LogFAQs > #936867468

Round 1 Portal 2 vs. Tomb Raider

Moltars Analysis

Tomb Raider is one of the (sadly) rare cases in this bracket where the lower seed isnt a completely weak game that will get blown out. GameFAQs isnt super big on Tomb Raider and Lara, but at least its recognized here and will get some votes.

Portal Im a bit skeptical about these days. Back in 2010 it was all the rage, but in the 2015 contest, both games underperformed. Valve stuff in general just seems out of favor on GameFAQs.

Im not going to fully count Tomb Raider out here, but Portal 2 should still have enough strength to win this match in an unimpressive fashion.

Moltars Bracket: Portal 2

Moltars Prediction: Portal 2 57%

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transiences Analysis

Portal 2, weirdly enough, feels like a big wildcard. Not many games have aged over the last 10 years like the Portal games have. And yet, I think people still have a positive perception of Portal, almost as a throwback to an older time. I guess that lines up with other tastes on the site.

Tomb Raider 2013 is probably a lot better than other 14 seeds in this contest. It finished its GOTY poll about as well as AC4 did and Lara showed a pretty noticeable boost, going from 45% on Chun Li to 45% on Amaterasu (and going 50/50 with Altair). I think you can be relatively high on Portal 2 while also picking it to look kinda bad here due to Tomb Raider being pretty alright. This one is hard to predict percentagewise, but it would be a real shock to see Portal 2 in any kind of real danger.

transience's prediction: Portal 2 with 60.41%

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Leonharts Analysis

I was pleasantly surprised to see Portal 2 get a 3 seed here. Its one of the oldest games in the contest, and I was wondering if everyone had just forgotten about it since Valve basically gave up on the series. It held up fairly well in 2015, losing a close match to Sonic 2 in a contest that was dominated by 90s nostalgia. I think it has a path to the division finals here, but Ill be curious to see how it does round 1. Tomb Raider is probably underseeded here. Weve seen the rejuvenating effect the series reboot has had on Lara Croft in recent contests. I wouldnt be surprised if it put up a decent performance here, so Im not going to get too worried about Portal 2s future prospects if it does.

Leonharts Vote: Portal 2

Leonharts Prediction: Portal 2 with 63.17%

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Kleenexs Analysis

Portal 2 was actually pretty disappointing back in 2015. Its probably weaker than the original Portal, and despite being one of the few PC games that would get a second look on GameFAQs, I dont think its all that strong. I certainly dont think its going to lose to Tomb Raider, but I can see this one ending a lot closer than people expect. Unless they expect it to end close already - I have no idea. Tomb Raider was hot back when the first game in the reboot series game out, but has cooled off significantly since, and I doubt most people care too much at this point.

Kleenexs Prediction: Portal 2 with 59.50%

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Guests Analysis MechanicalWall

Outside of the Division 4 clusterfuck of doom, this was probably the eightpack that gave me the biggest headache. The top seeds are: the last single-player game Valve put out (until this VR thing I guess) that may or may not have managed to maintain its strength despite no PS4/Switch ports; the newest disappointing installment in a high profile Square JRPG series that may or may not have enough fans to bail it out of matches with a bunch of western games; one of the weaker Nintendo series on this site that may or may not benefit from New Horizons being a huge hit; and the latest Rockstar game that may or may not be stronger than the Div 4 ones (and how much will that matter?)

I say this because the actual Portal 2 v Tomb Raider match isn't as interesting or in doubt as the wider meta of this part of the bracket, and what this match might mean within that meta. Portal 2 should win here, and fairly comfortably at that. Like I said, unlike a lot of the PS360 games in bracket, this one doesn't have a port onto the PS4 or Switch (I think the Xbone plays it through BC but lol the Xbone on this site), which might have hurt its longevity. It looked pretty good in 2015 but the further we get from its release, the more room it has to fall. Despite all that, it's frickin Portal 2. It's still widely regarded as a masterpiece, the final game of Valve's godly era before they realized they could just squat on Steam and microtransaction filled multiplayer games and make money without actually having to put in the work of producing the kind of innovative, high budget single player games they were known for.

Meanwhile, Tomb Raider is tougher than a lot of the other 14 seeds if only due to branding, but it's not gonna do much here. The 2013 game was actually pretty well regarded, but two VERY iterative sequels have retroactively made the original seem less interesting than it was. I have a bit of a theory (which hasn't been substantiated) that these same-y sequels that don't improve anything actually hurt the original game more than bad sequels. What made the original game cool and unique fades with each sequel, while all the bad things get repeated and make people wonder why they liked the original game at all; this is a sentiment I often see when talking about the TR reboot trilogy. At least a bad sequel makes people clamor for the good ol' days...

Anyway, for the record I actually have Portal 2 winning this side of the Division, and because I have no read on what the percentages are gonna look like (it could go from a fairly close match to an absolute clobbering and I wouldn't be surprised), I'm just gonna write down the minimum percentage Portal 2 is gonna have to score to make me feel comfortable with my pick. I think a doubling sounds right; like I said, TR shouldn't get rolled as hard as other 14 seeds.

MechanicalWall Prediction: Portal 2 67%

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Crew Consensus: Tomb Raider falls down a pit.

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Moltar Status: hype
Contest Analysis Crew Archives: http://thecrew.speedrunwiki.com/