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Our March Madness single elimination tournament of video game vs. video game franchise continues. Behold, the second round of video game institutions arbitrarily battling it out for fanhood domination. Let's get moving.
ROUND TWO
WEST REGION
(1) Mario vs. (2) Grand Theft Auto
A real clash of the titans here, and they don’t come much more diametrically opposed: Mario bathed in sunshine and hearts and just about everything sweet and light about video games while GTA is soaked in blood and sin, a banner-carrier for everything that’s wrong in our society with video game culture.
This is tough. GTA is a juggernaut, but as strong as any individual title has been, there’s something missing down at its roots. For all that new technology has promised us in the last console generation and presumably the next, the core GTA mechanic of driving around and causing mayhem has proven surprisingly resilient to being changed, no matter how freighted with moral quandary as in GTA IV or split up among different protagonists in GTA V. It’s reasonable to ask: Is this all there is?
But Mario.
Mario has moved forwards into each new generation of console with aplomb and double-jumping dexterity, even moving backwards into retro 2D gaming with a twist more recently. He’s an icon, and while GTA as a series is iconic, it can’t stand up to that kind of superstar status.
WINNER: Mario
Elder Scrolls (3) vs.Half-Life (5)
Legacy can only get you so far.
Half-Life is undoubtedly one of the best-loved game franchises of all time. Fans' adoration of it is almost cult-like, which only makes its pull more powerful. But Elder Scrolls is a going concern, very much still active and evolving.
Meanwhile, rumors of Half-Life 3 are only an enduring gag in the game world. It's entirely possible that no individual installment of the Elder Scrolls has had as much impact as either of the Half-Life games, but as a mass of storytelling and gameplay, Elder Scrolls is formidable and substantially outweighs Half-Life at the present time.
WINNER: Elder Scrolls
EMINENCE FRONT Call of Duty (1) vs. Fallout (2)
Well, this is going to get me in trouble.
For all of Call of Duty's staggering success, I just have this feeling that the time of the modern military shooter is waning. Don't get me wrong: COD and Battlefield and their brethren will continue to be made and will continue to push the boundaries when it comes to sheer graphical prowess, but how many more Hollywood-paced single-player campaigns that ultimately fall short are we going to be subjected to?
Call of Duty's "innovations" at this point feel more like wrinkles, like they can't afford to mess too much with the formula lest they stray too far from what's made them a success. By way of contrast, Bethesda has already shown a willingness to innovate with gameplay in the Fallout universe and there's no reason to think this won't continue unabated into the next console generation.
With a universe so rich and a solid base formed by Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, the idea of Fallout 4 on Xbox One and PS4 should have just about any video game fan salivating.
WINNER: Fallout
Street Fighter (3) vs. Mega Man (5)
Frankly, Mega Man doesn't stand much of a chance.
Yes, it's an 8-bit classic, but Street Fighter has just as much pedigree as an old-school game that dominated arcades in the early 1990s. On top of that, it has evolved and grown over the last several decades into a robust and respected fighting game that continues to dominate competitive multiplayer tournaments.
Bottom line, Mega Man has a cast of terrific characters, including the man himself, who's made popular cameos in the Super Smash Bros. series. But beyond nostalgic titles for handhelds and reissues, Mega Man has ultimately failed to move forward into modern gaming the way that Street Fighter did with Street Fighter IV, which successfully married the game's two-dimensional gameplay to a three-dimensional presentation that deepened it without sacrificing its core feel.
WINNER: Street Fighter
SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE Halo (1) vs.Metroid (2)
Hm. Two epic space dramas starring helmeted heroes.
Creepy alien worlds full of ancient technology. Energy weapons, rogue A.I., the list goes on. The games' similarities actually make this matchup not all that tough to assess. The Metroid series has great games, with a terrific set of mechanisms to empower players to grow Samus gradually as she explores these unknown worlds.
But Halo not only created a deep universe for players to explore, but has provided characters as resonant as Cortana, as maddening as 343 Guilty Spark, as mysteriously compelling as Master Chief himself. Metroid is fun and its exploration elements are excellent, but Halo is all that and so much more.
WINNER: Halo
Mass Effect (3) vs. Assassin's Creed (4)
Weighing gameplay and story here, it's hard not to go for the Mass Effect series.
RPG purists might bemoan the turn the franchise took in the second game away from hardcore fiddling with equipment, but the streamlining overall was brilliant, allowing the stories of the individual characters to shine through.
It also cleared out the stilted combat from the first game and let you feel like you were really commanding Shepard and his (or her) crewmates.
Meanwhile, the moment to moment experience of the Assassin's Creed series has always been fairly solid, imbuing you with the sense that you genuinely ARE a badass assassin leaping from buildings to gut unsuspecting and crooked Italians or redcoats or whatever. But the glue behind the series has always been a little feeble. Call the gameplay a wash here and you're left with the ambition, the scope of the games and how effectively each carries it off.
WINNER: Mass Effect
PACIFIC DIVISION Zelda (1) vs. Final Fantasy (2)
This probably isn't as close as the seeding might make it appear.
After all, with comparably long and storied franchises to compare, it's fairly plain to see that Zelda's highest highs have easily matched Final Fantasy's in terms of impact within video games themselves and likely exceeded Final Fantasy's in the broader cultural context. And even Zelda's weaker moments are still more than a match for Final Fantasy's, some of which have been rather tepid.
Simply put, Final Fantasy is a name every gamer knows. Zelda is a name everyone knows.
WINNER: Zelda
Metal Gear (3) vs. Tomb Raider (5)
Yet another tough matchup to call.
The Tomb Raider series likely has the edge in terms of broader cultural awareness. What with a movie franchise and a lead character who is a charming, good-looking woman with a British accent and not a grizzled war veteran who might be his own clone or maybe not but is definitely missing an arm now.
But Tomb Raider also weathered a long, long fallow period where it was mostly garbage-y as a game. Meanwhile, Metal Gear has forged ever forward without rebooting, instead just building ever more baroque additions to its funhouse story. Who knows what the hell is going on at this point? And who even cares? Metal Gear is building something and with a visionary like Hideo Kojima at the helm, there's always the feeling that whether or not everything precisely makes sense in a given installment, it will represent something unique and visionary.
WINNER: Metal Gear