(3)Tales of Symphonia vs (14)Resident Evil 5 2010

Ulti's Analysis
The reason for Wesker's sudden boost last year was fairly obvious, but this match went and proved it for good. Resident Evil 5, a 14 seed, was the bracket and battle favorite and was the lone game from the vote-in polls to do much of anything in the actual contest. However this is a site made for RPG fans, so Tales of Symphonia was able to never really be threatened here. One has to wonder how this would have gone in a day match, though.

Tales won in one of those "not as close as the percentages indicate" deals, and it kicked off a very entertaining bottom half of the bracket. Prime was a lock to make round 4 from the top, but the bottom half was filled with a bunch of games of similar strength. The only games that were guaranteed not to do anything were the two Left 4 Dead games. The other 6 -- Tales of Symphonia, Resident Evil 5, God of War, LittleBigPlanet, Grand Theft Auto 3 and Half-Life 2 -- could all have a case made for them where they could win three matches. And since Metroid Prime was always known for disappointing and Fallout 3 was an unknown commodity pre-contest, it wasn't far-fetched for the bottom half winner to possibly make a semifinal run. We all know now what happened, but pre-contest the semifinalist to come from these first two divisions was a pretty cool debate.

And then Tales/RE5 had a pretty good match to kick things off, and it's always nice when things live up to hype a bit.