Board 8 > ~~ Ctes' Post-Contest Analysis (PCA) ~~

(+) Yeah! (+)

Round 1 Division 8 Day 15
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 84.00%
Subnautica 16.00%

Prediction Percentage 95.4%

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim had a rough contest. It was consider the favorite by the board to reach the finals and get the honor of being the final game Breath of the Wild beats, so it could basically only underperform from expectations. Furthermore, the other #1 seeds in the bottom half had board 8ers defending them at any chance, while Skyrim really lacked anybody doing that. The Witcher 3, which was from the start generally considered the most likely game to take the spot in the finals from Skyrim, had begun its contest run by exceeding expectations, so Skyrim could really only disappoint today.

It got 84% against a game that is pretty different from it and thats on top of any potential Bethesda backlash it might have been a victim of, which really starts to matter when you hit the big numbers. I dont think it was a bad performance, although some was making it out to be because Subnautica is expected to be extremely weak. Its not that its a bad game, but its no big name and its not a thing for us, that much is true. But Skyrim got below 80% here and I think that was what it needed to be in contention for the spot in the finals it could hope for.

The Witcher 3 looked better in round 1 for sure, but there was no telling what either of them was truly capable of yet. We couldnt say much about the Bethesda anti-voting yet, but it seems pretty clear its there later on. Its hard to grasp how much of a difference that makes. Like, Cloud Strife will probably never be the character to score the big blowouts again. Final Fantasy VII got that against them a long time ago for always winning. For a while, they started out looking bad at every chance, but still did just fine in the end. Because the round 1 matches were as big blowouts as they were, it wasnt yet time to lose all hope of Skyrim reaching the finals. The Witcher 3 might have tilted the favorite status slightly, and Skyrim sure heard of that, but it was still reasonable to hope for it.

The oracles predicted this match almost perfectly. I mean, weve been closer to the consensus than 0.77% before, although thats still good. But the worst prediction still got 44.30 points. Thats pretty darn great. Despite that, people were ready to throw dirt at Skyrim right away. A big reason for that is its horrible board vote, which was a good hint of the expected Bethesda anti-voting. Most people dont see the percentages at the end of the day and Skyrim rose throughout the day, though not as much as in future matches, which says a lot about Subnautica. It was judged from when the match began, and I know trends arent what they used to be, but that doesnt mean there cant be shifts. Ill probably defend it quite a bit, because I think it needs to be mentioned in any Game of the Decade debate even if what it did so well has been improved upon now, and nothing that is wrong with Bethesda has to do with Skyrim. It didnt deserve all the hate.

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Round 1 Division 8 Day 15
Fate / Grand Order 33.80%
Journey 66.20%

Prediction Percentage 62.83%

This match was expected by many to give us the weakest game in round 2, which would end up providing Skyrim with yet another target on its cover before it proved to be wrong. Journey got rolled over by Final Fantasy VII in 2015, a game that most of us knows get a fair share of votes against it for always winning. It finished up near the very bottom of the x-stats and no one was really surprised. Its a pretty game, and while it has gotten its prestige here and there on the internet, were not the place to get it from. We had no expectations for it, and rightfully so.

Then theres Fate / Grand Order, which has just about no business getting a seed that high. People know what it is because the anime series is pretty big but being the only mobile game in the bracket probably says a lot about how much we think of those. Ive said before that Pokemon GO shouldve been in the contest. I stand by that, but not because I think it wouldve been worth anything. A few people picked Fate / Zero, but Id expect that to be lack of faith in Journey more than anything. As I said, many people expected this match to give is the weakest game in round 2, even if a few other matches were brought up as well.

Journey did better than the average oracle expected of it and no one picked against it there. We still expected Fate / Zero to among the worst games in the bracket and its weird how it ends up avoiding bottom 20 here. Perhaps the name helped. Im thinking its a game enough people have tried out to prevent it from being destroyed so it has a possible larger playrate than the other bottom games. It drew a game we have previously shown to not cared about, which is perfect for taking advantage of such a playrate. It was also the top option in the bracket. Flip the seeds and Journey certainly scores a higher prediction percentage. On top of getting a good draw itself, Journey is probably also a bad draw for Skyrim being as different from it as it is. Skyrim has its anti-votes, but still ended up getting the job done for many rounds. That probably helped Fate / Zero escape the bottom. I think it couldve easily gotten there elsewhere.

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Count me as one of the guys who picked Journey to lose because I had no idea what FGO was and assumed it was a popular game based on the seeding. Apparently it is a popular game, just WAY out of this site's wheelhouse.

Journey never really interested me much beyond when it was new. From what I gather it's basically a 90-minute "experience" where all you do is move around and explore some environments. I do like games that involve exploration quite a lot, but I also typically like them to be more traditional games. You ever played it?

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Round 1 Division 8 Day 15
Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn 71.53%
Crypt of the NecroDancer 28.47%

Prediction Percentage 82.97%

Final Fantasy XIV has somehow managed to be the most well-liked Final Fantasy this past decade. Not necessarily the strongest, but certainly the one with the least things going against it. Thats pretty crazy considering what it is. Although its also something that it achieved down the line. It wasnt as good at first. It also got an interesting bracket placement where it had a possibility of making round 3. It looked good today as well, which made the next round a bit more exciting. Generally, the winner of the next match was believed to advance twice, but FFXIV had a outside shot.

Of course, Crypt of the NecroDancer was never something to expect very much of. Weve learned already at this point that there is no such thing as general indie boost. Some indie games are just legit now, and this one is not really from the time youd prefer to be. Furthermore, its a rhythm game and thats probably not something you want to be. We had Guitar Hero and Rock Band in the previous Game of the Decade, which is fair enough, they had their time in the spotlight, but they underperformed. You should respect nothing of such games and little of indies.

Final Fantasy XIV probably does good here on the forced voting stuff. You see the name Final Fantasy there and it gets your vote for recognition. That matters against games that are hardly known. I wonder if the name alone cements it as what is the strongest MMORPG now, which isnt exactly a big title here, but still a title.

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SE messed so bad that an MMO is considered the best! Damn.

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Safer_777 posted...

SE messed so bad that an MMO is considered the best! Damn.

I'm not an MMO guy, but I have a few friends who are and they've told me that FF14 is easily the best MMO on the market these days.

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Round 1 Division 8 Day 15
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End 41.15%
Mario Kart 8 58.85%

Prediction Percentage 56.02%

This was one of them more debated round 1 matches of the contest. Not because it necessarily split the board the most, but because it was widely agreed that the winner of the match would advance all the way to round 3. Uncharted 4 is a big game and they have proved themselves to be alright in the past. Uncharted 2 advanced to round 3 in the contest we had a decade ago. The fourth one sold by far the most. Most of the discussing however centered around Mario Kart 8. Mario Kart 8 appeared in the latest Best Game Ever and got stomped by Super Mario 64 in round 1. It looked very weak back then, but it was also in a match that could be filled with SFF, so it was hard to tell. Racing games are historically worth just about nothing on our site, but Mario Kart is different from the norm and is this not really hurt by it. Its similar to how Smash Bros has always been good despite being a fighting game. Now it has been released on the Switch to become one of the best-selling games of all time. It was largely thought to be best Mario Kart of all time, although people like us will probably insist on Mario Kart 64 being so. It had a high ceiling, but a low floor.

Mario Kart 8 ended up being a favorite by a solid margin. The previous contest, Character Battle X, taught us to go with the Nintendo character in a debated match. This seemed like the same thing. This time, even the overall site favored Mario Kart ever so slightly, which is probably partially because experts make up a bigger portion of the brackets, but also because Mario Kart 8 has been one of the biggest casual games of the decade. I think it has some amount of casual bait in itself, so good thing that worked out for some of them for a change.

Seriously, Uncharted 4 got screwed by bracket placement as much as you possible could. Even at the time of the match where most of board thought Uncharted 4 is weaker than it ended up being, it was unanimously agreed that Uncharted 4 would easily beat every other #13 seed in the bracket. Mario Kart 8 is so far from the second strongest of them. The second best might just be Tales of Berseria. That doesnt sound much like an achievement, so lets look at the other perspective. Because on the other hand, Mario Kart 8 looks good enough to be able to upset every other #4 seed too, except for Super Mario Galaxy 2, but including Horizon. Super Mario Galaxy 2 looks like it had a case for being among the eight strongest games, so thats hardly a bad thing. Mario Kart 8 is easily the most underseeded game in the entire bracket and Uncharted 4 was the poor game to get screwed by that. It could beat a lot of games that made it to round 2 with relative ease.

It took most of the contest before people accepted Mario Kart 8 is actually really good, so at the time Uncharted 4 was thought to be really weak. Some people were thinking Mario Kart 8 had no chance against Final Fantasy XIV next round and that this was just Uncharted 4 being trash, because the match was over right away. Mario Kart 8 won the board vote big time, it looked like it would go for a doubling for a moment before eventually calming down. Im not sure if theres some general Naughty Dog backlash going on. This was before The Last of Us 2 has leaked, but it was still not exactly the most popular company.

Mario Kart 8s inclusion seems to show that Mario spin-offs were not counted when considering the expected series cap of two games per franchise. Its a good call too. It would be weird not having such a big game in the bracket. Galaxy 2 and Odyssey are both among the greatest received games of all time, they both had to make it in as well. Besides, Mario Kart alone of doing better than almost all series today, usually selling better than the platformer Mario on the same console. On the other hand, Uncharted 4 got in a high seed while Uncharted 3 did not. Im sure this has been used as potential evidence of Uncharted 4 being weak by some, but its really just another snub a result of the game coming out in the game it doesnt really belong to. Its similar to God of War III in that regard. You dont think of Uncharted 3 as a 2010s game when its part of an early Playstation 3 trilogy.

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By the end of the contest, Uncharted 4 ended up looking really good, Mario Kart 8 simply ended up looking way better than anyone had imagined it was capable of. I was defending this game a lot throughout the contest and I feel pretty proud for seemingly having had the correct read on it in the end. There are those that will probably still calling it a bust for being a high seed that dropped its round 1 match in a chalky bracket, but thats quite unreasonable when its solely because of Mario Kart 8 being underseeded and many other games would have done the same.

It seems like the general idea now is Uncharted 2 was pretty good, but the others werent as big and Uncharted 4 didnt improve on the formula enough, so it wasnt remembered as well. I mean, sure, there are surely parts of the internet that thinks so or we wouldnt have the discussion, but Uncharted 4 was big in every way and you cant deny how it was here 4 years after its release. IT was huge in reviews of both critics and users. It has sold more copies than any other Playstation 4 game. It also wasnt supposed to improve upon the formula. It was created as the final entry in series to draw a conclusion to the story of Nathan Drake, and thats exactly what it did. Besides, its not like the game just used the same gameplay, its better than the other games in the series and The Last of Us too, its just not as big as jump, but why should the fourth game in a four game story be that?

GameFAQs has always been less interested in the series than most. People seemed to firmly believe that Uncharted 2 would easily be the strongest of the Uncharted games. I disagreed from the day of this match and claimed that I thought the fourth game has a chance of being the strongest and that I dont think the difference is all too big. Uncharted 2 got the most outside praise, but Uncharted 4 sold better and fans arent really as settled on 2 being the best one as some people want to make it seem like. Plenty of fans prefer 3 or 4. My idea was mostly laughed at back then, but on the other side of contest, it sure looks like I was right.

We cant tell for certain, but lets compare to the games that made both the 2015 and the 2020 contests. We obviously wont use stuff like Witcher 3, Xenoblade Chronicles or even Mario Kart 8, which everyone can see boosted a lot. Compare them though Fire Emblem: Awakening or Borderlands 2, which have about the same distance to each other in both contests. Uncharted 4 looks better. Compare through Bayonetta 2 and Uncharted 4 looks better, and thats even when believing Bayonetta 2 was SFFd a lot this constant and keeping it constant. Compare through Civilization V and Uncharted 4 looks better. Compare through Minecraft and theyre about even, but its widely agreed that Minecraft was underrated in the 2015 stats. Compare through Shovel Knight and Uncharted 4 looks better, and sure, Shovel Knight is hard to read properly this contest, but you can see where were getting at.

Even if you somehow want to say that all of that is within the uncertainties and it doesnt prove anything, it sure as hell indicates that if the games are much different in strength, its in favor of Uncharted 4 and theres not much else than gut feeling to tell us that Uncharted 2 should be stronger. There is no way for it to be by a lot. You can argue that some of the games I mentioned has reason to decline, but not all of them, and you can argue that for Uncharted franchise just as well. How a direct match between them would end is another discussion, but basically everything reasonable you can put on the table points towards Uncharted 4 not only holding up indirectly but looking straight up better.

The board wanted to call Uncharted 4 a bust, but its the opposite if anything. Everyone but me claimed it would be way weaker than another entry from its series and it wasnt at all. It exceeded our expectations and its a darn shame its complete lack of luck in bracket placement prevented it from getting a match where it could upset something. I dont know what this board has against it, but whatever it is it sure isnt a general opinion, not anywhere, but not even on our own site. Whatever happened with Naughty Dog was after this game came out. Uncharted 4 is a good game, and Im glad it would end up showing it was good enough in the end.

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Some kind of nitpicky thoughts:

ctesjbuvf posted...

Some people were thinking Mario Kart 8 had no chance against Final Fantasy XIV next round and that this was just Uncharted 4 being trash, because the match was over right away.

I don't believe anyone claimed that whatsoever. There were definitely some who thought FFXIV had a very good chance to beat MK8, but no one who thought MK8 had no chance against FFXIV. For perspective's sake, 54.44% was the highest Oracle prediction for FFXIV there.

ctesjbuvf posted...

Mario Kart 8s inclusion seems to show that Mario spin-offs were not counted when considering the expected series cap of two games per franchise.

No, it doesn't, because GameFAQs' database lists Mario Kart as a separate series from Mario as a whole, unlike say Captain Toad.

ctesjbuvf posted...

We cant tell for certain, but lets compare to the games that made both the 2015 and the 2020 contests.

This is inherently a fallacious comparison, because Uncharted 2 was stuck behind Undertale's warping effect on the RBY/Sonic 2 match in 2015. Thus, it's reasonable to assume it's stronger than 2015 made it look, just like Portal 2, which was also skewed by the same match. On the other side, I could claim that Uncharted 2 is clearly the strongest of its series because 36.5% on Fallout 3 (through Halo) is obviously better than 41.5% on Mario Kart 8, but I won't, because I realize that Uncharted has almost certainly fallen off since the original GotD.

ctesjbuvf posted...

Everyone but me claimed it would be way weaker than another entry from its series and it wasnt at all.

I don't think I've seen anyone besides you claim anything about the contest strength relationship between Uncharted 2 and 4, whether during GotD 2 or at any other time. Maybe I've just missed said claims, but I feel like you're exaggerating at least a bit there.

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MetalmindStats posted...

I don't believe anyone claimed that whatsoever. There were definitely some who thought FFXIV had a very good chance to beat MK8, but no one who thought MK8 had no chance against FFXIV. For perspective's sake, 54.44% was the highest Oracle prediction for FFXIV there.

No chacne is probably not the best wording for a general opinion, I'll admit, but I did see that swung around in the stats topics more than once. "Some people" meant a few.

MetalmindStats posted...

No, it doesn't, because GameFAQs' database lists Mario Kart as a separate series from Mario as a whole, unlike say Captain Toad.

I see. But is it the only spin-off to do so? I can look into that myself as well.

MetalmindStats posted...

This is inherently a fallacious comparison, because Uncharted 2 was stuck behind Undertale's warping effect on the RBY/Sonic 2 match in 2015. Thus, it's reasonable to assume it's stronger than 2015 made it look, just like Portal 2, which was also skewed by the same match. On the other side, I could claim that Uncharted 2 is clearly the strongest of its series because 36.5% on Fallout 3 (through Halo) is obviously better than 41.5% on Mario Kart 8, but I won't, because I realize that Uncharted has almost certainly fallen off since the original GotD.

It's difficult to get a good read, but we adjusted for that as good as we could back then, so the point still stands. They don't look much differently as most people claimed, leading to the final one...

MetalmindStats posted...

I don't think I've seen anyone besides you claim anything about the contest strength relationship between Uncharted 2 and 4, whether during GotD 2 or at any other time. Maybe I've just missed said claims, but I feel like you're exaggerating at least a bit there.

"Everyone" is perhaps misleading, because it's not like it was ever any major discussion that involves the whole board. But I shared thoughts about Mario Kart being and later Skyrim probably being good, which I often explained had to do with expecting Uncharted 4 to be as good as anything Uncharted 2. Every round I did this, and everyone who responded to me made those claims, each time.

It's a specification worth editing in for sure, because of course a bunch of people could agree but just didn't respond. In reality they probably didn't care much.

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Round 1 Division 8 Day 16
Pokemon HeartGold / SoulSilver Version 81.96%
Night in the Woods 18.04%

Prediction Percentage 91.81%

The final one of the three remakes would also score a big blowout. Its always weird to speak of the Pokemon entries as a single game when theyre technically two, but it makes sense, I suppose. So far, there was nothing indicating that being a remake would hurt you in any way. It was also still hard to tell because its different when facing games that people actually think about remembering the past decade of games than when its against something not widely known. The big opponent for Pokemon HGSS was NieR Automata in round 3. It was the board favorite to make round 4 but expected to lose to Skyrim by everyone except a few that fear Pokemon too much, or underestimate Skyrim I suppose.

NieR looked pretty good today, but it wouldnt take many votes against HGSS to prevent it from getting a higher percentage, so Im pretty sure most people still believed in whatever they did before the contest began. Night in the Woods is a cute game that was pretty well acclaimed, but it hasnt gotten the attention a bunch of other indie games have gotten. It released on everything and its from 2017, so here a good reminder that people arent actually voting for things because theyre from 2017, it just happens to have a lot of games we care strongly for. That might just be the most obvious statement you can make.

The same thing can be said about indie games, however. We grouped those together a lot more than we should, especially in the early part of contest. One indie game being good doesnt really say anything about the others, regardless of exposure. That indie games generally seemed to do better likely just means that indie games in general have a easier time getting exposure today. That obviously increases the chances that well have legit indie games, but it doesnt mean a general rise. Of course, another match going on today was showing that better.

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Also, do keep even nitpicky thoughts coming! It's fun to discuss things and it almost always makes the write-ups in the archives better.

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ctes, I've been going over the GOTD 1 x-stats and making adjustments to what doesn't look right to me, which has so far only entailed raising Mario Kart DS like 4-5% against Brawl, pulling Fallout 3 down 5% against Brawl, and pulling SOTC down 5% against MGS3. All that has Uncharted 2 getting 29.37% on Majora's Mask, making it equal to World of Warcraft. That doesn't seem too bad TBH. I think this site has just never really cared for Uncharted: see 2 losing to HALO in GOTD 1. Makes sense given Uncharted is about as much of a choker in these contests as Halo is.

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Round 1 Division 8 Day 16
Celeste 49.55%
Rayman Legends 50.45%

Prediction Percentage 37.78%

After a mostly boring round 1 with lots of blowouts, the final day of the round gave us the best match of the contest so far and got us all hyped again for round 2. It was almost out of the blue. We werent particularly hyped for the match before it came. No one was expecting it to deliver this much. Celeste was already the favorite by a pretty big amount and the first round hadnt really done anything to change that, the contrary if anything. Celeste is everything that we up until this point had agreed was good to be as an indie.

Rayman Legends marks the first appearance of a Rayman game in any of our contests. We also only got the character into two contests. First time when expanding the field 2007 where he jobbed hard to Snake, Nightmare and Vyse. No point in getting him back in then, until 2013 expanding the field as insanely much as it did. From that point forward, he might be able to win the right match as being a mascot or well known character is better now than it used to be. Unfortunately for Rayman, he drew Squall in 2013 and missed the field completely in 2018. Perhaps if he gets into Smash Bros, we might care to nominate him again. Otherwise its a long shot. Thats a huge part of the reason people had little faith in Rayman Legends. Its not even considered to be the best of what a series capable of doing nothing had to offer.

The match was exciting almost right away. Celeste won the board vote by quite a bit. Its not too surprising, we love games that. A lot of indies have had similar trends, and Ive seen people talk a lot about Celeste and never about Rayman. On top of that we have the bracket votes, but Rayman didnt really allow Celeste to get away. It held the lead during the freeze, going up and down a little bit, before being ahead by 21 at the freeze. Given what trends weve seen similar games to Celeste have, and given that Celeste probably had the board vote and the bracket vote, this sure didnt look very good for it.

True enough, Celestes lead dropped to only 6 in the next update despite bracket votes and the like still being in its favor. At that point, you could be really happy having Rayman in your bracket, because things were looking really good for it. Then the match randomly turned. Celeste won the next update by 3 votes, which isnt much, but everyone expected a lead change. Celeste extended that to 20 votes the following update and go slightly up from there for a few more updates, before Rayman made a small cut. With a small lead of 36, perhaps it was still the power hour in effect. There was hope for a Rayman supporter, right?

The next update would have Celeste bursting up to 88 and the one after that up to 144. That was a very quick shift that certainly looked like Celeste had this one in the bag. The next while would have them go a big back and forth at times, but overall, Celeste was going upward. Suddenly, it looked like Rayman had actually won the board vote. Five hours into the match, Celeste was up by 300 votes. It was looking like it was over, but that it would just end up being a lot closer than we thought it would.

The 5-hour mark is interesting, because its when Celeste stopped going up. Two updates later it was ahead by 333 votes, which is the highest lead any of them had the whole match. Rayman did a pretty big cut then, but no one was paying too much attention yet. An hour later Celeste would be at the same spot. In other words, they were stalling for an hour. Then Rayman began working at making the match interesting from that point forward, as the US went to sleep and Europe began waking up. Rayman was winning in most of Europe, while Celeste held the lead in NA.

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Rayman began winning the hours from that point forward. It was a pretty slow progression at first and most of the board were asleep, but we began noticing slowly that the Rayman was putting together something. It had the time, but would it be enough when Celeste was winning in NA? Rayman certainly made the attempt. While the match was almost even for the two following hours after the biggest lead, Rayman cut off 100 votes the next hour. At this point, every awake had taken notice. Rayman continued to cut the lead of at a a good pace having broken the 100-vote lead nine hours into the match.

Rayman began slowing down at that point. It continued to cut for a few more updates, but then Celeste began to stall. It would appear Raymans best hours were over despite Europe still waking up and NA still being asleep. The thing is, it was probably just close enough anywhere, so perhaps there was more to this match than geography. The match would stand completely still for a few hours and I dont think theres really any trends to use there, it just did. Votals are low enough for such to happen. Celeste attempted to get some of its lead back, but it wasnt really allowed to get away.

Eleven hours into the match would be when Rayman would begin the final strike. Right before NA would supposedly wake up and save Celeste. Rayman could the lead slowly and a bit more than hour later, Celeste managed a 2 vote lead before the change finally happened. Rayman was ahead. Slowly it began to build a lead that was over 60 by the time we entered the thirteenth hour.

Then Celeste cut big time. NA had seemingly finally woken up and things could go Celestes way. It made sense that the morning vote began a bit later because the match was on a weekend after all. Celeste slowly got that away before we got into the best hours of the match. Celeste took the lead with a single vote. Then Rayman took it back only for Celeste to lead with a single vote again. Next update by 2 votes. It looked like anyones game. Celeste wasnt able to run away with it. It had a lead in the 10s for a while, until Rayman swapped that around and did the same. At exactly 14 hours into the match, wed get a tie.

Celeste took the lead again after the tie. That would be the final time Celeste had the lead, but it was exciting for a while yet. Next update, it was Raymans turn to lead by a single vote. Then for a couple of hours Rayman would lead with about 20 to 30 votes. Rayman then attempted to build a lead bigger than that, but Celeste kept putting it back down to that point for a while. They would continue to make push each of them for the rest of the match, but Raymans pushes were just a bit better and so it ultimately won with about 200 votes.

The upset ended up happening. Board 8 didnt expect it and casuals didnt expect it. No one cared much though. The winner would not make a real attempt at Pokemon HGSS, everyone knew that. It was just great to follow a match like that again. Two matches in round 1 so far, The Walking Dead vs. Bastion and Rocket League vs. Dragon Ball FighterZ had been exciting for a little while, but this was the first time the match was worth following almost the full day. It gave us some much-needed excitement.

North America never really helped Celeste much, even though it won there. It looks like it needed to win bigger there to depend on it. Trends are a bit weird today and we have less of them, which makes it harder for a game to complete comebacks. Theres the power hour and theres the time of the match where Europe dominates the vote. Those are the things we have today. Geography and our own taste. Rayman just seemed a little bit better overall. Perhaps it got the win on its more recognizable name that the character hasnt gotten a chance to yet.

Round 1 was notable for having indies exceed expectations. This match served as a nice foreshadowing for most of round 2 when it comes to indies. They usually underperformed relative to expectations. This match did a good job highlighting that a group of indies simply had gotten perfect matches to look better than they were, but it was mostly due to the other games. That was a sign of things to come.

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Round 1 Division 8 Day 16
Divinity: Original Sin II 69.22%
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft 30.78%

Prediction Percentage 58.63%

This was another one of the matches where it was discussed whether that the winner might be the weakest game to make round 2, although the winner was never really in doubt. Heartstone was in the 2015 contest and finished dead last in the x-stats after managing to get no more than 8.97% against Ocarina of Time, which is not exactly the game to receive the least number of anti-votes. Hearthstone is just that bad. Its not our type of game and we dont like Blizzard much anymore. We expected it to do very bad today.

Divinity: Original Sin II was also a game we had just about no expectations for. Its a PC game first and foremost, which is a bad thing here. It also focused a lot on its multiplayer experience, which likewise isnt what you want to be here. Hearthstone reappeared after finishing dead last and yet we didnt believe Divinity could pull off the doubling on average. That says a lot about how little we thought of it.

Hearthstone would end up still being the worst of anything that appeared in the 2015 bracket, but it didnt quite end up on the bottom this time, which makes sense, its a much weaker field. Its seemingly casual bait to some extent judging from the prediction percentage. They both were a little better than expected, but mostly Divinity. It didnt really change anything, because the winner today was clear and Divinity was never going to beat Automata.

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Round 1 Division 8 Day 16
NieR: Automata 68.41%
Bayonetta 2 31.59%

Prediction Percentage 81.32%

The final match of round 1 came down to a seemingly good-looking victory for NieR: Automata against yet another game screwed by bracket placement, Bayonetta 2. Automata was talked about quite a bit pre-contest. It looked alright considering its competition in the Game of the Year polls of 2017 and 2B made the latest character battle as a #1 seed, showing that theres definitely a fanbase here, even though she didnt have the strength you expect of a #1 seed. Automata had a match against Pokemon HGSS on the horizon. While Pokemon was the favorite, Automata was a popular upset pick.

Bayonetta 2 did make our previous contest losing to Read Dead Redemption rather easily. Since then, however, Bayonetta was revealed as the final DLC character of Smash 4 and returned to Ultimate along with everyone else. Furthermore, both games have been ported to Switch, which the second one in particular needed to be. It was expected to be decent now, but its low seeding gave it a completely unwinnable match. Interestingly, despite the first one failing to make the previous contest, it was seeded a lot higher now, but they were both screwed by bracket placement.

The oracles didnt expect Automata to pull off a doubling, so it overperformed a bit. This made the people that picked Automata for round 3 happy, although the Pokemon match didnt really teach us anything about what it was against. Automata would end up not looking as good in the next round though and would fail to make the upset, so what happened here then?

The most popular idea is that Automata SFFd Bayonetta 2. MechanicalWall was trying to put forth the idea already at the time of this match, but almost no one believed it at the time. Impressive seemingly being right about that from the beginning. I dont think its obvious. The games are made by the same company, which has some rather passionate fans. They play similarly too. Those were the main ideas behind it, but I think it was reasonable to assume otherwise despite of it. Across all our contests, we have basically no evidence of previous SFF between things from different consoles from different companies. Different consoles is one thing if its a N64 game SFFing a Gamecube game or something like that, but a Playstation 4 game SFFing a Wii U / Switch game? That was hard to believe by many, myself included, and I dont think you can blame us. But full credit where its due for sticking to it from the beginning. That explains why Automata looked so much better today than in the following rounds.

The other possibility is that Bayonetta 2 simply didnt boost the way we thought. That seems weird all things considered, but we also saw Tropical Freeze looking really bad despite getting that dreamy Switch release, so perhaps its possible? Mario Kart 8 being as good as it did is a point against it, although that game sold so insanely many copies on Switch that it might just have broken through to the boost regardless, or maybe people just see Mario Kart something and think that they know what that series is. Development of Bayonetta 3 is apparently happening, but thats really all we know of it, which might not be too good for the series. A while ago it was including at the end of a direct where everything they had was a line confirming its still going on. Perhaps thats a point against it. Finally, Bayonetta appearing in Smash likely did more for the character than the games, if it helped the games at all. That one at least seems likely to be.

Its just to say that we might simply have misjudged how good Bayonetta 2 actually is. I believe in the SFF idea the most though. Its a shame it couldnt get a slightly higher seed and make for some interesting matches somewhere else in the bracket. Its actually the type of lower seeded game a bunch of round 1 matches were missing. If Bayonetta 3 is out the next time a games contest happens, then well probably see at least one of them again, so lets pray they get a better chance then.

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That wraps up round 1! I'm super exciting to start writing about some more exciting matches overall, although the end of round 1 had some good stuff. We'll begin round 2 later today.

Mostly for my own sake, I'll post a small list here of round 1 matches that I want to add something to or change something on the wiki.

DOOM vs. Inside
Undertale vs. Octopath Traveler
Super Mario Odyssey vs. Mortal Kombat 11
Dragon Age: Inquisition vs. Ori and the Blind Forest
Yakuza 0 vs. The Witness
Uncharted 4: A Theif's End vs. Mario Kart 8

A big thank you to Averia (and maybe others) for beginning to put these on the wiki. I really appreciate it. If you get to any of the above matches, just put in what I wrote here. I'm not sure yet if I'll edit them during the PCA or afterwards (might depend on whether or not we'll be needing a part 2).

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A lot of boring matches to go through, but it had its moments at least.

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Round 2 Division 1 Day 17
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 84.86%
Halo: Reach 15.14%

Prediction Percentage 90.96%

This is an insane score to get in round 2. Breath of the Wild had absolutely no need to prove itself and yet it completely destroyed its competition once again by almost as much. I was tempted to fear Breath of the Wild was good enough to just slaughter whatever it came across, but thats obviously not the case. Its insane to keep doing this for a game that everyone with just the slightest bit of contest knowledge knew would be the winner. It also appeared that The Outer Worlds was fine and couldve beaten something like Life is Strange too, but something had to get Breath of the Wild. Halo finished last in the x-stats of any game in round 2, so Breath of the Wild did have luck on its side looking good. Halo wasnt really considered when figuring out what the weakest round 2 game might be.

Halo: Reach is probably also yet another easy game to score a big blowout against just for being a Halo game. It could use its bracket votes and name to beat something like Life is Strange, but no one really cares about Halo anymore and Reach is a decade old already. I wonder if well even see a Halo game next contest, but the original one might keep getting in on its name, I suppose. Theres a much bigger chance that fans of Life is Strange will keep getting that one back in again despite finishing so low in the x-stats twice, because that one actually has a small but very dedicated fanbase. I cant remember seeing any Halo fans for a very long time, so if theyre still out there, they sure arent vocal about it.

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3 good matches, but more moments that for sure.

But yeah, this was most certainly the less wordy half, but almost the less interesting. It takes longer to write 10 lines about some of the most boring round 1 matches while I've written a lot for the next one already in no time.

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Round 2 Division 1 Day 17
Final Fantasy XV 50.42%
Hollow Knight 49.58%

Prediction Percentage 51.64%

Round 2 started out with a big match that was basically just as big as the best match of round 1, that we just had a day ago. One day of round 2 was all that took. It was clearly more exciting now. Ironically, the two also follow very similar trends, but the opposite ended up happened. Final Fantasy ever struggling to make round 3 of any contest is not something youd get anyone to believe when these contests began and the most recent Final Fantasy was still from the golden days. Of course, it helps that were in a contest where the good Final Fantasy games are ineligible, so well probably not see the same thing repeated next games contest, but its still crazy. Final Fantasy XV might very well lose this one if not for the bracket votes, although Hollow Knight likely isnt too far behind in prediction percentage.

Almost everyone took Final Fantasy XV here without thinking much about it, but after a bunch of indie games exceeded our expectations after Hollow Knight was the first to do it, the upset was considering quite a bit more. Hollow Knight was believed a good contender to be the best indie game in the bracket. Its high seed supports this idea as well. I have seen the idea that Final Fantasy XV won the match because Final Fantasy VII: Remake had been out for only a few days when this match happened, but Im not sure it matters that much. Fans of FF7 might just as well vote against FFXV. It wouldnt surprise me at least.

The match begin with Hollow Knight being a clear board favorite, but FFXV quickly took the lead and starting gaining slowly as the first minutes went by, but Hollow Knight wasnt allowing it go get anywhere, using that great indie board vote, as it has been called. FFXV managed to hold the lead until the freeze. On one side, most indie games fell off after the early vote and Final Fantasy is known to do the opposite, but on the other hand, FFXV was expected to have the most bracket votes, so there was hope for both of them.
The next update saw Hollow Knight make a small cut, still keeping the excitement high. Then FFXV fell off a major cliff to lose the lead. Hollow Knight would keep that momentum up and quickly build a lead up to 64 votes.

It would seem like it used its fuel quickly though. FFXV removed most of that lead, bringing it down to 18 in two updates. The match would then stand still for a while, until FFXV began very slowly cutting the lead down until it was just a single vote away. Next update had FFXV take the lead with room to spare, as it got its best update in a while, but Hollow Knight would have none of that and instantly tied match. Hollow Knight would take the lead back, but instantly lost it again. FFXV would struggle to run away with it for bit, which included getting a one-vote lead as well. Hollow Knight would then randomly take the lead with a spike and would keep it for a few updates before FFXV would take the lead back with a similar spike.

That was the final time Hollow Knight was in the lead, but it would be able before FFXV supporters to breathe out. FFXV would build upon its lead slowly, but because it was winning in NA and losing in most of Europe, people hoped Hollow Knight would do a similar comeback to what Rayman did yesterday. FFXV had built a lead of about 200 votes when the dead hours kicked in, Europe began to wake up and NA was away and true enough, Hollow Knight cut into that. Hollow Knight began cutting and moved FFXV down to about a 150-vote lead. It had a great spike, getting the lead down to almost 100, but FFXV instantly took it back and then the match stalled for hours.

Hollow Knight couldnt really make progress, but it did allow FFXV to never get away for real. Hollow Knight wasnt doing as well in Europe as Rayman was and FFXV also had South America, which Celeste didnt. Geography didnt look to help out Hollow Knight any. The match was just really even. After a while FFXV would rise extremely slowly until it many hours later peaked at a lead of 400 votes before slowly going in the other direction again. Hollow Knight began making steady progress near the end but didnt have time and lost by a bit more than 200 votes in the end.

It was a really good match, but its also a victim of our general lack of trends these days. Back in the day, we couldve seen huge swings in each direction, but the swings we have now are mostly random and comes from the votals moving as slow as they do. For a match that felt back and forward a lot, it barely moved at all.

This match made it seem like Hollow Knight was indeed very strong, but the next rounds would show it simply had exceptional bracket placement as Breath of the Wild murders Final Fantasy XV and then calms a bit against the rest of its opponents. Its probably the final time that happened though, and fellow indie game Bastion was already looking terrible at the time of this match. Final Fantasy XV was even weaker than we thought. Its interesting that if Hollow Knight had pulled this off, we would have the first contest ever where there was no match between The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy.

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Halo is kind of a thing of the past now. The new games just haven't been as popular as the old ones and the fanbases for the old Halo games just don't show up on this site.

Have you played any of the Halo games? I haven't because I've never owned any of the Xbox line of consoles, but I've watched two Let's Plays of the original and today I finished watching one of Halo 2. The LPer said he liked Halo 2 a lot more than the first game, and Halo 2 looked like the better game to me, but the original definitely had more impact on release and that alone probably makes it stronger in contests.

I think the gameplay of the series interests me the least, due to it being simplistic gameplay aimed for a more "casual" audience, but the sci-fi war setting does really appeal to me. It feels like a cross between Star Wars and Aliens, the latter being my favorite movie of all time which was also hugely influential on numerous game franchises.

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I've played the first two a bunch of times. I had a the original Xbox, so I completed them with various friends. They're enjoyable, and I do plan on playing the third one at some point, but I want to do co-op.

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Round 2 Division 1 Day 17
Monster Hunter: World 55.80%
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice 44.20%

Prediction Percentage 53.48%

This was a hotly debated match before the contest where a lot of people took the Sekiro upset because it looked to be pretty good in the Game of the Year polls. When round 1 happened, a lot of people agreed Monster Hunter: World looked better, since it was hard to think Ni no Kuni could be better than Bravely Default, but a third of the oracles still went with Sekiro today. You could argue that console games tend to do better than handheld games, so that Bravely Default wouldnt be much better and you could argue that Sekiro had a worse opponent for it than Monster Hunter did, but you had to stretch things a little bit.

Monster Hunter won pretty, but there was a bit of excitement in the first minutes. Monster Hunter burst ahead with the early bracket votes, but Sekiro quickly got very close. The were about dead even until the freeze happened where Monster Hunter was ahead by only 11 votes. Then it got one of the biggest jumps in percentage all contest by jumping more than 5% to lead with 110 and the match was over from there. Monster Hunter quickly went up. Sekiro got a final glimpse of hope when it after half an hour cut from 257 to 228, but it was just that one update where Monster Hunter fell off, it took it all back and a bit more next update and proceeded to quickly shoot for 1000 votes.

Its the first time Monster Hunter ever really looked that good in a contest and I think its part of the reason why many went with the Sekiro upset. I regret picking Sekiro more than most mistakes I made personally simply because I completely failed to realize what its opponent was. I knew it was a bigger Monster Hunter, but just how much bigger I forgot despite knowing it beforehand. This game isnt just the biggest of franchise, it was huge and sold loads of copies.

Most people never gave the winner of this match a chance in the coming round, but Monster Hunter would do so well that I felt it redeemed the Sekiro upset pick quite a bit. Sekiro would end up actually looking pretty good, its just that Monster Hunter also looked better than anticipated. It makes sense considering how the other games from FromSoftware (missed pun opportunity) ended up looking. That company is doing well in these contests. I think its worth having Sekiro back another time. Then more of us might just have played it to, its one of the newest games in the bracket and we tend to be slow at getting trough them.

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Round 2 Division 1 Day 17
Bastion 28.09%
Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age 71.91%

Prediction Percentage 64.99%

Despite Bastion pulling off a big upset the round before this, people had concluded that older indie games werent all too good and so not much was expected of Bastion today. We all knew that The Walking Dead was simply that bad and Bastion was lucky to draw it. Dragon Quest XI got almost exactly the percentage of the oracle consensus, so this match got by far the least attention today for being the only one that gave us pretty much nothing to talk about, but good job board 8! Its ironic that no one was comparing Dragon Quest XI to Monster Hunter: World when that match would be closer that the heavily talked about Monster Hunter vs. Sekiro. The fourpack next to this one was simply better than anticipated.

Today we had the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games in the bracket competing at the same time. I know there is another mainline Final Fantasy in the contest, but its quite different from our usual big ones. While FFXV undoubtfully had a better opponent, its weird to see the Dragon Quest game being so much better. Who wouldve thought we would see the day? The have been around for so long, both series and it has never been close. Final Fantasy was always the bigger name. It still is, but today its because of its history. Dragon Quest is so far ahead in recent years. Bastion would end up being one of the weaker round 2 entries and its likely the only time well ever see it in a contest, so its great that its one appearance gave us an enjoyable match.

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Round 2 Division 2 Day 18
Mass Effect 2 66.88%
Fallout 4 33.12%

Prediction Percentage 58.29%

Today was a very exciting day because people felt like each game had a chance in all four matches, which never happens. Now hold that thought and look at this result. Fallout 4 got killed completely. Its hilarious when matches fool us like this. I was over 8% away in my oracle prediction and I was still closer than the consensus. No one actually thought Mass Effect 2 could drop the match, but we sure didnt think itd look good doing this after its previous match.

Resident Evil 7 was instantly redeemed of course and its yet another point in the bag for 2017. Its one of the two contenders for most underseeded game in the bracket, only rivaled by Mario Kart 8. We didnt fully know that yet, but it was already clear that it was in large scale. Mass Effect 2 was thought to have a really hard time winning division after last round, but now it looked like it could still do that. If the Bloodborne rally had any effect on this match it was actually in favor of Fallout 4, because Mass Effect 2 dropped as the day went on, but it should be mentioned that Bethesda games usually rises as the day goes by, so this was likely mostly unaffected.

No one took the Fallout 4 upset, but Im willing to bet someone would have tried the uspet if we hadnt gotten the idea that indie games from the early part of the decade werent very good, which made VVVVVVs big loss look less impressive. Mass Effect 2 would still have been the favorite, but it wouldve been by a bit less. Part of the reason that no one took it is probably also that its hard to pick Bethesda games in a debatable match, especially the ones from Fallout 4 onwards. It had quite the backlash and it shows today. Remember when Fallout 3 got to the semi-finals last contest? That sure was a hard fall.

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Round 2 Division 2 Day 18
Borderlands 2 44.92%
Horizon Zero Dawn 55.08%

Prediction Percentage 28.65%

Borderlands 2 becomes the first of the Game of the Year winners in the contest to lose, although another one of them would fall tomorrow due to severe bad bracket placement. Final Fantasy XV almost did yesterday but managed to hang on. Borderlands 2 was the most popular choice for the weakest of the winners as it had an easy year to get title. The second place from 2012 would redeem that year as much as it could, however. Borderlands 2 was not expected to be as good as it was in 2015 and it lost to Earthbound easily back then. It hasnt aged all too well, the humor isnt as appreciated anymore, and the franchise didnt really keep the level up.

Despite all of that, Borderlands 2 was the favorite today. Lots of people took Horizon Zero Dawn in the upset, but we generally underestimated that game by a bit. It was completely overshadowed by being released right before Breath of the Wild and while it was still critically acclaimed, it seemed most people forgot about it quickly again. Well, at least you dont forget it when its right there in the voting form. Horizon won this match easily. It won the early board vote big time, then Borderlands 2 looked to take the match when the freeze happened, but Horizon went up big time next update and never looked back. Then the Bloodborne rally happened and boosted Horizon a little bit more than already.

Its weird that Horizon wasnt favored here to me. Look at the Game of the Year polls. Horizon isnt too far behind Persona 5 and beats NieR: Automata, which we had great expectations for. I suppose people just thought people stopped caring very quickly. Or perhaps Aloy being trash in the previous character battle was what did it. The most cookie guru bracket this year was Master Moltar, who made just a single upset. This was the one, so he eliminated the guru cookie today on the first day of eliminations. Considering the Board8BOP user was on the leaderboard until the second semi-final and finished seventh on the second chance leaderboard, its pretty cool that the cookie died this fast, even if it really takes nothing to do it.

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About Borderlands 2, if people mention so much how BioWare's, Bethesda's, and Blizzard's reputations have gone way down, Gearbox definitely deserves a mention in the same breadth for their involvement in Duke Nukem Forever, Aliens: Colonial Marines, and Battleborn.

I agree it's weird to me Horizon wasn't favoured. Even if you want to take the route that Aloy was trash in 2018, it's not like Borderlands 2 characters were much better in 2013. See: Handsome Jack jobbing to VIEWTIFUL JOE.

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Yeah, and that was in the heyday of Borderlands even.

Characters =/= games really can't be said enough.

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Round 2 Division 2 Day 18
Resident Evil 2 57.57%
DOOM 42.43%

Prediction Percentage 64.72%

This match wasnt really in doubt before the contest where all but two gurus picked Resident Evil 2 and didnt think more about it, but DOOM delivered such an insane percentage in round 1 that made people have second thoughts. Most people still went ahead with Resident Evil 2, since it also did really well in round 1, but a few people took DOOM and there were more people that considered it.

In the end we overestimated DOOM quite a bit. It turns out INSIDE was just extremely weak and from this point forward it was in clear contention for being the weakest game in the bracket, a title it eventually won, even in the adjusted x-stats. DOOM was actually doing a little bit worse than this before the Bloodborne rallies hit and boosted it. The match was never really in doubt.

Perhaps a Bethesda backlash did something here, but I find that doubtful because Fallout: New Vegas didnt look to be affected any and DOOM is also only published by them. We saw Fallout 4 get destroyed at the same time as this match, clearly thats where the damage was done. DOOM could use its name to go really high on INSIDE in round 1 because no one knows that game, but against a Resident Evil game, that would not be as helpful. DOOM mightve made for a better match elsewhere, but at least it made us doubt a match that we shouldnt have doubted by going so high in round 1.

Doom Eternal coming out right before the contest began mightve helped it a little bit, so Resident Evil 2 was looking really good here. Resident Evil 7 also looked really good from this day forward, another good thing for Resident Evil 2 supporters. It was not expected by many to have problems before the division finals before the contest and it was probably the favorite to win it at this point, at least it was after round 1. Though now Bloodborne showed itself capable of successful rallying in a match it already won, so Resident Evil 2 would need its a-game to get through then.

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Round 2 Division 2 Day 18
Fire Emblem: Awakening 42.10%
Bloodborne 57.90%

Prediction Percentage 48.94%

This match was another one that had the gurus almost equally split, but Fire Emblem: Awakening was the favorite before the contest began. After round 1 happened, it did not look as good at all and Bloodborne suddenly became the favorite. You had to believe Call of Duty: Black Ops was really bad to keep your faith in Awakening high. Especially because Three Houses didnt look spectacular in round 1 either. While believing Black Ops is as bad as possible these days is pretty reasonable, Awakening was never really in this match.

Fire Emblem was a very easy target this contest. Both games didnt get as far as the majority of the board thought and with what people think is too much Smash appearance, the series hasnt really been as well looked at as it used to before it truly became mainstream. It seems however like Awakening wasnt actually any worse than in 2015. The difference is at least minimal. Im sure most people thought Awakening was better than Bloodborne in 2015 here and didnt see that change with a big new Fire Emblem recently out, and while that looked stupid today, perhaps that wasnt all wrong.

Its Bloodborne that has risen a great amount. It was new back in 2015 and hadnt truly found its ground yet, but the Soulsborne games have established themselves as some of the best this previous decade has to offer and theyre some of the first things you think of when you think of what game of the decade was. Bloodborne hasnt quite achieved the status Dark Souls has, but thats because Dark Souls came first. It seems pretty clear to me that Bloodborne is mostly preferred by the people that play all the Soulsborne games. This all redeems Awakening supports a bit I think, but good call to those that expected the Bloodborne rise.

The match wasnt ever really in doubt. Awakening won the board vote but lost the lead before the freeze and Bloodborne never really looked back. The Soulsborne games havent had good board votes at any point and we love Fire Emblem here, so its to be expected. Worth noting is that Awakening was a bit above 45% for a while until a Bloodborne rally kicked in. It was pretty clearly the most successful rally of the contest so far and pushed Bloodborne up to where it was now and also clearly affected the other matches going on. Being capable of brining an effective rally to the table even when ahead suddenly made it very possible that Bloodborne could go further than round 3. The Bloodborne fans are very passionate about their game!

Its not the first time weve seen a game needlessly rallying when already winning a match. Super Smash Bros. Melee is known for doing this back in 2015 against Pokemon Gold and Silver. Melee went on to kill GameFAQs favorite Chrono Trigger with its rallying powers, which frustrated the board a lot since Chrono Trigger looked good enough to beat Ocarina of Time that year. Melee would then continue to rally past Final Fantasy VII before losing a battle of rallies against Undertale. That did not make it very popular with our board, as it took away a bunch of matches we looked forward to and trivialized them instead. You can see where Im going with this. Bloodborne took villain status in the eyes of many and feared to win matches it wasnt supposed to because of it, though it wasnt nearly big enough for anyone to fear if would get past Breath of the Wild should it get that far.

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My gut pick was Fire Emblem over Bloodborne, but it just didn't look right to me. It was basically the Portal/FFXII of this contest.

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It's the one match I got wrong in that division.

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I think I might have been banking on Awakening having declined in reputation since 2015, since it came across as being in kind of a similar situation to Fallout 3, Star Trek '09, or The Force Awakens in that regard. However yeah the game probably didn't decline much since 2015, and to be fair I did also think Bloodborne would have improved in stature since '15.

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The rally topic actually was posted when the match began, but it didn't get enough upvotes to be noticed until hours later. That's why the rally appeared on our site when Bloodborne had already won. It's a bit different than Melee fans, who rallied when the match was already decided.

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Round 2 Division 3 Day 19
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 64.06%
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds 35.94%

Prediction Percentage 74.96%

A Link Between Worlds becomes the second of the competing Game of the Year winner to exit competition. It did however lose to another Game of the Year winner, so there was no way around one of them going out today. ALBW is really one of the most screwed games in the bracket when it comes to bracket placement. The adjusted x-stats showed it in fifteenth, so not only did it exit perhaps two rounds earlier than it deserved, it also didnt get to have the least bit interesting match, not only getting one of the best games in the bracket, but getting one that likely SFFd it a lot.

I know we dont want to have Zelda games destroying the bracket, but there were only two of them anyways and ALBW wouldnt have been too dominant. Im sure it just didnt get the nominations it needed to get higher, but theres only one other #1 seed thatd suck more to put it against. After it was snubbed in 2015, we might have finally got a real read on it, but no. It likely wont be coming back either, because the console Zelda will have priority in future nomination periods. This was its best chance.

A Link Between Worlds is a fantastic game. I know it didnt win the prize anywhere else that it did here and many believe The Last of Us should have won back then. In any case, ALBW was really good and did a lot of things every Zelda fan missed. Being the handheld game after Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks is easy, but more people seemed more positive towards it upon any other release since perhaps Ocarina of Time. Twilight Princess, Wind Waker and even Majoras Mask had people a bit more split upon release. Hell, even Breath of the Wild, which largely overshadowed it, had people more split. Breath of the Wild even got all the credit for being nonlinear, but ALBW was that too! It deserves a bit more praise than what were giving it at the end of the decade.

Its hard to tell how much SFF there is here, but if you believe there is a lot, then Ultimate once again doesnt look as good as Super Mario Odyssey does. Its tough to truly determine anything because usually Zelda is before Smash Bros in the Nintendo hierarchy. If you believe the same here happened today, then it looks extremely good, but thats unlikely. The hierarchy is more a rule of thumb when it comes to the games, it doesnt apply for every single entry obviously. Exactly where A Link Between Worlds stood today also wasnt too apparent, so this round wasnt very good for comparing Ultimate and Odyssey.

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Gamespot actually named LBW its Game of the Year as well.

The game became somewhat notorious for fading from public consciousness pretty fast from what I can tell. I guess I'll mention that I like what I've played of the game, but not a whole lot and I got stuck at some point and never returned out of disinterest.

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Round 2 Division 3 Day 19
Marvels Spider-Man 57.65%
Minecraft 42.35%

Prediction Percentage 31.61%

This is probably the match that makes it so difficult for our board to accept Marvels Spider-Man is just really good. We have no faith in Minecraft being worth anything and we werent very openminded to Spider-Man being that either. Spider-Man had a really successful launch and weve shown to really like the similar Batman games in the past, so Im not sure why it was that difficult to believe. Also, remember that Spider-Man was doing a few percentages better before all the rallying in the Octopath Traveler vs. Shovel Knight match happened. Both parties seem to prefer Minecraft in this match. The prediction percentage is really low. Thats what happens when you share a fourpack with both Minecraft and Dota 2, I suppose!

Minecraft is not exactly the type of game that tends to do well here. Its not one of our typically liked genres, a lot of its playerbase is younger than us, and why would you need to go to a FAQ site for it. It seems like obvious casual bait that isnt worth much when it comes down to it. It also finished very low in the 2015 x-stats after losing to Halo, which went on to get killed by Final Fantasy VII.

It was however brought up before that perhaps Minecraft was a bit undervalued in the 2015 x-stats because of the Halo vs. Final Fantasy VII match, as perhaps FFVII is a really bad opponent for Halo. This contest makes it seem like there might be some truth to the theory. I also just think we tend to group Minecraft too much with usual casual bait like GTA, Fortnite, Dota, WoW etc. Unlike all of those, its not really disliked by anyone. We might not care for it much, but we dont dislike it either and everyone knows what it is. Furthermore, its huge enough that even a great part of our site has probably tried it out. Finally, its a Game of the Decade contest. Minecraft might boost a bit from that, because its one of the biggest games of all time and most sites mention it when discussing Game of the Decade. Minecraft will probably make it in again and be casual bait once more but still not get very far again, but its worth seeing it back I think, and it can win matches against the right games.

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Next one is a really big one! It'll be tomorrow at some point.

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Minecraft was at a popularity low in 2015, though lots of people still played it even back then. It has since gone through another renaissance of sorts, plus one could argue that Minecraft might have gotten a "Game of the Decade" boost.

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ctesjbuvf posted...

No one actually thought Mass Effect 2 could drop the match, but we sure didnt think itd look good doing this after its previous match.

Yeah no, there were plenty of people who thought ME2 could drop this match. In fact, we were so scared after both games' results last round that 2/5 Crew members even picked Fallout 4 to win outright.

ctesjbuvf posted...

I also just think we tend to group Minecraft too much with usual casual bait like GTA, Fortnite, Dota, WoW etc. Unlike all of those, its not really disliked by anyone.

This just isn't true at all from what I can tell, though. There's plenty of people who dislike Minecraft, perhaps even more than GTA and WoW - Minecraft hate used to be a movement, as Para put it, and it's only died down because it's no longer the casual bait du jour. There's tons who don't care about it either way, moreso than GTA and WoW - some of those respect it anyways, much like GTA and WoW. And there's some who are genuine Minecraft fans, though probably less than WoW and definitely less than GTA.

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I think a simple would instead of could would do the job there, and that's probably a rush error. I began the write-up saying people felt that each game had a chance to advance. Not a single oracle picked the upset though, so 2/5 Crew members must be an outlier.

I'll edit it slightly and add in the points about Minecraft too. I don't really see anyone bashing the game anymore, but having that perspective is good.

5 pages of Octopath / Shovel Knight coming up. I'll just go through it.


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Hm, I want to go to the next page, because this one will be some posts.

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I guess I can just talk to myself a bit then.

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Of course, there's a limit of how fast you can do that.

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Alright, let's do this.

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Round 2 Division 3 Day 19
Octopath Traveler 49.64%
Shovel Knight 50.36%

Prediction Percentage 18.86%

Who couldve guessed that this would be one of the absolute best matches of the entire contest? Shovel Knight was picked by a solid number of gurus to win this match but by far the most of them had it beating Undertale today. Very few people expected Octopath Traveler to be here, but even fewer people thought it would stand a chance. Almost everyone that did not pick Undertale to round 3 did not do so, because they expected Undertale to receive some similar anti-voting to what Draven got two years ago. Most people didnt think it would be enough and that it could use its momentum to ride to round 3 in similar fashion to what L-Block did in the past.

Not many were expecting a close match today, but it was exciting right from the beginning. They were neck to neck for the first five minutes, almost equal, and they went back and forth. Shovel Knight would make a minimal jump next update, but then Octopath stole the lead. Some argued Shovel Knight had the bracket votes and Octopath would run with it now, but others knew that most people werent bracket voting today because they had Undertale winning this match. Look at the prediction percentage and you see the proof. Octopath Traveler likely has quite a bit less than that, it already had close to this in round 1, and only a small handful of the gurus that picked Octopath in round 1 did so again.

True enough, Octopath looked to be the bracket vote winner, probably as a minor bandwagon factor. Shovel Knight took it all back in the coming update and build on it afterward. Octopath would make its small cuts, but Shovel Knight would gain a good bit more. In the span of about four hours it would have build a lead of about 300 votes and almost no one one thought the match still lived.

Then the night hours came and put the brakes in. It was similar to Celeste vs. Rayman Legends overnight, but Octopath initially didnt make the same push and Shovel Knight looked to have a hold of the match. As morning came to Europe Octopath would stop stalling and start making progression. It was nothing fast at first, but it cut the lead down to below 300 again clearly moving forward. At this point people began taking notice, those of us awake at least, because Rayman had won its match with a bit of room to spare, so if Octopath could keep this up, it could win it.

Octopath kept slowly cutting the lead down. The pace was inconsistent, but it went in one direction and a lead change seemed inevitable as the lead went down below 100 votes. With about 50 votes left to be cut, a rally thread was put on Shovel Knights subreddit, which seemed to halt Octopaths cutting a bit, but not to anything major. Its hard to tell how much it actually did, because it was also when NA was beginning to wake up and everyone expected that to give Shovel Knight some more footing. The match was around 50 votes for a while.

A rally thread was then also put up on Octopaths subreddit and that one later changed the course of the match. At first, it was successful enough to remove most of the remaining lead, but it looked to mostly a small spike. Octopath got close but couldnt quite get there. Shovel Knight was ahead by nine votes, then three votes, then three votes again and then a single vote, but it just wouldnt drop the lead. It looked like the reddit rallies have run their course unless they gained significant traction.

Shovel Knight gained a little bit again from there, which might have been rallying I suppose, but is probably mostly the morning vote coming I think. It wasnt all too fast. Then came the drama suddenly. As Shovel Knight just gained to be ahead by 46 votes, the moderators of the Octopath subreddit pinned it at the top of the page, meaning it didnt really need to traction, everyone entering that subreddit would see it right away and they would know it had the moderators support. Its effect was plain to see. Octopath had a huge spike and the next update tied the match. It did the same thing again to take the lead of 50 votes.

Octopath slowed a bit down from that point, but a lot of people thought the match was over at that point. Shovel Knight didnt have anything to counter that with. While the first two updates were the most beastly, Octopath would have the rally thread pinned there for the rest of match, meaning a consistent boost throughout the day as more people visit the page. Octopath went up slowly but steadily and was leading comfortably with 8 hours to go.

Then Shovel Knight really began stalling. Everyone was awake again now and the rallies had reached their potential. Shovel Knight did not lead Octopath get to a lead of 200 votes, though it was close at time. Shovel Knight then attempted to move things in its direction again, but it was a bumpy vote. Every now and then, Octopath would have a killer update, which often cancelled about 3 cuts, so it took a lot of time for Shovel Knight to get anywhere. With five hours to go, it still needed to cut off 105 votes. At the current pace, everything could happen. Shovel Knight had the time, but it was moving so slow that Octopath could perhaps do more if it wanted to. It seemed that most people on board 8 wanted Octopath to win, with most Shovel Knight supports being the ones that picked it to win today. That could end up bailing Octopath out if necessary.

Shovel Knight made a solid push to get the lead from 101 and down below 50 before Octopath really hit the brakes. Then they stalled there for hours. Shovel Knight won by far the most updates, but they were almost never particularly big and Octopath had some seemingly random big updates every know and then. Octopath really stalled, as is natural in the later hours of our matches these days. Trends are hardly there anymore.

With two hours to go, Shovel Knight took the lead with 11 votes, but it couldnt get anywhere with it. Octopath cut and then took the lead back to be ahead by a single vote. Then Shovel Knight took it back and lead by under 10 votes for four updates. It seemed like the match would come down to the last second. This was super exciting, because our lack of trends almost always has it so that matches wont be exciting near the end, but when the match seems to naturally land at just about it even, they can still be!

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