LogFAQs > #939143092

The 9 Games That Made Bracket (And How Long They Lasted):
-Bastion (Round 2)
-Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Round 1)
-Dead Space 2 (Round 1)
-Minecraft (Round 2)
-Portal 2 (Division Finals)
-Batman: Arkham City (Round 3)
-Terraria (Round 1)
-Dark Souls (Quarterfinals)
-Skyrim (Semifinals)

Notable Snubs:
-Zelda Skyward Sword
-Uncharted 3
-Pokemon Black & White
-Marvel vs Capcom 3
-Mario Kart 7
-Catherine
-Sonic Generations
-L.A. Noire

Headliners: Skyrim, Dark Souls, Portal 2

Busts: uhhhh, Terraria? Aaaaand Minecraft?

Snubs Analysis:

At 9 entries (only ONE of which is a Japanese game!!), 2011 has the least amount of representation in the entire contest. Its true! Even if my mystery missing game is from this year, it would still only tie with 2016 for least. Its strange because there were plenty of viable additions that were not included.

I mention in the OP of this thread that I judge notable snubs using sales, Metacritic, and major cult classic status. I also want to clarify that I only select games that one could reasonably imagine popping up in a GameFAQs contest. For instance, MW3 and Battlefield 3 were enormous games this year, but no one who follows these contests would be surprised by their absence. Shadows of the Damned is a cult classic, but Sudas games never seem to make it in; No More Heroes 1, his flagship game, showed up in 2010 and was swiftly fodderized; that was the one and only time Suda showed up in a games contest.

Anyway, I know as soon as people see Skyward Sword on the snubs list theyll be calling bullshit on my reasoning for not including FFXIII on the 2010 list, ie the Final Fantasy series was already fairly represented and FFXIII couldnt really have been expected to perform significantly differently. And hey, I didnt include Mario 3D Land on this one for the same reason!

But Skyward Sword is a different beast. One could have argued that ALBWs handheld status may have hampered its potential performance, and many indeed did. SS is a bonafide 3D console Zelda game, and at least twice a week thered be prolonged speculation in the Stats topic about how SS would have done. Would the Zelda name have helped it make a deep run, or would voters turn their back on what is almost universally considered the worst 3D Zelda? It was a spectre that haunted the contest from beginning to end, and you cant say you aint curious yourself.

Along similar lines, there was a lot of speculation surrounding how well a Pokemon game that WASNT a remake of a beloved classic would have fared in this era of Pokehatred. Now, I dont know shit about Pokemon. I really dont. But when I saw names being thrown around, Black and White was the one that I saw the most (along with X/Y, which actually made the 2015 bracket). And considering Pokemon didnt hit the series cap, it is strange that HGSS wasnt accompanied by anything. If B&W is a bad pick Im sure people will let me know.

LA Noire is the only sandbox Rockstar game released this decade to not make an appearance; while we know GTA is an infamous choker, its had perfect attendance in regards to having every console game since III make contest appearances. Ditto with RDR. LA Noire is obviously not in the same league as those series, but it was still highly publicized and even received an HD remaster on every current gen console, including the Switch!

Fighting games outside of Smash and Street Fighter have notoriously done very poorly in contests, and DBZF possibly being the strongest non-Smash fighter in the 2020 bracket is a testament to how the best way to beef up a fighters performance in our contests is to include characters people already recognize. Well, guess what series does that? Marvel vs Capcom 2 actually placed in the top 50 of the GotD1 x-stats, slightly ahead of SFIV. I highly doubt MvC3 would have performed as well in this bracket, but it would have been a fair inclusion alongside Mortal Kombat and Tekken. Put Phoenix Wright in its match pic and watch it win the board vote over literally anything in this contest.

With Persona 4 seemingly being boosted a decent amount and P5 being borderline top 5 material, Im surprised that cult hit Catherine didnt make it. Its Persona-adjacent and has a lot of fan overlap, and JUST received an HD remaster with substantial additions (including a bunch of Persona 5 music).

The rest are mostly just series that already have one entry in and could have been spared another slot. Sonic Generations sticks out as the most huh pick on my list, Im sure, but its inarguably the most well-received 3D Sonic game since Adventure 2, which made the 2010 bracket. Mario Kart 7 and Uncharted 3s younger siblings looked alright this contest (MK8 looked VERY good, in fact), and theyre prolific enough series that youd think they could have swung a second contest entry.

Bust Analysis:

Youre gonna pick on Terraria and Minecraft here? REALLY?

Youre probably wondering why I even bother having a self-imposed minimum of 2 busts per year, when already the first two years havent even had two real busts. Well theres the all important consistency factor, but other than that, it gets people talking and forces me to write about games that I might have otherwise never touched on.

Im not going to put up walls of text where theyre not warranted, though. Truth is, 2011 didnt really have anything that bombed, and I picked these two games for no other reason than I could have seen them doing slightly better.

The Terraria v Bioshock Infinite match happened when Indie Fear was still very real, and I remember actually people entertaining the upset here. And you know, on other websites, Terraria might have done it. You wouldnt know because people on this site dont really talk about it, but Terraria is flippin huge. As in, more than 30 million copies sold huge, which puts it in the same league as Skyrim/Blops/Witcher. The 32% it put on Bioshock might have been good if Bioshock was, erm, good, but it got dropped by Batman pretty easily. Terraria could very well have been as strong as something like Stardew Valley but that never really materialized.

Then theres the game that Terraria took direct inspiration from. Look, Minecraft did pretty well. It scored a blowout on Dota 2 that we could all relish in, because Dota players manage to outdo LoL players in unpleasantness SOMEHOW. It then went 60-40 with Spiderman, a game that proved to be pretty legit. Thing is, theres been this weird Minecraft resurgence manifesting recently, and based on what Ive seen during my web surfing, it emerged as a sort of counter to Fortnites explosion. Why Minecraft? Im not sure, though if I have to hypothesize, it has something to do with the building element and how Minecraft is comparatively more wholesome and creatively fulfilling than Fortnite, or something. Point being, I thought that it might not have been impossible for it to really reach for the stars because of this, but it turned in a decent performance regardless.

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