Over a decade old, Starcraft still comes out on top and will have its pennant hung from the rafters at Leveling Down for 2010.
What is left to say? At this site that caters to older gamers, Starcraft is the cat’s pajamas. After running through the Sun-Tzu (RTS) Region with a couple of scares, and after barely beating Bioshock to make it to the finals, Starcraft won the championship by a score of 60-40. Perhaps this is fitting, considering Starcraft’s sequel is (finally) being released this year. And maybe if games hadn’t been going head to head with one another, Starcraft might not have ended up on top. As it is, Starcraft endured all five of its matchups and is Leveling Down’s 2010 Video Game March Madness champion! After the break, some final thoughts about the tournament and a look forward to next year.
The Old School Rules
Looking at the bracket, a lot of old school games managed to come out on top of newer versions. Is that a reflection of the site, is it the power of nostalgia, or were those older games just more impressive during their time? It’s probably a combination of all of these factors. Objectively, the gameplay in Halo 3 is worlds better than Goldeneye, but maybe Goldeneye won out because it was so revolutionary for its time. But it definitely seemed like some of the older games had a strong showing. Look no further than the fact that 2 of the Final Four were from the 90s!
Metacritic has some issues
I’m still shocked that Starcraft ended up being a 3 seed due to Metacritic. But it’s funny looking at the Metacritic scores of some of these games – they really set up some difficult matchups. Halo 3 vs. Modern Warfare 2 in the first round? Either one of those games could have had a huge run, but they are only the 4th and 5th best games according to Metacritic. I can see why people hate Metacritic – can you really sum up the quality of a game in a number? Unless you are talking about numbers of hours played, I’m not sure (and maybe not even then). Regardless, it was the most objective way to seed these games, but I’m sure we’ll look at it again next year to see if there is a better seeding strategy.
It’s tough to determine a field of games
This is just a personal one for me, but obviously Rock Band 2 was the biggest omission, but there are some other notable ones. Tetris? Mass Effect Series? Assassin’s Creed Series? Super Mario Bros. 3? Some Sonic representative? I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting even now. Left 4 Dead! Half Life 2! You get the idea. Anyway, we hope to expand the field to a full 64 next year, and will definitely have something in place to capture all of your nominations. And who knows what games will come out in 2010-11 that will be worthy of the list?
Thank You For Your Support!
Our first video game tournament was a lot of fun this year, but we couldn’t have done it without all of you readers. Thank you for your continued support – whether it was the voting, the comments, the trash-talking, etc. We will be back again next March with a bigger and badder bracket, and we shall see if Starcraft still holds on in Leveling Down’s 2011 Video Game March Madness tournament!
