Results[]
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 8 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 120 |
| Match Date | Thursday, December 10, 2015 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Metal Gear Solid 3 - 48.54% 23 for - 48 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Metal Gear Solid 3 - 13.72% |
Metal Gear Solid series fans have wanted this match for years, and finally getting it was awesome. We have argued about 1 vs 3 basically since the day 3 came out, and while I know one poll on GameFAQs won't stop us series fans from arguing, just seeing the match was amazing.
My own opinion, for those who care, is that MGS3 is the better game among the two, and while I think Solid Snake is a better character than Big Boss in the series (especially after playing 5, holy crap), MGS3 Big Boss is a much better character to me than MGS1 Solid Snake. MGS1 Snake is immature and unintelligent to me, especially in Twin Snakes wheer they tried turning him into fucking Neo from The Matrix. MGS3 also wins in gameplay, graphics, replayability, and how the story is told. It doesn't have the better story, but it does have better storytelling. There is a difference. The entire game up until The End being dry also bogs it down, plus the constant menu-hopping has been discussed ad infinitum.
MGS1 wins on story, music, pacing, nostalgia, and characters. By today's standards, MGS3 can be picked up and played right now, while the original Metal Gear Solid has aged like a fucking corpse. I acknowledge the game was great for its time, and while I hate the "aged badly" argument that people always bring up with Goldeneye, Metal Gear Solid is a game where I'll break character and use that argument. That game is unplayable now. Have you people who think 1 > 3 actually played MGS1 recently? I replayed the entire series to get hyped for 5. I promise you that while 3 has some problems, it's better than 1. It's close, but it is better.
So for me, the best possible poll result would be MGS3 winning close. And in a contest loaded with matches that gave me exactly what I wanted, MGS3 went out there and won close. This match was close enough to where MGS1 could be as respectable as possible in defeat, but far away enough to where the match was ever in doubt. Without the presence of a rally, MGS3 was never going to lose this match. This was about as constant a 52-48 as you'll get, and really this was a match with no true losers. It was a day to celebrate and discuss the legacy of Metal Gear Solid, and given how the entire series looked like garbage this contest after MGS5 dropped the ball, it was nice as a fan to just have a poll all to myself.
Series ranking: 2 > 4 > 5 > 3 > 1. 5 has a lot of problems, but having far and away the best gameplay in the series puts it over for me.
This match put a bow on the divisional finals. We only had three 1 vs 2 matchups out of a possible 8, which shows how unpredictable things were despite the good seeding, and the final 8 had a good variety to it. Melee, FF7, Undertale, Mario 64, Ocarina, LTTP, Mario RPG, and Metal Gear Solid 3 is a well-rounded bunch. 4 companies and 6 series were represented here, and every game that got this far very much deserved it. There was no Wind Waker. No Shadow of the Colossus. No Warcraft 3 or World of Warcraft. No Capcom, Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard, or Microsoft. None of those dumb flash games like Clash of Clans or Candy Crush or Farmville that make billions of dollars (though I would support them rallying if they chose to). No Minecraft. No joke games, like Big Rigs or Cory in the House. There was really no bullshit at all, just 8 games that deserved to be here and can objectively be called the best game ever. It was great to see, getting here was a great ride, and the final week of the contest would be an absolute classic. Just everything one could hope for in a contest happened this season.
Ctes' Analysis[]
Considering what we've seen so far, this result makes little no sense for several reasons. Be there rSFF or not, I wanna say Metal Gear Solid 3 redeemed the series. This is not actually the case, the Mother 3 match and the BioShock embarrassment still just happened, but we'd lie if we said Metal Gear Solid 3 didn't surprise us positively the latest two rounds. Funny enough, a majority of board 8 got 0 of 16 possible points today. The match, boring and linear as it was, sure had quite the shocking result.
Most of us were aware that Metal Gear Solid 3 is the fan favorite of the series. Rightfully so, if I may add, it's my personal favorite too. Big Boss is my favorite character from the series as well. It was refreshing to see it do so well again, showing that destroying Mass Effect 2 last round wasn't only because of that game being weak, but also because Metal Gear Solid 3, even if it is past its prime, is still legit. Oh, and somehow Mother 3 isn't complete trash in these things despite not having been released outside of Japan. Despite being the fan favorite, you wouldn't expect it to win a match against the original game for Playstation 1. More people played it and it's also easily the least disliked of the bunch, as in, I'm not sure anybody does. It was supposed to win comfortably and yet that happened the other way.
Seriously, how many times this contest has the game from the PS2 era or beyond won a debatable match against a game from before it except of course for Undertale and Melee rallies? The only instance I can think of is Xenogears losing to KOTOR, which was a somewhat debatable match. Furthermore, even taking non-debatable matches into account, the new additions to the list would only be when FFX beat MMX and MGSV, MGS2 and Resident Evil 4's round 1 victories, of which only one of those didn't have the winning game disappoint big time. Consider those trends and Metal Gear Solid 3's victory looks incredibly weird, and especially because it flat out looked some levels below Metal Gear Solid earlier in the contest. I suppose the core fanbase sided with Metal Gear Solid 3 big time, because otherwise it shouldn't be enough to overcome casual votes and bracket votes.
This is the only time in the whole contest that a winning underdog in such a match was the more recent game. That's why you can't help, but consider rSFF, even though that's a phenomenon which existence we still haven't agreed on. I personally don't think there was though, the Mass Effect 2 match makes be confident too. It doesn't seem out of the question that BioShock was legit, even before rallies and the match with Mother 3 can be explained too. Earthbound performed almost 10% better on Metal Gear Solid than Mother 3 did on Metal Gear Solid 3, roughly 33% extra votes. Most of that fanbase it pretty passionate about the game, I'm assuming they're all well-aware of Mother 3's existence. A bunch of them likely played it or are at least passionate enough to support a game they're sure they'd like. Not to mention Earthbound and Mother 3 are polar opposites of Metal Gear, so it makes sense they perform better than you'd expect. That a bit more than a fourth of Earthbound's voters don't know or care for Mother 3 is amount that makes sense to me. It's really the only explanation that makes sense of the whole thing, so I think it's what we should go with.
We saw two upsets today leaving many experts without points. Metal Gear Solid 3 hopefully managed to make fans of the series smile again. It still had a semi-final shot, but Super Mario RPG's upset today, make it seem a lot less likely that the semi-finalist would be the division 8 winner. Metal Gear Solid 3 defied the usual trends today, but it's something completely different when facing a game from GameFAQs' golden era of gaming that can pull in both Nintendo and Square fans while likely riding a bandwagon. Unlike Metal Gear Solid which had fallen slightly in strength this contest, Super Mario RPG had a clear boost, bandwagon or not. Metal Gear Solid 3 showed the past two rounds to likely not have fallen as much as Resident Evil 4, but it would enter the quarter-finals as the underdog.