Results[]
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 128 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 28 |
| Match Date | Friday, April 30th, 2004 |
| Vote difference | 9,066 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Metroid Prime - 73.24% 67 for - 0 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Metroid Prime - 56.97% (23,324 brackets) |
What an interesting match this was. Before our little site ever decided to run this contest, a site called GameSpy decided to run their own garbage version of one such competition. The winner? Half-Life by a mile. Now let's get back to our contest for a minute. In 2002, Gordon Freeman managed to get a 3 seed. What did he do with it, you ask? He was upended by Tina Armstrong, one of the characters from the Dead or Alive fighting series. Gordon Freeman, who is the main character of Half-Life for those that don't know (and a lot of the people can actually play the game without knowing the main character's name, hence why he sucks in the Summer Contest setting; you simply can't piece 'Gordon Freeman' and 'Half-Life' together that well), became the laughing stock of the contest.
So in 2003, Gordon Freeman set out to get revenge for himself. He managed to get a 7 seed and an easy first round matchup against Max Payne. But yet again he lost, making Gordon Freeman the biggest joke in the history of the contest. It was so bad that our own Amazing Telephone ran a Google search on Gordon Freeman and found a picture of a cat with a bag over its head.
Enter 2004. Half-Life wins GameSpy's contest, and gets a matchup against one of Samus's top two most popular titles in Metroid Prime. Metroid Prime is an interesting story in and of itself, too. It was given the impossible task of being the sequel to Super Metroid and it was made into a First Person Shooter. Yet despite all of the pre-release criticism, Metroid Prime delivered an amazing title to become of the best games ever created. But the same thing can also be said about Half-Life. I vaguely remember someone on this board saying that more people play Half-Life online than any other multiplayer game, including Starcraft. I didn't verify this myself, but I wouldn't be surprised if this were true. I can assure the readers of this topic that Half-Life is absolutely huge outside of our site, much like Halo. And like Halo, Half-Life can and would kick the living hell out of Metroid Prime on most other gaming sites. But this isn't every other gaming site, it's gamefaqs. Nintendo and Square are the rulers around here, and despite only 57% of people thinking Metroid Prime would win, it had little to no chance of actually losing this match. We have a credo on the contest board called Gordon Freeman Never Wins for a reason.
Anyway, to the match itself. Metroid Prime gained an early advantage of 300 votes or so. But Half-Life didn't just roll over and die. It managed to split the vote virtually evenly before it was finally smoked by the morning vote and sent packing in this contest. But that doesn't mean tht Half-Life doesn't deserve respect after this match. If you go by Gordon Freeman's past performances, Half-Life should have been smoked from the get-go in this matchup. Instead, it held its own against one of the mascots of the Gamecube for a few hours in the poll. That has to count for something.
One last thing before I move on. This poll marked the return of insta-updating, and it would remain for the rest of the contest. It may have given a 2002 feel back to the contest, but it completely killed the drama of 15 minute updates. All we really had to do to see the match trend was hit refresh a few times, and not only that, but it completely bugged the **** out of creativename's file. But aside from that, I'm sure the 2002 regulars didn't mind seeing our old friend return ^_^
Match Trends[]
