Board 8 > ~*Ultimaterializer's Post-Contest Analysis!*~

(+) Yeah! (+)

Often duplicated, never replicated. Not even my brand new CPU, motherboard, and PSU all frying because of faulty wiring (do not buy from IBuyPower, what a shit show) could keep me away. But first, what are the critics saying?

"Savage red pill style Ulti reviews are the best. Good work!" -Anonymous

"Ulti always brings the passion to his post contest analysis, and they're always worth a read." -Ngamer64

"Love him or hate him, Ulti will always have Starcraft > Halo, also known as the greatest called shot for an upset we'll ever have." -yoblazer

This is not to say everyone is a fan!

"Ulti's PCAs are terrible. They barely talk about the actual match. It's a shame he gets to be the contest historian." -swirldude

"Fuck off, Ulti. Good riddance." -Steiner, who was actually silly enough to think I would suicide my account in an SBAllen contest announcement topic, of all places.

"Who is Dante?" -Nick

(The random quotes you'll see in odd spots now and again are so I can copy-paste directly to the wiki and get the Italic font I want.)

Pre-Contest Analysis

After what seemed like ''forever'', we finally got a new announcement. To the surprise of no one, and to the delight of everyone, it was Game of the Decade 2! Second verse, same as the first, but this time we'd be looking at the time line from 2010 - 2019 instead of the previous decade. The contest start got delayed twice thanks to coronavirus and server moves, but it did eventually start. And because there are still idiots who need this explained to them, the de facto standard for the first decade AD is 1 through 9, giving us present-day decades that start on the aesthetically pleasing "zero" number instead of "one". No, you are not clever for telling us there was no year zero and that this decade should actually be 2011 - 2020. Now go away. The adults are talking. Try not to eat Tide pods or lick toilet bowls to get likes on Instagram.

Nominations and the format was easy enough: 128 games in a 1v1 bracket, no loser's bracket this time (thank god), 4 matches per day for the first few rounds, then 2, then eventually 1 as we got down to the end. Board 8 dominated nominations as usual, leading to some hilarious overseeding -- Mass Effect 2, Super Meat Boy, DOOM, and plenty of others -- and Allen quietly stepped in with rules about critic scores and such to make sure Untitled Goose Game couldn't win the contest as a joke. This basically meant League of Legends wasn't eligible, though that game came out in 2009 anyway. That rule was tossed aside for Minecraft, which was in beta in 2009 just like League but whatever. The bracket itself was very varied, and even though Allen never said it directly it was clear there was a personal rule of his about no more than 2 games per franchise. The snubs list is already posted on the wiki, but some of the games on that list are nuts. Skyward Sword didn't get in. Mario Maker didn't get in. Smash 4 didn't get in. ''None'' of the Phoenix Wright or Final Fantasy 13 games. Resident Evil 2's remake, Pokemon Gold/Silver's remake, and Persona 4 Golden got in, but not Metroid 2, Xenoblade Chronicles X, or Captain Toad. Yeah I see you, Nick. Total miscarriage! This contest could have benefitted a lot from a few of these games as 14-16 seeds, but the Metacritic stuff was real.

How real? Check out this list that user @scaryice put together. Metacritic average by seeding:

Average Metacritic score by seed

(1) 94.3
(2) 92.3
(3) 91.1
(4) 92.4
(5) 87.1
(6) 89.9
(7) 90.1
(8) 89.3
(9) 88.3
(10) 86.6
(11) 86.8
(12) 85.6
(13) 86.9
(14) 84.8
(15) 84.0
(16) 85.8

This might explain why A Plague Tale, and other games that got meh ratings didn't make it in despite being hugely popular. Overall though, no real complaints or criticisms about the layout. We got robbed of a Breath of the Wild vs Smash Ultimate final, but it's understandable not to do it.

The ridiculous anti-rally measures were back and, uh... "better than ever", if you're the type who hates fun. User votes counted double, the poll start time was 8 PM EST again, and the unbelievably dumb must-vote-in-every-poll stuff was back. "Yay."

But hey, it was out first games contest in five years. LFG!!

One final note that I wanted to put in the pregame section, since it was a good discussion during the contest itself. I think personally, one of the following games is objectively the game of the decade regardless of how any poll turned out: Skyrim, Dark Souls, Dota 2, Clash of Kings, GTA5, Fortnite, Red Dead Redemption 2, Smash Ultimate, Breath of the Wild, CoD: Black Ops, Witcher 3, Undertale, Bloodborne, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, Mario Odyssey, Super Meat Boy, The Last of Us, Doom 2016, Overwatch, Borderlands 2, Shovel Knight, Hearthstone, Stardew Valley, Persona 5, Dragon Quest 11, Horizon Zero Dawn, Hollow Knight, NieR Automata, God of War 2018, Pokemon GO, and REmake Evil 2. You can pick any game you want subjectively, but any fair "game of the decade" for 2010-2019 has to be one of those games. And trust me, that is not a favorites list.

On we go!

"Whatever happens next, it's been an honor F5ing with you all this evening." -TheCodeIsBosco

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Division 1 Round 1: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (16)The Outer Worlds

(1)Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 19352 [85.02%]
(16)The Outer Worlds - 3409 [14.98%]
Total Votes - 22761
Prediction Percentage - 96.95%

Not to be confused with "Outer Wilds", which did not make the field. We all knew Zelda would smash this entire contest right from the jump, but the difference this year as compared to most is everyone was actually rooting for Zelda to smash this entire contest. It wasn't really the obvious winner catching anti votes until the tail end of the contest, and it started the Zelda Redemption Tour (remember, Zelda got embarrassed by Undertale last games contest) by utterly demolishing The Outer Wilds. There is a sick joy in watching a car crash unfold, and Zelda gave us seven of them this year.

Usually with the first writeup I get to comment on how Nintendo has the #1 overall seed and gets to squish some bug in the first match, but this was actually our first such Nintendo stomping in quite awhile. Dante was the #1 overall seed in the last character battle, 1995 does not count, and Chrono Trigger had this spot in 2015. You have to go all the way back to 2013 to see the last true Nintendo #1 overall seed in a contest (Link was the #1 seed that year, but Draven won the contest), and you have to go back to 2010 to see the last Nintendo #1 overall seed in a 1v1 contest. I could bring up the Rivalry Rumble, but I won't.

I will say that The Outer Worlds deserved better given Obsidian is now doing Bethesda's job better than Bethesda does, but every seeded contest needs their 16s and ''someone'' had to get fed to Zelda early. It happens.

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With that, I sleep. This week will be spotty, but I'm off next week so I should be able to bang this entire thing out pretty quickly.

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Tag
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oh he didn't block me on this account yet

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Tag

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Cant be worst than the last one where you flamed me in your hearthstone rant

here for this one

PostContestUlti posted...

"Savage red pill style Ulti reviews are the best. Good work!"

For the record, this was me.

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Tagging, glad to be around for these. Always fun seeing them be developed in real time.

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tag

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the man, the myth, the LEGEND ultimaterliazerx with his iconic post contest write-ups

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The last time I tagged this hard, I was banned from the playground indefinitely.

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Captain Toad was robbed and Ulti has my back.

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I still think the most interesting snub of GotD might have been Plague Inc. That would have been real interesting to see an pandemic simulator in the midst of an actual pandemic.

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I hope we get an answer to Nick's question over the course of this topic

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I still can't believe that match. Just look at his face!
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Taking bets on how many broken record, 5 paragraph long Blizzard rants Ulti has in this PCA. There were only 2 Blizzard games in the field that both got eliminated early, so I'm going to guess 7.

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Im honestly betting Ulti isnt going to go off on a rant about blizzard this time, we all know how he feels. Ive played the shit out of hearthstone and so has ulti, and I know it absolutely deserved to get its ass kicked by Divinity 2, game is fucking GOOD.

What's the over-under on the number of writeups where Ulti blames a game losing on people hating its series/franchise/company and anti-voting the game to "send a message"
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Tag for the Chris Berman and Lee Corso references.

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OrangeCrush980 posted...

What's the over-under on the number of writeups where Ulti blames a game losing on people hating its series/franchise/company and anti-voting the game to "send a message"

Both Fire Emblem losses will likely be blamed. Undertale, definitely.

Last of Us, Dragon Age, Fortnite, and Minecraft are also possibilities.

I'm sure there are others. Let's set the O/U at 12.5

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Thanks for doing this again. Your PCAs are always a fantastic read.

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I wonder what he will have to say about Dark Souls

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BlAcK TuRtLe posted...

Taking bets on how many broken record, 5 paragraph long Blizzard rants Ulti has in this PCA. There were only 2 Blizzard games in the field that both got eliminated early, so I'm going to guess 7.

Overwatch and Diablo III also made it in and even won matches, albeit in very unimpressive fashion. But D3 at least made it clear TLOU was doomed.

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Tag.

Xenoblade Chronicles X actually did get in and had a pretty creditable loss to Batman, but the snubs were pretty crazy for this contest given there were like 15 indie games I'd hardly heard of (and even a gacha mobile game!). I would have liked to see Skyward Sword to see a genuinely vulnerable mainline console Zelda - but I guess LoZ knows how to protect is aura by locking its weaklings away.

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Kotetsu534 posted...

Tag.

Xenoblade Chronicles X actually did get in and had a pretty creditable loss to Batman, but the snubs were pretty crazy for this contest given there were like 15 indie games I'd hardly heard of (and even a gacha mobile game!). I would have liked to see Skyward Sword to see a genuinely vulnerable mainline console Zelda - but I guess LoZ knows how to protect is aura by locking its weaklings away.

That was Xenoblade Chronicles 2, not X.

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Kotetsu534 posted...

Xenoblade Chronicles X actually did get in and had a pretty creditable loss to Batman

That was Xenoblade Chronicles 2, friend

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UltimaterializerX posted...

Is X different from 1 and 2 at all?

Completely different.

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all three Xenoblade games are very different from each other

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UltimaterializerX posted...

Is X different from 1 and 2 at all?

Very different.
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Oh, there's 3 Xenoblades now! So that's a thing. I've still only played the first one...

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UltimaterializerX posted...

I cant be the only one who is completely over these companies using goofy names. It should be called Xenoblade 1/2/3, not 1/X/2.

Kingdom Hearts is the WORST with this.

Bravely Default
Bravely Second
Bravely Default II

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But X has a reason not to be called 2 if what the above users are saying about it being very different are true. This isn't like calling Alien 4 Alien Resurrection or some shit like that.

It's like calling Mega Man X 9 and Mega Man 9 11.

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PostContestUlti posted...

Division 1 Round 1: (1)The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vs (16)The Outer Worlds

(1)Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 19352 [85.02%]
(16)The Outer Worlds - 3409 [14.98%]
Total Votes - 22761
Prediction Percentage - 96.95%

Not to be confused with "Outer Wilds", which did not make the field. We all knew Zelda would smash this entire contest right from the jump, but the difference this year as compared to most is everyone was actually rooting for Zelda to smash this entire contest. It wasn't really the obvious winner catching anti votes until the tail end of the contest, and it started the Zelda Redemption Tour (remember, Zelda got embarrassed by Undertale last games contest) by utterly demolishing The Outer Wilds. There is a sick joy in watching a car crash unfold, and Zelda gave us seven of them this year.

Usually with the first writeup I get to comment on how Nintendo has the #1 overall seed and gets to squish some bug in the first match, but this was actually our first such Nintendo stomping in quite awhile. Dante was the #1 overall seed in the last character battle, 1995 does not count, and Chrono Trigger had this spot in 2015. You have to go all the way back to 2013 to see the last true Nintendo #1 overall seed in a contest (Link was the #1 seed that year, but Draven won the contest), and you have to go back to 2010 to see the last Nintendo #1 overall seed in a 1v1 contest. I could bring up the Rivalry Rumble, but I won't.

I will say that The Outer Worlds deserved better given Obsidian is now doing Bethesda's job better than Bethesda does, but every seeded contest needs their 16s and ''someone'' had to get fed to Zelda early. It happens.

Did you make a point to mention it was Outer Worlds and not Outer Wilds, then proceed to call it Outer Wilds right after that? lol

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UltimaterializerX posted...

I cant be the only one who is completely over these companies using goofy names. It should be called Xenoblade 1/2/3, not 1/X/2.

Kingdom Hearts is the WORST with this.

While KH is bad with that, let's not forget Grand Theft Auto either. Only counting major console releases...

GTA
GTA2
GTA3
Vice City
San Andreas
GTA4
GTA5

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Then we can count Metal Gear Solid too I suppose

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UltimaterializerX posted...

That one too, but thats a series no one cares about so it doesnt really matter.

I care!
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