Rating Curve

I've taken two days to think it over and the grand conclusion I've come to is that PAHC is just fucking with us on this one, and if that was the intention then this might be the greatest bait in the history of the GD community, given how many people fully engaged with the level's "gameplay" and narrative. Let's start with the obvious: Purely as the ARG it's been (incorrectly) labelled by so many, Over Again is total shit. The "puzzles" are brainlessly easy but hugely tedious, a complete waste of time. Narrator-PAHC is a constant annoyance who berates you for following his instructions. The fact that some people are praising this level solely on the nonexistent merits of its ARG exterior is frankly disturbing. If you're going to make a level that's a total pain in the ass you have to sell it with some overarching theme or some other justification, and Over Again really struggles under this scrutiny. While you slog through finding codes Narrator-PAHC will club you over the head with a comically heavy-handed plot where he grows increasingly paranoid and angry about the lack of mental engagement with Real-Life-PAHC's levels. Narrator-PAHC's performance being pretty convincing does nothing to help the fact that the most reasonable action the player can take at this point is to stop playing the level. That's what I did - I closed the game and booted up Overwatch. Over Again's tirade against the creator point worship and subsequent lust for something as vague and ephemeral as "artistic merit" that infests GD culture just isn't the hard-hitting commentary I was hoping the level was building up to - It's entirely charted territory. I'm sorry - poking me in the eye repeatedly while going "Doesn't this suck? This sucks, right?" isn't any more subversive or thought-provoking than, choosing at completely random, Invisible Deadlocked. It seriously feels like PAHC became so disillusioned with the idea of artistic fulfillment coming from anywhere but within that he created this just to see what he could get away with. The way that Over Again crafts a lose-lose scenario that you can escape only by quitting the level is interesting enough, but that only gets you so far. There's no reason the player had to be an accessory to any of this.

One of the only revered classics where I have to throw my hands up and say "I don't get it". A handful of neat visual sequences with great color work throughout the back half can't salvage how the first third is nauseatingly cramped yet still unmemorable. The gameplay alternates between unsatisfyingly curated and intensely improvisational, and the song isn't helping any with how it seems entirely indifferent to the jerky, stop-start tempo (except for the one cube section filled with speed changes). Fast as Lightning just doesn't look good and definitely doesn't play well. It's not even that fast! Nope. I don't get it.