X vs Y

[SorO_Lost]

So way yond over in the BLYHT subforum I mentioned something about picking up media discussions and figured I'd give it a try, and what provokes more posts than pointless arguing about your favorite character? So welcome to my vs thread where in the interest of sanity I'm the sole judge of the winner. The format is easy, I pick to characters and you can tell me about their weapons, armor, and feats as wlel as make a case why they would win and why the other guy sucks. After a few days I'll pick a winner and we'll move on to a new match set.

Round 1: Master Chief [halo] vs Samus [metroid] (bonus video)
Arena: apocalyptic city ruins.
Power ups: Ominous-Mode, aka all power ups are available. In the case of MC they take the form of radioed cache drops.

[oslecamo]

Samus fights giant robots and gozilla-grade monsters solo and wins. She can also move in lava.

Mastah chef doesn't suck per se, but he's simply horribly outmatched in both durability and firepower. Samus suit can tank multiple hits from giant robots/godzilla/lava (and is actually immune to molten rock with full upgrades), and her weaponry will bring such enemies down. Mastah chef takes damage simply if he falls from an high ledge, and has multiple conditions for auto-death. The only auto-lose condition for Samus is when she's using a phazon suit at full power and lets it run for too long.

Plus mastah chef can only carry a couple guns at a time, while Samus has her trusty arm-cannon that has 24 different kinds of beams recorded, including the annihilator beam that shoots 'a "matter-antimatter" shot that homes in on enemy targets' in addition to dozens of missiles. The best thing mastah chef can bring is a rawket launcher that needs a slow reload every couple shots, and Samus armor at full power eats that kind of shots for breakfast.

Besides that, Samus has her own smart gunship that can perform bombing runs by itself on demand that will basically one-shot any infantry-level enemy including berseker knights.

Seriously, half the metroid games can be described as "Planet X is invaded by aliens/horrors. Samus arrives. Every hostile lifeform is dead within a few hours, high chance of the planet itself being blown up as well".

Then Samus suit is super-advanced tech custom-created for her by super advanced alien race and can evolve and adapt to new types of technology which allows her to play Megaman where what doesn't kill her does make her stronger. Also got genetic modifications from the same aliens to survive in harsh enviroments. Supposedly stronger/tougher than normal humies, although mastah chef can claim the same.

On the other hand, Samus used to live on Planet Zebes. ​Mass:​ 4.​8 trillion teratons. That's about three orders of magnitude heavier than Earth. And Samus can wall-jump in Zebes without her power armor.

Samus also has an advantage in utility, with the ability to morph into a super-fast ball that fits into tiny spaces and can lay bombs along the way.

Also crappy video is crappy. The creator clearly never played an actual metroid game. Maybe they glanced at some super smash brothers footage because fanservice obsession with the Zero Suit, but in the Metroid games the only time she uses it for fighting is after getting shot by a full pirate fleet of spaceships and crash-landing on a planet. That's pretty much the only canon instance of Samus armor being destroyed. And then she gets an upgrade.

[ketaro]

I thought this was a Pokemon thread. Excuse me.

[Garryl]

Y could totally beat the pants off of X. Of course, neither of them are a match for Z, but what is?

Round 1: Master Chief [halo] vs Samus [metroid] (bonus video)
Arena: apocalyptic city ruins.
Power ups: Ominous-Mode, aka all power ups are available. In the case of MC they take the form of radioed cache drops.

I'm only passingly familiar with Halo, and it's been a while since I played any Metroid, so my information and analysis may be incomplete. Also, I'm not counting completely one-sided powerups like invincibility (either the Halo and multiplayer Metroid Prime 2 powerup, or the total invulnerability of Phazon mode) or bugged out stuff like the Murder Beam (everything dies, possibly even the game) or the Space-Time Beam (resets space and time, or maybe stops them forever, depending on which direction you're facing), because then any comparison is kinda meaningless.

Master Chief vs. Samus, basics are exactly what Oslecamo said. Samus is working off of a much higher tech base which can equal or exceed most everything that MC has access to. The only things I know of that MC has access to on an infantry scale that Samus can't replicate is the one-hit KO-ish beam sword thing, cloaking, and regenerating shields. Cloaking may provide a first strike to MC if Samus is unaware of the possibility of an engagement entirely and doesn't even think to scan, but afterwards her superior detection systems (infrared, x-ray, sonar, and trans-dimensional scanning) should pretty well negate it if they're going head-to-head. The beam sword is nasty, but then so are power bombs and the hyper beam, and freeze + missile has always been a two-hit KO anyways. MC's regenerating shields are his only significant advantage, allowing him to win a battle of attrition if he can secure sufficient ammunition from his supply drops. Samus's energy shields don't inherently regenerate, so if MC can get in enough pot shots without taking sufficient return fire to hurt the armor beneath his shields while keeping Samus out of range for her Grapple Beam (which has an upgrade to let it drain energy back in Metroid Prime 3), he could theoretically wear her down and claim a victory. He won't, of course, because Samus's extreme mobility (high speed and self-powered flight, mostly), will ensure that she can control the engagements, being able to easily escape or pursue, so attrition is a completely non-viable option.

Beyond the infantry scale, some of the various Halo fighter ships should be a match for Samus's gunship. The gunship is probably capable of some ship-to-ship combat, but it's really optimized as a transport/bomber (at least from what we see in-game), so a decent air superiority fighter should be able to take it down. That said, Samus's power armor is plenty capable of ground-to-air combat, so she could well serve as an effective anti-fighter deterrent if she just lacks herself onto her gunship's outer hull and shoots from there while it's on auto-pilot. Case in point, she consistently takes on and crushes Ridley, who is basically an air superiority dragon. There's not really enough information to push it strongly one way or another, although I'd give the edge to Halo's fighter craft even over Samus's gunship with Samus firing back.

At a military scale, Master Chief is part of the UNSC military, while Samus is only a contractor for the Galactic Federation. Master Chief just has more forces that he can reliably call on for reinforcements, being part of (and not at the bottom of) a large chain of command. Samus can only really count on herself, and I don't get the impression that she has the clout to independently call in assistance from the GF navy. If the actual militaries involved were to clash, there's just not enough information to make any meaningful comparisons.

In terms of being able to deal with ground missions, against targets other than each other, Samus wins, no contest. MC's cloaking potentially allows for more effective stealth than Samus's mobility systems and morph ball, but its short duration is a killer. Samus herself is no slouch at infiltration even without her power suit's advanced technology, though. With it, she can access virtually any location, terrain be damned. Self-propelled flight is just so useful. Solid walls are a problem for anyone not from Red Faction, but for anything less than video game unbreakable, Samus is much better at making walls into suggestions. Samus's power suit's scanning and electronic warfare suites will make Cortana drool. In terms of combat effectiveness, see above regarding head-to-head at the infantry scale. Both MC and Samus are proven against conventional and unconventional military forces, but Samus has way more experience fighting off and blowing up weird monsters, gigantic robots, and frickin' space dragons than MC would even believe. Also, I'm pretty sure Samus has blown up more planets than Master Chief has, and she's definitely destabilized more parallel universes.

[ketaro]

Y could totally beat the pants off of X. Of course, neither of them are a match for Z, but what is?

Are you talking about Pokemon? Because that is very much talking about Pokemon 

[oslecamo]

The beam sword is nasty, but then so are power bombs and the hyper beam, and freeze + missile has always been a two-hit KO anyways. MC's regenerating shields are his only significant advantage, allowing him to win a battle of attrition if he can secure sufficient ammunition from his supply drops. Samus's energy shields don't inherently regenerate, so if MC can get in enough pot shots without taking sufficient return fire to hurt the armor beneath his shields while keeping Samus out of range for her Grapple Beam (which has an upgrade to let it drain energy back in Metroid Prime 3), he could theoretically wear her down and claim a victory. He won't, of course, because Samus's extreme mobility (high speed and self-powered flight, mostly), will ensure that she can control the engagements, being able to easily escape or pursue, so attrition is a completely non-viable option.

Again, I'll point out that mastah chef can be insta-killed by several weapons/effects.

Thus Samus only needs to shove mastah chef from a cliff or land one good missile hit for him to turn into a blood splatter, shields or no shields.

Samus herself only ever dies by dealing her ungodly amounts of damage.

At a military scale, Master Chief is part of the UNSC military, while Samus is only a contractor for the Galactic Federation. Master Chief just has more forces that he can reliably call on for reinforcements, being part of (and not at the bottom of) a large chain of command. Samus can only really count on herself, and I don't get the impression that she has the clout to independently call in assistance from the GF navy. If the actual militaries involved were to clash, there's just not enough information to make any meaningful comparisons.

You seem to be implying that Samus needs more than herself.

But again, around half her games are Samus dropping alone in a planet and just murderizing everything and everyone solo, while mastah chef always needs other force's support to finish his job.

This is, most Galactic Federation soldiers themselves think that Samus is basically Santa Claus, because how could one soldier have caused so much devastation?

Meanwhile metroid's space pirates who are often her antagonists see Samus as living horror, and their basic protocol when she's sighted on the same planet is for the space pirates to make their own death rites before going into battle, because they have zero illusions that they'll survive against the ultimate hunter.

Also, I'm pretty sure Samus has blown up more planets than Master Chief has, and she's definitely destabilized more parallel universes.

Mastah chef only has one planet blown up to his name.

[Kethrian]

There's a youtube series based on this entire concept, pitting certain characters against each other, and analyzing all their skills and abilities to see which one should come out on top.  For the sake of keeping their theme, the creators purposefully ignore characters' qualms against killing or fighting for these matches, but otherwise try to stay as true to the character as possible.

As for Samus vs Master Chief, Samus outclasses the spartan in practically every category, some by entire orders of magnitude.  It really isn't much of a challenge.  Now, how about Master Chief vs Doom Guy?  That is a much better balance.  Or make it a 3-way fight and add in Gordon Freeman, and make the outcome really messy to figure out.

[SorO_Lost]

There's a youtube series based on this entire concept,

They also purposely get things horribly wrong and make terrible arguments to draw upon negative publicity and are generally seen as a worthless citation on sites like Comicvine which has been debating vs threads for decades. Even DB's own forums have community ran errata over their crap.

Also I have no plans on covering the same character match ups as they did. Everyone knows Goku can beat the ever living crap out of Superman, but what we don't know is Injustice's yellow lantern Superman could beat white lantern Kyle Raner or a non-injustice-nerfed John Stewart. Which may very well become a topic sometime soon.

Also crappy video is crappy. The creator clearly never played an actual metroid game.

I'm sure Monty Oum, formally of Roosterteeth and the creator of RWBY and even the Dead Fantasy series, played and loved Metroid. But if you somehow missed the lightsaber & MC is a hot lezbo making out with Samus his style is based on the rule of cool.

[Garryl]

The beam sword is nasty, but then so are power bombs and the hyper beam, and freeze + missile has always been a two-hit KO anyways. MC's regenerating shields are his only significant advantage, allowing him to win a battle of attrition if he can secure sufficient ammunition from his supply drops. Samus's energy shields don't inherently regenerate, so if MC can get in enough pot shots without taking sufficient return fire to hurt the armor beneath his shields while keeping Samus out of range for her Grapple Beam (which has an upgrade to let it drain energy back in Metroid Prime 3), he could theoretically wear her down and claim a victory. He won't, of course, because Samus's extreme mobility (high speed and self-powered flight, mostly), will ensure that she can control the engagements, being able to easily escape or pursue, so attrition is a completely non-viable option.

Again, I'll point out that mastah chef can be insta-killed by several weapons/effects.

Thus Samus only needs to shove mastah chef from a cliff or land one good missile hit for him to turn into a blood splatter, shields or no shields.

Samus herself only ever dies by dealing her ungodly amounts of damage.

I may be overestimating the strength of the Mjolnir armor's shields and protective capabilities. As I said, I'm only passingly familiar with Halo, so I'm probably going to miss or get wrong a lot of the things from that end.

I was also going to bring up range as an issue, what with Samus's primary weapons having short-ish ranges or slow-ish projectiles at a distance and thus being easily dodgeable, but then I remembered Metroid Prime: Hunters, which does include a proper sniper rifle-type ultra-long-range weapon (the Imperialist). Missiles may or may not count, but I'm of the impression that they're only good to about the upper end of medium range before their propulsion (or containment, in the case of the Prime 1/2 Chozo energy-based missiles) fails.

At a military scale, Master Chief is part of the UNSC military, while Samus is only a contractor for the Galactic Federation. Master Chief just has more forces that he can reliably call on for reinforcements, being part of (and not at the bottom of) a large chain of command. Samus can only really count on herself, and I don't get the impression that she has the clout to independently call in assistance from the GF navy. If the actual militaries involved were to clash, there's just not enough information to make any meaningful comparisons.

You seem to be implying that Samus needs more than herself.

But again, around half her games are Samus dropping alone in a planet and just murderizing everything and everyone solo, while mastah chef always needs other force's support to finish his job.

This is, most Galactic Federation soldiers themselves think that Samus is basically Santa Claus, because how could one soldier have caused so much devastation?

Meanwhile metroid's space pirates who are often her antagonists see Samus as living horror, and their basic protocol when she's sighted on the same planet is for the space pirates to make their own death rites before going into battle, because they have zero illusions that they'll survive against the ultimate hunter.

In some circumstances, yes, Samus does need more than just herself. A one woman army is great for taking out static enemy positions, but throw in some time pressure, multiple simultaneous objectives, or the need to defend multiple positions, and it just doesn't work. Ever try playing Heroes of Might and Magic with just one hero? It takes too long to capture all of your mines, and you lose even more time every time you have to go back to town to pick up new units. You can hold maybe two towns, but any more than that and your opponents just run around you. Even if you only use one main hero, grabbing a bunch of secondary heroes to transport troops, capture weakly guarded mines, and chase off enemies with small armies is absolutely vital. Even in Metroid Prime 3, without the other hunters, Samus would not have been able to power up the orbital cannon on Norion before the phazon leviathan would have hit, leading to a very large splat. You can't always do everything yourself.

Master Chief gets those secondary heroes inherent in his position. He has troops below him and a chain of command upwards sending reinforcements. Samus doesn't quite get that. The GF is under no obligation to support her activities beyond payment for a job well done. Yes, she has the clout (Samus Claus rains down presents on the good little marines and troopers and plasma fire on the bad pirates, so if she needs out help then damn straight we're giving it) and contacts (Adam Malkovich, Admiral Dane, probably more from the manga and stuff that we don't see in the games) to get additional forces to aid whatever campaign she's involved in, but it's not as reliable, nor inherent to her position or abilities. Heck, after Metroid Fusion, she may be persona non grata in the GF, which drops the groups willing to assist her to the virtually non-existent Chozo and the barely-rebuilding Luminoth. As a solo operative, Samus wouldn't even be overly effective against the space pirates if they fought smarter, not harder, and just abandoned any planet and scattered the moment The Hunter showed up, maybe tried for more mobile ship-based research facilities over ground installations, and could probably get away with under 10% casualties instead of 90%+.

If you were to place Samus in a Halo game, she'd breeze through it no problem. Placing Master Chief in a Metroid game, even giving Cortana a Chozo IFF and translation package so they could actually interact at all with the environment, his chances of success are iffy at best, although he would still have a chance for most of them (no-damage runs do exist). Comparing the two of them head-to-head is just a blowout in Samus's favor, so I'm trying to look at other aspects, including things that don't even come up in their respective game series' at all, in order to make the analysis and discussion more interesting.

TLDR: Pew pew, Samus wins at anything she or Master Chief actually do. But that's boring.

[SorO_Lost]

I figured someone would make a case that infinite cache drops meant lots of overshield abuse which grants three seconds of invincibility per pick up. Anyway...

From sheer military might to the best stealth is killing them all: Corvo [Dishonored] vs Talion [Shadow of Mordor]
Arena: small island waystop, plenty of small buildings to climb around on as well as a nearby jungle.
Power Ups: Both can swap their Runes/Charms within their limits when they have a peaceful minute.

[oslecamo]

I figured someone would make a case that infinite cache drops meant lots of overshield abuse which grants three seconds of invincibility per pick up. Anyway...

Assuming that Samus cant just pick up said overshields herself (anyone can do so in Halo MP after all), then infinite cache drops means that a)mastah chef is team-killed by being crushed to death by the sheer pressure of all the bling being dropped, something that overshield specifically doesn't protect him from while Samus gravity upgrade keeps her going, and/or b)mastah chef can't see shit because the infinite walls of caches blocks his vision in all directions, while Samus has her trusty scanner to see through it.

[Garryl]

I figured someone would make a case that infinite cache drops meant lots of overshield abuse which grants three seconds of invincibility per pick up. Anyway...

I was specifically discounting invincibility powerups. If you're including full on invincibility, Samus is immortal, too, from her own powerups (either the Metroid Prime 2 multiplayer invincibility powerup, or just hyper mode's temporary invulnerability) and that's no fun for anybody.

From sheer military might to the best stealth is killing them all: Corvo [Dishonored] vs Talion [Shadow of Mordor]
Arena: small island waystop, plenty of small buildings to climb around on as well as a nearby jungle.
Power Ups: Both can swap their Runes/Charms within their limits when they have a peaceful minute.

Wish I could weight in for round 2, but I only have a bare minimum knowledge of the high concepts surrounding these two characters, and not a clue at all about their specific capabilities. All I know about Dishonored is that the protagonist is an assassin with a magical warlock patron kind of backing. Likewise, my knowledge of Shadow of Mordor is limited to having the impression that Talion is like someone put Aragorn, Link, and Solid Snake into a blender.

[ketaro]

Corvo can't actually fight when caught or confronted. Both are decent stealth, but when the moment comes for blades to clash Corvo will get wrecked by Talions crazy unstoppable combos. Also Talion is already dead and endless is revived by his elfbro should corvo get hella lucky, likely only with a gunshot.

[SorO_Lost]

Wish I could weight in for round 2, but I only have a bare minimum knowledge of the high concepts surrounding these two characters, and not a clue at all about their specific capabilities.

I'm also avoiding intros because I figure I might taint an opinion, at least until the end.