(5)Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain vs (12)Perfect Dark 2015

Ulti's Analysis
The biggest thing we heard during Undertale's run is that the game was too new to win a contest called "Best Game Ever". While this is an opinion people are allowed to have (and one I thoroughly disagree with, since you don't need an arbitrary shelf life to be good), where was the outcry against Metal Gear Solid 5 and Witcher 3 making the bracket? What about Life is Strange, Super Mario Maker, Bloodborne, Splatoon, or any other game from 2015 that might have gotten in? Where's the outcry about those games?

Oh, right, almost all of them were either fodder or too weak to matter, so complaining about those doesn't fit the arbitrary agenda. David Sirlin wrote a fantastic series of articles called Playing to Win, that I suggest everyone take an afternoon to read: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/

In the series, Sirlin calls those who don't play to win scrubs, and more or less said that tournament play is the only gameplay that truly matters. Scrubs like to make up hidden rules in their own mind to justify their own way of doing anything competitive. This caused a lot of panties to get twisted when he first said it, and it still causes arguments today. All the people who defended Brawl's gameplay over Melee's because "lol tournament players", for instance, are obvious scrubs (side note: this contest far and away proved what gamers actually prefer on the whole, but we'll get to that as we discuss Melee's run). Playing to win versus playing for fun is an argument people love to have, but they don't understand that the "playing for fun" side is objectively wrong. They don't win tournaments, they don't win money, and they almost never taken into account when balance patches happen. There's a reason for that.

All those people who pick and choose which rallies are "allowed"? Scrubs. The people who whined about Undertale being too new to have contest success? Scrubs. The people who hated Melee's rally against Chrono Trigger, then cheered like mad two rounds later? HUGE collection of scrubs. When I say you're either all or none with rallies, this is where I'm coming from mentally. These contests are meant to be competitive and win prizes. If you make up fake rules to justify something not in the official rules, you are a contest scrub in the same arena as those who don't understand what playing to win actually means. The only way you can have a for-fun contest is if no prizes are offered. Until then, these contests fall under the playing-to-win umbrella.

To my point for this particular match. There was no complaining that MGS5 came out and proved it had no contest strength to speak of. There was no outcry that it made the bracket. Nope, just 24 hours of LOL MGS5 when it was only able to get 55% on Perfect Dark. This is a little unfair for a couple reasons, the biggest of which is that it's just disrespectful to Perfect Dark. That game is awesome, and using it to pretend MGS5 is some joke is ridiculous. It's won a contest match before, and might be able to beat Call of Duty 4 now if those two had a rematch.

The other is that MGS5 being weak really isn't 5's fault. It's Konami's for being idiotic. We'll discuss that more in round 2, but for now I'm just happy it won a contest match.. Probably the only one I'll ever get to see it win.