LogFAQs > #939250314

Headliner Analysis:

while we know GTA is an infamous choker

Just one tiny problem: GTA is a fucking choker

Why are you propping up GTA after already bagging on it twice this analysis? you ask

Because this year sucks, I reply

I dont award Headliner status to games merely for exceeding expectations. Im not making Rayman a headliner just because it barely won a debated match before getting blown out. There has to be some meat on the games bones, and a narrative that can paint it in a positive light. Most importantly, it has to actually get somewhere in bracket.

And yknow, yes, GTA choked and obliterated casual AND expert brackets in its loss. Yes, it lost to a Vita port of a PS2 game. YES, it was the ONLY 1 seed to not make it out of its Division, or even make Division Finals.

But lets keep things in perspective. We KNEW GTAV was the most fraudulent 1 seed of the bracket. Is that the games fault? Allen was apparently taking Metacritic scores into consideration when seeding the contest, and the rest of the Internet doesnt hate GTA like we do. It was placed in a position where it was never living up to expectations. Stick it as a 3 or 4 seed in some other Divisions and no one would have blinked an eye. It very well could have won the Pokemon/Nier eightpack in Division 8, or the Portal eightpack in Division 7. Hell, make it a 3 seed in THIS Division and it makes Division Finals.

And lets look at its run. It beat Baba is You in 80-20 fashion. Thats a fine performance, but people were already calling for the Cupset to happen. GTA is a choker, but its not gonna choke on just anything (lawl). Its 60-40 defeat of Cuphead put the final nail in the coffin of Indie Fear; and this was with the entire board antivoting it, made obvious by how low it started that match before going up and up and up.

I already went over P4 vs GTAV at length, but while I dunked on GTA in the 2012 write-up, lets be fair here. Persona was fucking legit this contest. P5 is potentially a top 5 game in this bracket, and it gave the series a massive shot in the arm. GTA, a series that GameFAQs has shat on time and time again, losing to a supercharged JRPG with strong brand recognition isnt really that bad. I really dont think it is, not when this site has been getting smaller and smaller and getting boiled down to its most base components, ie RPGs and Nintendo. Casuals getting their brackets burned by GTA is nothing new, but the experts who have spent almost two decades analyzing and chronicling these contests should have seen this coming. I saw it coming and I had only ever made one bracket before this. Learn from your history, folks!

And in the end, GTA indirectly gets around 40 percent on Smash, maybe a tiny bit less. Thats honestly not that bad, and almost certainly makes it a top 15 game here at worst. GTAIII didnt even make top 20 in GotD1!

Am I the only one doing a PCA that is going out on a limb and defending GTA? Probably. This is why I have self-imposed minimums on busts and headliners; it means I really have to start getting creative.

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