Mosaic Fragments

Ahh, GameFAQs Character Battle, how much of my life must you waste? Didn't spend too long thinking about my entry this time -- it's not like I ever do very well anyway. More fun was to see who's up.

( Gaming babble. )

In the end, it's hard to think it won't be down to the usual suspects -- Link, Cloud, Sephiroth, Mario -- though they did seed them all in the first four divisions so at least two of the final four will be new. Who? I couldn't even begin to say. Aeris? Solid Snake? Balthier? Sonic? Luigi? We shall see, I suppose.

ETA: WTF? I was supposed to pick the order of the two who made it to the next round? o_O;; Well, so much for any hope of winning. (Not that I ever had any.)

A bit closer of a race this time.

[It's Ganondorf vs. Vincent Valentine from FFVII in case you don't want to click.]

I mean, neither character is all that popular within his own fandom, I bet, but I figured Vincent might win out by a bit what with Dirge of Cerberus and all. And that's pretty much what's happening right now, with a 48-52 split.

Don't forget to vote for Kirby tomorrow! (>'0')>

ETA: Apparently Ganondorf vs. Vincent was the most underpredicted matchup yet, with only 39.39% correct. [Vincent won, BTW, by a healthy 5%.] I think the only other one below half so far was Kratos vs. Ryu (from Street Fighter), at 48.99%.

Zelda is beating FF!

Not that I had Aeris' chance in Disc 2 of winning because my entry was totally FUBAR from the start. It all began with my braindead assumption that this was about the best game ever and not the best series, all blindingly obvious evidence to the contrary. This somehow led me to believing that Final Fantasy would lose to Grand Theft Auto. And then GTA conveniently lost to Warcraft in the first round. (Albeit by a slim margin.) And then there was Silent Hill, which I predicted would make it up to Zelda, which also lost in the first round, to Fire Emblem. (Whaa?) So, by the Final Four, only two of my choices were still standing. But if I managed to pick the winner correctly, maybe I can still claim some kind of moral victory. (Ha. Like it wasn't a 50-50 guess to begin with.)

Eh well, it's not like I've ever been good at gauging the popularity of games or characters, especially among that unique breed known as Respondents to GameFAQs Polls, whom we've previously confirmed are 90% male, lie about their lack of grammar, and can't play video games when they're 7. :P

[I could've sworn I made a post somewhere about the gender poll, to which someone -- meril, I believe -- responded that girls just go to GameFAQs, grab what they need, and don't bother with the poll. But I can't find it anymore.]

At least they've started to remove previous winners from the new contests, so eventually we'll make it beyond Cloud/Sephiroth/FF7/FF versus Link/LoZ...

ETA: The nominations page for the next character battle says, "The following characters are guaranteed positions and do not need any nominations: Link, Cloud, Sephiroth, Mario." Damn you, GameFAQs, why?!

A little under 50% of respondents to the current GameFAQs poll claim they try to use correct grammar and spelling in all their online messages. THEY'RE ALL LIARS! I don't think you can get much less meticulous than I am and still be telling the truth, because I've been getting sloppier lately as well. The other possibility, I suppose, is that all these perfect English majors just never post anything anywhere because they're too busy proofreading their homework or something. But there's always time to answer the GameFAQs poll!

And not to be sexist or anything, but it was established at some point that some ridiculous percentage, like 90%, of the GameFAQs poll respondents are male. That makes me even more convinced that most of them are lying.

Okay, you can all flame me now.

Someday, I will resume having meaningful posts . . . but today is not that day!

Wow, CATS and Ansem are head to head.

Not that I think Ansem would be that popular or anything, but CATS has done poorly in previous Character Battles and Ansem is at least Square.

So yeah, I submitted an entry for the Character Battle for the hell of it. Obviously, I haven't been doing very well, but I've been riding on the peak of the bell curve of points the whole time. Which is either scary or comforting, I'm not sure which. I mean, a plurality of people made the exact same predictions I did.

The first two people I got wrong were okay, because they're going up against strong people next round, including Sephiroth. But I got Ridley wrong, and I thought he was going to win against Bison, too, so at least by then I ought to start falling behind.

Looking at the contest stats is interesting. As in, "You mean there are actually people who don't think Sephiroth will win?" There used to be someone up there who thought Kuja would win. That made me kind of happy. As much as I love Kuja personally, I don't think he's going to make it past the first round.

I don't know gaming well enough to make these kinds of predictions, though. I don't know how to weight the obsessed fanboys versus the newness factor, like with the guy from Devil May Cry 3. [I really want to play the DMC games. After I learn how to handle those kinds of action RPGs (?) by playing Castlevania: Lament of Innocence. But that's a long way away.]

But I think Square kind of got shafted in the way some of their games ended up with the not-so-popular uber-uber-villain instead of the not-really-evil more visible manipulated underlings. I mean, Sin. Yay, random blob of clear fluid. But why not Riku or Maleficent (though I guess people would cringe at having a Disney character) instead of Ansem? And where are Edea and Seifer?

I'm most interested to see how Kefka does. Never quite figured out his appeal, but always had this vague sense that it was greater than I thought.

Dang. o.o

... I guess that's all I have to say.