Results[]
Wednesday, July 31st, 2013
Ulti's Analysis[]
This was our first match of the contest where second place came down to the absolute wire, and this stuff matters with an Expert Challenge floating around. Pikachu had first place wrapped up before the match even started, but a random second place match between Lloyd and Big Daddy being awesome? Baller. It was hard to really pick what the consensus was pre-match, too because no one cared. Seriously. No one. People plugged Lloyd vs Big Daddy into the LOL X-stats calculator, saw Big Daddy as a 67-33 favorite and called it a day.
But then Lloyd jumped out to a 300 vote lead in an hour and a half and threw a wrench into all that. Big Daddy would end up stalling overnight before making a push with the morning vote, but the 12 hour poll means he simply ran out of time. He probably wins second place going away if this poll was 24 hours, but again, I'd much rather a few more popular characters lose due to 12 hour polls than all the early round matches be 24 hours long. It makes for a better contest. Yeah it sucks as a huge BioShock fan that he only lost by 50, but I'll deal.
It made sense for Big Daddy to be the favorite, given a recent huge BioShock release and Lloyd having to share the poll with a Nintendo character. It also makes sense why he lost. The novelty of the dude has simply worn off. Big Daddy is barely even a character in BioShock; he's just a random thing you fight, and it would be like pretending a Hammer Bro from Mario is some awesome character that deserves wins in contests. Big Daddy only has character if you play BioShock 2, but that game's plot blows so who cares. The gameplay improved on the original, but not the plot. Not that it could, to be totally fair.
Big Daddy losing also wasn't all that painful given I am a huge Tails of Symphonia fan and think Lloyd is alright. It's not like he lost to freaking Wander, Touhou garbage or Donte. He lost to a good character, which anyone should be able to accept.
Not sure that quite credits exactly how much Big Daddy bombed in that match. Pikachu scored as much on him as Link would have been expected to. The idea of Big Daddy being overrated due to Missingno. backlash had been thrown around but almost *nobody* saw it being by that much. -Karma Hunter
Zen's (Late) Analysis[]
Pikachu's design is second only to Kirby's in dominating match pics. Your eye just keeps wandering over to this cheerful yellow blob on the left. You can't even get halfway to the giant turd that is Big Daddy before your vision snaps right past the anime boy and back to the rat.
Big Daddy was favored for second here, and rightfully so. Lloyd hadn't done much since his first game had come out, he had some cameos here and there and was in an unpopular SoulCalibur game. Big Daddy was in exactly three seconds of BioShock Infinite, the Citizen Kane of video games. You don't get purer expressions of art than a game where the main character punches people in the face with a big spinning hook.
Thanks, Cliff. How's Fortnite working out for your company? Oh, wait, you left your company because you thought Fortnite was the wrong direction only to release a bad knock off of Fortnite at your new company that was so poorly received that it caused you to go out of business?
Yeah, Lloyd impressed here, Big Daddy isn't exactly the strongest in these contests but when you look at the timing Daddy had all the moment here to win and win easily. Both of them might make it back into a contest, Big Daddy is an icon of a good series that's on hiatus, and Lloyd has second life through the PC port of ToS and a very devoted fanbase. Maybe he'll even be in Smash 5? He was a Mii costume in Smash 4, and after that last Direct, I'm not taking any ideas off the table anymore.