Results[]
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 2 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 99 |
| Match Date | Tuesday, April 21, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Mass Effect 2 - 58.29% 52 for - 0 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Mass Effect 2 - 37.49% |
| User Votes |
Mass Effect 2 - 5109 Horizon Zero Dawn - 3963 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Mass Effect 2 - 4563 Horizon Zero Dawn - 4114 |
Was Mass Effect 2 weaker than expected, or was Horizon Zero Dawn far more legit than expected?
Yes.
Both things are true. I have no doubts whatsoever that an entire series gets punished, even if only a little bit, when the parent company goes south. Mass Effect 2 probably did suffer a percentage loss across the board thanks to people not liking Mass Effect 3's ending or Andromeda. I think this had more to do with Horizon being legit though.
Most people thought Borderlands 2 would be the second game in this match, but Horizon Zero Dawn gave us a good bit of justice instead. The sequel to that performance was this match, where even in losing Horizon looked incredible. Mass Effect 2 is a wonderful game and Board 8 loves it and no one denies this. No arguments here. But if you haven't played Horizon yet, I hope this contest clued you in to give it a shot. It's an open world action RPG where you run around shooting robot dinosaurs. You can't get much cooler than that, my friends. I dare say if you liked Mass Effect 2, Horizon is right up your alley. Us fans don't always hype this game up for no reason. It's really good, please play it!
https://www.ps4home.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Horizon-Zero-Dawn-Wallpapers-5.jpg
Unfortunately, 127 of the 128 games in this contest went out on a loss, so everyone had to bow out eventually. Horizon getting 45% on Mass Effect 2, the prohibitive division favorite and a game truly deserving of the title of "Game of the Decade", on its way out was another proud papa moment. It was another data point for those who believed Mass Effect 2 was primed to be upset in this contest, too.
It was also more proof of how stacked 2017 was. Presented without comment so as not to step on the toes of Wall's project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_in_video_games
His writeup on that year will be far, far better than anything I could ever come up with. And 2017 deserved every single little bit of the love Board 8 gave it during this contest. I don't quite think we understood how stacked that year was pre-contest, but man did we learn it as things played out.
Ctes's Analysis[]
Another round of Mass Effect 2 easily getting the job done despite being the second most shaky #1 seed, ahead of only Grand Theft Auto V. Mass Effect 2 began the contest looking terrible against Resident Evil 7, then beat up Fallout 4 by a lot more in a match that had people worry and finally easily takes care of underrated game Horizon Zero Dawn and manages to go into the division finals as the favorite despite everything that happened so far. The final percentages here are misleading too. Mass Effect 2 was looking to finish above 58% before all the Bloodborne rallies started to come and significantly favor Horizon.
Horizon Zero Dawn still had a really nice contest run that gave it some deserved attention. It came out a few days before Breath of the Wild and was vastly overshadowed. We’ve talked about many times how 2017 was the year of the decade by a significant margin. Tons of franchises had their biggest game in a long time that year. Horizon, being a new IP, and being a pretty good game but nothing groundbreaking, stood very little chance against all that. In its GotY poll here, it did manage to easily beat NieR: Automata for second best PS4 game behind Persona 5, an impressive showing. Since then, Aloy got into the previous character battle as a high seed but lost to a character from Overwatch, and the game has been talked little about.
It was however remembered fondly, it would seem. It had its issues, people preferred the backstory parts to the present story and its open world mechanics were deemed inferior to many other games coming out at the time, but I’m glad it doesn’t mean the game can still be enjoyed. In a Game of the Decade setting, we talk a lot about the most influential and revolutionary games. We talk a lot about what games started certain gaming trends or did them best. Sometimes something comes out that does neither of that but it still very enjoyable. That makes it easier to forgot, especially if it’s something that had no pre-existing fanbase, but it does not mean the game should be disliked. Horizon is a perfect example of such a game.
Safer777's Analysis[]
After the previous results there was some fear but still everyone picked ME 2 to win here even though with less percentage that expected but still. So ME 2 did won BUT there was a rally for the other match that I will discuss in the other match. Without the rally ME 2 probably wins with like 58 which was what I expected too.
So for the match. Well ME 2 did win as everyone predicted but because the rally strangely enough favored HZD more it did score more than expected. Still I didn't even expected for HZD to do that good. It is an exclusive and it is an open world game like so many that we have seen. Plus no sequels so it isn't even a franchise. As for ME 2 maybe the best space game of all time. Single player at least. The game is excellent. HOWEVER my self I like ME 3 slightlly more because of the multiplayer. So many hours and so many friends I made there! Fun times. Still all went as expected.
Tsunami's Analysis[]
And suddenly, Fortnite's blowout loss looks decent. Last round, I said that based on the 2015 X-Stats, HZD beat Borderlands 2 convincingly enough that it theoretically had a chance against ME2, but I figured I was just illustrating how far Borderlands 2 had fallen (and yes, ME2-BL2 is a "legitimate" comparison because they were both in SMRPG's quarter, which means they can be compared to each other without having to account for Melee's rallying, Undertale's rallying, or OoT SFF-stomping ALttP). I didn't think Horizon Zero Dawn would actually put up this good a fight! This was, of course, good news for Skyrim, because we weren't questioning the idea that BL2 would have fallen and as such, ME2's poor percentage suggests that it, too, has fallen, which would then suggest that Witcher 3's blowout of ME3 isn't as impressive as it first looked. On the other hand, "as impressive as it first looked" would've put Witcher 3 potentially on BotW's level, at least until it broke 80% on a main line Final Fantasy in round 3. So this was far from a done deal.
...Goddamnit Allen you've got some explaining to do. As per usual, since I'm not familiar with a lot of these games, I looked up HZD to see how it managed to do so well. Sure enough, it was not the genre I expected it to be based on its name. It is, in fact, yet another of these ARPG's that are lighting up the bracket, and not a military game like it sounds like it ought to be. Which was fine, until I noticed that that's the game that...wait...never mind, that was an Overwatch character that HZD's main character lost to in R1 in 2018, not a Fortnite character. I thought Allen was getting cutesy again, like when he had Ninja Gaiden take on Halo in the first GotD after Ryu H's upset of Chief the previous winter. But I got my casualbait games confused.