LogFAQs > #939250349

Headliner Analysis continued:

This year would have done remarkably well on other sites. Not only do you have GTAV, but you have The Last of Us! And hey, you wanna talk about games that burned people through no fault of their own? TLOUs contest would come to a pretty miserable end, but it had a decent run, all things considered.

Its failure to absolutely obliterate literally what was already making the people that had put a LOT of faith in it kinda jittery, but I hear that people who like strategy games REALLY like Crusader Kings II, so eh. It still put more than fckin 80% on it; if we hadnt been spoiled by DOOM and Galaxy 2 that would have been considered pretty damn beastly. The Diablo match was considered a big underperformance at the time (and I was one of the people booing and jeering), but in retrospect, Diablo III was ok-ish. I guess if you spend almost an entire decade tweeking and adjusting and patching and updating a game, youll eventually placate people.

That was still the point where people realized it was gonna get gutted by Dark Souls. It didnt help that there were whispers of it maybe getting tied up and dangled from a gargoyle by Batman before it could even reach Division Finals (once again, I was one of those whisperers lol). Unfortunately for us lovers of spectacle, that massive upset never materialized; in fact, TLOU kinda overperformed a bit against Manbat, scoring a 55-45 victory that made me feel pretty damn silly; not because TLOU won, but because of the implication that Bioshock might actually lose to Diablo, a rather depressing notion that I actively argued against.

But as fate would have had it, the contests delays hurt TLOU more than any other title. During that long-ass break between Round 3 and Division Finals, someone leaked pretty much everything about TLOU2 to the public. And when I say everything, I mean everything. Now, I dodged those leaks completely, and as I write this, I still dont know whats in them and what has people so up in arms. But people in the Stats topic were blowing a gasket, declaring TLOU was gonna get smacked silly by Dark Souls. Now, I didnt care because I already had Dark Souls winning that match, but that was when I was REALLY tempted to check the leaks and see what could have possibly been in them to make people think they would tank the original game so hard.

But thing is, while well never know how much those leaks ended up hurting TLOU in its Dark Souls match (which was still a 58-42 affair, hardly an asswhooping of untold proportions), I can tell you one thing: it was always gonna lose. TLOU tanking so many expert brackets isnt its fault; like with Witcher, Dark Souls had become a gaming zeitgeist that many here seemed either completely unaware of, or completely indifferent to. There was no shame in TLOU dropping this match, and honestly, despite how popular that game is, this result wouldnt be that surprising on more mainstream sites.

All in all, The Last of Us had a pretty good run, as good as could have been expected. Its just a shame it had to go out on such nasty terms.

Other Thoughts:

This year had a pretty eclectic mix of entrants, and its weird to see how far some have come, and how far some have fallen. Look at Bioshock Infinite; once upon a time, it had stood side-by-side with TLOU in terms of critical acclaim, a massive darling of the community for like maybe a year, if that. Gaming journalists really arent the brightest bunch, but even the better ones arent given a whole lot of time to do deep dives into the games they review, so it wouldnt be for a while until people started realizing that the game wasnt as thoughtful and clever as it was initially touted as being. Batman vs Infinite was a near even match in 2015, natch.

Tomb Raider and ACIV are two other games that might have done better under different circumstances, though in their case its more the fault of their successors that dragged their series name into the ground. I have a theory that mediocre and same-y sequels hurt the original and good entries in the series more than bad ones; 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 and Assassins Creed. At least a bad sequel makes people clamor for the good ol' days...

On the opposite side of things, theres Disastertron XIV, famously being released as a daisy chain of turds that I assume they were hoping would coast by on name recognition alone. Once people started tossing those turds back at Square, the first self-aware thought in years finally crossed that companys mind. Turns out when youre a massive multibillion company, youre permitted a do-over or two, and FFXIV would be rereleased this year as an actual game. That people wanted to play. And amazingly, even enjoyed. Still, being an MMO was always going to put a cap on its strength, no matter how much people swear up and down that its the best Final Fantasy game since X.

Cant end this write-up without acknowledging the fact that this year gave us not only a Final Fantasy game, but a Zelda game as well! Weve all repeated this tragic tale a billion times at this point; a potential bracket threat got fed to Smash in Round 2. Boohoo. I waver back and forth on Allens decision to make Nintendo cannibalize itself in Division 3 and later in the semifinals; on the one hand, Im glad we didnt see that company run amok and score wins all over the bracket, but on the other hand, I feel ALBW would have been humbled a bit earlier than some may have expected. Depends how bad it got SFFed, I supposed, so I wont speculate too much.

This year didnt have the peaks of 2012, but the overall average is higher; nine games made it out of Round 1, which proportionally is really good. Of course, some of that is due to lucky bracket placement; Rayman, for example, got matched with the only 6 seed it could have beaten. Assassins Creed IV also kinda lucked out. Still, I think it all makes for a thoroughly average year, and trust me, Im not being limp-wristed here. Im just saving the shit grades for the years I KNOW deserve them.

Final Grade:

C - Pretty low peaks, but a high enough floor to compensate.

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