Results[]
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 3 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 19 |
| Match Date | Tuesday, March 31, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Spider-Man - 66.50% 66 for - 0 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Spider-Man - 78.22% |
| User Votes |
Spider-Man - 6010 Dead Space 2 - 2495 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Spider-Man - 4710 Dead Space 2 - 2205 |
Not gonna lie, I forgot Dead Space 2 was even in this contest until I got to this match in my writeups. Apparently the voters forgot as well, because Spiderman destroyed it. This actually could have been a lot worse, because Spidey was up 75-25 early before settling down. It was nice to see for us MCU fans, and it was also nice to see for licensed games on the whole. Those games tend to be rushed crap, but this one was neither rushed nor crap. In a lot of circles, Spiderman was the game of the year for 2018. That's how well done and well respected that game is, so seeing it annihilate a middling game was no surprise.
It also led to the predictable conversation that happens every single time a Spiderman or Batman game does well, which is that we need a character battle without the shackles. I fully agree with this, for the record. We've gotten too good at this and need the shakeup. Think of how unpredictable a lot of those matches would be. Spiderman vs Dante. Wolverine vs Luigi. Batman vs Kirby. Superman vs Ryu. Wonder Woman vs 2B. Thanos vs Kratos. Black Panther vs Ness. Iron Man vs Samus. Hulk vs Sephiroth. Mickey Mouse vs Sonic. Simba vs Solid Snake. Crono vs Goku.
The possibilities are endless, and it would be a great contest. We would probably lean too heavily toward nominating too many characters that aren't pure gaming characters, but so what? Allen obviously knows we want this, too, and I doubt a fellow gaming nerd like him is averse to the idea. I don't think he's refused due to lack of desire. It might simply be an issue with licensing costs and such. Who really knows? But if that contest can reasonably happen, we need to do it.
As a final side note, fuck Sony for trying to keep Spiderman out of the MCU. Sony's comic movies almost all suck ass, and this includes Into the Spiderverse. That might legitimately be the most overrated movie ever made. The first half was just dumb, but then Nic Cage, a pig, and an anime robot show up. Unless Nic Cage is being burned alive or bossed around by Sean Connery, I don't want to see him, hear him, or watch a movie that stars him. The only parts of that movie that I enjoyed were Miles and Prowler. Miles is good. Prowler is great. I'll take nothing away from those two. Everything else sucked, and I'm convinced half the stuff Board 8 gets obsessed with is an inside joke troll job. I refuse to believe you people actually like Into the Spiderverse, Shadow of the Colossus, Umineko, and Snakes on a Plane as much as you say you do. You're smarter than this. Supposedly.
Ironically, I loved the original Spiderman trilogy and Venom was alright. Granted Venom was only alright because of Tom Hardy, but hey! I don't ask for much. Just about everything else though is dog shit, especially compared to what the MCU can pull off. Yeah, I'm kissing the ring, what of it? Bite me. Those movies don't all make a billion dollars by accident, and you're not cool for not liking them.
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Ctes's Analysis[]
I was pretty excited to see Marvel’s Spider-Man in a contest because I thought it had great potential. The game was well received and sold extremely well. The Batman games have recent here and Spider-Man has actually been in good movies recently. I would be a lot more excited if Spider-Man didn’t have a pretty predictable path. I picked it to win two rounds without thinking and never looked back, but I still had some enjoyment in following it.
Most of that is in the other two matches, however. I must admit had to look up Dead Space 2 to remember what it was other than “some horror game”. It was well enough received sure, but it’s not something that we care a lot about here and I’m sure I’m not the only one to have forgotten about it. Dead Space 3 did happen, but it wasn’t as popular and the company that made them has shut down since then. Dead Space 2 came out back when the whole world was incredibly excited about horror. We are that a lot less today. It had a lot of things going against it, but it wouldn’t have won either way. The first game got nowhere near beaten San Andreas a decade ago, a result that looked fine until Golden Sun made the upset the following round. The second appears to be the most popular so maybe it could’ve done alright if it was in a contest 8 years ago. All things considered, breaking 30% here was the best it could realistically hope for. It was below expectations, but Spider-Man ended up looking better than people thought, so this was honestly good for it.
Safer777's Analysis[]
So we have Spider-Man! Damn! A few years ago we wouldn't even dreamed to have such games yet here we are. If we ever have another Character Contest we should have ALL characters that have appeared in a video game to be eligible. Batman vs Chuck Norris anyone? I have played the Dead Space series and they are excellent games. I like the first one the most. But EA killed the series because the latest game didn't sold as well as expected even though it brought money. That is EA for you. Marvel's Spider-Man seems to be in the top 3 of best superhero video games ever so it has this going on for it.
So for the match. Well for a Dead series(see what I did there? Get it?)Dead Space 2 did all right I guess. Some people thought that maybe DS would do better because of Super Hero fatigue or such. This thing doesn't exist. Super Heroes games/movies/shows are popular for more than 12 years and I don't see anything slowing them down. Too bad the DS series will never come out again. They had games on multiple consoles, phone games, comics, movies so many stuff. Yet apparently they didn't brought money. I do wonder why the 2nd game got in though. I thought most fans prefer the 1st game? In the first game the main character didn't even talked too!
Tsunami's Analysis[]
There is one debate that rages almost constantly on Board 8, and that is how characters from other media would fare in Character Battles if we allowed them in. The general consensus is that the most well-known characters would be very strong indeed, though there would of course be plenty of fodder. Perhaps the biggest issue is that by opening it up too far, you'd have such a large list of potential entrants that it would be absolute chaos. My solution, of course, would be to limit it to characters who have been in a "good" video game, since merely forcing them to have been in a video game doesn't really limit it much. Nearly everything has had licensed games these days. So how would we determine what's "good"? Why, how about "things that have been in Games Contests"?! Of course, we'd probably have to have Games Contests a bit more frequently, but as long as Allen's still gatekeeping to make sure only quality games get in, that'll do fine. Right off the bat you get a bunch of Disney characters via Kingdom Hearts, and a bunch of Marvel characters via MvC2. DC Comics doesn't quite get as good a deal as Marvel does, but the Arkham series has been a mainstay in these contests. The silly nomination system for the first BGE also allowed the Simpsons arcade game to get in, so that's a few more characters with potential.
But there are people who figure that since this is a gaming site, anything non-gaming would get eviscerated by even a weak video game character. These people are wrong, but occasionally there are results that continue to fuel their belief. The Walking Dead getting upset by Bastion was one of them. Another one that was considered a major upset ironically came in a Character Battle, where people thought that having "Darth" in his name and being the top option would allow Revan (a KotOR-original character, therefore eligible for contests) to beat Terra Branford. Yeah, I don't understand why that's relevant either. The Star Wars Extended Universe is massive, including those video game-original characters. The fact that the Star Wars name alone doesn't make you strong doesn't mean that Han Solo or Darth Vader wouldn't be strong. We've seen that even in our top video game franchises, when we rallied Groose into the 2013 contest and he fell flat.
Spider-Man fell just short of 70% against Dead Space 2, while GTA: San Andreas was only able to get 65.45% on the original Dead Space in the previous GotD. Some food for thought. Gamers are not so single-minded that they ignore anything that isn't related to video games.