Rating Curve

ill always be surprised by how good the entries to zeronium's cc were. lotta bangers in there, including this one. def makes me wanna see more low profile creator contests coz they've always showed off geometry dash in incredibly geometry dash-y ways. it's funny, this is the best zeronium themed level i've ever seen, so it makes sense it won zeronium's creator contest. who would have guessed

had a thing written about cultural appropriation and country/culture themed levels and shit (covering my ass after saying that by saying that cultural appropriation is such a ridiculously nuanced topic that you could spend a period of your life understanding it), but i looked into it and i knew tacos is chinese american (or something) and apparently sigrp is actually japanese i'm pretty sure, so this isn't the level for that. i still think its kind of cheesy when u just put basic shit from ur culture in ur culture themed art coz u can end up broadcasting a popular westernized version of history, but this isn't a super heinous example for sure. like theyre pretty well known but the inclusion of the prefecture symbols in this level is a great touch that rly fits the theme of japan and graphic design (the basis of modernistic gd levels ofc)

but anyway what im actually here to talk about is kind of where this fits into gd history for me. it's really just one thing, that this is the first level i felt genuinely really impressed by from the 1.9 gdps. most stuff before this just hadn't really caught my attention, a lot of cases then and now where it just continued the boring glow design of the era, or, at least i think i don't remember, were kind of pandery "1.9 themed" levels which still take a good bit to sell me on today. this is one of the first and the first major one where it felt like it was doing something really different from both the normal and 1.9 servers, and to this day hasn't ever been fully replicated (probably for the better.) it's not as weird of an idea now, but in 2020 the idea of making a modernistic 1.9 level, a style practically defined by the additions of movement, other triggers, and infinite colors in 2.0, was pretty much unheardof. kinda like how a big reason acu is such a famous level is that at first it was a Modernistic Extreme Demon which was a bizarre sounding idea then, but not really now. it's the application of that idea that makes it really interesting too, by no means being a straight forward modern style level with how it has like. actual gameplay. and detailed art. now of course, neodesign, best described as a specific fusion of design and modern, makes these statements sound even more absurd (and indeed neigefeu is at least adjacent to neodesign). this isn't a neodesign level of course, despite the incredibly straight forward name, again there's not much out there quite like this

theres definitely some weaker parts, the less art focused and more blocky and simple ones, which i assume are sigrp because they're a creator i've never really heard of outside of this level, but i dunno. it's not a huge dig because it's such an ambitious level for the time, esp on the then fledgling 1.9 gdps, being 3.5 minutes and all, the highlights and vibe more than make up for the lows

can definitely see the song turning off even a lot of people who usually like shmigles levels from this one but its what really makes it for me, so aggressive, obnoxious, unpolished, and abrasive in every sense from the song, to the decoration, to the gameplay, to the theming. just a really remarkably intense and raw experience, makes my heart rate rise every time i watch it