Results[]
Sunday, May 10, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Contest Quarterfinal |
|---|---|
| Match # | 124 |
| Match Date | Sunday, May 10, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Skyrim - 52.42% 38 for - 7 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Skyrim - 35.31% |
| User Votes |
Dark Souls - 4345 Skyrim - 4781 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Dark Souls - 4042 Skyrim - 4614 |
I love Skyrim, so don't take this writeup the wrong way, but it just kills me that Skyrim won this match. Had Dark Souls pulled this thing off, Ngamer64 wins the guru contest and I think the contest outright. There aren't many people who deserve a contest win more than that guy does, and I hope no one disagrees. On top of The Show, on top of his web site where he hosts the guru contest and the x-stats and the calculator we've come to all know and love, he's also done a TON of work on the Board 8 Wiki. I was really pulling for the dude hard, and.... damn. For a good long while, it looked like his gamble had a shot. Picking Dark Souls to beat Skyrim at this spot was such an intelligent pick.
The other reason this match kills me is actual gaming preference. Before this writeup, some of you asked me to explain why I love Souls so much. Will do. I started gaming in the 80s on the NES, and most games were fucking hard back then, especially for a very young child. Zelda 1 and 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1 and 2, Mario 1 through 3, Crystalis, The Guardian Legend, a bunch of Mega Man games, Ghosts n Goblins, Yo Noid, Balloon Fight, Kid Icarus, Punch-Out, Contra, and even Battletoads. I beat all of those games as a kid, and probably some others I'm forgetting. I won't bore people with my story of growing older and games slowly becoming easier and easier and easier to the point where it was a joke. We've all lived that story by now. There were some hard games here and there, but nothing like the feeling of beating some absurd NES game as a kid.
And then Demon's Souls came along. It was the first game I had played in a long, long time that brought me back to my childhood. It wasn't that I hadn't played good games or anything, but the experience of Demon's Souls almost had me lost for words.
And then the damn motherload happened. I love Demon's Souls, and it did nothing to prepare me for how absurdly good Dark Souls is. Death matters? A huge interconnected world? Indirect storytelling? RPG elements and the game never actually gets easy? What the hell? I could wax poetic about the Souls series for literally years, so I will simply link to my review and move on: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps3/606312-dark-souls/reviews/162813
It's not my best work, but I've never updated it because I like to look back and see how far I've come as a writer over the years. The very short of it is Dark Souls is a once in a lifetime experience, defined a generation, and made me feel like a kid again. And by the way, those same words are used by everyone who loves Breath of the Wild. That game didn't flatten this contest by accident. It's a really, really, really good game.
For those reasons and because I was rooting for NG so hard, this match murdered me personally in cold blood. But hey, there can only be one winner. When this thing started, Dark Souls was right there. The match was outright tied for what felt like forever, even though it was only 35 minutes. Then Skyrim won an update by 50, and that seemed like the end of the road for Dark Souls.
But no, Dark Souls had to sit there and fight back before getting buried again. And then it fought back again before getting buried again. And then to make it even worse, Dark Souls looked like it was going to come back once and for all. It brought a 120 vote lead down to 40, so of course Skyrim buried it yet again, and Dark Souls fought back yet again. It was like watching an underdog in some sport fight their asses off even though they knew they were outmatched.
When the poll got past 11, Skyrim finally decided to go "F this shit" and end this match, turning a 100 vote lead into 200 in all of 30 minutes, and after one final last gasp from Dark Souls, where our boy cashed all the souls in and made one final run at Paarthurnax, Alduin, and all 13 daedra, Dark Souls fell. Skyrim increased the percentage from 51% to 52 overnight, and that was that. It was an incredible first few hours, but Skyrim would ultimately win by almost 1500 votes.
It was a wonderful match between two games I will be in love with for the rest of my life, but I just love Dark Souls that much more. This was also arguably the best match picture I've ever submitted, too.
PRAISE THE SUN!
I'd mention how Skyrim did well below what it needed to to match Witcher 3's performance, but I feel like that goes without saying at this point. Next round, we would finally get that match and see how it played out on screen.
By the way, here are the seeding matchups for the final eight, presented without comment:
-1 vs 1
-1 vs 3
-1 vs 1
-1 vs 1
Ctes's Analysis[]
The final interesting match of the contest. Dark Souls pulling off the upset here had been hyped for a long time. First it was clear that Skyrim wasn’t getting past Witcher, but then it looked like it might not even get past here for a while. If Skyrim didn’t tear apart Pokemon HGSS like it did, Dark Souls might have been the favorite today, at least it would have had more supporters I think. It did still have people supporting it and I doubt people felt safe picking Skyrim.
The match delivered for a while. Dark Souls and Skyrim have both had pretty awful board votes, although Dark Souls did better against Metal Gear Solid V and The Last of Us. It would be interesting to see which game had the worst one. Skyirm was the safe bet because it a lot more throughout the day than Dark Souls did, but only time would tell.
The match was basically tied for the first five minutes. Next update Skyrim jumped up to a 51-vote lead in what could have been in, but Dark Souls had a lot more fight in it. Dark Souls that back all the way down to 15 and then they stayed there for a bit. The lead would at no point change, but Dark Souls made a push that made it seem like it would a lot of times. Skyrim quickly rose to near 100, but Dark Souls cut it down to near 50 again. Skyrim takes it all back and more in a single update and Dark Souls cuts most of it away again. That was basically the match. It took Skyrim more than three hours to finally take off, until then Dark Souls kept the lead below 100 for a long time.
If the Persona 5 rallies mattered, they were probably in favor of Dark Souls, but it’s hard to tell due to the rallies being the most affective in Skyrim’s worst hours. Skyrim interestingly took off the quickest with the morning vote. The match ended up being fairly close, but Dark Souls didn’t really ever manage to make a match of it despite giving hope a few times in the first hours.
This match eliminated the COVlD-19 guru bracket, which had eliminated lots of people and would win if Dark Souls could reach the finals. It was later revealed to be made by Polycosm, who managed to make a better bracket with the alt despite having Skyrim winning today in his own one. There were talks about whether entering twice should have any punishment, because it’s not actually allowed. Poly hadn’t imagined the alt would be one of the last brackets standing, it ended up getting more attention than anticipated. I don’t think anything should be done about it, other than declaring second place the winner had the alt actually won. As long as it doesn’t become a thing, it was fine for once, it entertained a lot of us. It would also be today that it was perfectly clear azuarc would win since the last three matches really weren’t in much doubt.
Skyrim would end up redeeming itself a whole lot and do as thought of it, although nothing to do about The Witcher 3 being leagues ahead of what was expected of it. Dark Souls also looks very good here, even if it didn’t win. It’s hard to determine exactly how it would compete with the big Switch games not named Zelda, but it certainly proved that its seeding was deserved. The game had come a long way, had major influence on the decade as a whole and is just really good. Respected by casuals and hardcore gamers alike, it would not only do well itself, but FromSoftware looks really good and hopefully they keep the pace up. Dark Souls will be fun to see back in a regular contest because it’s a lot stronger than 2015 indicates, hopefully the contest title didn’t do too much of that!
Safer777's Analysis[]
Now this match was strange. The whole Crew went with Skyrim too but everyone said that Dark Souls could do it too. We all though that too. Skyrim was the favorite but Dark Souls winning would be not suprising too. I mean we all understand that Skyrim has gotten weaker and it makes sense because it is a 9 years old game and we still don't even have anything new Elder Scrolls after all this time! Come on! And Dark Souls is the game that created the get good meme AND the souls like term so 2 of the big gaming things at once! Damn! Also Skyrim is THE open world game. Sure Witcher 3 might look more impressive BUT Skyrim doesn't have a main protagonist so you can really roleplay there. Plus man there have to be like 500.000 mods for that game and the game is constantly in Top 10 played games in Steam and is in Top 3 in this site all these 9 years. Plus I think it is every console ever made? So yeah Skyrim is still really damn popular.
So for the match. Suprise the match was really close! In fact in the first 30 minutes we even had Dark Souls winning by a bit too! Both games were around 49.5-50.5 for the first 3 hours with Skyrim barelly winning. So yeah we had a match. BUT after the first 3 hours Skyrim just took off and never looked back. Sure we had a few cuts here and there but at the end Dark Souls couldn't do it. Still I would NEVER expected that before contest for Dark Souls to be that close to Skyrim. A combination of Dark Souls having gained in power and Skyrim dropped in power. Still Skyrim did it at the end so that is all that matters. Seems Dark Souls got an arrow to the knee! See what I did there? Eh? Yeah that was stupid. But anyways seems Skyrim can't beat Witcher 3 like that but eh what can you do? Still before contest it was the favorite game to beat Witcher 3 and now is the underdog. Funny how things change.
Also in this Round Witcher 3 FINALLY surpassed Skyrim in correct prediction percentage so it seems a lot of people had Dark Souls reaching the Semifinals. Crazy. What I mean is that in all Rounds before this one BOTW was 1st in Correct Prediction Percentage, Skyrim was 2nd and Witcher 3 was 3rd. BUT now it seems that Skyrim and Witcher 3 reversed places. Strange how more people had Witcher 3 reaching the semifinals match than Skyrim. People believed in Dark Souls a lot it seems.