Results[]
Wednesday, April 1, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 3 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 23 |
| Match Date | Wednesday, April 01, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Devil May Cry 5 - 48.37% 21 for - 45 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Devil May Cry 5 - 70.37% |
| User Votes |
Devil May Cry 5 - 5309 Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze - 3906 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Devil May Cry 5 - 4255 Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze - 3218 |
Speaking of Devil May Cry, what an incredible redemption story. There aren't many games, or franchises, that deserved to win a heavily debated match more than Devil May Cry. I know Dante himself has some success in contests, but his games? Here is the entire DMC history in our contests:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2435-mushroom-division-round-1-sonic-the-hedgehog-vs-devil-may
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4078-northeast-division-round-1-mother-3-vs-devil-may-cry-3
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4105-south-division-round-1-star-wars-kotor-vs-devil-may-cry
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4137-northeast-division-round-2-metroid-prime-vs-devil-may-cry-3
That's it. That's the entire list. Blown out in the series contest, and 1-2 in the last Game of the Decade. Not just 1-2, either; those were three awful performances. Failing to double a game never released in America despite an absurd picture advantage? Come on bro.
On top of that, the series has been through hell and back. Twice. The original game was supposed to be a Resident Evil, but it got changed partway through without ever fixing the camera angles. Trash. Then 2 happened, which was an all-time disaster. 3 was arguably the best action game ever made, and people thought okay, good, the series is on track.
Nope! 4 was literally only half a game, and DmC was laughable garbage that was no indefensible the series almost died for good. DmC was a self-insert fanfiction. Seriously, the director modeled that game's version of Dante after himself and spent the entire game crapping on series fans: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m-5V65dnQrU/T4hcbMWm1AI/AAAAAAAAADc/V3PCEmPz6GE/s1600/tameem+v+dante.jpg
It would be a long time before we got a new game after that disaster -- 6 years, to be exact -- and mercifully it was an incredible video game. The camera was finally fixed. The characters were all good. The gameplay was top notch. I could go on, but I won Review of the Month singing this game's praises so go read that instead: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/241018-devil-may-cry-5/reviews/167901
There was one catch here. A Devil May Cry game in a debated match against a Nintendo game with a well-known name, of all things? Donkey Kong was past the choker label, too. In 2015, Donkey Kong Country 2 won two close matches (something DK is very shaky with). In 2018, Donkey Kong of all characters went on an upset tour. Not only did he upset Tidus, but Donkey Kong -- yes, the infamous contest choker himself -- beat Leon Kennedy in a MASSIVE guru upset. 160 gurus signed up for that contest. Only nine picked Donkey Kong to win twice. In those two contests, one for games and one for characters, Donkey Kong had shed nearly 15 years of grief.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_asNhzXq72w
Seriously, what the fuck even happened here? Mind you, I am not remotely upset DMC5 won this match going away. I played and loved both games, but DMC deserved this and I was rooting for it. This thing was close for 3 minutes, and then DMC5 just boat raced this thing. There was no indication whatsoever that this was possible. I know DMC5 backers were confident, and I'm happy for you, but I thoroughly disagree that there was any way to truly know this was coming. I'm going to commit a logical fallacy here and appeal to authority. Yoblazer33 is the best to ever do it, and if his first two contests actually counted toward his overall guru score, he would far and away be the #1 overall guru in our contest's history. By the NG and Swirl, I really think we should legacy rule his first two contest scores into the overall and call it a wrap. Yoblazer is not the 11th best guru ever and everyone knows it.
Anyway, he knows what's up. He was in third place this year until the penultimate match, and would have won this contest if Bethesda didn't suck ass. He looked at all the same data I laid out here, and came to the same conclusion. Devil May Cry in a debated match, against Nintendo? EZPZ. But then in one of the biggest shockers ever, DMC5 crushed it and gave Donkey Kong some PTSD. DK doesn't have his choke label back, but if he pulls this once or twice more, look out.
Swirldude, the #1 overall guru via technicality (the dude is a genius who has put in serious work for 2 decades, but everyone knows #1 is Yoblazer) was kind enough to explain what happened on The Show. The short version is DMC5 is a fairly strong and well respected game, and Donkey Kong Country means very little outside of the SNES. On top of that, DKC Returns on the Wii just wasn't good, and Tropical Freeze was released two years into the Wii U's life span -- also known as two years after people realized the Wii U was garbage. Nintendo is the dominant entity on this site, but even Nintendo has a weakness. That weakness is the Wii U.
And that Show appearance perfectly encapsulated what happened here. Truly. We should have seen this coming. For all intents and purposes, Breath of the Wild is a Switch game. So let's throw that one out. Once you do, what exactly on the Wii U is relevant outside of Mario Kart 8, Smash 4, and Captain Toad Treasure Tracker? Bayonetta 2 was a Wii U exclusive and the gaming public destroyed that game for it. You'd be hard pressed to find anything Nintendo has ever done that's more radioactive, and they couldn't get off that system fast enough in lieu of the Switch.
So Swirl had it right, I think. This is the Wii U's fault. It's also one of the only examples of a Switch port meaning literally nothing. Either way, I couldn't be happier. Good job DMC5, you magnificent bastard. You deserved this one more than you can ever know.
Ctes's Analysis[]
I’m honestly still surprised that this match went this way given recent contests and this one too. Devil May Cry 5 was supposed to win this match, the prediction percentage shows that most casual brackets agree. Being supposed to win the match has never stopped anything from dropping said match before, however. Board 8 expected that to happen here. It was close, but Tropical Freeze was the favorite to win and for good reason! Yet it just didn’t come close, and it ends up looking really bad no matter how you spin things. It was in the match for just about 15 minutes, but that appeared to just be the board vote favoring it, perhaps because we thought it would win.
Donkey Kong is known for being a choke artist. Not that it’s actually an ability. Yet last contest Donkey Kong made two consecutive upsets in his best attempt to throw that title away before doing slightly better on Vivi in their third match. While that was Donkey Kong’s third loss, doing slightly better meant a lot. Vivi is clearly stronger than he used to be, partly because Final Fantasy IX is a lot more well remembered today than it used to be, but he was almost riding high on the Mario upset in 2013. Almost everything from Smash Bros had boosted that contest.
Tropical Freeze was initially a Wii U game, but it was very popular and believed to be among the best Donkey Kong Country had offered after a previous disappointing title. Being a Wii U exclusive is no good, but it had been ported to Switch, so it shouldn’t matter anymore that it used to be only on Wii U. Devil May Cry 5 was the best thing to come out of the franchise in many years, so people expected a close match, but picking the Switch game just seemed like the right idea in such a match.
Not only was it not the right idea, the match wasn’t even close! Not that it’s a huge win, but for a debated match, it’s not a good result. Was Devil May Cry 5 that good? Did we underestimate it? Dante has always been pretty good in these contests. The first and third games are great, most of us agree. It was the best idea for what happened here at the time that Devil May Cry 5 was simply pretty good. It doesn’t look like it now unless you believe Super Mario Odyssey is indirectly stronger than Ultimate and there was a lot of rSFF in that match. Tropical Freeze is just bad, that’s all there is to it.
Then why is Tropical Freeze that bad? Nintendo was criticized for charging full price for the rerelease with basically no updates, so maybe it didn’t help it as much as it should. I still don’t think it’s the full explanation. I’ve also heard people say that being a Wii U game is going to hurt you and no rerelease can help that. Bayonetta 2 is the other game where this is used as an explanation, but then just how beastly do you imagine Mario Kart 8 is if it’s hindered by being a Wii U game at first? It clearly is not. Unless you think Mario Kart games are similar enough to the point where one of them proxies the franchise, then the argument doesn’t explain everything. It’s still possible I suppose, but I think we’re left with Donkey Kong Country just being really bad, and that we clearly overestimated the strength of that franchise today because Donkey Kong isn’t trash anymore. That Donkey Kong Country needs to be on SNES to be worth anything. The best of them is just alright here. Donkey Kong being iconic and boosting from Smash Bros doesn’t mean his games are any better.
Safer777's Analysis[]
DMC 5 came recently and it was amazing. The best of all DMC games fans say. So DKC was the favorite of Board 8 here. But I don't understand why. Sure DMC games never do well and Dante everyone always says he is strong yet he never does well. Do you know that in the first every Character Contest he was in the top 10 favorites to win the whole thing? The other 9 were the Noble 9 of course. DKCTF was a DKgame apparently too. Look I don't know about this. Sorry. I just know the original DK games on SNES which I have played all 3 of them too!
So for the match. DMC won and without any real trouble here. Now I know when in doubt go for Nintendo but here is the thing. When people think about DKC games which ones they think? Yup the ones on SNES. Which are more than 25 years old by the point. Have you heard anyone talking about any DK games after that EXCEPT if they are a big fan of the series? Yeah thought so. Same with Metroid games. People think the NES and the SNES one and the one for Gamecube. Meaning ones that are like 20 years old or more at this point. People just don't really care for other games except if they are a huge fan of the series. Maybe you say I am wrong but I stand on my thoughts. So there you go. DK get's his real power from the Smash series. Casuals beat us onto this match too since most of Board 8 went with DKCTF.
Tsunami's Analysis[]
Oy. Just when Donkey Kong had finally shed the label of being a choker, this happens. Though in fairness, he was never really in this match, unlike so many of his famous choke jobs where he threw away a win. It took about 2.5 hours for him to win his first update, and the match was more than a third of the way over before he won one by more than 5 votes. And while it doesn't make the list of most embarrassing results for the Gurus, it's pretty embarrassing. The Gurus had Tropical Freeze as a slight favorite, while the casuals pegged this match correctly at nearly a 70% rate. The reasoning was simple enough: DKC games had performed decently enough in contests when given half a chance (which is to say, in 2015 alone, because the voting system for 2004 meant there was no way one would make the field over fellow SNES classics like ALttP, SMW, Super Metroid, FFVI, and CT, and 2009 both DKC games just got fed into bad SFF situations--and one of them still managed to reach R2!), while Devil May Cry...uh...yeah. Devil May Cry still has yet to get a game into an "open" Games Contest. No representation in 2004, none in 2009, and none in 2015. DMC1 made the field in GotD out of the vote-ins, but unlike in the Character Battle earlier that year, the vote-in winners performed like their low seeds suggested they should. DMC3 was a bit higher up on the seeding list, and it...failed to double Mother 3 in Round 1 before a wholly expected R2 loss to Metroid Prime. Now, let's put things into perspective here: Mother 3 has never been released outside of Japan. The theme for Round 1 pics was "box art", which is perfectly fair and balanced, but it inconveniences Mother 3 because its box is just the name of the game on a solid red background. So, huge pic advantage, huge playrate advantage, only 64.86%. Wretched! Its main character has done fairly well in contests, but mostly in that he's put up good numbers in losses and wins over fodder. The strongest character he's actually beaten in a 1v1, based on strength at the time, is probably Ryu Hayabusa in 2006, though based on current strength, it's his 2004 win over Tails. In multi-ways it's another story; he made the semifinals in 2007 and the quarterfinals in 2008 (but beat out the same character he advanced in second place behind in the 2007 quarterfinals for 2nd place advancement out of R3), and, well, his 2013 wasn't exactly inspiring but at least in his exit he managed to beat out a decent midcarder for second place. But 2007 and 2008 being by far your two best contests is far from encouraging.
So what changed? The site's opinion of action games, obviously. Devil May Cry's creator went on to create Bayonetta and the two series have very similar combat systems, so after seeing Bayonetta overperform against A Link Between Worlds the previous day, this shouldn't have come as a huge surprise. Apparently this is GameFAQs' type of game now. Go figure.