2009.

And to be clear here, your evidence is one slight Google search that specifically displays its initial release date, as opposed to its full official release date. As someone who's actually played Minecraft, the game came out in Alpha at that time, not as a full official release.

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PostContestUlti posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/community/Ultima_X/contributions/reviews

Those are not all 1s and 10s, lmao

ultis reviews are so weird

REmake: perfect

RE0: trash

like I know RE0 isnt great but its at least 3/5

RE0 is pretty bad.

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MetalmindStats posted...

I'm also curious to find out who Ulti tapped to guest speak for Undertale/Octopath. I'm guessing either Gall, Ng, or TPLink.

I have a bit of a suspicion of someone outside the board he might be in contact with.

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ColZach posted...

REmake: perfect

RE0: trash

As it should be. 0's co-op was contradictory in places and the idea of ditching item boxes was terrible.

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_SecretSquirrel posted...

I have a bit of a suspicion of someone outside the board he might be in contact with.

Hmm, that's a good point. I'm sure I'm just missing something, because I can't think of who said person might be myself, but I suppose that's more likely than Ulti asking a fellow B8er to speak on it.

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Ulti have you ever actually played Trails in the Sky? It's not without flaws and is definitely targeted at a specific niche, but I'd like to think that people enjoy it for a reason.
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It's one of the users Metalmind guessed.

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pyresword posted...

Ulti have you ever actually played Trails in the Sky? It's not without flaws and is definitely targeted at a specific niche, but I'd like to think that people enjoy it for a reason.

I'm sure the game is incredible. Truly. But to hear Board 8 talk about it you would think it's a top 10 game ever made, which I have severe doubts about.

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Never trust B8s flavor of the month games.

I have been burned so many times on garbage like Ico

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Okay so I've read this whole topic now and a couple of stray points:

-Ni No Kuni sucks not because it's a traditional JRPG (DQ11 is as traditional as they come and it did well in the contest, mostly to peoples' joy), but because the AI is garbage that can't do jackshit. It's a game where the AI controls party members and you constantly have to babysit it. It has all of the makings of a great JRPG otherwise but the combat just isn't fun and this is largely why.

-Wtf is up with the random "giant corporations having a monopoly on shit" nuthugging? People dislike Amazon driving other companies out of business and Disney having Spider-Man movie rights because the more one singular giant corporation has control over an entire industry the more they can drive up prices, fuck over consumers, and not have to worry about quality control (Disney having Spider-Man movie rights impacts the latter because Spider-Man is one of the last big moneymakers Sony Pictures has).

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Ni No Kuni was legit so much fun. Until you get the aforementioned partner. Then it falls off a cliff. I was loving the first 5? hours and then it was so bad I quit

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I mean I'd pretty fiercely argue that Trails has a claim to being a top RPG series!

Personally the series probably has my #1 game slot as well as at least 1-2 others in my top 10, but of course any list like that is going to be wildly dependent on the tastes of the person making the list.
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_SJimW_ posted...

-Wtf is up with the random "giant corporations having a monopoly on shit" nuthugging? People dislike Amazon driving other companies out of business and Disney having Spider-Man movie rights because the more one singular giant corporation has control over an entire industry the more they can drive up prices, fuck over consumers, and not have to worry about quality control (Disney having Spider-Man movie rights impacts the latter because Spider-Man is one of the last big moneymakers Sony Pictures has).

The goal of every small business is to eventually "make it" and become one of those big companies with lots of funds and thousands of employees.

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Also, I'll leave it to you guys. Do you want more writeups, or do you want to give @Ngamer64 24 more hours? <_<

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give Ngamer 24 days imo

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ngamer 24 hrs

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Just write your portion now, and add his bit on later
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Hbthebattle posted...

Just write your portion now, and add his bit on later

Probably a good idea.

As for why I chose him, there are two gurus who correctly picked both the Undertale fourpack and Xenoblade's path. A few gurus picked the fourpack right, so I used a secondary method to weed the list down. Ngamer is one of those gurus, and I really love the guy so I'd love him to get immortalized in a writeup. To the victor goes the spoils!

I'll let you guys figure out who the other guru is.

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was it Azuarc, or...
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Division 3 Round 1: (3)Undertale vs (14)Octopath Traveler

(3)Undertale - 12087 [46.71%]
(14)Octopath Traveler - 13790 [53.29%]
Total Votes - 25877
Prediction Percentage - 21.58%!!

I tried to warn you.

https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(5)Sans_vs_(12)Pac-Man_2018

''"Undertale is the new Portal. It had its moment, but it will never have a repeat performance even though it should be strong enough to make contests moving forward."''

I never one time had any doubts that Octopath Traveler would lose this match. My only struggle in this fourpack was whether or not Shovel Knight could beat an Octopath Traveler that had just beaten the champ. It's a borderline miracle Undertale resisted getting punished here. Sans and Draven got ''smoked'' two years ago. Games that could even be ''considered'' rally threats got buried in this contest, yet Undertale managed to hang in there for 10 minutes before suffering a fairly respectable loss.

There were a few reasons for that. One, Undertale has a legitimate fanbase. It wasn't some flash in the pan video game; it may not be the flavor of the month that gets the entire internet's imagination going en route to winning a contest, but it absolutely has a fanbase. There is a reason Kenny Omega used it for an entrance once and grown men were crying when this happened:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmau-gRMr_U

Two, it was a 3 seed and had the brackets. There were bracket votes keeping this close. Three, the match started ten minutes late, so there wasn't the initial surge of anti-votes. Four, and perhaps most importantly, it has a Switch port and was the defending contest champion in a winnable match. This all combined to allow Undertale to avoid serving penance. I'm convinced that without a Smash character, a Switch port, ''and'' the much higher seed in a winnable match, this might have been in the same realm as what Draven had to go through two years ago. Hell if you remove all that and just switch the seeding around in this match, Octopath might have won 70-30. But all of those things converged together to make this a very respectable loss. I legitimately and truly thought Octopath would get 60% here. It's on record and everything! http://oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k20&type=match&match=21

So for Undertale to lose close actually surprised me, though for some reason it losing shocked the board and turned this place into a sewer for a few days. Hell if there's something filthier than a sewer, I'd love to know what it is. Whatever that is is what the arguments were on Board 8 while this match was happening. Can't we just be happy Octopath Traveler won and call it a day? Do you people ''still'' have to argue over whether or not rallying is bad? Not only is there is no argument here, but Undertale happened five years ago. Get over it. Rallies keep these contests interesting, and the anti-fun brigade is just objectively wrong on this. They're also some of the most immature, obnoxious people this forum has ever seen.

Did you know that if you enjoyed Undertale winning the contest five years ago and/or enjoy rallies, you're a victim blamer? No, really, that's an actual quote from a well known Board 8 user on this web site who also happens to be a moderator. Forget burn victims, orphans, the families of addicts, people in poverty, women forced into the sex trade, slaves, victims of domestic violence, the people killed by communism, or anyone else that is a true victim of their circumstance. The ''real'' victims in this life are those who don't like rallies during a contest on GameFAQs. That's what actually matters.

This individual asked for his name to be kept off the record, so out of respect and journalistic integrity the usernames in this image are censored:

https://i.imgur.com/1loKXXm.png

Yes folks, if you enjoy rallying you are a victim blamer. That is an honest to goodness real quote. It gets better, too. From the same user:

''I don't see how I can lay it out any more clearly than I did here. If the '''actually sane''' "there's no middle ground" people want to actually refute this stuff then great, otherwise it's just thoughtless.''

If you disagree with the anti-fun brigade or call out their hypocrisy -- don't think for one second that these people don't ''love'' rallies when they agree with the winner -- you are not a sane human being. That is a word for word quote. That is how dumb this mod thinks you are -- this individual, who will remain nameless, thinks you are mentally ill for ''daring'' to enjoy yourself in this life. Is it any wonder no one uses our site anymore when these are the types of people in charge of keeping the peace on it? Most mods used to act like DetroitDJ and Team Rocket Elite -- friendly, pleasant, fair, and knowledgeable. Now, a good number of them act like the one quoted here and a lot of users are on board with this type of mentality. People like to throw around the excuse of our site being dated causing the low traffic and collapsing vote totals, but the truth is no one uses our site anymore because of people like this pushing everyone away. Can you imagine the mindset required for thinking everyone who dares to disagree with your position is mentally ill? Couldn't be that you have a point that some might naturally disagree with. Couldn't be that one side of this issue is insufferable. Nope, disagreeing with anti-fun brigade must mean you're mentally ill. If that doesn't sum up why this site is done for, nothing ever will. I could draw some very obvious conclusions here about the political leanings of people who think this way, but I'll leave that one alone. Draw your own conclusions.

Octopath Traveler, largely due to having enough natural strength to get around Undertale's advantages and getting boosted by juuuuust enough anti-votes to put this match away, was in a very interesting spot here. I think in a vacuum without 2015 ever existing, Undertale wins this match. But because Octopath won under some incredible circumstances, it was a wild card moving forward. Could it win this fourpack? Could it catch fire and be given a rallied thank you run? Who knows. But it's a Square JRPG on the Nintendo Switch, so it didn't win this match by default. It had to earn it, and earn it it did.

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Division 3 Round 1: (6)Shovel Knight vs (11)Dragon's Dogma

(6)Shovel Knight - 16664 [64.4%]
(11)Dragon's Dogma - 9211 [35.6%]
Total Votes - 25875
Prediction Percentage - 76.67%

I know Undertale losing took up all the attention and most of the whining during this quartet of contest matches, but believe it or not, three other matches did in fact happen at the same time. One such match was Shovel Knight getting a ho-hum win over Dragon's Dogma. Some indie games were okay in this contest. Most were not. Shovel Knight is one of the ones that looked quite alright. It was actually over 70% early on before bleeding percentage all day, but the only stat that really matters in sports is wins and losses.

Thanks to Undertale causing a bunch of noise, Dragon's Dogma fans (all 9 of them) got off easy for all the whining they did during this loss. What was so special about this game that it supposedly should have won this match? To try and find the answer myself, I went on Youtube, searched up the game's title, and immediately spotted a video called "Dragon's Dogma Is The Best Game You've Never Played". Okay, fair enough.

Oh, it's the guy responsible for making the ''bad'' Devil May Cry games. No thanks. Moving on.

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Division 3 Round 1: (7)Devil May Cry 5 vs (10)Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

(7)Devil May Cry 5 - 14856 [57.41%]
(10)Tropical Freeze - 11020 [42.59%]
Total Votes - 25876
Prediction Percentage - 70.37%

Speaking of Devil May Cry, what an incredible redemption story. There aren't many games, or franchises, that deserved to win a heavily debated match more than Devil May Cry. I know Dante himself has some success in contests, but his games? Here is the entire DMC history in our contests:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2435-mushroom-division-round-1-sonic-the-hedgehog-vs-devil-may
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4078-northeast-division-round-1-mother-3-vs-devil-may-cry-3
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4105-south-division-round-1-star-wars-kotor-vs-devil-may-cry
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4137-northeast-division-round-2-metroid-prime-vs-devil-may-cry-3

That's it. That's the entire list. Blown out in the series contest, and 1-2 in the last Game of the Decade. Not just 1-2, either; those were three ''awful'' performances. Failing to double a game never released in America despite an absurd picture advantage? Come on bro.

On top of that, the series has been through hell and back. Twice. The original game was supposed to be a Resident Evil, but it got changed partway through without ever fixing the camera angles. Trash. Then 2 happened, which was an all-time disaster. 3 was arguably the best action game ever made, and people thought okay, good, the series is on track.

Nope! 4 was literally only half a game, and DmC was laughable garbage that was no indefensible the series almost died for good. DmC was a self-insert fanfiction. Seriously, the director modeled that game's version of Dante after himself and spent the entire game crapping on series fans: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m-5V65dnQrU/T4hcbMWm1AI/AAAAAAAAADc/V3PCEmPz6GE/s1600/tameem+v+dante.jpg

It would be a long time before we got a new game after that disaster -- 6 years, to be exact -- and mercifully it was an ''incredible'' video game. The camera was finally fixed. The characters were all good. The gameplay was top notch. I could go on, but I won Review of the Month singing this game's praises so go read that instead: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/241018-devil-may-cry-5/reviews/167901

There was one catch here. A Devil May Cry game in a debated match against a Nintendo game with a well-known name, of all things? Donkey Kong was past the choker label, too. In 2015, Donkey Kong Country 2 won two close matches (something DK is ''very'' shaky with). In 2018, Donkey Kong of all characters went on an upset tour. Not only did he upset Tidus, but Donkey Kong -- yes, ''the'' infamous contest choker himself -- beat Leon Kennedy in a MASSIVE guru upset. 160 gurus signed up for that contest. Only nine picked Donkey Kong to win twice. In those two contests, one for games and one for characters, Donkey Kong had shed nearly 15 years of grief.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_asNhzXq72w

Seriously, what the fuck even happened here? Mind you, I am not remotely upset DMC5 won this match going away. I played and loved both games, but DMC deserved this and I was rooting for it. This thing was close for 3 minutes, and then DMC5 just boat raced this thing. There was no indication whatsoever that this was possible. I know DMC5 backers were confident, and I'm happy for you, but I thoroughly disagree that there was any way to truly know this was coming. I'm going to commit a logical fallacy here and appeal to authority. Yoblazer33 is the best to ever do it, and if his first two contests actually counted toward his overall guru score, he would ''far and away'' be the #1 overall guru in our contest's history. By the NG and Swirl, I really think we should legacy rule his first two contest scores into the overall and call it a wrap. Yoblazer is not the 11th best guru ever and everyone knows it.

Anyway, he knows what's up. He was in third place this year until the penultimate match, and would have won this contest if Bethesda didn't suck ass. He looked at all the same data I laid out here, and came to the same conclusion. Devil May Cry in a debated match, against Nintendo? EZPZ. But then in one of the biggest shockers ever, DMC5 crushed it and gave Donkey Kong some PTSD. DK doesn't have his choke label back, but if he pulls this once or twice more, look out.

Swirldude, the #1 overall guru via technicality (the dude is a genius who has put in serious work for 2 decades, but everyone knows #1 is Yoblazer) was kind enough to explain what happened on The Show. The short version is DMC5 is a fairly strong and well respected game, and Donkey Kong Country means very little outside of the SNES. On top of that, DKC Returns on the Wii just wasn't good, and Tropical Freeze was released two years into the Wii U's life span -- also known as two years after people realized the Wii U was garbage. Nintendo is the dominant entity on this site, but even Nintendo has a weakness. That weakness is the Wii U.

And that Show appearance perfectly encapsulated what happened here. Truly. We should have seen this coming. For all intents and purposes, Breath of the Wild is a Switch game. So let's throw that one out. Once you do, what exactly on the Wii U is relevant outside of Mario Kart 8, Smash 4, and Captain Toad Treasure Tracker? Bayonetta 2 was a Wii U exclusive and the gaming public ''destroyed'' that game for it. You'd be hard pressed to find anything Nintendo has ever done that's more radioactive, and they couldn't get off that system fast enough in lieu of the Switch.

So Swirl had it right, I think. This is the Wii U's fault. It's also one of the only examples of a Switch port meaning literally nothing. Either way, I couldn't be happier. Good job DMC5, you magnificent bastard. You deserved this one more than you can ever know.

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Octopath is on PC now as well!

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Division 3 Round 1: (2)Super Mario Odyssey vs (15)Mortal Kombat 11

(2)Super Mario Odyssey - 22245 [85.97%]
(15)Mortal Kombat 11 - 3631 [14.03%]
Total Votes - 25876
Prediction Percentage - 91.57%

Hey so remember how Smash Ultimate was supposed to waltz to the semifinal and its opening match confirmed it?

'''NOT SO FAST, MY FRIEND!!'''

Mario went completely and thoroughly berserk here, and it was a throwback to the early 2000s when Mario was just pasting fools all over the place. He was flirting with 88% at one point, too, but that didn't matter. What mattered here was this blowout being so massive that it had everyone sweating their Smash Ultimate > Odyssey picks, especially the people who took that upset special and backed off.

The reason for that is obvious. There is no planet, none, zero, where Tekken 7 would ever beat Mortal Kombat 11 in a contest match. It simply would not happen. Yet Tekken 7 did 3% better this round.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9Uw97lOOlk

By the way, Carl Lewis should thank his lucky stars for Fergie. Someone finally did the national anthem worse than he did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFvvEloObCE

But yeah, Smash looked to be in some serious trouble after round 1. That would not let up in future rounds, either.

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guys I played RE0 and I was a dumbass little kid and the boxes were actually really fun for me, I liked making plans moving around the world

i think yall are bad at classic RE and need to play more RE6 or something ;)

Division 4 Round 1: (1)Grand Theft Auto V vs (16)Baba Is You

(1)Grand Theft Auto V - 19151 [79.27%]
(16)Baba Is You - 5008 [20.73%]
Total Votes - 24159
Prediction Percentage - 95.06%

transience looked through the entire bracket and looked at all the games by ownership, and Baba Is You is either at the bottom or second from it. I know ownership on GameFAQs is a bit of a flawed stat, but it's better than nothing. I don't really care enough to look it all up myself. The point here is I am convinced Baba Is You would have finished dead last in the x-stats if it had faced a heavy hitter guaranteed not to get anti voted -- Super Mario Odyssey or Witcher 3, for example. But because it drew Grand Theft Auto, it got to be the beneficiary of GTA's intrinsic anti-strength. Baba was actually winning this match when it started, because Board 8 detests GTA so much.

Grand Theft Auto 5 is the one game in that series with real strength, though the series has had ''some'' success on this site. Vice City once held Melee to 53%, San Andreas was our Game of the Year in 2004, and there are all manner of fair results in the fourways, 2010, and 2015. The issue is people see these famous close upset losses to Golden Sun and Chrono Cross and assume all the matches go that way. That just isn't the case. GTA is the type of series that, due to its nature, will never blow anything out or get blown out itself. In fact, 5's win here is likely to be the biggest win a Grand Theft Auto ever gets on this site -- and even then, due to anti-votes, it wasn't able to put an unknown 16 seed opponent at the bottom of the stats like it should have.

For the record, I am one of those people who anti-votes Grand Theft Auto in almost every match it's in. Not for the reason you might think, though! I'm sure a lot of people think GTA's anti-votes come from nerds not liking how GTA players remind them of the guys who stuffed them into locker rooms in high school or whatever. Not me. GTA started as super goofy cartoonish nonsense, and was legitimately hilarious back in the day. Then 3 happened, the series went 3D, and it turned into this hyper-serious sandbox that it's never truly been able to get out of. I've never forgiven GTA for the change in tone or the types of players it now attracts. It used to cater to gamers like us. Now it's plagued by frat boy morons. The series needs to go back to being cartoonish and ridiculous.

As far as I'm concerned, this is where the series peaked and it's yet to be topped:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G37hYz6v-7Q

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PostContestUlti posted...

I never one time had any doubts that Octopath Traveler would lose this match.

That is definitely not true! You told me in the AAT deadchat that you thought Octopath wasn't notable enough to win here.
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ColZach posted...

guys I played RE0 and I was a dumbass little kid and the boxes were actually really fun for me, I liked making plans moving around the world

i think yall are bad at classic RE and need to play more RE6 or something ;)

Most little kids like everything they play. Nothing wrong with that.

I love a terrible sports game on the Sega Genesis called Super High Impact, for example.

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By dumbass little kid I had to be at least 10. Honestly dont remember. Just remember enjoying 0 more than people told me I would.

PostContestUlti posted...

There is a reason Kenny Omega used it for an entrance once

Twice, actually. The Wrestle Kingdom entrance, and then flat out cosplaying as Sans on Halloween.

PostContestUlti posted...

Then 3 happened, the series went 3D, and it turned into this hyper-serious sandbox that it's never truly been able to get out of.

The super serious shit didn't happen until IV. The PS2 era was full of wacky shit like Big Smoke spending hundreds of dollars at a fast food restaurant.

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Division 4 Round 1: (8)Cuphead vs (9)XCOM 2

(8)Cuphead - 16493 [68.28%]
(9)XCOM 2 - 7662 [31.72%]
Total Votes - 24155
Prediction Percentage - 77.96%

Pre-contest, KP discussed the indie glass ceiling and thought Cuphead would have the best shot at being this contest's strongest indie darling. Spoilers -- KP is a really, really smart guy. In the raw stats, Cuphead did the best. How much of that is natural strength versus getting to go against GTA5 next round is anyone's guess, but either way this game is legit.

XCOM 2 was one of the many, many early round fodder games to just get its doors blown off in the early rounds, which is typical of a seeded tournament but I'm still bitter Bayonetta wasn't a 9 seed in ''any'' other division. That said, this match was not about XCOM 2. It was about Cuphead proving how legit it was, and this final percentage doesn't even do justice to how good the game looked in this match. It was over 70% for quite a long time before falling off to a respectable 68.

How good was this performance? This coincided with GTA5's anti-votes preventing Baba Is You from finishing last, which started up all of the hype trains for, as Harrich put it so beautifully, the '''CUPSET!!!'''

Cuphead > GTA5 hype was alive and well after this one, boys. If nothing else we were guaranteed to see Cuphead get an early lead, but one trend here was very important to keep an eye on. See how Cuphead started off like a house of fire and then burned itself out midway through the match? That was a very, very common problem indie games would have all contest long.

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I have to credit Undertale and its fanbase for convincing and winning some people to try and enjoy that game, something that League of Legends and other rallybait characters and games have been unable to do in this site. Still though, the anti-votes proved decisive in its dethronement.

And I'm totally okay with that

Division 4 Round 1: (5)Persona 4 Golden vs (12)FTL: Faster Than Light

(5)Persona 4 Golden - 18785 [77.77%]
(12)FTL: Faster Than Light - 5371 [22.23%]
Total Votes - 24156
Prediction Percentage - 88.36%

Some indie games looked okay this contest. Most did not. FTL was one of the games that ended up looking like a garbage pile. FTL doesn't just look like a garbage pile in polls, either.

https://vjarmy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/ftl.png

Okie dokie.

When I first did my bracket, I actually had Persona 4 Golden winning three matches before deciding to have some faith in GTA5. Losing to Chrono Cross and Golden Sun, while embarrassing, makes sense. But surely GTA5 wouldn't lose to a Vita game even with its built-in anti-votes, right?

Yeah once this poll started I regretted that decision in about 5 seconds. Not only did Persona 4 show none of the weakness one might expect from a Vita title -- this thing was clearly a proxy for the original Persona 4, which is why this and Pokemon HGSS should not have been allowed in this contest -- but Red Dead Redemption pulled off a similar blowout in round 1 of this fourpack. Barring Rockstar hierarchy and SFF (GTA pulling off SFF, ha!), the winner of Persona 4 v Red Dead was going to the divisional finals. That was set in stone after round one.

The discussion when this happened live centered around trying to order Baba Is You, FTL, and Ghost Trick. That was a flawed discussion, because it assumes transitive linearity with Grand Theft Auto when we know 100% that this is not the case. The issue is whether or not the third round match would be close at all, which more or less guarantees GTA can't win, and these round 1 results showed it would be close. That right there meant GTA5 was done.

Side note. Remember back in Bizarro World when Board 8 actually rallied for and rooted for Grand Theft Auto to beat Warcraft in the series contest? It's surreal to think about.

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Division 4 Round 1: (4)Red Dead Redemption vs (13)Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

(4)Red Dead Redemption - 19051 [78.87%]
(13)Ghost Trick - 5105 [21.13%]
Total Votes - 24156
Prediction Percentage - 94.77%

Some indie games looked okay this contest. Most did not. Ghost Trick was one of the many, many games that served as mere filler for the early rounds. This is why we had a series cap of two, huh? So we could have even more blowouts than usual?

RDR's blowout here was almost identical to what Persona 4 was doing to FTL. I mentioned this during the Persona 4 round one writeup, but I feel that Baba v FTL v Ghost Trick was a flawed conversation. You can't order these games in a vacuum, because GTA as a series comes with built-in negative strength. GTA5 was clearly screwed after round 1.

What was ''very'' interesting however was the incoming Persona 4 Golden vs RDR in round 2. Both games scored identical blowouts against new competition. Both games were really close in the stats in 2015. It was clear that "Persona 4 Golden" might as well have been "Persona 4" in this contest, so it's fair to bring this one up...

Persona 4 (2015g) VS Red Dead Redemption (2015g)

Persona 4 has a strength of 25.16.
Red Dead Redemption has a strength of 24.60.

Persona 4 wins with 51.11% of the vote!
A win of 1,355 with 60,875 total votes cast.

Some of the best matches in contest history are the ones where you ''know'' it will be good in advance, and all the tools were in place for that one to make some magic. On top of that, it was also clear that the winner was the favorite in round 3. Unknown winner, high stakes? Sign me up!

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I think RDR would have beaten GTAV straight up, honestly.
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Division 4 Round 1: (3)Xenoblade Chronicles vs (14)Splatoon 2

(3)Xenoblade Chronicles - 19671 [78.43%]
(14)Splatoon 2 - 5411 [21.57%]
Total Votes - 25082
Prediction Percentage - 77.66%

Holy unexpected star of the contest, Batman! When this thing was announced, Division 4 was the big talking head debate show division. The case could be made for four games winning this thing (GTA5, Persona 4, RDR, Three Houses), and there was even some Cuphead buzz. But almost no one was talking about Xenoblade Chronicles. That changed in a hurry once this match happened, especially as Three Houses was stinking it up against South Park, but pre-contest? Not a word.

Part of that is Yoblazer and I keeping our mouths shut. We both picked Xenoblade after a good look at the data pre-contest, but didn't say a word to anyone outside of yo I think giving one small Show hint. This is a competition, after all. I'll get into what I saw when we get to the divisional finals, because it was as good a pick as I've ever made.

The important thing to remember about this match specifically is that Splatoon 2 is a game people actually care about. It sold over 1 million copies in its first week, it was an early Switch release, and it was used to launch Smash Ultimate. Remember?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Gt42kVgCw

That video was seen probably hundreds of millions of times all over the world. Splatoon 2 helped do that.

Xenoblade took that and beat it like it stole something. It was quite the start to the contest for Xenoblade, and confirmed why some of us had so much faith in it.

Well, that and one of the best soundtracks in the history of video games. Seriously, go listen to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPiDX76dHVE

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Division 4 Round 1: (6)Overwatch vs (11)Death Stranding

(6)Overwatch - 14022 [55.9%]
(11)Death Stranding - 11061 [44.1%]
Total Votes - 25083
Prediction Percentage - 72.66%

One of my favorite gimmicks from The Show this year was yoblazer crapping all over Hideo Kojima and Death Stranding every chance he got. Granted, anonymous inside sources have hinted that he didn't even ''play'' Death Stranding, but who even cares? The game is a bucket of literal piss grenades. I am in no way joking about that one, either. You can actually throw your own piss at enemies. I know a lot of people expect me to rant and rave over Blizzard winning matches this year, but I have a changeup for you on this one.

The better game won this match. Yeah I said it. Me, probably the biggest Blizzard hater on the entire internet, agree with this result. This is not a defense of Overwatch, either. It's an awful (very awful) ripoff of Team Fortress 2, it began the loot box plague, the designers and artists are SJWs, and the player base is ''laughably'' awful. I've brought this up before, but in Overwatch you can get banned for picking off-meta heroes and Blizzard completely lied about it. No surprise to anyone who pays attention to their nonsense, but the reason this happens is because the report system is automatic. If a bunch of players report the same person, they're automatically suspended and oftentimes banned. For playing a video game for fun.

And Death Stranding is still worse. This was a debated match pre-contest, because everyone knew it would be garbage versus trash. It's hard to pick these fodder matchups, especially when there is no metadata to draw from, but Overwatch was a well known brand name. That's likely the only reason it won. Death Stranding is absolute ''trash'', and the game is so bad that I've stopped feeling bad for Konami screwing Hideo Kojima over. They clearly knew something.

For the unaware, Death Stranding is about a guy delivering packages after a plague hits, also known as the gaming version of Door Dash. I get that this is topical, but the game is a gigantic world with nothing in it, and way, way, WAY too many dumb mechanics. The irony of all ironies is that the game is completely lacking of any action whatsoever, but when action finally shows up it always happens at the wrong time. Jim Sterling has a good perspective on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Hy87yKfXn0

Adding to how bad the game is is how incredibly overhyped it was. "Finally, Hideo gets to make a game without the tyranny of a parent company!" Yeah, turns out this dude was a hack the entire time and needed an editor to pull his one or two good idea from his hundreds of bad ones. Hideo Kojima is the Vince Russo of video games, and Death Stranding is the new Shadow of the Colossus. It is an overhyped, terrible video game with bad mechanics, a lifeless world, and an ''awful'' fanbase. Yes, some video games prove the medium is an art form. Your game is not one of them. Go away.

I mean come on, Death Stranding has '''me''' happy that a Blizzard game won a contest match. Do you guys understand how impossibly bad a game has to be to pull that off?

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