Our champion has been decided! After a total of 40 articles stretched across nine months, the Push Square community has chosen the winner of our Ultimate PlayStation Character Tournament.
This whole thing kicked off all the way back in October 2017. Every week since, we've pitted PlayStation characters against one another in polls on this very site. The community would vote, and the winner of each poll would move on to the next round of the tournament. The loser was out.
We're happy to announce that the winner of the first ever Push Square Ultimate PlayStation Character Tournament is...
Nathan Drake!
It's not exactly a shocking result, but the hero of the Uncharted games has taken the win. Drake has been a part of PlayStation since 2007, when Uncharted: Drake's Fortune launched on the PlayStation 3. Since then, Naughty Dog's series has become one of Sony's biggest exclusive properties on a global scale. No wonder so many of you voted for him!
Drake beat Aloy, of Horizon: Zero Dawn fame, in the Grand Final last week. Drake took an impressive 65% of the vote.
Here are the top 8 characters of the tournament (ranking is decided by tournament standing and then number of votes):
1st Place: Nathan Drake
2nd Place: Aloy
3rd Place: Kat
4th Place: Solid Snake
5th Place: Geralt of Rivia
6th Place: Kratos
7th Place: Cloud Strife
8th Place: Ellie
More than 100,000 votes were cast over the course of the tournament.
It goes without saying that this tournament wouldn't have been possible without the support of our community.
Thanks for sticking with us!
Comments 91
No idea what I'm going to do with my life now.
However, I need to know whether you lot want to do something like this again.
I doubt we'll do another tournament exactly like this one, but we do have some ideas about what could come next.
Let me know what you'd like to see!
Congratulations on a great tournament, @ShogunRok! It was brilliant following this every week.
I would be down for a similar tournament at some point when you've recharged your batteries!
Congrats to Nathan Drake. He's a pretty fantastic character all in all, so he's a deserved victor.
Kat or Trico would've been better for the top spot though.
This turned into a complete joke once Trico was voted out but it was worth sticking around for the punchline that is Nathan Drake.
Half kidding, of course (though Nathan does indeed suck) - brilliant tourney Ramsey, really enjoyed the epic bants (lads lads lads). Good luck coming up with a worthy replacement regular article!!
Was great fun thanks. I voted every week unless I didn’t know both characters. The results seem pretty reasonable although I thought Joel would come higher.
In before everyone complains that one mass murderer won over the other mass murderers
Nice to see Cloud come in quite high too
Its almost a battle of the PS3 vs PS4 icons. Drake will always be associated with the PS3 era to me and the Character that defined the PS3 where as Aloy - even if she only appears once on this generation - will be associated with the PS4 gen and likely to be a 'defining' character for me. I know Nate and Kratos have both had 'big' releases but I still associate those more with other eras.
Holy hell this has been going on for a year? Really doesn't feel like it was that long ago! Agreed with the others that I would have loved to see Trico win it, but I'm still happy to see Drake take the prize.
It's nice kat is number 3
I hope sometime in the future, sony will make another gravity rush.
#NotMyPlaystation Aloy the future of PlayStation.
Some interesting minor stats:
1. Geralt ended up with more total votes than Kratos, somehow
2. Kat ended up with the most invalid votes thanks to duplicate accounts (yet still made it into the top 3)
3. Lu Bu (of Dynasty Warriors fame) had the least votes of any character in the entire tournament
4. PlayStation exclusive characters generally made it furthest into the tournament, rather unsurprisingly
5. Aloy had to fight her way through more PlayStation exclusive characters than anyone else in the tournament
6. Nathan Drake averaged 71% of the vote across all of his matches, meaning that he won every match with relative ease
Fab tourno, well played Ramsey lad. Tuning in every Wednesday made you realise just how much time flies nowadays.
Sooo, when's the next one?
Great tournament and ultimately I'm happy with the winner. Expected Ellie to win it but Drake is a worthy champion.
Thanks for running it. Would love more tournaments on here for sure
I'm still disappointed we didn't end with Kratos vs. Nathan Drake, but great tournament, and I really had fun @ShogunRok !
Cool tournament, cool stats as well. Let's face it we all want to be like, live with, sleep with, cuddle with Drake. All of us. Period.
@ShogunRok Obviously, thank you so much for all your efforts for this feature 👏🙏
As a suggestion for the future, may I suggest tournaments for best game in a genre (fighting, FPS, racing, horror, etc), either PS4 only or going all the way back from PS1 to current gen.
Sometimes the most predictable result is the right result .
Nate is just the perfect hero & to me will always define PlayStation.
Great tournament @ShogunRok !
@ShogunRok Excellent tournament, it could only be surpassed by having Kratos vs Nathan at the final!
Of course we want more I suggest best PS1/PS2/PS3 games, maybe best songs/music...
Anyway, Kat in number 3 and you all that voted let the servers shutdown roflmao
Great Tournament! I'm actually gonna miss it. I can't be mad at these results, it was well earned. What's next, Fav Playstation E3 press conference?
I made a thread on ResetEra, hope y'all don't mind.
@ShogunRok Could you send the results to Sony, please?
I’d like a Gravity Rush 3.
Cheers.
Nice but predictable. Next time do a "whats your fav ANTIHERO on Playstation"?
Are we doing a games one next?
Yeah, predictable result. But Nate is a good character. Uncharted just wouldn't be as good without him (Well, not unless Chloe's there anyway).
And hey, Snake got 4th overall, which is not bad at all. I'm happy.
Thanks for the tourney @ShogunRok! Haven't had this much fun in a while.
Missed the early rounds as they were before I became a regular reader but joined in with a few votes where I felt I had a fair awareness of both characters and overall it’s been good fun and I’d happily join in from the start for a new one - perhaps something a little more restricted, either by console gen or genre, would bring out some interesting choices, especially for those of us old enough to remember back to PSOne days 😀 Nice work @ShogunRok, look forward to the next one, when you’ve recovered! 👍🏻
@AFCC The community fought tooth and nail to get Sony to reconsider but in the end they went through with it anyway without so much as an apology or even an acknowledgement. We "let the servers shutdown"? Yeah, no. Not even close.
Anyway, GG, y'all. Nathan's not my first pick for favorite character, and his games don't exactly thrill me the same way they seem to thrill everyone else, but I can't say he doesn't deserve it. Dude's got charisma aplenty and captures the spirit of an adventurer like Indy to a T.
Well nobody can beat drake 😄👏👏👏👏
More uncharted please
That was fun. It went on for 9 months? Crazy!
Congrats to Drake. I would definitely be up for something like this again.
@Kaijufanatic I'm just poking the fans! I do love the game myself and I'm sad to see it die
@AFCC It isn't so much that we "let" the servers shut down as it is that our pleas fell on Sony's deaf ears. It's still absolutely ridiculous to me that Sony shut down the servers to one of their first party titles only a year and a half after it's release, especially when there are servers from PS3 era games still going strong. Makes me kinda wonder just what exactly it is I'm paying for with PlayStation Plus...
@AFCC I see. For me it's still "too soon" to joke about. The wound's too fresh.
I bought my PS4 (Uncharted 4 Special Edition) just to play the Uncharted games.
A well deserved win!
@MysticMask sorry D:
Yap, we play plus, had 1 to 2 years of pretty mediocre lineups and now they start shutting servers! I like Sony better when they are losing the gen x)
@Quintumply well done
Was fun voting in tournament I thought cloud would of ended up a bit higher but that may be personal bias on my part. Would be interesting to see a best game tournament for each console i.e PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4.
I'd be up for another one. Maybe start it every October. Great job @ShogunRok
I knew Nate was gonna win but I was hoping for either Kratos or Kat to win, oh well I can't really complain Nate has earned his reputation in the PlayStation community
There could’ve been no other winner. But Kratos at 6th place is madness! Even though The Witcher 3 is my all-time favorite game Geralt isn’t a PS character. And how is Kat ahead of Kratos? And Aloy has 1 game. ONE!!! C’mon man!
The tournament was awesome. Drake the homicidal maniac will always be the crowd favorite. Let's vote on something else soon...
@bindiana
Best games by console:
PS1: Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style
PS2: Dark Cloud 2
PS3: God Of War 2
PS4: The Witcher 3/God Of War
The Wu-Tang selection is only because it’s rhe only PS1 game I’ve ever played.
@AFCC Yeah, I definitely think they're starting to get overconfident again, like they were at the end of the PS2/start of the PS3 and like Microsoft was at the end of the 360/start of the One. There's also the whole Fortnite "Oh, you logged onto the PS4 with your account? We're now going to hold it hostage to where you can ONLY use it with a PS4!" fiasco.
@ShogunRok I came in at the last few rounds of this, but this was pretty cool to see. I would think maybe one about best villains would be cool to see.
Also, this made me realize that I must be missing something by not having played a Gravity Rush
@AhmadSumadi I think Aloy got a bit of a bot-assist with hers, as there was at least one time where I was refreshing the page with her against Kat and noticed that she was getting a new vote per minute until she was a good 50 votes ahead. That's a bit suspicious if you ask me.
Kat was voted higher than Kratos and Solid Snake smh...frankly I’m more shocked that many people even know Gravity Rush exists
@ShogunRok Now we need a greatest villian one.
@DaScorpion I'd highly recommend playing them both! The first one might feel a little clunky and barebones here and there due to it originally being a Vita title, but those issues are resolved and then some with the sequel!
Nice work fella! Serial killer gets the top spot.
@MysticMask yap! Too many people that doesn't bother at all but to me it's actually stopping me from playing on Switch! Ridiculous, I say
Drake is more a serial killer than Kratos though. Kratos kills beasts and mindless creatures. Drake kills people! Then turns them into soylent green!
Lets do it again!
@ShogunRok
Could do a most iconic weapon/s on PlayStation or best soundtrack? Although I can just imagne Uncharted winning again on the soundtrack, lol.
I would suggest most annoying character but I can only imagine the arguments that would cause!
@ShogunRok Well done on a great tournament! My personal highlights were Delsin Rowe going further than he had any right to before finally getting hammered, and of course Katosgate.
So that's the end of the first round, and the second round of heats begins in October, have I got that right?
Thanks for all the fun, really looked out for this every week!
PS: sackboi should have won of course
@MysticMask Gravity rush 2 is a joy to play, it's fun just playing/flying around in the city
@AhmadSumadi In drake defense, he didn't kill his father/brother/uncle though, he only kill nameless bad guy while having a fun adventuring with his friends/brother/partner. It's fun for the whole family
Kratos is the best.💖💞💕💓💗💜💚❤💪😇.word up son
No surprise with Drake, a fun little tournament. So now what do we do on Wednesday?
The uncharted games are simply amazing, I know the formula may have started to get old but they are still pure gaming gold!! Nathan drake would have been easy to have been quite a dislikable but he's so well written you cant help but for root for him!! A true icon and will be missed, big shoes to fill. Thanks for organising!!!!
Ah, vindication for having bought the Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection bundle PS4 back in 2015. And yet another reason why the real Uncharted movie NEEDS to star Nathan Fillion!!
No idea why Nate won, but oh well.
Congratulations Nathan Drake!
It was a great tournament, I’m just sad that Ratchet & Clank were eliminated so soon.
And it’s also funny to read the Uncharted haters crying here on the comments.
Uncharted >>> tomb raider. 😀
@ShogunRok Nice work, sir. Thank you for your efforts. I voted every week, including the thread at the very beginning in the forums when this was just a glimmer of an idea in your mind and were taking nominations. I am very satisfied that Drake won and with the whole top 8.
I would definitely like another tournament like this. It was a lot of fun. Not sure what I’m going to do every Wednesday morning from here if we don’t do another one.
Best PlayStation game antagonist, NPC, weapon, vehicle, villain, character art style, character clothing, gameplay mechanic .... I don’t know, the possibilities are endless.
How the hell did Kat even place in the top 8??
@MysticMask Thanks! They are both on the list of "to play". Unfortunately, that list is SO LONG. lol. I have a backlog of games to play, but they are on there.
Doesn't look like Cervantes, I'm confused.
Pyramidhead shoulda won.
The face of playstation lol
I think the final top 10 list is both a true and satisfying result. While, personally, Aloy would not be quite as high on my own personal list, I think that for the most part, they are indeed great results. This was alot of fun and I look forward to a similar option to do something like this again. Thanks Push Square!!
Kat getting 3rd place makes me seriously happy.
Gravity rush failed because it's not a good game and it's not an interesting story. Kat is a bland character and should never have been near the top ten.
Fight me.
I'm down for another one without the cheating!!😆
it seems good to me by nathan
The only right choice tbh
To be fair at this point in time it's the perfect Result. Nate has been carrying the PlayStation icon baton for the past 10 years. And this result with Aloy being the runner up is like a passing of the baton. Once she gets a few more games (asking as they are as solid as the first) then there's no reason she can't be the new icon. Now Nate has officially retired.
Well done @Shogunrok for running it. I'm betting it was a War Of Attrition at times.
hes the next james bond
@Johnnycide ...are you trolling? Because it sure sounds like you're trolling.
@DaScorpion I totally understand! My pile of shame is quite high myself... >.>
I would say that you should give them high priority since the servers for the second game were shutting down, but alas that time has already passed. Sigh...
@MysticMask nope. If anyone have a toss about Gravity Rush then it wouldn't have bombed. Twice. Three times if you count the remaster.
I played the first one for a few hours on vita, and found it lacked any kind of hook whatsoever.
There's a small fanbase, yeah, but hardly anything that should be scraping any kind of top ten.
@Johnnycide I'd say that the bombing was more due to the lack of advertising on behest of Sony. I mean, Gravity Rush 2 and Horizon Zero Dawn came out only a month apart, yet HZD got sooo much more advertisement compared to the barely any that GR2 got. Which, speaking of...if you find Kat to somehow be bland, then I can only imagine what you think of Alloy, as she comes across as incredibly bland to me, personally speaking. But I digress. About what part of the game did you get to when you did play it, out of curiosity?
And I think the fact that Kat did get to the 3rd spot in this tournament is indicative that the franchise has more than just a small fanbase.
@MysticMask
1. Comparing Horizon to Gravity rush? One of the greatest games this gen compared to a B title, at best? Surely you'd choose a better hill to die on. There are so many factors in there that it's not even a contest.
2. I liked Aloy. I liked her character arc, the acting, the design... Spot on. She was like a cave girl Nathan Drake. Kat was "anime slapper. Falls over a bit".
3. She moved into a sewer and got a cat, then some other stuff happened and I got bored.
4. A small fanbase that isn't above rigging votes, apparently. She's about the same level as the guy from Vanquish, only Vanquish was good.
Kat came 3rd, the Push Square community gives me faith.
@Johnnycide
1. My point being that advertisement is important if you want to sell something to the masses. Horizon got tons and tons of advertisement, and Gravity Rush 2 got barely little to practically none at all. I don't know why you brought the rest of that up. Of course, it was a rather congested period of great game releases, as even Horizon got completely pushed aside once Breath of the Wild released.
2. From what I've seen of Horizon, Alloy comes across as an incredibly bland and generic video game protagonist, with perhaps a bit of angst thrown in? I've seen none of the charisma that Nathan Drake extrudes.
Kat is a bit of a klutz, and though she does have some tiny moments of melancholy she's mostly super optimistic and cheerful, which is a nice change of pace compared to most angsty video game protagonists nowadays. She's endearing, and extrudes personality, especially in the sequel. I mean, you have a multitude of gestures you can perform that random NPCs actually react to (like waving back to a wave, or acting startled if you do the scare gesture behind them). The sequel has a tone of awesome attention to detail like that.
3. So you didn't really give the game a chance. Gotcha.
4. I watched the votes for Alloy vs Kat on the last day for a bit. It was sitting at Alloy having a 20 vote lead. Came back to the page like a half hour later and suddenly alloy was up like 50 votes, and after spending a bit of time refreshing the page noticed that Alloy was getting a steady new vote a minute. That reeks to me of someone employing a bot to inflate Alloy's numbers. So Kat wasn't the only one with some vote rigging. And from my understanding of @ShogunRok's comment, comment about interesting stats, Kat still got 3rd despite those duplicate account (rigged) votes. As in, even not counting those votes she still got 3rd.
@MysticMask yeah... TL;dr
I mean, what do you want me to say? You've got your opinion. Apparently most people don't share it, otherwise you'd all be playing the sequel online.
@Johnnycide Ohhh I think I get it now. You need a game with voice acting in order for it to hold your attention, as lots of text is too much for you. Fair enough.
@MysticMask yeah.... Only Undertale is probably my favourite game of all time so keep trying with the insults, champ.
@ShogunRok Geralt as a Playstation character?, are you serious? how can you include Geralt in the poll?
@Johnnycide
What, you want a cookie for that? I mean, you're the one that wanted people to "fight you" about your opinion, yet can't be bothered to read the other side's points...and then still want to take potshots at the game regardless. That's wanting your cake and eating it too.
I came into this thinking that we were discussing/debating in good faith, but apparently I was wrong in that regard. Fitting though that you're a fan of Undertale then.
@MysticMask if I'm completely honest I was just enjoying seeing how wound up you were getting. Crying into your Hatsune Miku body pillow because some dude on the internet thought Gravity Rush was average, but, you know. Keep getting wound up and all... It's pretty funny.
@Johnnycide
Of course you are. What a sad and pathetic life you must have if this is how you get your enjoyment out of it.
@MysticMask wow. You really are a bit far gone aren't you?
What's sad and pathetic is policing the internet for people who disagree about a 7/10 game that you like. That's pretty sad and pathetic, son.
My original comment ending in "fight me" was done mostly in jest, but seeing as you immediately became a whiny little weeb about it I continued the conversation for my amusement. I stayed relatively tame and didn't get personal until you started getting upset that I don't like Gravity Rush. Read that again. You. Got. Upset. Because. Someone. On. The. Internet. Doesnt. Like. Your. Little. Cartoon. Crush.
Now who looks sad and pathetic here? Cuz it ain't me, kiddo.
Now I could go on, but this site is heavily moderated and I don't want to be responsible for you being any more upset than you clearly are. I will say that this is my final comment on the matter, and that you really need to consider where your priorities lie.
@Johnnycide
You're reading a whoooole lot more into my actions than you really should be. And inferring things out the whazoo. From my perspective, up to a point the conversation was pretty calm and level, despite the unnecessary and antagonistic jab from you here and there. I didn't get annoyed until you decided you couldn't be bothered to read my comment, yet still wanted to take potshots. So, I responded in kind.
And then you went ballistic.
If I was really trying to "defend mi'lady Kat's honor" like you're trying to imply, then it wouldn't be taking me a whole day or so to reply, now would it? Yes, it stings that the servers to one of my most favorite franchises closed down way too prematurely, and I and others are perhaps a bit raw due to that. But then you're the one trying your hardest to rub salt into that wound, so remind me again who's priorities need checking?
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