This level is super weird. It struggles to really know what it wants to do. It throws in so many ideas, but fails to execute them properly because of course, they don’t have enough time to develop themselves. The 1st half is your neuro-typical pixel block level which yeah, it is well made but like, it looking like 76% of all the 2.2 levels feels safe and underwhelming, especially for the finale of the NCS event and also for a « mythic » level. The 2nd part I guess is where they try to make you escape the arcade and uhm… yeah it’s cool but it falls into the problem that 21% of all the 2.2 levels have, which is giving more attention to be as visually impressive as possible, at the cost of consistency, progression and even gameplay. The worst part of this level has to be the part where you play those « mini-games ». Bruh, I don’t think you can even call them QTEs bc you literally just need to spam the button and also, why are there not mini-games for each of the levels??? Like why only these 3 ??? AND WHY DO WE ONLY NEED TO SPAM TO PASS ALL OF THEM??? WHAT’S THE POINT??????

Yeah, this level is very average, it is well made for sure, props to the creators, they definitely know one thing or two about the editor, but I thought that after all this experience they would deliver something way more interesting than pixel blocks and "free 1 million views on YT"-type level

Not gonna say a whole lot more than what has already been said, huge disappointment for a final event level and ended up to be much worse than my already low expectations

Playing this level feels like clicking on thumb tacks, this level is an actual pain to play and I do not understand why they released it in the state that they did. This level has random parts of needless spam, unreadable and even unexcusable garbage, and completely seemingly random gameplay decisions that feel like that one South Park skit about how Family Guy chooses their jokes. I genuinely don't understand this style of level as it just throws random effects at you and expects you to love it, nothing about this level is satisfying or fun to play, and with a lineup like this within the level it is incredibly disappointing to see what it is.

The disconnect between what the mod team thinks GD's audience wants and what GD's audience actually wants has never been more apparent than in this tacky, tasteless, dated-on-arrival, obama medal ass conclusion to the NCS album event

Button Masher is Viprin’s first megacollab released in over 2 and a half years, and it’s a pretty surprising one. For over half a decade. Viprin’s projects have been hyped up design style collabs that consistently push the limits in execution with simple themes, such as “sky” and “rainbow”. With Button Masher, however, this way of level creation was flipped on its head. As the last level of the NCS x Geometry Dash event, Button Masher was teased only a month before getting released, and isn’t your typical design level you’d expect from Viprin.

The level starts off outside of an arcade machine that you enter after a few seconds. Before you enter, you can see vibrant posters of all the NCS event levels on the wall, as this level isn’t just the final level of the event, but a collaboration between all the creators of those levels as well. After entering the arcade machine, the next 50 seconds are fairly basic pixel block parts. I say basic, but it’s still a well executed version of the style. It doesn’t do much to be very original though, which honestly brings it down a bit for me. This is the case until 0:46, where you start beating up a monster to the song, with a few “glitches” forming and the screen occasionally breaking out into the real world, reminding the player that you’re in an arcade machine. The drop is where the level seriously picks up, as the level becomes more menacing and more glitches start to occur. Eventually, the glitches overtake the arcade machine, and you break out of the screen and into the arcade. 

At this point, the style of the level completely changes. You’ve broken into the real world, and the decoration is more art based and realistic to accommodate that. This segment is easily my favorite in the level, as it packs so many small details in such a short timespan. I love how you see all the arcade machines in the background, before crashing through a claw machine, going past a bowling alley on an air hockey table, and flying your way past the prize corner before jumping into another arcade machine. You don’t last very long in this new arcade machine before you start jumping between multiple different ones, with each one referencing different games and levels. Finally, you reach the last machine, and the level ends with a brilliant sequence of a fake “Game Over!” death followed by a wonderfully animated endscreen.

While there’s a lot more I could talk about, Button Masher is a great level. I do think that the first half is pretty weak, as it lacks originality, looking more like random RobTop styled levels than something actually themed. It even feels a bit weak design wise at times, with some large empty spots and somewhat off putting colors, but the later parts are all fantastic. I think this was a really fun way to end the NCS event, as everything ends up coming together for an exciting grand finale!

I think Button Masher didn't live up to the community's expectations, and it's totally reasonable to believe this.

The biggest flaw of this level is... its image. Being the last event level of the NCS collab, an event that no one could imagine happening before 2.2, quite a good amount of people expected something that could maybe represent the creativity and spirit of Geometry Dash and its community. Once the final product was presented, none of this was seen. Button Masher doesn't represent the active part of the community at all.

The level essentially represents Robtop. Not the community, not the game, just the creator and its product. It feels and looks like a marketing campaign, like it was meant to be seen as a Tiktok video, just to be (mediocrely) impressive enough to tickle the brain of a person who has never heard of Geometry Dash outside of the first few official levels.

Every creator involved in this final megacollab went with what resembles Rob's 2.2 visual style, seen in Dash and in The Tower's platformer levels, with a few changes here and there to give an identity to each part (even though most of the level looks the exact same, so you can't tell who made what). This style choice was not a good idea either, as most of the community (including me) is growing annoyed of the pixel style, since it's being used way too much and effortlessly in levels that genuinely play like shit and have nothing interesting going on.

I think AudieoVisual's and Grax's parts are the only recognizable ones in here, with an honorable mention to Connot's, as they are more coherent to their own creating styles and actually feel different from the rest of the level.

To end the yapping on a bad note, Button Masher feels egoistic and ignorant to what made GD so big in the first place, rather it only depicts what the average non-gd player thinks the game is. The level is decent and the theming is consistent, but the context behind Button Masher makes me dislike it more than the general consensus. It was a terrible way to end such a meaningful event to the history of the game.

the zone pirate v of mythic. for elaboration purposes, zone pirate v is probably one of the most controversial legendary rated levels due to its amateurishness and also it being generally not really being impressive in the spectacle or the creativity department. with these issues present, however, zone pirate v is generally inoffensive at best and quite sloppy in execution at worst

button masher is literally worse than zone pirate v

button masher has some parts that are actually nauseating to look at, and not in a way that serves its benefit like being hypnotic, extremely intense, or the like

the first half of button masher is an amalgamation of generally tired but alright looking styles, namely a non-stylised, somewhat flat looking art style, pixel style and this glowy simplistic design-adjacent style. spoiler: this lack of consistency throughout the level is a pretty big detriment to the level's core visual identity; it feels stuck in 3 different places simultaneously with the sum being more untasteful than the components

now, the elephant in the room -- the second half of this level takes all the comparatively minor issues of the first half, scales them up and adds some more. the glitching is rarely seen to be as messy as this lineup of creators' other works, is a nice deviation / experimentation but it is so messy and amateurish that it just makes the entire level look even more disorganised. the arcade part is ALSO completely disconnected in how its gameplay looks from every other part, with it being freefly and with relatively few inputs. nonetheless, neither the song nor decoration changes significantly in order to accomodate this gameplay change; in fact the song becomes even more chaotic and rough while you kinda just... leisurely fly through the arcade. the part proceeding this also has the exact same issue so i'm not gonna repeat myself

i've already touched on the song earlier but in summary: i am normally indifferent to mdk's music but this song has some of the most uncomfortable filtered vocals and basslines i have ever heard

points for the "hit it, slash it, slap it, ram it" part and the endscreen is fun i guess. just a patchwork of bland and extremely questionable design choices that mesh together really untastefully

as for the gameplay, no section of gameplay ever feels cohesive to interact with due to the rampant use of gimmicks, hand-holding the player with this new wave of chaotic-feeling yet underdeveloped gameplay compensating for insane effects that has emerged in 2.2, and, ironically, button mashing. i am not sure if this was intentional to fit the name, however i doubt this as this is also an issue with certain other high-tier levels as well by some of the creators in this lineup

i understand why this happened with the gameplay due to the recommendations for the ncs event levels showing off as many 2.2 features as possible, resulting in the over-reliance on gimmicks and all the other jank. this, however just makes the experience of playing it feel even more jarringly disconnected from the actual level, while the level does nothing to work around the disconnection being polished. with all the things i've said about this level the gameplay is actually not unfun to play; just mediocre. the gameplay's disconnect from the level also affects the visuals indirectly since it's very clear without even playing it that that very disconnect is there. i don't feel like my actual enjoyment of this is a help or a detriment to the level as a whole, hence my gameplay rating of 5 not contributing to the overall very much

in conclusion, the positives about this level are that i do see some merit in the deocration in some parts, especially the first half and the endscreen being quite nice. otherwise, yeah sorry to everyone who participated in this level :(

update: yeah this is no longer the worst event level lol. raising it because it is actually not as bad as i intially thought (2.5)

For the most part, this is a fun level. The gameplay is fun, it looks good, and it just overall feels like a great finale to the event.

One problem, though. Optimization. Most of the level runs perfectly fine, but the Duckstep part will not run better than 30 FPS, and since it's a UFO part with nowhere to land, that makes it a lot harder than it's supposed to be. Turning on LDM does not fix the lag. And since it's so deep into the level, you lose about a minute and a half of progress when you die because your clicks register a quarter of a second later than they're supposed to. All this ultimately hampers my enjoyment of it somewhat, but other than that, it's a really good level.