(3)Tales of Symphonia vs (6)God of War 2010

Ulti's Analysis
So hey, remember this match? http://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Oblivion_vs_Tales_of_Symphonia_vs_God_of_War_vs_San_Andreas_2009

People have been arguing about where God of War stood in that match for a year now, and getting Tales of Symphonia vs God of War 1 on 1 to settle it a year later was wonderful. Even if Allen didn't set this up intentionally, he should just come out and say he did.

The match lived up to the hype, too, at least until the morning vote hit. Tales of Symphonia took the board vote, but was unable to run away with the match because of bracket votes. And then overnight, the match was a prolonged, deadlocked, oftentimes painful stall. I'll often exaggerate a bit and say matches were deadlocked when they just fluctuated between 100 vote leads for awhile, but this was a legitimate deadlock. Go look at the graph and update chart if you don't believe me. The two games might as well have been tied for 5 straight hours.

And those five hours were glorious, especially given both games were likely to be day vote beasts so the potential for a true classic was there. The reactions across the board were great, too, if only because the Tales fans were much happier than the God of War fans. Tales, despite the characters collectively having one contest win (a Lloyd > Wesker match that probably goes the other way today), has clutched up in the past. God of War meanwhile was known for choking it up. The LOL 4-ways aside, nothing from God of War could ever get out of the second round.

So for five hours when God of War was unable to do much of anything, the fans truly feared it would be another close loss.

And then the morning vote hit. You know how the underdog hangs around for awhile in a sporting event (think the NCAA tournament, since that's what our contests are based on), then the stronger team just starts dominating after a certain point? That's what happened here once the morning vote came around. God of War turned a 5 hour deadlock into a total laugher, taking the morning vote and going on to win by nearly 1200 votes. It was such a clear and massive swing that there can be no doubt which of these two games is the stronger of the two, though Tales of Symphonia deserves a lot of credit anyway for how it performed here. It was one of the best matches of the contest.

At the end of the day, the people who felt like God of War was held down by San Andreas in that 2009 match were right. Maybe the overlap wasn't massive, as proven by God of War having no much trouble with ToS 1 on 1, but it clearly made some difference.