Results[]
Sunday, March 29, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 2 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 9 |
| Match Date | Sunday, March 29, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Mass Effect 2 - 66.57% 64 for - 0 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Mass Effect 2 - 75.53% |
| User Votes |
Mass Effect 2 - 5205 Resident Evil 7 - 3042 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Mass Effect 2 - 4099 Resident Evil 7 - 2471 |
Every now and again you get a 16 seed that clearly got mis-seeded for whatever reason. The most blatant example of this was Starcraft in 2004, but there have been other examples. Raiden in 2003. Duke Nukem and Terry Bogard in 2004. Wii Sports in 2010. Ratchet and Clank 3 and Phoenix Wright in 2015. Rosalina and Wesker a couple years ago.
And, of course, CATS whenever he's stuck being a 16 seed.
Now I'm not saying a lot of these mentions didn't eat some "16 seed losses" as it were, but most of these items were mis-seeded in some way. We can clearly add Resident Evil 7 to that list. Mass Effect 2 looked so awful in this match that people rightly questioned its status as a division favorite, and that was before Doom, Resident Evil 2, and Bloodborne all went berserk the day after this. 63% on a 16 seed when four other games break 80% in your division looks wretched. There's also Resident Evil 7 being a divisive game in that series. Some fans loved the horror movie throwback style, and others hated it for being way too short and not "Resident Evil" enough. To see it pull this off was a huge eye opener.
There are two prevailing thoughts here. One is that Resident Evil 7 was hilariously mis-seeded and we need not think much of what happened here. The other is that Mass Effect 2 was in a lot of trouble. I'll talk more about this when we get to Mass Effect 3's matches, but there are a lot of people out there who utterly detest this entire series now because of what happened with Andromeda and 3's ending. People can make fun of our voters all they want to, but our voters have very astute and they absolutely punish you if you go sour.
The contest did ultimately prove Resident Evil 7 as a hidden gem, not to mention Capcom having a resurgence overall, but at the time of this match we simply didn't know that yet. It took Resident Evil 2 and Devil May Cry 5 to really bring it home on that one.
Ctes's Analysis[]
When you’re the favorite to win a division, you are not supposed to only get 63% in round 1. Something was clearly off here. The prediction percentage was also lower than every other match in the division except for the one including casual bait and rally feared Fortnite. Fallout 4 got a significantly higher number against indie game VVVVVV, and we had just learned those things were legit. Resident Evil 7? Does anyone care about the series at this point? The remakes brought back some fuel, but the early games were always popular. The fifth one was fine, but nothing extraordinary like what it followed up on. The sixth was bad and the seventh wasn’t extraordinary either, and it was promoted mostly through VR.
This was how it looked at the time. Mass Effect 2 looked like it could potentially lose to Fallout 4, maybe the round after that, and it was certainly not the favorite in the division finals after this point. That went to Resident Evil 2 now maybe even DOOM or Bloodborne seemed more likely. This division played out perfectly that way because every round 2 match felt uncertain. Andromeda was obviously expected as the main reason for what looked a decline, but we hoped that people wouldn’t punish previous entries for that and that the contest title would help Mass Effect 2 out, as it is often brought up in such discussions.
Of course, we know now that Mass Effect 2 is just fine and the thing that was off was the seeding of Resident Evil 7. This was considered at the time, but we weren’t sure for a while. I think in hindsight, we can figure out why. Resident Evil is still a huge franchise name. The fourth title is one of the most popular and revolutionary games ever and everyone knows what it is. The REmakes have been a huge success too, putting the franchise in a more positive light than it has been for some time. The franchise also never had bad reputation in the way Mass Effect or Fallout has had, it just declined a lot from its peak. I can see it getting a bunch of votes from people not having played either game. On GameFAQs that would certainly favor the older title, especially in a match where you see no point of bracket voting.
It’s certainly a shame that Resident Evil 7 didn’t get to break brackets somewhere, but it did serve the purpose of making the division interesting until the end. It’s also a good reminder of how much more exciting the contest would’ve been if more than two games had been allowed per franchise. Resident Evil wasn’t big enough for two big titles to take high seeds, so it allowed for a game to cause havoc with a low seed, even if it meant no victory. We’d have more runs similar to Mario Kart 8 this way probably. I’m sure there are those that would complain we only care about very specific franchises, but I doubt it’s that different from elsewhere and we’d still have the same top 16.
Tsunami's Analysis[]
Finally, on Day 3 of the contest we had a match with relatively even proportions between registered and unregistered voters. ME2 scored 63.11% with registered voters and 62.39% with unregistered voters. Which is not all that impressive for a 1-seed! The stats topic was discussing whether disappointing later entries in the Mass Effect series soured the voters on 2, but this seems like the exact opposite of what normally happens. Maybe with casual voters who aren't familiar with either game, the series name plays--in which case Resident Evil 7 was the perfect entrant to take advantage of this, as RE1-4 were all fairly highly regarded--but usually the more entries a series has, the higher rated its oldest entries get. Pokémon is the best example of this, where obviously you have the people who say that everything after Gen 1 (or sometimes Gen 2) is trash, and then you have a backlash where there are others that say that the series didn't even start getting good until Gen 3 and the first two generations are unplayable, but generally speaking the later generations grow in stature each time a new generation is released after it. I was really surprised that the Gen 5 games didn't make it in; I figured that with Gen 8 being out already, they could be really strong, since usually the rule of thumb is that the two most recent generations are "trash" and everything older is at least passable (though I'm not sure if Gen 8 has given Gen 6 this boost yet). Though the only game to get in is actually Gen 4, so yeah. (Good choice, too; I'm personally of the opinion that the second half of Gen 4 was when Game Freak decided to finally bother making their plotlines actually engaging instead of just a throwaway to hang the monster collection on. I guess they sort of put some of the lore into Diamond/Pearl, too, but they just did it so much better in Platinum!)
So this result had everyone calling for ME2's demise as early as next round. Certainly possible, but it seemed a tad premature.
Safer777's Analysis[]
RE 7 got shafted. It has power and it could beat some of the game on this contest but it got the lowest seed possible so there you go. ME 2 got so much praise when it came out and it is considered the best game of all 4. Yeah I am including the 4th one too! RE 7 went for a reboot since RE 6 had the lowest ratings for a main RE game. So we had 1st person perspective and a new main character too. But I have to confess something. Even though I am a huge RE fan I didn't liked RE 7. Yeah I know, but still. I even liked RE 6 because playing with a friend was a blast. But never the less RE 7 got really high praise and it did well in sales. Not as good sales as Capcom wanted but hey. I don't know what the rest of the fanbase things about it, but as I said I just didn't liked it.
So for the match. I believe RE 7 did good here. But well a 1 seed going against a 16 seed what do you expect? I believe only 1 time a 16 seed won in all contests that have happened on this site and that was 16 years ago. Still ME 2 did as expected so I guess all are good? Eh we shall see. Oh first match on this contest that I have played BOTH games! Also pretty sure RE 7 is the strongest 16th seed of all 16 seeds on this contest. Too bad for placenement. Couldn't we have an indie game that nobody cares here?