qoUEO is very disappointing to say the least. I am going to section this review off by addressing different aspects of the level separately as i feel like this would make it easier to understand what is wrong with it

GAMEPLAY:

• For levels of this caliber, nothing matters more than the gameplay. The base gameplay in qoUEO, to my understanding, was built to be much easier than what it currently is now. The verifier buffed it with instructions to make the first quarter much harder than the rest. This severely impacted the playability of the level as the difficult section of the level is EXTREMELY awkward to navigate. The wave is obviously the biggest offender in terms of gameplay as most of it feels like random clicking interrupted by random extremely difficult spams that DO NOT get consistent unless you use CBF (at least in my experience), i will elaborate more on the chokepoints in the balancing section but i do need to mention that if it wasn't for them the gameplay would've been much more tolerable.

• Following the wave, the gameplay doesn't get much better. The cube is decent at best, and there really is nothing special about it, same goes for the ship. However, the ball has the same issue of simply feeling like random clicking. It does not match the song at all, and this far in the level, gameplay this awkward is just not fun to deal with. The last robot somehow plays even worse as it's all over the place. Despite being a 2.1 level this is a predecessor to all the camera movement issues 2.2 brung. This leads me to my main complaint about the level's gameplay, and a reoccurring theme thoughout the level: This was rushed. So many of the issues qoUEO suffers from could've been easily fixed with a bit of attention. None of the gameplay flows well because it was lazily put together.

STRUCTURING:

• This section doesn't need to be long as this is just a direct continuation of my previous complaint. The structuring in the wave is some of the worst i have ever seen in a wave part. The sheer carelessness the creator had for this level resulted in an atrocity that can only be experienced. Navigating the wave of qoUEO feels like im stepping in a dark room full of legos. I'm treading step after step hoping i dont randomly get inflicted with the worst pain ever. I could go on but you get the point.

• Post-wave, it does get better for awhile as i think the ship puts forward some very aesthetic looking structures, you can visually tell that effort was put into making this look nice and balanced. But then the ball / robot decide to ruin the fun as those parts are compositionally lacking of any coherence. Some empty spaces there, come clutter here, whoops, did i live my 1 second long blue cut scenes in? Unfortunate!

BALANCING:

• I like to think of myself as a rather open minded person, the idea of a rated wave challenge has always interested me, and disregarding the fact that qoUEO plays nothing like a wave challenge, it is still perceived as is, and this leads me to my point that qoUEO sort of ruined this idea in the public's eye. Lots of people view qoUEO as a stupid level, which is true, but the idea of a wave challenge followed by easier gameplay is not stupid in the slightest, and if it was executed properly, it could genuinely be a very good way to introduce challenge gameplay to a playerbase that otherwise would've stuck to playing demons. qoUEO had one job and it miserably failed, not that it even tried to succeed in the first place.

• You would think that it would be really hard to mess up such balancing, make the first quarter hard, and the rest easy, but unfortunately qoUEO just had to do things differently. The post-wave section is riddled with insufferable choke points that get more and more unfair as the part progresses. I feel like i don't need to elaborate much on this, it would've been much more fun if the post-wave section was more linear in difficulty.

DECORATION:

• I don't think qoUEO looks good. However, it doesn't look good because of the two main points i brought forward. If I look at the level's decoration, isolated from it's miserable structuring, i think it has the potential to be amazing. The color-work in qoUEO is it's strong suit, it works with the song so well, and the atmosphere is pretty unmatched. The nature of the level, and it's balancing, really helps tie it together, and is the only reason why this level gets any points to begin with.

• I truly believe that if qoUEO was given more attention, it could've been a phenomenal level. Atmospheric hard levels are my go-to, playing them is otherworldly and it's such a shame that all of it is overridden by the dread every death makes you feel while grinding qoUEO.

• I want to insist on how great the color-work in this level is. The darker tones in the wave broken up by the bright flashy pulses and structures fully encapsulates how the song plays out. Which i do need to mention, Cove by Waterflame is really amazing, it's a shame grinding out qoUEO has ruined it for me 😀😀. The energy delivered by the "drop" is really tame, as it should be, the level get's less moody and more vibey, so does the song. the rotating assets create for an unusual atmosphere, and i need to single out the white connectors as they genuinely are a fantastic asset. The level keeps the trend of small bright colorful assets throughout up until the robot where everything becomes "two toned", purple-ish / blue and yellow, which i think are a great color combination and overall helps make the part more memorable. Now obviously i need to mention again that all the positive points im making are completely overshadowed by the compositional weaknesses the entire level presents. The robot is probably the biggest offender, leaving some spots completely open and decoration-less in an otherwise busy and buzzing environment. What a shame.

EXTRA NITPICKS:

• The anti-skips in this level are nothing short of lame. They truly serve no purpose as they are all in the post-wave section, and in the non chokepoint areas, simply preventing people from having fun for the love of the game, classic qoUEO move! I wan't to point out that if i hadn't done any noclip accuracy runs from 0, i wouldn't have found out about the anti-skips at the cube and robot until i got there from 0, and that is because they only appear from 0. Why? I don't know.

• List of % i need to isolate for being particularly terrible:

- 4% (without CBF this section is very awkward)

- 6% (chokepoint, you can microclick like a psycho to make this part "easier" but thats if you love getting carpal tunnel)

- 8% (without CBF, this was the hardest part of the level, with CBF, it gets consistent, but it's still bad, advice: do 1, 2, 1 instead of 4 consistency clicks)

- 12 to 14% (awkward, unfun, bad, weirdly structured, carpal tunnel inducing, don't even get me started on how this plays without CBF)

- 15% (bad spam)

- 20% (this is a curveball !! i think this spam is the most fun part of the level, it flows very well, but im biased because it matches my comfortable clicking speed)

- 39 to 43% (WHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHY)

- 53% (terribly put together, who knew two clicks could be this bad, also honorable mention to 56 watch the completion to understand)

- 57 to 58% (bad gp)

- 64 to 65% (blind setup based input unless you have the reaction time of an F1 driver

• What does qoUEO even mean??

My closing thoughts for this review is that this could've been so much more. The mediocrity of this level tarnished the otherwise interesting concept of a rated wave challenge simply because the people involved couldn't be bothered to care.

Completion