Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1383

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4088-east-division-round-1-call-of-duty-4-vs-prince-of-persia-sot

This was considered a bad showing for CoD4, perhaps because of how poorly PoP did in the Character Battle earlier in the year, but that was a different design. When he had the Sands of Time design against Kirby in 2006, he did decently.

Regardless, I thought this was fine for CoD4. At the very least, it was good enough not to worry about it getting upset in the next match.

Also I thought about doing Guru previews for Games 2015, but that contest was ruined by rallies, so what's the point? I'll bring it up for match recaps where it matters.

Sands of Time was popular, any worse would be a bad showing for it.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4089-east-division-round-1-pokemon-platinum-vs-metroid-fusion

Pokemon did not have a good contest, perhaps the last time we could ever say this about it, which alone might make it the last truly great contest.

Seriously though, the Oracle average for D/P/P was 64% and it couldn't SFF a Metroid game for the GBA. This was definitely a harbinger of what was to come for Pokémon in GotD.

Pokemon is mostly Gen 1 beating and Gen 2 being reasonably strong.

I wouldn't be surprised if Fusion could turn that around these days,

DPP probably had it's biggest advantage of being the newest pokemon game at the time, now it's just... Gen IV. Maybe it'll become nostalgic

TeamRocketElite posted...

Pokemon is mostly Gen 1 beating and Gen 2 being reasonably strong.

Don't forget Sun and Moon in 2016 GotY

MacArrowny posted...

Don't forget Sun and Moon in 2016 GotY

It is so funny to me that the top two games in that GotY, that and FFXV, would not even be top three from that year (Doom, Dark Souls III, Uncharted 4) now and even as early as the last Game of the Decade contest. They truly just won by default. Likely a bit of anniversary/Pokémon Go hype for Pokémon as well.

Also, aw yeah Alan Wake nearly doubling in strength since Alan Wake 2 released!

Leonhart4 posted...

Pokemon did not have a good contest, perhaps the last time we could ever say this about it, which alone might make it the last truly great contest.

I don't think it really was bad either. No one really thought RSE would beat Galaxy or DPP, they got as far as they could. A lot of poeple took GSC as far as FFX, but it was more Majora being stronger than anyone expected. GSC didn't get to FFX but it lost to a game that beat FFX and won everything and ended on very high in the x-stats.

R/S/E probably loses to GTA4 if that's a night match instead of a day match. That wasn't a good showing.

Good showing, no, but I don't think it performed lower than it was expected to. IIRC it was a debated a lot. At the time RSE were more divisive than now and probably it being a day match was what made it a slight favorite on the board (no way it was sitewide).

MacArrowny posted...

Don't forget Sun and Moon in 2016 GotY

Jesus. I don't recall 2016 being that awful for gaming.

MacArrowny posted...

Don't forget Sun and Moon in 2016 GotY

That was just a weak year + the power of "newest Pokemon game" pre-Dexit. If Sun and Moon make a contest it'll get destroyed by anything semi-decent.

2016 was a very good year for games, just not for the big franchise action adventures and AAA RPGs GameFAQs flocks to. It is also why those three I mentioned are now stronger than the top two at the time because people came to them gradually.

The last time a game won GotY here that wasn’t that description of Smash was Borderlands 2 over a decade ago. Even that is close. But there are lot of great game otherwise.

Pokemon liked Sun and Moon quite a bit when it first came out. Although, opinions have soured over time since the unskipable cutscenes make replays a pain.

LightningStrikes posted...

It is so funny to me that the top two games in that GotY, that and FFXV, would not even be top three from that year (Doom, Dark Souls III, Uncharted 4) now and even as early as the last Game of the Decade contest. They truly just won by default. Likely a bit of anniversary/Pokémon Go hype for Pokémon as well.

Also, aw yeah Alan Wake nearly doubling in strength since Alan Wake 2 released!

Eh, XV and SM practically doubled UC4, and XV still managed to beat Hollow Knight in GotD 2.

Dark Souls 3, maybe.

Uncharted 4 looked better than XV in GotD2! That is what I am saying. There was a big difference after the polls. Which does make sense. Also XV squeaked by Hollow Knight before Hollow Knight peaked in popularity lol. Not a glowing endorsement of that game!

Uncharted 4 was stronger than FFXIV. They faced the same opponent so that should be quite accurate. I don't buy FFXV being the stronger of the two, a statement the stats also support.

Ah, that's fair. Yeah, UC4 was probably stronger in 2020 then.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4090-east-division-round-1-wwf-no-mercy-vs-fire-emblem-path

WWF No Mercy was Football's Guru pick, and there was a certain amount of nostalgia from those of us who played it back in the day. We were willing to throw away a point on this match on the off chance it might beat a Fire Emblem game (which hadn't broken through to the mainstream yet).

Of course, No Mercy didn't come anywhere close to winning, but those who picked it didn't care too much. It was fun just having it in the bracket.

was/is that ostensibly the strongest wrestling game

Probably? Who knows!

pjbasis posted...

was/is that ostensibly the strongest wrestling game

Never forget: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/31-the-best-of-1999-nintendo-64

The strongest wrestling game has to be either No Mercy or WCW/nWo Revenge, but neither one of them was going to be much other than fodder.

2015 was fun even outside the rallies. Mario RPG’s run was so good.

2015 was mostly a fun contest. There's just no point in looking at overall predictions for it.

I think it's a bit fun to see still. Because even if we didn't get all the answers, we still got some.

Mario RPG's run was fun to see, for sure. If any old-school game is my "darling", that game is the one! I've beaten it more times than literally any other game! But in retrospect, it's like... great, the cinderella run had to result in... yet another Nintendo game going too far.

lmao at wrestlemania beating smash bros. back then

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4091-east-division-round-1-valkyria-chronicles-vs-disgaea

Is it as simple as "the top option wins" with this match? Disgaea was actually the big favorite on the board, but Valkyria Chronicles had a 58% prediction percentage overall. Also at the time, we were lamenting that this match only had around 31,000 total votes. I'd kill for us to have anywhere to that for a match now...!

another one where I just picked Valkyria because it was the one I was more personally familiar with it

If only I played the Halo games instead of Mario and Sonic

We had just seen Laharl finally get on the W column for the first time earlier in the year, so it made sense for the board to back a consistent commodity in Disgaea over Valkyria, but with that prediction percentage, it's hard not to think this result could flip between bracket voting and any other psychological advantage comes with being the first/top option if Disgaea had the higher seed.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4092-east-division-round-1-smash-bros-brawl-vs-mario-kart-ds

SFF match that really told us nothing about Brawl's strength. It did exceed Oracle expectations by 4% though, for what it's worth.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/6-gamefaqs-announcements/81063596

An Anniversary!

On November 5th, GameFAQs turns 30 years old, which, as the GameFAQs mods love to remind me, makes it almost an exact year older than me!
I had hoped to organize another GameFAQs contest, but that turned out to be a bigger technical lift than expected. Instead, we’ll have a special user-made Top 10 list and hopefully a few more surprises to celebrate.

Did he mean contest like we mean contest?

It's happening

The only time I won prize money was for that top ten games list in 2005 so let's do it

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4093-southeast-division-round-1-super-mario-galaxy-vs-beyond-good

We knew Beyond Good & Evil would be one of the weakest games in the field, and it certainly did not disappoint in that regard. Mario Galaxy had a rough showing in the 2009 Games Contest, so it was nice for it to get a big blowout in the first round here.

I don't think Mario Galaxy has ever had a good contest, honestly. Neither 1 or 2. They always do a little worse than they feel like they should.

They do lose every debatable match they're in, but often I felt we underestimated their opponents more than overestimated them. Galaxy 2 looked quite good in 2020, but it's not like it could do something with it.

Galaxy 2 made Witcher III look fallible, so that's worth something.

Eh, I think there's only so bad a mainline Mario game is going to look against a western game. I dunno if you want to call that a floor or what, but Galaxy 2 hitting that floor isn't great.

Super Mario Galaxy ended up looking fine in 2015, good even. It just happened to run into the unexpected buzzsaw that was Super Metroid.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4094-southeast-division-round-1-pokemon-emerald-vs-grand-theft

This was a highly debated match. This was back when R/S/E was considered the black sheep of the series, and now people seem to like it again. Grand Theft Auto IV was still the newest GTA game, so it hadn't completely fallen off of a cliff yet. R/S/E was the favorite, primarily because it was a day match, and that turned out to be the correct rationale.

R/ S/E had 54% at the freeze, but GTA4 tied the match 15 minutes later and gradually built up a lead of 385 after about three hours. However, the ASV hit right on cue and R/S/E rapidly erased the deficit. It took the lead an hour and a half later and pulled away to win by a little under a thousand votes. There aren't too many matches where it feels like the result was determined by whether it was a day match or a night match, but this is definitely one of them.

GTA4 is very much the black sheep of the series too, and even back then it was viewed as such. Made it even more interesting.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4095-southeast-division-round-1-dragon-age-origins-vs-f-zero-gx

Dragon Age: Origins certainly had a better GotD showing than Inquisition did! I don't know if any modern series has had more of a fall from grace on this site than Dragon Age, at least for a series that's actually up our alley.

Assassin's Creed 2 looked pretty good. And that series is more up our alley than ever, since they decided to make the last few into RPGs. Yet AC is pretty much dead here.

That sounds more like too little too late...!

But yeah, that's another one we got burned out on between the two GotDs

Oh yeah, it's just funny to compare to something like Yakuza. Both of them shifted into being RPGs after having a ton of games, but Yakuza is way bigger than it was in the PS3 era while AC is nothing compared to what it was back then.

It's funny how Assassin's Creed feels oversaturated when there are like two years between releases, while Like a Dragon fans go "PLEASE MORE OM NOM NOM" every year.

MacArrowny posted...

Oh yeah, it's just funny to compare to something like Yakuza. Both of them shifted into being RPGs after having a ton of games, but Yakuza is way bigger than it was in the PS3 era while AC is nothing compared to what it was back then.

While it definitely is less popular amongst the hardcore gaming fans as a whole, AC still is a pretty popular series! Valhalla actually is the best selling game in the series as a whole and Shadows isn't actually that bad, just less in line with other big games out there.

main reasons I can think of for its lack of popularity amongst hardcore gamers

1) No real throughline for the series past AC3 (Aka Post-Desmond)

2) Unity tanked the series's critical reputation upon its release.

3) The series has become the poster child of bloated open worlds, for better or worse.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4096-southeast-division-round-1-zelda-twilight-princess-vs

This result created some Zeldafear because FFX only tripled Shenmue back in 2004, but it wasn't too hard to imagine that Shenmue had fallen off in the six years since.