Results[]
Monday, April 13, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 2 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 70 |
| Match Date | Monday, April 13, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Horizon Zero Dawn - 53.55% 41 for - 14 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Horizon Zero Dawn - 28.65% |
| User Votes |
Borderlands 2 - 4106 Horizon Zero Dawn - 4939 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Borderlands 2 - 4278 Horizon Zero Dawn - 5442 |
I love you Nick, but I can't support your love for Borderlands at all. They might be fine games for all I know or care. Not the point. I resisted mentioning this one during the round 1 writeups, because we have to save some material for later, so let's just do it now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5K8BMNLpy0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gearbox_Software#List_of_video_games
I will never support or defend a single game on that list until Randy Pitchford is gone. Fuck that dude and everything he stands for. It's called voting with your dollars.
Coming into this contest, I figured the crazy success of Borderlands 3 would help Borderlands 2 win two matches. It's not like Aloy set the world on fire last character battle, either, so I figured Horizon was incredibly niche and had no chance here. It was a logical conclusion. Then mid-contest, the news hit about what an indefensible piece of trash Randy Pitchford is.
Long story short, I said screw my bracket and pulled as hard for Horizon as I've ever pulled for anything in any contest match we've ever had. Yes it was a longshot upset, but there is no planet where Borderlands deserves to win a damn thing anymore. Thankfully, the match was never in doubt. Borderlands tripped off the blocks, and though it got back into it at the freeze, the first update buried the game for good en route to Horizon Zero Dawn boat racing this poll. It slowly rose in percentage all match long from being tied at the freeze, to ultimately scoring a 55-45 blowout that was never that close.
First off, congrats to Horizon for finally getting some fair time to shine. It had never made any poll before this contest, so we had no real idea what to expect. The game is fantastic, and Aloy losing to an Overwatch character made me sick two years ago. Not only was this match a wonderful bit of justice, but Horizon's performance in this might convince some more people to try it. It's a total win-win!
This is also when we started to realize what a monster 2017 was in this contest. I don't want to steal MechanicalWall's thunder, since he's doing an analysis of specific years, but the very short version is that 2017 was just nuts in this contest. Notable releases that year were Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Persona 5, Divinity: Contest Savior 2, NieR: Automata, and.... Horizon Zero Dawn. It's not something that was lost on people as this contest moved forward, but more importantly, Randy Pitchford and Gearbox Software can go piss off. No offense to anyone who likes Borderlands, this has nothing to do with you at all, but this match was justice.
https://blog.gamersensei.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Garen-Header1080.png
Ctes's Analysis[]
Borderlands 2 becomes the first of the Game of the Year winners in the contest to lose, although another one of them would fall tomorrow due to severe bad bracket placement. Final Fantasy XV almost did yesterday but managed to hang on. Borderlands 2 was the most popular choice for the weakest of the winners as it had an easy year to get title. The second place from 2012 would redeem that year as much as it could, however. Borderlands 2 was not expected to be as good as it was in 2015 and it lost to Earthbound easily back then. It hasn’t aged all too well, the humor isn’t as appreciated anymore, and the franchise didn’t really keep the level up.
Despite all of that, Borderlands 2 was the favorite today. Lots of people took Horizon Zero Dawn in the upset, but we generally underestimated that game by a bit. It was completely overshadowed by being released right before Breath of the Wild and while it was still critically acclaimed, it seemed most people forgot about it quickly again. Well, at least you don’t forget it when it’s right there in the voting form. Horizon won this match easily. It won the early board vote big time, then Borderlands 2 looked to take the match when the freeze happened, but Horizon went up big time next update and never looked back. Then the Bloodborne rally happened and boosted Horizon a little bit more than already.
It’s weird that Horizon wasn’t favored here to me. Look at the Game of the Year polls. Horizon isn’t too far behind Persona 5 and beats NieR: Automata, which we had great expectations for. I suppose people just thought people stopped caring very quickly. Or perhaps Aloy being trash in the previous character battle was what did it. The most cookie guru bracket this year was Master Moltar, who made just a single upset. This was the one, so he eliminated the guru cookie today on the first day of eliminations. Considering the Board8BOP user was on the leaderboard until the second semi-final and finished seventh on the second chance leaderboard, it’s pretty cool that the cookie died this fast, even if it really takes nothing to do it.
Safer777's Analysis[]
This match I was shocked by the result. I mean HZD is an exclusive game and Borderlands series is the one that made the looter shooter genre famous. We even had B3 coming out a few months ago too and it was very well received. HZD hasn't anything new in years. So yeah I thought pretty easy match. But no.
So for the match. Well HZD won with relative easy. But why? I am not sure myself and I don't understand. Is it because the game is better? You can't really compare them though. Is it more popular? Once again I say no. So why this happened? I guess here in Gamefaqs we don't like Borderlands series even though we had B2 as our GOTY the year it came out. You heard me right. We had B2 as our GOTY! Things change eh? Still I have played both games and both are excellent in their own way. B2 for the loot and the wacky world and HZD for the story and the amazing world. The prediction percentage was extremely low too so I am not the only one that got this thingy wrong.
Tsunami's Analysis[]
When HZD scored a massive blowout of Fortnite, we all just chalked it up to Fortnite being antivoted to kingdom come. After this win, on the other hand, it looks legit. The Gurus were fairly split on this one, though they ultimately favored Borderlands 2; by the time Oracle came around, however, they were leaning towards HZD, likely as a result of BL2's Round 1 performance. With the casuals? Your guess is as good as mine who the favorite was. Technically speaking, more brackets picked HZD to win in this round than to lose in it, but the group that picked HZD to lose last round had the heavy plurality, 43.13% to 28.65% to 28.22%. Which means the favorite was probably Borderlands 2, which had an 80.77% prediction percentage in Round 1, but it's quite likely that "Horizon Zero Dawn-Fortnite winner" was favored over Borderlands 2 and certainly at least a chance that Fortnite could even be the favorite despite not being the favorite last round if enough of its R1 pickers were expecting it to be RallyFEAR and picked it to go deep. At any rate, this was a solid win for Horizon Zero Dawn. Its goal right now? Try to put up a better percentage on ME2 than its Round 4 opponent will. Prior to this round, I'd have called that impossible, but it just put up over 55% on presumably a stronger opponent than either of them faced, and neither of them broke 58%.
- Borderlands 2 (2015g) VS Fire Emblem: Awakening (2015g)
- Borderlands 2 has a strength of 21.33.
Fire Emblem: Awakening has a strength of 22.89.
- Fire Emblem: Awakening wins with 53.41% of the vote!
A win of 4,149 with 60,875 total votes cast.
...Oh. Never mind then.