Results[]
Wednesday, July 24th, 2013
Ulti's Analysis[]
It's not easy to have a cooler picture or cooler "look" than Altair, but Shulk managed to pull it off. I really need to play Xenoblade one of these days if all the characters look that hard. Is it similar to Xenosaga or Xenogears or whatever? I feel like once I play it, I'm going to look back at this match and be kind of mad. Altair was not a true 25 seed, and I'll never forget how mad the Xenoblade fans got when they saw this bracket first revealed.
Never mind that Ratchet ALSO beat Shulk half to death <_<
The actual match wasn't particularly interesting beyond 44-33-22 being pretty neat, so I'm hoping people take it upon themselves to tell me how good Xenoblade is! Was Nintendo getting all that hate worth it? I really do want to know, it seems very long and I want some motivation to play it. How's the battle system?
Zen's (Late) Analysis[]
If I told you that there was a secret pic Shulk could get that would instantly double, nay, triple his expected vote total, would you believe me? Would anyone on this board believe a pic could be that strong?
KamikazePotato and the rest of the Xenoblade fans on this board would have you believe that this was the key.
Yes, the key to Shulk's victory was-- Shit, I should be more specific here. It wasn't a bad child-size cosplay of Shulk. It was this thing.
The Monado! People were convinced that if someone could squeeze this giant red phallus into a match pic with Shulk that he would at least be able to beat Ratchet, perhaps even proven multi-way contest veteran Altair!
After a few days of bad pic submissions, KP found the best Picsmith for the job: KP, the ultimate weapon wasn't the Monado, it was your heart all along.
So Shulk got what was considered the best possible picture, and... lost. Lost pretty hard. I had fallen for all the Shulk hype and taken him over Ratchet in my Expert bracket. Whoops. To be fair, KP is right a lot of the time and he's pretty convincing, and that XENOFEAR got to me.
It actually wasn't crazy to consider Ratchet weak enough to lose to Shulk. He had lost to Thrall once, and failed to double Eddie Riggs. Since 2013, Ratchet has received a bad movie and a good, albeit short, movie tie-in game. Where is his strength now? Probably the same, but I don't mind seeing him in these things.
Altair once again has a decent contest showing. It's astounding that the basically personality-void protagonist of the first ever Assassin's Creed game is still one of very few reps the series has had in this contest. People don't even like the first AC or Altair in general anymore. Outside of Ezio, there really isn't any better pick, though.