The first winner is on the board. The crowd continues to cry for blood. The 2023 Game Of The Year Deathmatch continues.
With The Little Boat From Dredge emerging victorious from our first matchup, it's now time to see who will join them in the tournament's first quarter final. Before we do, though, a rules recap!
There are 16 games in the mix for Game of the Year 2023. We're pitting them against each other in a knockout tournament. But we're not pitting the games themselves against each other; instead, we're selecting a Champion from in or around each game and having them duke it out in the arena in hand-to-hand (or weapon-to-weapon, or hand-to-weapon) combat. The winner, decided via a schoolyard "would Batman beat Superman" style debate, moves on. The loser does not. Here's how things stand after one bout:
The next showdown is between blockbuster Souls-lite Star Wars: Jedi Survivor and Cities: Skylines II, a game that isn't even very good, but one day might be. In one corner, representing Star Wars and fresh from saving the galaxy twice, we have The Redneck Jedi himself, Cal Kestis. And in the other corner, representing Cities: Skylines II and embodying everything that was so weird about its launch, performance and the discourse surrounding it, we have...A Mouth Full Of Unnecessary Teeth.
OK, fighters, touch gloves/teeth...LET'S FIGHT:
Nathan: I did not even know about these teeth until now.
Luke: By the time you really get going in Jedi Survivor, redneck Jedi Cal Kestis has got pretty damn powerful. More than powerful enough to handle a city full of people with more teeth than they need for a city-building video game, I think.
They might slow him down, sure, but I don't think they can stop him.
Riley: I don't know, though! A city's worth of teeth is… a lot of teeth. Can he beat ALL the teeth?
Luke: They're not, like, evil teeth. They're not Imperial Teeth. They're just teeth.
Riley: But we are talking an ungodly number of teeth. It's too many people! It's too many teeth! I'm on team teeth!
Nathan: Right, the sheer volume of teeth might render him temporarily helpless.
Riley: I think the teeth take this!
Gita: I want Redneck Cal Kestis to win this but I have no justification for him defeating a city full of teeth.
I’m afraid the teeth are too powerful.
WINNER: SOME TEETH
Congratulations to The Mouth Full Of Unnecessary Teeth, who will now face The Little Boat From Dredge in the quarter finals.
