(3)Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater vs (6)BioShock 2015

Ulti's Analysis
This match happening at the same time as Starcraft/Mass Effect 2 created one of the coolest situations in this entire contest, which was two Western RPG games rallying their ass off at the same time. Add that to the Starcraft rally, and you just had an overall really cool day going on. It's important to remember that the west rarely gets a rub on GameFAQs; this site is practically a 90s Japanese fan site at this point. So to see the west completely run our poll for a day... it filled the west with determination. For one day. It wouldn't last, and had this rallying begun earlier in the contest we might have seen some very different results.

The funny thing here is all three rallies diametrically opposed Metal Gear Solid 3, which was just hilarious to watch, made it look really bad in winning this match, and made the final raw x-stats look totally ridiculous. This match was really the tale of two different matches, because early on this looked like it would be standard fare for round 2 -- just a predictable win in the 60-40 range. MGS3 was over 60% early, and though it bled some percentage overnight, it was nothing major and it was easily able to build up a lead even as Starcraft was rallying. Even through the dead zone and early morning, MGS3 only really bled some percentage.

It's when Mass Effect 2's rally kicked off that things got really weird in this match. Mass Effect 2 got going at around 10 am, which is precisely the moment MGS3 vs BioShock proceeded to stay deadlocked for 14 hours. Not long after Mass Effect 2 started rallying, BioShock started rallying. It turned all of these polls into a giant rallyfest, which was cool to watch even though most of it was centered around Starcraft vs Mass Effect 2.

With MGS3 and BioShock specifically, the big western push was able to get BioShock an even vote intake with MGS3 for 14 hours. But to overcome an 1800 vote lead, it would need more than just going 50-50. There was one scare for MGS3 around ASV time when BioShock cut off 300 votes over a 2 hour span, but MGS3 was able to stabilize before ultimately surviving and winning the match. Still, even though BioShock didn't win, it was impressive to see it going 50-50 with a game that's much stronger naturally. This was probably a 55-45 match naturally, and BioShock got it down to 52-48 before the match ended. With a better rally, it could have actually won.

For MGS3, it was the latest example in a long line of embarrassing results for the Metal Gear Solid series -- two of which happened on the same day! -- and at this point all three games were just waiting to lose. Would anyone have been surprised at this point had Mass Effect 2 beaten MGS3?