Results[]
Round One
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 2 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 14 |
| Match Date | Sunday, November 8, 2015 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Mass Effect - 43.93% 17 for - 90 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Mass Effect - 51.44% |
Though Paper Mario TTYD/Symphonia was our first close match, this was our true first close match.
You know how every contest has a few matches where the casuals just embarrass us here on Board 8? This was one of those matches. 80% of gurus had Galaxy 2 winning without much thought, and most Oracle folks picked Galaxy 2 in the 55-60% range. The idea, outside of IT'S FREAKING MARIO, is that Mass Effect 1 has never had much strength on this site. On top of that, people have learned time and time again to ignore our Game of the Year polls when evaluating contest strength, so people just ignored Mass Effect 2 embarrassing Galaxy 2 in the GOTY poll in 2010.
First off, Mass Effect 1 does have strength. That one match in 2009 was clearly either SFF, or something weird happened. Mass Effect, Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3, and Halo 3 probably have fanbases that hilariously overlap. Someone had to get the short end of the stick there. For two, Mass Effect winning two matches in Game of the Decade before getting 46% on Portal is no joke. Galaxy had strength that contest as well, but a lot of people just pick the Nintendo option in any debatable match and move on. Usually they're right, but this was a case where they weren't right. I'm sure somewhere here I should blame Mass Effect 3's ending for ME1 being underrated here, but I'm saving that rant for the Undertale match.
Galaxy 2 took the early lead thanks to the Board 8 vote and Nintendo Power Hour, but then Mass Effect got a cut very early in the match. Galaxy 2's lead would peak at 265 about an hour in, but then the power hour ended and Mass Effect began the slow (very slow) overnight bleed. It can't really be overstated how slow this was, especially given the low vote totals. These two games were basically deadlocked with Mass Effect getting very slow leeway overnight, but people had to treat Galaxy 2 winning an update 72-62 overnight as OH MAN GALAXY IS PUSHING AHEAD.
No, that's just AntiTrendsFAQs in action. This match, among many others, showed this contest that trends mean as little now as they ever have, thanks to things like social media and smart phones not forcing people to wait until morning votes and after school votes to get their options in. Point being, Galaxy 2's 265 vote lead an hour in didn't get knocked below 100 until 5:30 in the morning.
Mass Effect kept bleeding away, but people just assumed the traditional Nintendo morning and day vote would save the match for Mario. But before the day vote showed up, we had a dead zone to get through. During that dead zone, Mass Effect got this thing tied up. Then the morning vote seemingly favored Mario, as he pushed back to a 50 vote lead very quickly (I'd like to take this time to once again point out that rallying happens in every single match and the people who whine about rallying are ridiculous, it's no accident when a comeback happens and then just stalls the second a tie happens). People assumed the match was over in Mario's favor here too, because obviously the morning vote would just favor Mario, right?
Nope. This match stayed tied all morning long, with Mario trying and trying and trying to pull away and get a lead, but every time he managed even a 10 or 20 vote lead, Shepard was there with a pistol and full points in Marksman to blast that shit away immediately -- the easiest way to cheese through the original game, for sure!! It continued like this all the way to lunch time and even a little bit beyond, and a lot of us hoped it would stay like this all day so we could set a new "closest 24 hour match" record.
Unfortunately, Shepard decided to stop dicking around, busted out a shotgun and started going full Carnage on the poll -- that is, the battered remains of our once-mighty ASV showed up, and it favored Mass Effect by quite a lot. What was a deadlocked match turned into Mass Effect pulling in 55-60% updates for the rest of the match, which turned things from a tie into a comfortable 625 vote win. This would end up only being a 1 point match, but contests aren't really contests without F5 spam.
It was a great win for Mass Effect, and was a win for the good guys. Galaxy 2 is forced motion control garbage, Yoshi's worst-ever appearance in a mainline Mario game, and one of the biggest offenders of "obvious cash grab" in Nintendo's history. Yahtzee did a very accurate review of the game that I suggest people check out. Nintendo isn't even trying to hide it anymore with how dumb they think their fans are.
But hey, you all bought and defended Wind Waker. You deserve what Nintendo has turned into. Every time the Wii U gets embarrassed, a kitten gets a comfortable rest, and a game as amazing as Mass Effect doing the honors makes it all the better. Mass Effect in general was in the middle of a lot of interesting things this contest, but before rallies got involved, there was Mass Effect telling the Wii U to fuck off.
Justice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTy9v9a7Tmo
Ctes's Analysis[]
This might not be the first guru upset, but it was the first real match of the contest! It was still super exciting after about 13-14 hours into the match. At this point, it became clear Mass Effect would take it, but Galaxy 2 would still make some significant cuts for a while to keep the tension. For the last 8 hours, the match was over despite Galaxy still making attempts to get back in the match. 80% of the gurus had Galaxy 2 winning today, a surprisingly high amount of you ask me, because even as someone who picked Galaxy 2 to win it, I never felt it was safe. I know others could feel the same way, but I also think there was some bandwagon going with some of the picks here, similar to DQVIII/P3. Once people see tranny, Leon, KP, Ulti and such agree on a winner for a debatable match in their Pre-Contest analysis, said match apparently stops being debatable. Still doesn't explain completely here as Leon got this match right.
In any case, with massive guru support and being well received Nintendo game, Galaxy 2 dominated the power hour, especially the early vote. In 15 minutes, Galaxy 2 almost had a lead of 200. Looking at the other matches that have little to no trends, you'd think the match was already over there. After that Galaxy 2 slowed down a bit. Mass Effect won a few updates every now and then, but Galaxy 2 was increasing its lead until exactly when the power hour ended, totally verifying the power hour name. Then it stood still for 10 minutes before Mass Effect made a match of it. During the next hour Mass Effect removed 90 votes of the lead and looked to be the favorite. Then somehow once again at the hour change, the game changes and Galaxy increases its lead by 30 votes again over the next hour, not enough to recover, but certainly better than the second hour. We were entering the deadzone, which everyone knows doesn't favor Mario. But seeing as the trends have been reduced to almost being purely geographical by now, Galaxy 2 was the favorite. It was expecting to run away with it when America woke up again.
Following the first three hours, Mass Effect took half an hour to cut 70 votes of the lead again, reducing it to roughly 130. The match was pretty even about an hour before it began to slightly favor Mass Effect as the deepest time of the deadzone began. Galaxy 2 did a pretty good stalling job with some good increases at times, but Mass Effect ultimately had the bigger cuts. Slow but steady and with bumps on the road Mass Effect shred the lead Galaxy 2 took no time to build. Then at the 7:45 update, Mass Effect took the lead by 2 votes. This was followed by a tie the next update. Ties are cool as they're a rare sight, but it was expecting Mass Effect would build a lead briefly after this. However, Mario isn't exactly known for just rolling over to die when he's behind. After the tie Galaxy build a small lead again. It held it for about an hour before the next lead chance, this time a four vote lead. The very next update, the lead changed back to Galaxy 2, but then back to Mass Effect the next update again, which held it for two update before yet another tie. Galaxy 2 then had the lead for updates until Mass Effect took it back. This was an intense match at this point. We didn't know what to expect, but people were probably right about the morning vote favoring Galaxy 2 slightly, as it was a lot more even now. This is probably the final point of the match where trends makes sense.
Mass Effect held its lead for a good while before Galaxy 2 made an insane cut to achieve the lead again. The lead changes the next three updates again and went back to Mass Effect, who held it for a few updates before another three lead changes right after each other put the ball back in Galaxy 2's court. It stayed there for a while before Mass Effect for just one update took the lead and then Galaxy 2 held it for a while again. Mass Effect took it again followed by a major gain, which Galaxy 2 erased in one update as it took the lead back for what would be its final time. Mass Effect took it back and build a 50 vote lead somewhat fast. Over the next hour Galaxy 2 made some solid attempts to take it, but it became clear Mass Effect would stop looking back. The following hour was probably when everyone called the match over. From there, Mass Effect would increase its lead slowly until Europe went to sleep and the lead simply stayed the same for the remaining of the match ending with a 625 vote lead. For a match to swing over 800 votes in 2015 without real outside interference was truly spectacular!
Apparently, over half the brackets had Mass Effect winning despite being the lower seed so the casuals get a laugh at us I guess. Has Galaxy 2 been as favored in general as it was on hour board, it would've surely won. The first Galaxy would probably win this match with little trouble based on GotD, so there is a strength gap between them. It makes a lot of sense, the first one introduced a whole new concept for the 3D Mario games that the second one just followed up on. Furthermore, the first one was from when the Wii was huge while the second one came out when the popularity of the Wii was starting to decline. It's a shame though, because Galaxy 2 is definitely the better game when it comes to pure gameplay and I think most people agree on this. It felt like an upgrade to the first game. The levels were much more creative and the endgame was actually challenging. I'm sure no one beat the final level easily. It's personally my favorite 3D platformer and likely ranks in the top 10 of my favorite games overall so seeing it lose was a shame even though I also do like Mass Effect.
This match was fantastic, but unfortunately it began the trend of calling Mario a turd this contest, which outside of one game that also has other things to explain its flop, isn't really true. Spoilers: that game is Super Mario Maker. It's like people forgot Mass Effect looked pretty great during GotD. It got about 45% on Portal, which got around 45% on RE4 and those games were legit that year. I'm not sure if people expected ME3 to have weakened the series, but I don't think that's how it works. Of course people didn't know this yet, but ME ends up looking really good, so Galaxy 2 is excused.