Results[]
Sunday, March 29, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 2 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 11 |
| Match Date | Sunday, March 29, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Borderlands 2 - 57.21% 55 for - 8 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Borderlands 2 - 80.77% |
| User Votes |
Borderlands 2 - 4908 Bloodstained - 3339 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Borderlands 2 - 3816 Bloodstained - 2755 |
Borderlands 2 was not the heavy guru favorite to get out of this fourpack, but it was the favorite nonetheless. And when you compare this performance to what Horizon Zero Dawn was doing to Fortnite, it was no contest. Borderlands 2 laid an egg here.
Now some people might say this is due to Bloodstained being a very respectable game. They would only sort of be half right. As someone who has legitimately loved and written the book on this game (https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/158368-bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/faqs/77623), I'm more qualified than most to comment on this game's strength.
For the unaware, Konami is complete trash and turned all of their franchises into slot machines. I am not making that up. One such casualty of this was Koji Igarashi, a pinnacle of Castlevania development. Thanks to the magic (if you can call it that) of Kickstarter, a bunch of people poured money into a new Castlevania-type project. You know the rest. Bloodstained is among the most well-known and well-liked Kickstarter video games out there, but that didn't stop the game from having all of the typical Kickstarter video game problems. That is to say, it was an unfinished buggy mess when it launched. I got lucky with enjoying my trophies and playing it on the Playstation 4; on other systems, such as the Switch and PC, the game outright did not work at all for weeks when it came out. But hey, that's okay. Patch culture!
If there is one thing that shows how lazy today's gaming developers are, it's patch culture. It doesn't matter if we release a game with a bunch of problems at launch. We can just push it to market and fix it later. Patch culture! It doesn't matter if Final Fantasy 15 is only half finished at launch. Patch culture! Well I and many others think patch culture can go screw itself. That, predatory microtransactions, and the debacle of DLC are a huge stain on gaming today, and it's gotten so bad that games released at full on launch day get criticized for being complete on launch day. That was actually a problem some people had with The Outer Worlds. That actually happened. Go look it up.
To go one step beyond this, Bloodstained early on announced one of the stupidest patches I can ever remember. They wanted to nerf single player content. Yes, you read this correctly. This isn't Madden, or NBA 2K, or League of Legends, or some other online competitive multiplayer game. It's a freaking 2D single player side-scrolling RPG platformer. That announcement more or less killed this game, and even dumber is that it was announced before any fixes.
How does this relate to a match against Borderlands 2, I hear you wondering. Simple. This was not some 60-40 struggle between two strong games. This was Borderlands choking like a dog. 59% against all of Bloodstained's baggage is a terrible performance, and when compared to Horizon just thrashing Fortnite, it meant those of us who picked Borderlands to win twice were screwed.
And frankly, good. I'll get into the people behind Borderlands being trash in round 2, don't you worry. I've said it before, but our voters are astute.
Ctes's Analysis[]
Another match that fueled the thought of indie games being legit. Borderlands 2 is a previous Game of the Year winner here, and while I think everyone agreed it had a good year to take such a price, this still wasn’t very convincing. While Final Fantasy XV would end up fighting for the title, Borderlands 2 probably goes out of round 1 looking like the weakest GotY, just like it went into the contest as. I suppose one could make an argument for Smash 4, but it isn’t in the bracket, so we’ll never know for sure.
Borderlands 2 actually performed better than the average oracle expected of it. This shows that the indie fear was now for real. The Borderlands series is hardly what it used to be. The humor is outdated, and the gameplay isn’t as fun as it used to be. We even saw a handful pick against it after the first few days of indie success. This could be a place where another indie game could do damage. The fear was in full force. It probably would’ve performed below expectations if it had been up the first day.
Borderlands 2 is still good enough, however, it was never going to drop this. It doesn’t look all too great yet, but it had hope going forward, since trashing Horizon trashing Fortnite tells us nothing about its chances in another match. The Walking Dead only barely lost against its indie opponent, and I doubt anyone would consider TWD to get close to Borderlands 2. Looking back, Bloodstained looks like one of the better indies in the contest. It’s exactly the kind that could have damaged brackets given better bracket placement.
At this point, the idea that indie games from the second half of the decade were legit was starting to form. Hollow Knight and Bloodstained had looked really good. Bastion won, but only barely against what was expected to extremely bad and VVVVVV was looking terrible in a match next to this. It was a good idea, that would end up having some truth to it and is probably a good rule of thumb, though it does not come without exceptions.
Tsunami's Analysis[]
Borderlands 2 was our GotY in 2012, but it's frequently considered one of our weakest GotY winners ever. And we once had a Call of Duty game win GotY, which in the world at large would certainly be stronger but Call of Duty hasn't been worth anything in contests since, well, around the same time that it won a GotY. Anyone who knows me should know that I'm a huge fan of both music and statistics, so it shouldn't surprise you too much that I frequent WhatNotToSing.com, and the good folks over there have a perfect explanation:
- The American entertainment industry is all about the here and now. All major industry awards, be it Oscar or Tony or Emmy or Grammy, tend to be as nearsighted as Mr. Magoo. In Hollywood and New York and Nashville, one year is about as far back as anyone seems to be able to remember. As such, every winter these various acadamies manage to embarrass themselves by bestowing a major award on something or someone that will be thoroughly forgotten five years hence.
That applies to the Internet and its court of public opinion, too. CoD 4 did very well in the 2009 Games Contest, and then Modern Warfare won 2009 GotY the following January. And then...we just kind of forgot about it. It was a fad. Also, how did I never notice that typo in the editorial I just quoted?
But as for Borderlands 2, we saw its weakness. 0-3 in CBIX, with only one of the characters even getting second place. Got upset in Round 1 of BGE3. No characters even made CBX. Can we go back to CBIX again, where one of them managed to allow a non-Symphonia Tales character into second place? Okay yes that was the resident "joke entrant", but still. And while it had the greater name recognition here, it's not like its opponent didn't have the pedigree. Bloodstained is a spiritual successor to the Castlevania series, produced by the series' long-time producer, Koji Igarashi. The similarity of its subtitle to that of the most popular Castlevania game is no coincidence. And remember how much this site loves Japanese things. This performance was very encouraging for Bloodstained, and if we ever get another Character Battle, I wouldn't be surprised if its protagonist was able to do okay. Not great, of course, because very few characters to debut during the Contest era have been worth much (Amaterasu, Altair even though he missed the last one entirely, Sora if you want to count by NA release dates but his game was already out in Japan by the start of Character Battle I). But decent enough for a newcomer. (And no, Geralt doesn't count; Witcher 3 may have been the game to boost him to prominence, but even just as a game character he dates back to the 90s, and across all media he's as old as Link.)
Safer777's Analysis[]
So we have the weakest GOTY winner from the previous decade on this site vs a spiritual successor to the Castlevania series. Yeah B2 had won GOTY here. Amazing eh? But then again once a Call Of Duty game won GOTY here. You heard me right. I don't know how myself too. B2 made popular the looter shooter genre. It is an amazing game and even better with friends. Do you know they released a DLC expansion for it 7 years after it came out? For free too? Yeah. The game is damn good!
So for the match. The crew actually gave it lower win percentage(okay except Guest)and I don't know why. Sure we have a spiritual successor to Castlevania which is so popular that it coined the term Metroidvania but the Castlevania series is dead. The last game came out 6 years ago. Nobody cares anymore. Oh wait we have a pachinko Castlevania so all are fine I guess. Everyone knows the Borderlands series. The last game came out in the previous year. So name recognition for sure. I didn't know about Ritual since I don't play Indie games and I had to look it up. But Bordelands series? Too famous now. However B2 didn't even managed to break 60% which I say it is a moral victory for Ritual. Ritual is a good game from what I have gathered at least.