Board 8 > The Show EP 4 - SK/HK/P4 Classics, 7 Upsets, and HENTAI RALLIES w/ greatone!

(+) Yeah! (+)

As of right now, I have started listening to this episode.
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good work Batman

I just hope a lot of people on the leaderboard have BioShock because I'm running out of time...!
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My thoughts 54 minutes in (always the same format, but never the same time interval!):

• I also voted for Hollow Knight in Ng's most impressive indie game poll, mostly for the reasons Yo and greatone mentioned. Additionally, I felt that there was only so weak Berseria could possibly be after Velvet's 2018 showing, something which I'd say the next round bore out.
• NITW is somewhat divisive and not necessarily well-respected here on GameFAQs, to the extent voters even know about it - think Edith Finch with a lower playrate. Plus, all the true contenders broke 80% on turbofodder this round. With those points in mind, I wasn't at all surprised to see HGSS comfortably exceed 80%, and I don't take it to say much about its chances against Nier.
• Just to nitpick greatone's point a bit, Jade Curtiss was last in the adjusted 2007 stats, then made 2008 and 2013 anyways. Of course, this might be the first contest ever (Lloyd in 2018 is arguable, I guess) where anything Tales-related had a seed in line with its actual strength.
• As far as I see it, the main reason B8 underestimated BotW this round is because we're totally out of the loop about all but the biggest games of the past few years. As Obsidian's Fallout successor, The Outer Worlds was always likely to have some strength, just as its one GotY poll (however skewed) indicated. On the other hand, only Halo fans cared about games past the first three, and pretty much all the Halo fans are gone now. That's not to say this result is anything less than incredible; rather, the Oracle consensus was confusingly low here.
• I apologize if this was covered later on, but since the FFXV/HK match brought it to mind, I want to say now that some of the seven sitewide upsets might not have been upsets after all, depending on the criteria used to define an upset. That primarily applies to Bloodborne > Awakening, which looks like an upset at a glance because a majority of brackets didn't expect it to make the third round. However, if at least 2.13% of brackets had either Human Revolution or Black Ops in the third round, Bloodborne had more picks than Awakening - and each of those losers had over 20% of brackets taking them to the second round. Xenoblade might have also fallen into that gray area where it had the most picks to escape its fourpack, yet none of those four games had a majority of brackets overall.

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UltimaterializerX posted...

Isnt Bioware defunct? They cant really release Mass Effect trilogies, can they?

It is not defunct.
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My thoughts from the next 40 minutes:

• Contrary to greatone, I would argue that RE2's sizeable margin over Doom was perfectly transitive based on their Round 1 matches. Danganrompa 2 has a distinct, if small, fanbase here on GameFAQs, which Monokuma proved by almost avoiding a tripling from Frog in 2018. Thus, it makes perfect sense that 83% on Monokuma's (second) game would be clearly stronger than 86% on a random piece of indie turbofodder, and in turn that Danganrompa 2 would almost double Inside 1-on-1. That's obviously not to say that every comparison between contenders based on turbofodder will be transitive, but this one certainly seems to have been so.
• I still think the single most wasted game in this bracket is the one that beat Bayonetta, particularly because Bayonetta would have easily lost to any 1-seed, whereas it's hard to say whether Mass Effect 2 or Grand Theft Auto V would have beaten A Link Between Worlds.
• I'm all for a best game of the 90s contest, preferably in 2025 because that would be right in between this contest and the 2020s GotD we'll hopefully have if GameFAQs is still around in 2030. That being said, I would really like to see a proper main bracket CT/Ocarina final after CT looked outright stronger every round in 2015. Meanwhile, FF7 is a major wildcard after the remake as mentioned - it could easily lose to something like RBY, or conversely, it could maybe even beat CT. I think a bracket with both Ocarina and FF7 retired would actually be more predictable in the crucial post-divisional stage, particularly in terms of its winner.

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MetalmindStats posted...

* I'm all for a best game of the 90s contest, preferably in 2025 because that would be right in between this contest and the 2020s GotD we'll hopefully have if GameFAQs is still around in 2030.

What's fun about GotD is that it captures a particular moment in time, when the decade has just finished. I'd rather just see another "Best Game Ever."

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scaryice posted...

I'd rather just see another "Best Game Ever."

I agree. Most of the strong games are from the 90s anyway, plus we'd get to see if BotW could crack the top 5.

I wasn't super interested in a 90s contest but that bracket by greatone looks super cool. Lots of matches that could be debatable.

While a BGE, although it has its advantages, tends to go more in the direction of "90s game kills modern game, rinse and repeat".

Also after having this GotD, having a 90s contest would feel fresher than a BGE., since it would have a completely different 128 games.

Yeah it is a bit "pointless", but having Best Game Ever 4 times is kind of sllly too. At this point all contests are unnecessary, we keep having them just because they are fun.

..

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ZenOfThunder posted...

..

Wow. Hollow Knight would have done better than that. (I think.)

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ZeldaTPLink posted...

I wasn't super interested in a 90s contest but that bracket by greatone looks super cool. Lots of matches that could be debatable.

I'd like to see what a 90s GOTD bracket would look like if it was actually put together in early 2000. For starters, Street Fighter II & Doom would be seeded way higher than a 5 & 8 respectively. Also, games like Legend of Legaia (which always gets ignored these days) would be there.

Maybe I'll put together my own bracket to see what that would be like...

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scaryice posted...

I'd like to see what a 90s GOTD bracket would look like if it was actually put together in early 2000. For starters, Street Fighter II & Doom would be seeded way higher than a 5 & 8 respectively. Also, games like Legend of Legaia (which always gets ignored these days) would be there.

Maybe I'll put together my own bracket to see what that would be like...

While the seeds were vaguely based on contest strength, I do feel like those seeds aren't that inaccurate for the time period, considering they were a 9 and 10 in the first Games contest in 2004.

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_SecretSquirrel posted...

While the seeds were vaguely based on contest strength, I do feel like those seeds aren't that inaccurate for the time period, considering they were a 9 and 10 in the first Games contest in 2004.

Well, to be fair, Doom had to push and shove for nominations in an incredibly crowded PC field from which each person could only choose one game to nominate, and it still received a 10-seed. A game of the 90s bracket would have been less competitive in nominations.

Anyways, I've finally finished listening to another quality episode of The Show! My thoughts:

• I'm inherently biased towards Yo's Octopath/SK take because I was one of the nine Gurus to call SK > Octopath > Undertale, though I wasn't huge on the match itself because I missed pretty much all its highlights. The other thing I'd contend about this match is that it was a bad omen for indie games in general, both because SK struggled in the first place, and because it put a game as heavily antivoted as Undertale in the top tier of indies.
• Agree with greatone that most of us unfairly underestimated GTAV for the reasons he stated, and also because 43% on Mario RPG in 2015 already showed it had strength. With that in mind, I see the GTA/Cuphead match as a good result for both games - it proved that GTA won't win its division because of its opposition's strength (+rallies) rather than its own weakness, and it also gave Cuphead a legitimate claim to being the strongest indie game this contest.
• I personally didn't care for P4's match both because my bracket pick lost and because it was a dead stall all night, then the hentai rallies wound up pretty much preserving the exact same margin. That's just me, though.
• I'm skeptical about Stardew contending for strongest indie because of the major New Vegas rally none of you mentioned, which I would guess significantly favored Stardew (as a PC-first pseudo-RPG) over Galaxy 2.
• You're reading too much into SFF, Yo - 65% on MGS2 would be almost BotW-tier. That being said, I will at least concede that this result made Witcher 3 look like the clear bottom-half favorite to reach the finals.
• Agree with the mentioned stars (nothing tops Zen pics!); my turd award goes to indies in general, admittedly helped by hindsight.

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Personally, I'm looking forward to The Outer World's #7 finish in the 2020 x-stats.


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Bloodborne Reddit mods are the heroes of the contest thus far

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SBAllen posted...

We'll open it up after the end of this round. If you want to get a head start, preliminary design is that you create the 240x120 background and then the logos will be in the lower outside corner until selected. That is to say, don't put the logo in the image as we'll be doing that.

good news for our picsmiths
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https://i.imgur.com/DjIBdiD.mp4

.

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lmaooo

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LeonhartFour posted...

good news for our picsmiths

Yeah, I already started on my first contribution.



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We're entering the deadliest day of the contest soon. Dozens of Gurus are set to be killed in just 30 minutes!

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I am slain.

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Should have shut the contest down sooner in order to avoid so many tragedies.

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Persona 4's Game of the Decade 2 S. Link has reached level 4!

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Episode 5 is hot off the presses, and it's sizzling!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/78617320


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Keeping this alive for a few more days so I can finish reading.


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