Board 8 > An analysis of how each year performed in Game of the Decade 2

(+) Yeah! (+)

I really dig your analysis, looking forward to the rest!

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Also, I was a little bummed that AC Brotherhood was snubbed from 2010. It is widely regarded as one of the best AC games, and it is by far Ezio's best appearance, who is one of the most memorable video game protagonists of the decade.

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Yay, I found my missing game!

It was JOURNEY! Thank God 2012 comes so early in this analysis or I'd have had to wait a while to realize wtf it was.

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The 1 Game That Made Bracket:
-The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask

Headliners: Majoras Mask

Busts: Majoras Mask

Notable Snubs:
-Not Majoras Mask

Analysis:

You know, for most of the contest, we were dunking on this bracket, yucking it up about how shit most of these modern games would perform in a hypothetical Best Game Ever or any fair bracket. So much fodder! Even the headliners would get spanked by the midcarders of the GotD1 field!

As the Zelda-Witcher final came to a close, BotW had to dig in its heels and brace for a FINAL final battle: GotD1 champ, Majoras Mask, appeared! People had been asking for this match since before the contest started, and in this long awaited duel Breath of the Wild absolutely bullied Majora, giving it noogies and nipple twisters. So much for BoomerFAQs and old games reigning supreme, BotW put up 62% on MM and singlehandedly vindicated the entire GotD2 field and ushered in the era of ZoomerFAQs.

Now seriously, OBVIOUSLY there was at least some SFF at play, OBVIOUSLY BotW was coming in hot after earning the championship belt, and OBVIOUSLY this might play out differently in an actual tournament match. But come on, ALttP could only put 52.39% on Majora. BotW outdoing that by more than 10% has to mean SOMETHING, and the lack of anything like bracket voting and such meant people were free to vote their hearts.

Suddenly BotWs domination of this contest was thrown in a different light; obviously most games would fold to a contender for top 5, if not top 3, EVER. If someone seriously tries to do GotD1-2 x-stats based on this match, even after adjusting for SFF GotD2 will probably come out looking pretty dang good. As for Majora lol. Way to let down your year, and your entire decade!

Final Rating:

D for DAAAAAMN it got rocked

For the people who seriously needs this here, yes I'm just taking the piss.

Your regularly scheduled programming will resume tomorrow with 2012!

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MechanicalWall posted...

Busts: uhhhh, Terraria? Aaaaand Minecraft?

Minecraft and Terraria are both fine choices even if neither is to GameFAQs' taste. However, I'd also like to mention 2011 as a whole, for being the only year without a full top 10 represented, and having a ridiculous gulf between its haves and have-nots (even if both classes mostly exceeded expectations).

MechanicalWall posted...

If B&W is a bad pick Im sure people will let me know.

I'm not going to say B/W wouldn't have had strength, but I kind of get what Allen was going for there. All the relevant Pokmon games except GO (more on that in a moment) are seriously samey, and there would have been little intrigue to including most of them in a bracket when HG/SS already represents them just fine. The exceptions are the aforementioned GO and Sw/Sh, both of which had tons of variance potential, and while the latter wasn't fundamentally different, just being the most recent mainline Pokmon game automatically renders it a snub for me.

I agree that MvC3 was one of the biggest snubs of 2011, perhaps even of the whole bracket, but there's another 2011 fighting game that belongs right alongside it: MK9. Like, I get how MK11 made it instead despite being hated - presumably most of the (small) MK fanbase just robotically penciled in the newest installment, while practically no one outside the fanbase considered any MK one of the best games of the decade. Still, though, there's leagues of difference in terms of their all-audience reception and impact, much like MvC3 versus SFV among Capcom fighters.

Also, for what it's worth, MK7 was merely the functional 3DS Mario Kart, and much like SSB4, everyone stopped caring the second it was no longer the newest Mario Kart game. Obviously, I wouldn't dare claim SSB4 doesn't belong on any snubs list, but Mario Kart is that much less popular and significant a series.

Everyone's already basically addressed what I would have said about 2010, though I'm not sure HGSS belongs among its headliners, and Mega Man 10 was arguably a notable snub.

Great start overall though, I'm certainly looking forward to the rest of your write-ups.

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majora did horrible

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Tag

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Minecraft looked alright. Disappointed in Terraria. Another major snub would be Super Mario 3D Land.

2011 had the fewest games but probably the second highest average strength, and perhaps the most major snubs.

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There was too much competition for Pokemon and no single game that was the clear favourite. Over the last generation there were four new generations while generations 1-3 all had a remake/reimagining. Throw in Black/White's sequel and Pokemon Go who likely got some nominations due to its significance during the decade and we have nine games plus all the other spin-offs the series has produced.

In contrast the 00s only had three new generations and a remake (along with its own boatload of spin-off games).

The more impressive thing was that HG/SS got a three seed. Either there was some nomination rallying going on outside the board or SBAllen saw Pokemon's struggles and decided to give the most nominated game a seeding boost.

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UltimaterializerX posted...

Really looking forward to 2017.

Oh God, looking at my 2017 list, that analysis is going to be as thick as a novel.

Also I should have figured the snubs lists would be the most contentious part of these write-ups. Trust me, I considered most of the games that have been mentioned, but I self-imposed that 8 game per year cap to keep myself from talking too much about games that didn't even make bracket, and from there it's actually kinda difficult to decide what does and doesn't make the cut. Yes, you can make a snubs list of the snubs lists if you're so inclined!

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The 13 Games That Made Bracket (And How Long They Lasted):
-The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series (Round 1)
-Borderlands 2 (Round 2)
-Dragon's Dogma (Round 1)
-Persona 4 Golden (Division Finals)
-FTL: Faster than Light (Round 1)
-Xenoblade Chronicles (Quarterfinals)
-Mass Effect 3 (Round 2)
-Dishonored (Round 1)
-Hotline Miami (Round 1)
-Diablo III (Round 2)
-Virtue's Last Reward (Round 1)
-Crusader Kings II (Round 1)
-Journey (Round 2)

Notable Snubs:
-Spelunky
-Mark of the Ninja
-Fez
-Gravity Rush
-Kid Icarus: Uprising
-XCOM: Enemy Unknown
-Spec Ops: The Line
-The Last Story

Headliners: Xenoblade Chronicles, Persona 4 Golden

Busts: Borderlands 2, The Walking Dead

Snubs Analysis:

Oh, you already KNOW how this shits gonna go. 2012 is pretty much the consensus pick for worst year of the decade, if not millenia. When your year has to get bailed out by a game that came out in 2008 and a game that almost wasnt released in America, you know youre in deep.

But well get there when we get there. As you can imagine, it was slim pickings for snubs; the fact I have three indie games on that list should clue you in that in the inverse of 2011, this year was probably OVERrepresented. But hey, if INSIDE and Obra Dinn can make into bracket, why not Fez, or Spelunky, or Mark of the Ninja, three well-liked indies with decent playrates? Would they have done absolutely anything in this bracket? Of course not, but hey, when your power level is this low, just showing up counts for something!

For those of you not in the loop, you might see Spec Ops on that list and think to yourselves what in the absolute fuck is that? If you went so far as to Google it and look at some images you might wonder why I would even think of including it on a snubs list for a GameFAQs contest. Well, Spec Ops The Line is ONLY one of the greatest stories written this decade, with a cult fanbase that acknowledges it as such. If any non-CoD modern military shooter had a shot at getting into this bracket, it was Spec Ops, mostly because it makes you feel like shit for liking modern military shooters.

Actually, another entry on the what in the absolute fuck is that list is The Last Story, though Im sure if any community recognizes it, its Board 8. It was directed by a little known man named HIRONOBU SAKAGUCHI, probably one of like three or four JRPG developers who could swing attention to a project through name recognition alone. Despite being a part of Operation Rainfall, it never took off like Xenoblade did, and unfortunately for the Gooch, The Last Story did not end up being as hilariously ironic a title as Final Fantasy was.

Yknow, NintendoFAQs is one of the most pervasive nicknames for the site among those aware of our contest history, but I feel its a bit of a misnomer. Its really just ZeldaMarioSmashAndSometimesMetroidAndPokemonFAQs. Those are really the only Nintendo series that have any power in the games contests (Metroid and Pokemon have like two entries each that are really OP); shit like Kirby, Donkey Kong, Pikmin, and Star Fox hardly even get entrants, let alone any big wins, and those are still the B-listers; lets not even go further down the line. Point being, if any site were to nominate Kid Icarus Uprising, a rather well liked title, to a Game of the Decade contest, itd be NintendoFAQs, but nope.

Speaking of handhelds, you know the Vita came out this decade, and indeed this very year, right? Hard to remember, I know, but it only got one entrant out of 128, and of course its a port of a PS2 game. I feel there should have been a Vita-original title represented, and what better than Gravity Rush, everyones favorite quirky sandbox game that also conveniently got a PS4 port so that people could actually fckin play it?

Oh, and uh, XCOM. Am I the only one who was surprised the second one got in over the first one? Yes? OK moving on.

(I'm going to give a token nod to NSMBU here, but like I said about FFXIII and Mario 3D Land, Mario as a series is satisfactorily represented and NSMBU wouldn't have done better than the titles that made it in)

Bust Analysis:

I know I said Id try not to pick on fodder in my OP, but there was no WAY The Walking Dead was escaping this analysis without a thwack across the wrist and a zombie bite around the ankle. Among both casuals and experts, TWD was supposed to easily win its match against Bastion before ambling over to Round 2 and getting a shotgun blast to the face, courtesy of Dragon Quest XI. Instead someway, somehow, it choked HARD, getting beaten by Bastion in a 52-48 match.

Telltale Games have gone the way of the dodo (I hear it was kinda resurrected but not really through some corporate voodoo but wtf ever), flooding the market with 800 billion titles that hardly evolved from the original Walking Dead before they peaced out. I honestly feel that this avalanche of very same-y feeling titles completely diluted the goodwill TWD Season 1 engendered, and what was once the consensus 2012 GotY (according to GotYBlogs) became just another game in their enormous lineup. Hollow Knight beating Tales of whatever made people nervous about their initial disregard for indie games, but this match was the REAL catalyst of the Indie Fear that would wash over people for a few days. If Walking Dead hadnt choked we wouldnt have had to put up with people thinking that 70% on VVVVVVV was actually really good and that Mass Effect 2 was cooked.

And hey, speaking of corporate bullshit, Borderlands 2. Now I have 0 fondness for this series and have never bought a Gearbox game, so I have no investment in whatever fuckery Randy Pitchfork has been pulling. All I know is that a lot of people had faith in Borderlands to win its fourpack (I never did cause Horizon is legit but whatevs), and it starts off its contest run with a 58-42 win against Bloodstained. Now I poke fun at Indie Fear, but Im sure Bloodstained actually does hold up pretty well in the stats, so its hard to blame people who felt safe about their Borderlands > Horizon pick.

That sense of safety ended pretty quickly when Horizon made quick work of Borderlands in their match, 55-45 style. This burned a lot of people who thought BL2 had that match in the bag, but honestly, I dont think losing to Horizon is embarrassing whatsoever. Other than the fact that, you know, BL2 was OUR GotY of 2012, and seeing it drop a debatable match so easily pretty much epitomized how shit this year was. If it wasnt for the 2008 game and the game that released in Japan in 2010, THIS would have been the strongest performance from a 2012 game. L, O, and furthermore, L.

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Headliner Analysis:

Actually, lets stop roasting this year so much and switch over to those very games. Somehow, they both ended up on opposite sides of the single most debated Division of the contest, Division 4. Usually in these analyses I focus on one game at a time, but Persona and Xenoblades stories are too intertwined for that, so Im going to switch to a Round by Round look.

They were both easy picks to make it out of Round 1, and they did indeed doink some fodder; Persona took out what I have to imagine was a Board 8 favorite in Ghost Trick, while Xenoblade walloped Nintendo stablemate Splatoon 2. So far, so good, right? Well, already there were complications. Xenoblade had what was essentially a bye into Round 3, as no one but Black Turtle thought Overwatch was worth shit, so it would be a while until it had to worry about anything. It was merely a matter of eyeing its performance against Fire Emblem Three Houses, which had just laid an egg in its match with South Park (Im saving my Fire Emblem roasts for later on). Personas performance, however, was almost identical to the performances of GTA and RDR, so it was impossible to tell if it was actually equipped to run the Rockstar gauntlet.

Lets not belabor Xenoblades side of things in Round 1; it ground its casualbait opponent into the dirt with a performance that looked great, and was when people were clued in that Xenoblade was doped up on something this contest, most certainly some Deluxe Edition hype and Xenoblade 2s success (in fact, Xenoblade 2s match against Batman was arguably when it really started to set in how well Xenoblade 1 might do).

But Persona 4s fourpack was hardly comparable, as Red Dead Redemption, hot off the release of RDR2, lie in wait. This match would matter a LOT, as the winner of it had a shot at taking out GTAV and winning the entire Division. And it sure played out like a match that mattered; Persona 4s amazing board vote and Rockstars shit one gave people some hope that this was gonna be an easy P4 W, but inevitably RDR sliced a 5% lead into almost nothing. And yet, it was probably the least exciting wire-to-wire match ever. No lead change, no REAL charge, nothing. RDR just kinda hung outside Personas door, like a creep in a Nickelodeon film who cant decide if hes actually gonna work up the courage to knock and confess his feelings to his stalking victim. Eventually, RDR realized Persona was just not that into it and fucked off, killing a shitton of casual (and expert!) brackets on its way out.

The assumption was that if P4 could barely handle RDR, then it would definitely fold to GTAV, which actually looks pretty decent in the 2015 x-stats. Just one tiny problem: GTA is a fucking choker. It always has been, always will be. This match played out hilariously similarly to the previous one; same hilariously skewed board vote, same slicing of the lead. I have to assume that Rockstar has a bush rented outside Personas home, where its games gaze wistfully at P4 through its windows and wonder whatd be like to be the sort of cult JRPG that GFAQs loves instead of a massive multibillion dollar empire. Yknow, before remembering that theyre a multibillion dollar empire and that GameFAQs having a hardon for JRPGs doesnt change that.

Okay that metaphor was getting jumbled by the end there. Point is, Persona 4 ran the Rockstar gauntlet and survived. At the same time it was barely breaking 51% on GTA, Xenoblade was roflstomping Three Houses in a match that absolutely cemented Fire Emblem as the Turd of the Contest. Xenoblade was supposed to be on the receiving end of a Nintendo hierarchy beatdown; instead, it was the one dishing out the beating. You wanna talk about hilarious board votes, this was 50-50 at the freeze, and had to have been one of the most bracket voted matches in the contest, because as soon as the first update hit Xenoblade jumped almost five whole percent. From there it didnt look back, landing a 60-40 win that baffled pretty much everyone. Im really feeling it, this is the Monados power, its Reyn time, etc etc lets get all the memes out now.

So the final for the inscrutable Division 4 was set. On one side, a bloodied and battered Persona 4 that had crawled out of its half of the Division with torn fingernails and a bruised face. On the other, Xenoblade descending from the heavens, looking absolutely princely after smiting its half. Hilariously, these games had a 14-16% prediction rate to make it this far; it had to have been the least likely of all the plausible combinations of games. When it came time to create Second Chance brackets, most people took Xenoblade without much thought, and at a decent percentage too.

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Headliner Analysis continued:

So of course Division 4 was ready to pull one last prank on everyone. Xenoblade STARTED with a fine enough lead, but just like its former opponents, Persona kept pushing. And pushing. The lead was kept at less than a single percent for most of the match, but the fan was kept spotless until the last few hours, when shit rocketed straight onto it. Blame hentai rallies, blame normal rallies, but unlike the Rockstar games, Persona was making a REAL charge, and based on how quickly it was rising, it looked like it had a shot at claiming the lead JUST as the match would end. But it just didnt happen. It cut the lead to mere double digits before completely sputtering out, and the final margin was 111. Xenoblade had been counterrallying, and I suppose it fortified its position exactly when it would matter the most. On a personal level, I was devastated; Persona 4 winning here would have guaranteed that Id end the contest at the #1 spot on the leaderboard, and seeing it choke at the last hour was pretty demoralizing. Id eventually recover and take the #5 spot, but I cant help but think about how one extra pair of anime tiddies on a hentai subreddit might have been the only thing keeping me from a 1000 bucks.

Uh, anyway. Xenoblade had a SIX percent pick rate to make it into Quarters, by far the lowest pick rate wed see the entire contest. And how was its miracle run rewarded? By being fed to Smash Ultimate. Oh joy. It held up remarkably well though; a 60-40 match with a top 5 game in bracket, a fellow Nintendo game, was actually really really impressive. Maybe I should have seen Xenoblade being a beast coming; think back to Mario RPGs run in 2015. It was Nintendo, it was Square, it was a JRPG! It had it all. Xenoblade doesnt have the Square part, but being a Nintendo JRPG still provides some hax, which explains how a game with such a low playrate did so well.

Other Thoughts:

Wow, I was so caught up reminiscing about P4 and Xenoblades epic runs that I forgot I was writing about fckin 2012. Unlike 2011, there was absolutely nothing impressive about anything that any of the other games this year did. I guess Diablo III not getting wrecked by The Last of Us was OK? Not really impressive though.

And some of these games lucked out, too. Journey made it to Round 2 thanks to being seeded against a Gacha game. ME3 got seeded against a game thats even more hated than it on this site. Both games being destroyed by the eventual semifinalists is pretty funny, not gonna lie, but I highly doubt they hold up well at all in the final x-stats.

And then what? 13 entries, and P4, Xenoblade, Borderlands, and maybe Diablo III and ME3 (and thats only after assuming Witcher 3 SFFed it into paste) are the only games that arent fodder. Thats 8/13 left. 62% fodder rate, and thats being generous. Remind me why this year was so well represented again?

And yknow, I LIKE a lot of those games. Dishonored? Hotline Miami? FTL? Great stuff. Just not worth a plucked eyelash on this site.

Im kinda struggling with the final rating here. On the one hand, P4 and Xenoblade had such crazy runs that it feels wrong to slap this year with a straight-up F. On the other hand, do two games out of a field of 13 drag the average up by enough? I mean, SOMETHING has to take the F here, or else Im just another gaming publication that doesnt actually use their entire scale and therefore renders it meaningless!

Believe it or not, looking at the rest of my list, the truth is that some of the following years not only have a similar density of fodder, but they dont even have as good of peaks as this one does. Yah, seriously. Tells you something about the field. So 2012 just barely escapes from a failing grade.

Final Rating:

D - Possibly the single most carried year in the field, but at least its getting carried.

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Was Borderlands 2 a bust? It was constantly getting called a fraud, the weakest GotY winner, a lot weaker than it was before, and so on. This turned out to not be true, it looked alright through Horizon (which was a tossup), and basically in line with its 2015 performance - especially when you consider that Horizon was benefitting from Bloodbornes rallies. Comparing it with the actual fraud and weakest GotY winner FFXV, Borderlands really only fell behind Xenoblade and P4G (and frankly, counting P4G is a little cheeky). You might even say its the strongest 2012 game to actually release in 2012!

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I wouldn't consider Borderlands 2 a huge bust, but relative to the other games in that year I would agree it was the second least impressive entrant relative to pre-contest expectation.

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Yeah it's all relative. Like I said in my analysis, I don't think losing to Horizon is embarrassing, but more could reasonably have been expected from it. And more importantly, no one expected ANYTHING from the rest of the roster.

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Lightning Strikes posted...

You might even say its the strongest 2012 game to actually release in 2012!

And I actually said exactly this lol

MechanicalWall posted...

If it wasnt for the 2008 game and the game that released in Japan in 2010, THIS would have been the strongest performance from a 2012 game

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Persona 4 actually faced FTL in round 1, not Ghost Trick.

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LinkMarioSamus posted...

Persona 4 actually faced FTL in round 1, not Ghost Trick.

Oh God, the first Round of that half of the division blurred together so much I forgot what was what.

Well when I put this up on the Wiki I'll correct those sorts of errors. Thank you for pointing that out

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2012 I thought was fairly okay, mostly just a meme because its 2 best and most impressive games aren't technically even 2012 games.

I think the most disappointing year might be the one coming up and the worst overall year is the one after that.

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No year that produced Xenoblade Chronicles, Dragon's Dogma, Gravity Rush, and Spec Ops: The Line (thanks for mentioning it!) should ever be considered a bad year.

P4G, VLR, Journey, and ME3 were also pretty good.

I've always been a qualty over quantity type, though. Some of those are among my absolute favorite games of the whole decade, all in the same year. To me that is better than having a dozen "decent" games.

And Xenoblade doesn't get nearly enough respect. Its seeding was blatantly low, as shown in how it did. Its problem is Nintendo's F'd up every single attemp to bring it to North America until now. First the die hards had to petition for it for over a year only for it to get a limited run GS-only release. Then exclusive to the "new" 3DS that almost no one had. Then on the Wii VC on Wii U, which would've been great....if people owned Wii U's (I did my part....).
Amazingly it took a whole decade for it to get an actual widely available release, as it will in 2 weeks. Probably at least 1/2 of the people voting for it never would've even known of the game if Shulk hadn't made it into Smash.

squexa posted...

I think the most disappointing year might be the one coming up and the worst overall year is the one after that.

; )

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In general, I thought 2010-2012 were pretty good and it was the middle years that were weakest.

squexa posted...

I think the most disappointing year might be the one coming up and the worst overall year is the one after that.

2014 was a pretty good year...for a Wii U owner.
That and...sort of...2015 were the only good ones, though.

Well remember, I'm only analyzing off contest strength here, and oh boy do things start getting a little dicey around here.

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Oops I missed it. Soz.

Imagine if the Wii U actually took off. The narrative around 2014 would be totally different! And 2012 was a good year it was just one in which the kind of games that were actually good changed a lot, which is reflected in contest strength here. It was a similar case in 2016 though there Doom seems to have broken through after the fact.

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Night bump

2013 coming tomorrow!

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MechanicalWall posted...

this is the Monados power,

you damn right it is

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The 13 Games That Made Bracket (And How Long they Lasted):
-Ni No Kuni (Round 1)
-Fire Emblem Awakening (Round 2)
-Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (Round 2)
-Dota 2 (Round 1)
-Grand Theft Auto V (Round 3)
-Stanley Parable (Round 1)
-Assassin's Creed IV (Round 2)
-Tomb Raider (Round 1)
-Animal Crossing: New Leaf (Round 2)
-Bioshock Infinite (Round 2)
-The Last of Us (Division Finals)
-Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (Round 2)
-Rayman Legends (Round 2)

Notable Snubs:
-Pokemon X/Y
-Pikmin 3
-Luigis Mansion: Dark Moon
-Papers, Please
-Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies
-Metal Gear Rising: Revengance
-Injustice: Gods Among Us
-Guacamelee!

Headliners: Grand Theft Auto V, The Last of Us

Busts: Fire Emblem Awakening, Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Snubs Analysis:

Trust me, I am WELL aware that Im going to have to justify my headliners and busts picks this year, but well get there when we get there.

How is it, exactly, that Board 8 failed to get ANY Phoenix Wright game nominated this contest? Ive heard the reasoning that nominations were divided between DD and SoJ (and theoretically the Layton crossover), but come on. Two Ace Attorney games out of a potential seven (if you include the Investigations games) made it into the 2015 contest for Petes sake, and the barrier for entry in this contest was much lower. Call of Duty fans had NINE different games they could have nominated, and they still got one in. Assassins Creed fans had about as many as that to choose from, and they got TWO in.

Im not going to list a Pokemon game every year one came out in, but Im giving a special shoutout to X/Y because it had already made the 2015 bracket, and if any generation were to accompany HGSS Id assume it would be this one. And speaking of Nintendo, in further proof that this site is hardly NintendoFAQs and just ZeldaMarioSmashAndSometimesMetroidAndPokemonFAQs, Pikmin was snubbed from this contest, just as it had been snubbed from the last GotD contest. Same with the games headlined by Marios number 2.

Such an Injustice. Oh, that reminds me, remember how I said that in order to get a fighter to actually be worth anything in these contests you have to slap some pre-existing brand names on it? Yeah. Honestly I dont have that great of a read on that series, but it certainly seems pretty popular, and would have complemented the anemic fighting game roster of this contest well.

If you ask me, Metal Gear Rising is one of the more baffling snubs, definitely one of the most egregious ones that Im going to be listing in the entirety of this analysis. Like, its got Metal Gear in the name, AND its developed by Platinum games. Last I checked people still really like this game, and considering the fact that Metal Gear didnt hit the series cap, this was just BEGGING to be included.

If youre wondering why I include indie games on my snubs lists when there are some juicy AAA game that could have been placed in those slots, my thinking is essentially: if Allen wanted to put a spotlight on indie games for this contest (and he CLEARLY did, considering the snubs Ive been listing that could have claimed some of those spots), there was a hearty selection to choose from. Guacamelee is a sterling example of the Metroidvania genre, and Obra Dinn presumably owes its slot to the success of Papers, Please, Lucas Popes previous game that has slightly more name recognition behind it.

Bust Analysis:

Much like 2010, it was slim pickings this year for both busts and headliners, so a couple of these picks are sure to raise some eyebrows. Let me start, then, with the more confusing selection here.

Animal Crossing wasnt the favorite to win its fourpack by any means, theres no denying that. But in discussions surrounding the highly debated bottom half of Division 6, one game was ever present in peoples minds, and it wasnt any of the ones that were actually a part of the contest. Oh no, it was the recently launched Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a megahit that had reached our secluded site, one that hasnt really cared much for the series. There was chatter centered around how this eightpack was ripe for the taking, and because of that, a New Leaf doped up on New Horizons success might be able to elbow past the two Western games and the embarrassment. Turns out, there wasnt much reason to worry about RDR2 and Portal. While New Leaf put up a decent 42% on RDR2, that would only end up putting it on par with KHIII, which yeah. Not a bad performance, per se, just not the one it could have potentially been. You have to wonder what mightve happened if it actually was the Switch game up to bat; it very well could have won this match.

But the 3DS wasnt content with offering up what was only a mild bust at best, oh no. It served up the genuine article this year. Im going to save the bulk of my vitriol for the game that caused Fire Emblem to be so overrated, but Awakening isnt getting out of here without some harsh words. The theory was simple: Three Houses was such a big success, with such high levels of engagement across the Internet, that it would act as a rising tide for itself and Awakening. We saw this hypothesis proven with Persona, but hey, they say that a good hypothesis has to be one that can be falsified or whatever. Already there was a whiff of bullshit in its match with Deus Ex; in one of my guest crew write-ups I desperately tried arguing that 63% on Human Revolution was actually really good, but I knew I was just fooling myself. HR just doesnt have the clout the original has, and this match clued everyone in that wed been blowing all that smoke up FEs ass to be rewarded with nothing in return.

Now look, 2015 x-stats had Awakening vs Bloodborne as a 54-46 match. Even if BB had gotten a mild buff over the years, Awakening should have gotten a similar buff thanks to 3H. Hah hah hah. Thanks to B8s love of FE and indifference to Miyazakis games + bracket voting, Awakening looked ok for a few minutes before it became clear that wed been swindled. That 54-46 projection became flipped in Bloodbornes favor, and that was before a decently sized rally inflated its total. Funny story: If you hold MGSV at its 2015 level, Dark Souls increased 8% over the years. If you hold Awakening constant, Bloodborne ALSO increased about 8% since the last contest, which makes plenty of sense. If that math is accurate, then Awakening hardly budged. Theory falsified. Maybe Im just especially bitter because my FE > BB pick stung more than any other pick in my bracket; not because it cost me the most points, but because it was the ONLY match where I defied my gut instinct and let the board whisper sweet nothings in my ear. I KNEW Bloodborne would win, but hey, Nintendos really good on this site and 2015 x-stats and and and Im not blaming anyone, by the way, it was on me for not sticking to my beliefs.

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Headliner Analysis:

while we know GTA is an infamous choker

Just one tiny problem: GTA is a fucking choker

Why are you propping up GTA after already bagging on it twice this analysis? you ask

Because this year sucks, I reply

I dont award Headliner status to games merely for exceeding expectations. Im not making Rayman a headliner just because it barely won a debated match before getting blown out. There has to be some meat on the games bones, and a narrative that can paint it in a positive light. Most importantly, it has to actually get somewhere in bracket.

And yknow, yes, GTA choked and obliterated casual AND expert brackets in its loss. Yes, it lost to a Vita port of a PS2 game. YES, it was the ONLY 1 seed to not make it out of its Division, or even make Division Finals.

But lets keep things in perspective. We KNEW GTAV was the most fraudulent 1 seed of the bracket. Is that the games fault? Allen was apparently taking Metacritic scores into consideration when seeding the contest, and the rest of the Internet doesnt hate GTA like we do. It was placed in a position where it was never living up to expectations. Stick it as a 3 or 4 seed in some other Divisions and no one would have blinked an eye. It very well could have won the Pokemon/Nier eightpack in Division 8, or the Portal eightpack in Division 7. Hell, make it a 3 seed in THIS Division and it makes Division Finals.

And lets look at its run. It beat Baba is You in 80-20 fashion. Thats a fine performance, but people were already calling for the Cupset to happen. GTA is a choker, but its not gonna choke on just anything (lawl). Its 60-40 defeat of Cuphead put the final nail in the coffin of Indie Fear; and this was with the entire board antivoting it, made obvious by how low it started that match before going up and up and up.

I already went over P4 vs GTAV at length, but while I dunked on GTA in the 2012 write-up, lets be fair here. Persona was fucking legit this contest. P5 is potentially a top 5 game in this bracket, and it gave the series a massive shot in the arm. GTA, a series that GameFAQs has shat on time and time again, losing to a supercharged JRPG with strong brand recognition isnt really that bad. I really dont think it is, not when this site has been getting smaller and smaller and getting boiled down to its most base components, ie RPGs and Nintendo. Casuals getting their brackets burned by GTA is nothing new, but the experts who have spent almost two decades analyzing and chronicling these contests should have seen this coming. I saw it coming and I had only ever made one bracket before this. Learn from your history, folks!

And in the end, GTA indirectly gets around 40 percent on Smash, maybe a tiny bit less. Thats honestly not that bad, and almost certainly makes it a top 15 game here at worst. GTAIII didnt even make top 20 in GotD1!

Am I the only one doing a PCA that is going out on a limb and defending GTA? Probably. This is why I have self-imposed minimums on busts and headliners; it means I really have to start getting creative.

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Headliner Analysis continued:

This year would have done remarkably well on other sites. Not only do you have GTAV, but you have The Last of Us! And hey, you wanna talk about games that burned people through no fault of their own? TLOUs contest would come to a pretty miserable end, but it had a decent run, all things considered.

Its failure to absolutely obliterate literally what was already making the people that had put a LOT of faith in it kinda jittery, but I hear that people who like strategy games REALLY like Crusader Kings II, so eh. It still put more than fckin 80% on it; if we hadnt been spoiled by DOOM and Galaxy 2 that would have been considered pretty damn beastly. The Diablo match was considered a big underperformance at the time (and I was one of the people booing and jeering), but in retrospect, Diablo III was ok-ish. I guess if you spend almost an entire decade tweeking and adjusting and patching and updating a game, youll eventually placate people.

That was still the point where people realized it was gonna get gutted by Dark Souls. It didnt help that there were whispers of it maybe getting tied up and dangled from a gargoyle by Batman before it could even reach Division Finals (once again, I was one of those whisperers lol). Unfortunately for us lovers of spectacle, that massive upset never materialized; in fact, TLOU kinda overperformed a bit against Manbat, scoring a 55-45 victory that made me feel pretty damn silly; not because TLOU won, but because of the implication that Bioshock might actually lose to Diablo, a rather depressing notion that I actively argued against.

But as fate would have had it, the contests delays hurt TLOU more than any other title. During that long-ass break between Round 3 and Division Finals, someone leaked pretty much everything about TLOU2 to the public. And when I say everything, I mean everything. Now, I dodged those leaks completely, and as I write this, I still dont know whats in them and what has people so up in arms. But people in the Stats topic were blowing a gasket, declaring TLOU was gonna get smacked silly by Dark Souls. Now, I didnt care because I already had Dark Souls winning that match, but that was when I was REALLY tempted to check the leaks and see what could have possibly been in them to make people think they would tank the original game so hard.

But thing is, while well never know how much those leaks ended up hurting TLOU in its Dark Souls match (which was still a 58-42 affair, hardly an asswhooping of untold proportions), I can tell you one thing: it was always gonna lose. TLOU tanking so many expert brackets isnt its fault; like with Witcher, Dark Souls had become a gaming zeitgeist that many here seemed either completely unaware of, or completely indifferent to. There was no shame in TLOU dropping this match, and honestly, despite how popular that game is, this result wouldnt be that surprising on more mainstream sites.

All in all, The Last of Us had a pretty good run, as good as could have been expected. Its just a shame it had to go out on such nasty terms.

Other Thoughts:

This year had a pretty eclectic mix of entrants, and its weird to see how far some have come, and how far some have fallen. Look at Bioshock Infinite; once upon a time, it had stood side-by-side with TLOU in terms of critical acclaim, a massive darling of the community for like maybe a year, if that. Gaming journalists really arent the brightest bunch, but even the better ones arent given a whole lot of time to do deep dives into the games they review, so it wouldnt be for a while until people started realizing that the game wasnt as thoughtful and clever as it was initially touted as being. Batman vs Infinite was a near even match in 2015, natch.

Tomb Raider and ACIV are two other games that might have done better under different circumstances, though in their case its more the fault of their successors that dragged their series name into the ground. I have a theory that mediocre and same-y sequels hurt the original and good entries in the series more than bad ones; what made the original game cool and unique fades with each sequel, while all the bad things get repeated and make people wonder why they liked the original game at all; this is a sentiment I often see when talking about the TR reboot trilogy and Assassins Creed. At least a bad sequel makes people clamor for the good ol' days...

On the opposite side of things, theres Disastertron XIV, famously being released as a daisy chain of turds that I assume they were hoping would coast by on name recognition alone. Once people started tossing those turds back at Square, the first self-aware thought in years finally crossed that companys mind. Turns out when youre a massive multibillion company, youre permitted a do-over or two, and FFXIV would be rereleased this year as an actual game. That people wanted to play. And amazingly, even enjoyed. Still, being an MMO was always going to put a cap on its strength, no matter how much people swear up and down that its the best Final Fantasy game since X.

Cant end this write-up without acknowledging the fact that this year gave us not only a Final Fantasy game, but a Zelda game as well! Weve all repeated this tragic tale a billion times at this point; a potential bracket threat got fed to Smash in Round 2. Boohoo. I waver back and forth on Allens decision to make Nintendo cannibalize itself in Division 3 and later in the semifinals; on the one hand, Im glad we didnt see that company run amok and score wins all over the bracket, but on the other hand, I feel ALBW would have been humbled a bit earlier than some may have expected. Depends how bad it got SFFed, I supposed, so I wont speculate too much.

This year didnt have the peaks of 2012, but the overall average is higher; nine games made it out of Round 1, which proportionally is really good. Of course, some of that is due to lucky bracket placement; Rayman, for example, got matched with the only 6 seed it could have beaten. Assassins Creed IV also kinda lucked out. Still, I think it all makes for a thoroughly average year, and trust me, Im not being limp-wristed here. Im just saving the shit grades for the years I KNOW deserve them.

Final Grade:

C - Pretty low peaks, but a high enough floor to compensate.

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Very late here, but Ghost Trick was a 2011 release in NA.

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Nameless2000 posted...

Very late here, but Ghost Trick was a 2011 release in NA.

Leave it to Board 8 to notice my Ghost Trick mistakes lol.

Duly noted, another correction for the wiki archives

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Super Mario 3D World is very missing from your 2013 snubs list. It's almost certainly 2013's strongest snub, and unlike 3D Land, it has an actual fanbase outside of Board 8. Regarding the Ace Attorneys, I think it's easy for us to underestimate just how little everyone else cares about anything Ace Attorney-related except Phoenix himself, and that includes all the Ace Attorney games.

MechanicalWall posted...

Thanks to B8s ... indifference to Miyazakis games

Board 8 loves Bloodborne, though! I believe it had the most B8 nominations of any game without a specific nomination rally of any sort this time around. Of course, we love Fire Emblem, too, and more importantly, bracket votes trump all in debatable matches.

MechanicalWall posted...

Allen was apparently taking Metacritic scores into consideration when seeding the contest

I still haven't seen any evidence to support this claim, besides the vague statements on the nomination form, which I'm convinced only mattered for selecting which second/third installments of series to leave out. Things like F/GO's 8-seed and SFV's 10-seed don't exactly suggest that Metacritic scores were otherwise a notable factor in seeding this contest. Likewise, GTAV was able to secure a 1-seed in 2015, so even considering that Metacritic scores mattered for seeding back then, it repeating that on nominations alone in a much less competitive field is not hard to believe.

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MetalmindStats posted...

Super Mario 3D World is very missing from your 2013 snubs list

I've mentioned a few times that I'm not including snubs from series that are already satisfactorily represented and hit the 2 game per series cap. Mario Galaxy 2 and Odyssey are by far the strongest Mario games of the decade, so no NSMBU, no Mario Maker, no 3D World or Land.

Someone in the stats topic averaged out the Metacritic scores of each seed and found at least a casual relationship between seeding and score. I think Ulti has it included in his topic.

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2014 is up tomorrow. Gonna be a shorter one 'cause, well, you'll see.

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MetalmindStats posted...

Regarding the Ace Attorneys, I think it's easy for us to underestimate just how little everyone else cares about anything Ace Attorney-related except Phoenix himself, and that includes all the Ace Attorney games.

This is mostly accurate, but people do really love 1 and 3, and that's why you see them in GotD1 and 2015 as low seeds, because we can never really come to a consensus on which one to mass nomiante, so they end up drawing matches that are way out of their league.

This is important to understand if you want to know why Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice didn't make it at all, firstly because there wasn't exactly a mass consensus on which one to nominate here. Secondly, the 2010s saw a lot of activity in the Visual Novel market, that just wasn't there for GotD1. Shu Takumi, the writer of the original trilogy, lent his skills to Ghost Trick, which did make it in. Danganronpa was a big twist on the murder mystery aspect, and though it had its own issues with no consensus option to nominate, it managed to push through DR2 as a 14 seed. The Zero Escape series also released throughout this decade, and managed to push in VLR itself despite competiting with 999 as the fan favorite of the series. And on the western front, Life is Strange was a big hit on the board as well, and ended up being the best seeded VN of the bunch, and I think ranked just above VLR on the unadjusted stats. To say nothing of the snubs in the genre, viral hits like Katawa Shoujo and Doki Doki Literature Club! had some decent support in the nomination process as well.

All of these little things, combined with the Ace Attorney games just being continuations of the series, not really bringing all that much innovation to the genre, and you can see why they have been a bit disposable this time around. They would probably beat all the other VNs in the bracket off brand recognition, except maybe LiS, but I wouldn't trade them DR2 or VLR's spot because Ace Attorney has had its time to shine, and will be back again in contests that play to its strengths.

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MechanicalWall posted...

2014 is up tomorrow. Gonna be a shorter one 'cause, well, you'll see.

Bayonetta 2
Hyrule Warriors
Smash Bros.
Mario Kart 8

Pretty decent lineup for Wii U, at least

2014 for first F year.

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2014 was definitely Wii U's best year

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The 12 Games that Made Bracket (And How Long They Lasted):
-Bravely Default (Round 1)
-Danganronpa 2 (Round 1)
-Shovel Knight (Round 3)
-Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze (Round 1)
-Dragon Age Inquisition (Round 1)
-South Park Stick of Truth (Round 1)
-Destiny (Round 1)
-Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (Round 1)
-The Talos Principle (Round 1)
-Mario Kart 8 (Round 3)
-Hearthstone (Round 1)
-Bayonetta 2 (Round 1)

Notable Snubs:
-Super Smash Bros for 3DS/Wii U
-Alien: Isolation
-Wolfenstein: The New Order
-Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor
-The Evil Within
-Professor Layton VS Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney
-Outlast
-P.T. (yes really)

Headliners: Shovel Knight, Mario Kart 8

Busts: Dragon Age Inquisition, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

Snub Analysis:

Look at that banner, look at the field, look at EVERYTHING that preceded this sentence, and tell me you dont already think this is the weakest year of the decade. I should just post the Final Rating and skip this year but I wont. Cause Im dedicated. And bored.

Speaking of things that I am, am I crazy, or is my list of snubs better than a lot of the games that actually made it in? Am I silly to think that Shadow of Mordor and Alien Isolation would have done better than Hearthstone? Or Wolfenstein and the Evil Within better than The Talos Principle and Danganronpa? This year reminds me how poorly represented horror as a genre was this contest, because alongside Alien and TEW, Outlast was a flagship horror game of the decade, and heavily influential for how that genre evolved. P.T. sounds like a gag pick, but honestly, it was like a fckin hour long and probably has more goodwill on this site than Destiny does. Not gonna bang the Phoenix Wright drum too much, but like, come on. None?

Of course, this all pales in comparison to probably the biggest snub for a series that didnt hit the cap, Smash 4. Since Brawl, weve never gotten the most recent Smash game and its immediate predecessor in a single contest before, and its pretty clear we never will. Dont you wanna KNOW? Know whether these games really do lose as much strength as we think they do? Much like Skyward Sword, Smash 4 haunted the Stats topic all contest long, with constant speculation how well it might have done. Does the Smash name help it coast, or does Ultimates release immediately fodderize it? Doesnt help it was stuck on the Wii U, meaning people could not WAIT to ditch it and grab it on the system they actually own. Well probably never see it in a contest again, so those answers will forever go unanswered.

Bust Analysis:

Not ONLY is this years field rife with fodder, it suffered from the single highest amount of Round 1 upsets. Its not like we were asking much here; these games were supposed to cop a win before marching to their slaughter in Round 2. But apparently these demands were deemed unreasonable, because we couldnt even get that much from.

Binding of Isaac is probably the least disappointing, because ok, its an indie game that stopped being relevant years ago, and wasnt good in 2015 either. It still has cult appeal, and was even one of the Switchs launch titles; it was one of the few things people could play in those early couple of months. I suppose you could thank Nioh 2s release shortly before the contest began for this upset, though Nioh as a samurai Souls clone series got punkd the second Sekiro was announced and FROM just went ahead and served up the genuine article (and just to get a jump on the inevitable comment about this, yes I know Sekiro doesnt play completely like Dark Soul) .

Dragon Age, meanwhile, was the consensus 2014 GotY according to GotYBlogs. Thats a big, chunky AAA title with brand recognition, matched up against another dinky little indie game. Unfortunately for Dragon Age, three factors foiled its victory. One, Biowares stock has completely and utterly tanked since its release; Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem werent even that long ago. Two, remember how I said Witcher helped initiate a paradigm shift against Skyrim and Bethesda? It arguably hurt DA:I even more than that; Inquisition was one of the only open world RPGs available for more than a year after the PS4 and Xbone launched, and I personally believed it garnered so many GotY based on that alone. It looked pretty and had an impressive scope compared to the previous generations games, so it managed to get by at a time where people were desperate to be impressed. Then Witcher comes out a few months later and blows everyones minds; Inquisition went from being THE game to get if you wanted a PS4 WRPG to an afterthought almost immediately. Third, and most importantly, Ori wasnt actually a dinky little indie game, but one with a relatively robust name brand; and like Nioh, it had just received a sequel, one that Microsoft banged on about at every single E3 for like three years it feels. Doh, the fickle whims of fate once again conspire against 2014s lineup!

But what about the match that was actually actively debated pre-contest? Ill be 100% honest with you: I never once thought Tropical Freeze was gonna win this match. I assume the reason people were so confident in it was because of the Switch release, but come on. That shit was SIXTY dollars, and unlike, say, MK8 Deluxe or Hyrule Warriors, it didnt come with a bunch of DLC or added content. More importantly, ZeldaMarioSmashAndSometimesMetroidAndPokemonFAQs is real, NintendoFAQs is not. Are you from one of those series? No? Well are you at least from the 90s? Still no? Then GameFAQs doesnt actually care about your Nintendo ass. Xenoblade gets to apply the JRPG buff here, skyrocketing its relevance on this site. Devil May Cry is hit or miss, but DMCV was easily the best received one since DMC3, which has looked OK in the past. The eventual 57-43 result was one that showcased a match that didnt look like itd ever been debatable. Your zoomer New Funky Mode blurb meme pales in comparison to the boomer Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series blurb meme.

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Headliner Analysis:

Well, this should be relatively brief. 2014 is one of only two years in the entire contest that didnt have at least one game make Division Finals or beyond. Its true! Makes for an easy analysis.

Mario Kart 8s run (or drive, really) was pretty decent, though. Thanks to getting SFFed into the dirt in 2015, we didnt have a REAL read on the game, or how much the Switch release helped. And make no mistake, while we were pretty loose with claiming how much a Switch release may have helped this or that game, it definitely mattered for MK8. The Deluxe edition being released only a couple of months into the Switchs life meant it was an easy buy for early adopters, and to this day, it is the single best-selling game on the system. Not Breath of the Wild. Not Smash. Not Odyssey. Its this.

And it showed. Its match with Uncharted 4 was decently debated, and like with the DK/DMC match, the eventual 59-41 result made you wonder why it was ever in doubt (and of course this was one of the few important Round 1 matches I was on the wrong side of). At the time, this was written off as UC4 being garbage, an entry from a series that had peaked on the PS3, and even during those halcyon days was hardly that impressive. But MK8 would prove that was no fluke. It pushed for a 60-40 win against FFXIV in Round 2, but again, this result was fairly easy to write off. FFXIV is an MMO, bruh! Doesnt matter that its got the Final Fantasy name attached to it (for whatever thats even worth), being an MMO immediately caps its strength. And I mean, thats true. I just expressed that very sentiment in my 2013 analysis.

But these rationalizations continued to cloak MK8s power level. It met one of the eventual semifinalists in Round 3, and this time it was on the receiving end of a 60-40 loss. But man, let me be the first to admit that I was very vocal about this being a shit result for Skyrims chances at the final. And I mean, I was right, but not necessarily for the reasons I believed. Truth is, the story of this match wasnt Skyrims weakness; it was of MK8s strength. We wouldnt realize this until Division Finals, when Skyrim put an almost identical number on HGSS. This would mean that at least theoretically, MK8 could actually beat JRPG darling Nier: Automata head-on. That is HILARIOUS, and proves that even modern Mario Kart is a real force on this site. Yah, the word Mario in the title should have clued us in, but its nice to have evidence.

Despite Shovel Knight having a more contentious Round 2, its run was comparatively less interesting to me. This was mostly because it got put in a contender for weakest fourpack of the contest, a fourpack that led straight to another game with Mario in the title, this one just a wee bit stronger. Here was the theory of the case: If Undertale retained ANY of its 2015 power post-rallies (ie people here actually played the game after it won the contest), it would roll this fourpack. If not, or worse, if it got anti-voted, Shovel Knight would bury it (har har).

Thats kinda what happened? Shovel Knight almost doubled Dragons Dogma in Round 1 (which, holy shit, probably puts DD WAY down in the x-stats), making it look an easy lock for Round 3 after Undertale did indeed get antivoted (and no one can convince me that wasnt why it lost). Unfortunately, one of the characters in Octopath Traveler is a thief, meaning that easy lock was picked and tossed away.

What followed was one of the most bizarre matches in the contest; it was close as shit, it was one of the VERY few matches that had its first lead change about 12 hours after the poll had opened, a lead change that held for hours and hours but I just couldnt care. I dont know why this seemed so uninteresting to me, but it just was. The only thing that caught my interest was that Shovel Knight was the ONLY game to get its devs to tweet in support of it (unless I missed something?), a tweet that helped it mount a big comeback in the final hours of the match, eventually digging Octopaths grave and receiving the lowest pick rate in the contest until P4 and Xenoblades wins in Round 3.

There was debate in the Stats topic for days over whether or not Shovel Knight was going to pull ahead anyway, but for me, the most interesting implication was that indie devs are the ones more likely to have their ears to the ground. I dont think the giant monoliths of Nintendo or Square or whatever have anyone anywhere in their chains of command that give a shit about this increasingly irrelevant site, and even if someone does care, its much harder for us to get their ear. Indie games, meanwhile, have much smaller dev teams that dont have so much corporate baggage, and should be more responsive to our contests. Could we have gotten Lucas Pope to tweet in support of Obra Dinn? Or Johnathan Blow for the Witness? Those are games with dev teams you could fit around a kitchen table. If they had been in debatable matches and one of us had prodded them for a tweet, would we have received one? We need to test this at some point.

But anyway, Shovel Knight went on to not even get 30% on Mario Odyssey. There were claims of SFF, but who cares, man. As epic a match as Round 2 may have been for people, this was always going to be the result; fodderization at the hands of Mario. Probably why I was so disinterested. If it had ended up doing what Mario Kart did and surprised us with some big number thatd have at least been something, but nope. 2014 had a VERY limited entertainment budget.

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Other Thoughts:

Do I need to belabor the point here? Look at how far this field of games got; outside of Mario Kart and Shovel Knight, NONE of them even made it past Round ONE. That is by far the most abysmal success rate of any year this decade. Its not even close. And its not like any of them looked good in defeat, and a lot of them were the victims of upsets and blowouts from games that arent even that strong. Destiny and Hearthstone got pushed to around 30% by Stardew Valley and Divinity 2. These are not top games in the field. Im fairly certain theyll end up in the bottom half of the x-stats. And they still scored blowouts here. Christ.

I guess Bravely Default was ok; BotW and DQXIs match implying that it would beat FFXV head-to-head is so. Freakin. Funny. And South Park only getting doubled by 3H doesnt sound great, and it isnt, but it was yet another clue that Fire Emblem was not going to be anywhere near as dominant as wed hoped.

Bayonetta 2 was another game that had let us know ahead of time that its opponent, Nier Automata, wasnt all that, but unfortunately it wasnt until the following Round that people realized that of course Platinum SFF would be a thing. In the unadjusted x-stats for Division 8 (a division that was otherwise SFF free), Bayo 2 is below Journey. Whats easier to believe, that Bayo 2 became significantly weaker since 2015 with a Switch release under its belt (or that Journey got an insane boost, which based on Skyrims end performance, it didnt), or that it got SFFed? Platinums fanbase is hardcore, and you can bet that a lot of people who own one of those games owns the other. I dont know why people were dunking on me for suggesting this when a lot of much more dubious reasons for SFF were commonly accepted, but its nice to be so thoroughly vindicated by pretty much every piece of information that eventually came to light.

Enough words wasted on this year. The worst thing is, it actually has competition for absolute worst of the decade. Yes, really.

Final Rating:

F - Badbadbadbadbadbadbad. Bad. Goodn't

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Hyrule Warriors is an objectively great game, and it sucks that anything made as a Musou/Warriors game is automatically treated as unworthy of praise by so many.

MechanicalWall posted...

Speaking of things that I am, am I crazy, or is my list of snubs better than a lot of the games that actually made it in? Am I silly to think that Shadow of Mordor and Alien Isolation would have done better than Hearthstone?

Shadow of Mordor deserved the snub. Game was fucking terrible, I can't believe I listened to the critical praise and bought it w/o doing more research first.

Dragon Age, meanwhile, was the consensus 2014 GotY according to GotYBlogs.

Bayonetta was the actual 2014 GotY and while it unfortunately also lost in round 1 due to its seeding against NieR Automata, it still felt pretty good to see DA: I get humbled by an indie game.

That shit was SIXTY dollars, and unlike, say, MK8 Deluxe or Hyrule Warriors, it didnt come with a bunch of DLC or added content.

Hyrule Warriors offered plenty of content and a full game for its price, plus a bunch of free DLC. And its paid DLC was at least a lot of stuff for what you paid for. It was the first game I've ever bought DLC for (and to this day, that list is 2 games long) b/c it was worth it.
Just not sure why you're singling out HW, when most $60 games have DLC now, and it was by far one of the most benign examples.... Can't comment on MK8, not familiar with it's content.

Xenoblade gets to apply the JRPG buff here, skyrocketing its relevance on this site.

Xenoblade is legit one of the best games of all time, skyrocketing its relevance on this site.

streamofthesky posted...

Just not sure why you're singling out HW,

I'm saying Hyrule Warriors' Switch release WAS a robust package that included a bunch of extra content and therefore justified its price tag. I'm not bagging on it here! If Zelda hadn't hit the series cap I would have included it on the snubs list.

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MechanicalWall posted...

I'm saying Hyrule Warriors' Switch release WAS a robust package that included a bunch of extra content and therefore justified its price tag. I'm not bagging on it here! If Zelda hadn't hit the series cap I would have included it on the snubs list.

Oh, ok then.

And I consider it more a Musou/Warriors game than a Zelda game, anyway. I like both series, but the gameplay is like 90% Musou/Warriors.

streamofthesky posted...

Shadow of Mordor deserved the snub. Game was fucking terrible, I can't believe I listened to the critical praise and bought it w/o doing more research first.

Personally I did enjoy Shadow of Mordor, but everything about it was just so generic. Shadow of War also really tainted it for a lot of people, that game was such a piece of shit that you forgot how slightly above average it's predecessor was. I'm glad neither game made the list.

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I did like Shadow of Mordor but everything kind of blended together for a while, the Nemesis system or w/e it was called was neato but the more you played the more you'd see the cracks in it, it's SO scripted but at least the scripting was varied enough you didn't notice it unless you dumped hours into it like I did

I think the real cherry on top was that after like 40 hours of me dicking around and grinding I finally did the last mission which includes you facing your truest rival, the dude you fought and killed the most, in one final epic showdown

but I got up to him and there was this big zoom-in and his name came up and I was like "who the fuck is this" and I cut his head off like immediately. really undercut what should have been an incredible moment

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God, 2014 somehow seemed even worse than I remembered after reading this analysis.

Dragon Age Inquisition being consensus GotY shows just how bad the year is.

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I would have absolutely hated seeing Sm4sh in this bracket. A totally obsoleted game that probably would have taken out a bunch of stuff I liked anyway.

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