Results[]
Monday, March 30, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 2 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 13 |
| Match Date | Monday, March 30, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Resident Evil 2 - 76.78% 65 for - 0 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Resident Evil 2 - 92.37% |
| User Votes |
Resident Evil 2 - 7116 Danganronpa 2 - 1421 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Resident Evil 2 - 5756 Danganronpa 2 - 1215 |
Some indie games were okay in this contest. Most were not. Listening to yoblazer trying to pronounce "Danganronpa" wasn't quite as painful as Rosie O'Donnell's impersonation of the Chinese, but it was painful nonetheless! Swirldude was nice enough to enlighten us on The Show about what that game actually is. Apparently it's a visual novel that Phoenix Wright fans would enjoy, which... actually doesn't sound bad at all. But seeded contests all have their slew of round 1 blowouts, so here we were.
But even then, we were less prepared than Illidan's opponents for what RE2 was going to do in this contest. "Painful" is also an apt word to describe Resident Evil 2 ripping through this match. This fourpack of matches pretty much all made Mass Effect 2 look terrible, and Resident Evil 2 got the ball rolling by proving its Game of the Year showing to start off the 2020 polls was no fluke. In those polls, it beat Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Sekiro to take the title. It followed that up by destroying Not Phoenix Wright. It was far from done after this demolishing, either.
This was another feather in the cap of Capcom's resurgence, and who knew that designing good games without worrying about dirty microtransactions and loads of sinister DLC practices would make fans like you? It's almost like this is what people have been saying all along or something. Gamers don't want microtransactions. Gamers don't want on-disc DLC. Gamers don't want their intelligence insulted. They want good games. That's it. It's not hard. When you give gamers what they want, they vote with their dollars. Free markets work, my friends.
I will say though that Resident Evil 2 cheated hard with that name. Let's not forget that every single game made in 1998 is technically a contest champion! https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6720-best-year-in-gaming-final-2001-vs-1998
So rather than being called Resident Evil 2: Remake or something similar, Capcom went with the original name. I am legitimately and truly convinced that this game got a 1998 boost from nostalgia, which kind of feels dirty. Two games, Persona 4 Golden and Pokemon HeartGold SoulSilver, had absolutely no right making it into this contest. Those two are just graphical upgrades of games not released in this decade.
Resident Evil 2 is very borderline, and pushes at it really hard, but ultimately I'm okay with it since it's a full remake. The other two no, but RE2 is fine. The issue is where does it stop? Do we let Ocarina of Time 3D in? How about Link's Awakening? That's a full remake. I just think it's dumb that all three of these games got to feed on nostalgia in a contest specifically designed to avoid it. If you booted all three of those games in favor of Pokemon Go, Skyward Sword, and Pokemon Sword and Shield, the contest would have felt more fair.
Ctes's Analysis[]
Picking Resident Evil 2 to win the whole division was a cool upset pick before and during the contest. A result such as this was exactly what it needed to make it look possible. Mass Effect 2 had performed below expectations yesterday and now Resident Evil 2 scores a huge blowout, proving its strength to us. Even so, DOOM managed to exceed expectations even more in its match today, so it didn’t get to be a lock to round 3 in the eyes of everyone. What a good division this was after round 1!
Danganronpa finally got a game into a contest. It has its cult fanbase, so congratulations! There’s not much to gain doing it again, however. Even if you considered Resident Evil 2 the division favorite at this point, getting blown out this badly by anything except perhaps Breath of the Wild should mean there is no point in coming back, so in a contest setting, it’s probably time to big welcome to the despair instead. Seeing how many blowouts we’re having at this point makes me consider what having four matches a day along with four votes is doing. That obviously favors a Resident Evil against a Danganronpa, so maybe it could’ve cracked the 20% it should have hoped for if it was the only match? Of course, the high number of blowouts is also because of the two games per series rule.
This was the first showing of the remakes in the contest and so far it looks like it’s just as strong as it could be in any setting. Though at this point, there was no telling what that meant for Persona 4 Golden or Pokemon HGSS. Resident Evil 2 is by far the most different game from its original between the three. Now had it shown up worse than it looked in the GotY polls, they’d have reason to fear for themselves.
Tsunami's Analysis[]
So yeah, remakes were allowed into this contest, though at times it could be hard to tell because there were also a couple of games with the same name as their franchise's debut game, like Doom and God of War. I'm curious as to whether Bacon showed any sort of discretion; if it was just generalized "yeah all remakes are eligible", it's kind of tough to imagine that RE2 got a 1-seed and OoT3D didn't even make the field. Or did the lack of recency and the fact that handheld games are largely viewed as second-class citizens here make people forget entirely that it was eligible? No, that doesn't make sense; HeartGold/SoulSilver made it in and that's even older. (Then again, it's also a much bigger improvement on its original game!)
At a glance, it appears that this was another case where almost all of the "extra" votes went in one direction. Then you realize that in a blowout this big, the proportion isn't all that far off! The official percentage is 83.13%; the raw votes have it at 83% even. Either way, it's close to a quintupling, which either means that RE2 is an absolute monster or that even by the standards of VNs, Danganronpa is piss-weak. In 2015, four VNs made it in, two each from two series. The original Phoenix Wright, a 16-seed, narrowly avoided a doubling from Skyrim, while the third PW game even more narrowly avoided a tripling from Symphony of the Night in a 2-15 matchup. In a pair of other 2-15 matchups, 999 got 22.2% on Persona 4, so roughly halfway between a tripling and a quadrupling, while its sequel, VLR, got a little under 21% against Mass Effect 2. Now, we know that Phoenix has pretty much gone mainstream, but I'd expect the Zero Escape series to be roughly on par with Danganronpa. The original, not-remade RE2 was also in 2015's contest, where it lost in somewhat respectable fashion to Final Fantasy Tactics. In fact, let's pull up the X-Stat calculator to see what the expectation would be:
- Resident Evil 2 (2015g) VS Virtues Last Reward (2015g)
- Resident Evil 2 has a strength of 23.93.
Virtues Last Reward has a strength of 10.70.
- Resident Evil 2 wins with 77.64% of the vote!
A win of 33,656 with 60,875 total votes cast.
77.64%. Not even what Persona 4 got on the stronger 999. Either the RE2 Remake was just that good (not entirely inconceivable since you're dealing with updating a game from the late 90s to the modern HD graphics and controls), or Danganronpa isn't even remotely in the same conversation as Zero Escape. Probably some combination of both.
Safer777's Analysis[]
So how a game from 1998 went into this contest? Simple. It is not RE 2 from 1998, it is RE 2 from 2019! In all seriousness though I don't understand how RE 2 got in. I thought no remakes and remasters? Otherwise we would have OOT or FFX or stuff like that? Guess since it is actually a new game which just keep the general story from the original RE2 and changes all other stuff it if fair game. Just like how FF7 remake will be eligible for the next GOTD contest(if we are alive by then). RE2 remake got amazing reviews and won numerous GOTY awards. As a person who played the original RE 2 back then when it first came out I have to say the remake is excellent too. I just prefer SLIGHTLY the original RE2 but that is a personal opinion. As for Danganronpa 2...Sorry don't know anything. It is apparently a visual novel?
So for the match. Well what do you expected? Even if you don't know anything about the contests here pretty sure you knew what game would win. And as always the crew overstimates the power of such strange games. They all went under 80%(except one person)and RE2 scored even higher than he predicted. See here is the thing. People just don't care about these strange obscure games ESPECIALLY if they are visual novels. Only Ace Attorney is somewhat decent here and that is not by much. I know that the D series has its fans since the games keep coming out but you know what I mean.