Rating Curve

unforgettable use of an invisible teleport portal

i mean yea it’s probably the best raszagal level but it’s still a near part by part copy of another level like their other levels https://youtube.com/watch?v=EHWNqI2VuQA

still a weird situation where these were both well known when i was getting into gd (and wasn’t in any places) where these really blend together in my mind and feel kind of incomplete without each other (and this objectively is probably the better one, unlike dr raszagal phoenix), this one likely more well known because it’s a notably hard underrated nondemon, but yknow still the lack of creativity does eat away at the score for me. 1.9 was a weird time

Demon

in a sense very good song representation because i find it a little frustrating or disappointing in the same way i find the album it comes from, which i know is a flaming hot take, like its one of the favorite albums of one of my friends and generally really critically acclaimed but while there are some really good and/or surprising moments (title track, this one, frontier psychiatrist obviously) a lot of it kinda just gives me the feeling of, that sure is music! kind of a mush in the moment and not especially memorable in retrospect. and i do love sampling and even heavily sampling music, i'm one of probably only a couple dozen people who have heard the entirety of impossible nothing's 60+ hour behemoth that is the nomicon series, and i've heard and like a lot of other kinds of sample based music, but this particular implementation doesn't really do it for me

and the level's a similar story, though with a pretty different context. what i find harms both of them is how committed they are to the 'almost all samples' thing, and that they try to fuse all these parts into something that feels coherent, loosely evocative of a time and/or place. in practice, this creates a kind of 'averaging' effect, one may even say, in a literal sense, generic. on the album this manifests more as a psychedelic, hazy memory of a moment, wouldn't really say average or generic, but a lot of the choices the level makes are similar to the choices a 'generic level' might make. something i find describes a lot of my tastes in music and art (and other things too) is that i am generally more gravitated towards 'jaggedness' than 'smoothness'. at a literal level that manifests as more snappy or rhythmic music, collage or collage-like sudden jumps, but at a deeper level, things which are adversarial, challenging, niche, or require a lot of context. going from not understanding something, with at most the feeling that there's something there for me, to understanding it and genuinely appreciating it is honestly one of the biggest things i live for, and things which are easy and conventional or purely 'vibe based' don't tend to click with me as much, though i definitely have a broader taste in gd levels than that, partially because of the huge amount of context i have for most levels (and i am slowly amassing a similar context in music). that's kinda tangential though, i'm more talking about the first sense in this level, as i won't deny it is a fairly context dependent and unconventional level. still, a good portion of this reminds me what i internally call 'generic neodesign', levels which directly take the influence of later jayuff and overdefo but don't diverge considerably from the themes. how that manifests here is the generally blue theme with orange and yellow highlights, fairly abstract theming, stars, and a distinct effect influence, reminiscent of deffie's run from luella to metal test. it's definitely deeper than just that, a few parts breaking up the theme into unexpected places, some of them working great like my favorite part, that part with the spike and block text and the broken glass sample from not a phobia which is just brilliant and exactly the right set of choices, some of them i find lacking, like the pocke - credits sample, which i find doesn't diverge much from the source, and is much less representative of the song and mood. it's also that there's other levels that explicitly and implicitly do the idea better for me. most immediately is that i find ladyflash by tuna/leah the best and most unique implementation of the same idea this level has, probably being a response of some kind. but other intentional uses of samples, like in the a gift to us all series, like the yatagarasu bird variations or the deadlocked bossfight in roadkill, or in more referential levels like world box which really showcase the variety of gd levels and culture (even the first 'jump' in the drop of WHAT i find cute in a 'here's all these things that inspired or wowed me' way). and there's the ever present way people don't directly steal but recreate other peoples ideas, often a negative but occasionally fascinating, especially in a more outsider context, such as the ugly, amateur approximations of famous 1.9 levels in guranus fantasy, or strange referential remakes like high death, which at their best give a lot of earnestness, character, and charm. have to mention manix too of course, who sometimes just looks silly but i love the way he uses and adds to the bobratchet - forever bound guy in volcanic rush. so radio not really living up to all this potential for me, in a gd culture way, in an artistic way, in the plethora of ways musicians use samples, i find disappointing

definitely in spirit a 6/10 rating from me, but i find things which aim for something i want to see, in being really technically impressive, have a great idea, or both, but fall flat of the goal, deduct a 'point' from my average enjoyment

with the honorable final, through collaboration, funnygame hands off the status of the 'crazy talented guy who makes the effect levels that look impossible' to serponge (and the goat status imo)

with love baba, through the Monsters By Krmal, zobros hands off the status of the 'uncategorizable experimental creator who makes really hard stuff and also really dumb joke stuff, and is unbelievably good at the game for his time, and likes to beat fucked up levels' to krmal

i mean i don't think zobros could make lit fuse or falling up, or krmal make acropolis or nine circles or clubstep nightmares, but there very clearly is the same kind of guy under there. and i don't think serponge or krmal have had successors, or ever really could, but they definitely built on considerably from their "predecessors". funnygame probably could've pioneered minigames but didn't create long enough to. zobros definitely could've made something like conical depression or xo but effectively retired before then. but all 4 had such an impact that we're still feeling the ripples of them today