Rating Curve

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Not one of the first thousand levels to try this punchy rave aesthetic, but almost certainly the most successful. It's the casual starkness of that oppressive bass and shimmering starkian glow that really provide the most significant opportunities to lose yourself in AFTER DARK's effortless push and pull. Very reminiscent of asistamamong's Подпалящимсолнцем, in that way. I do think the intro sequence overstays its welcome a little bit, and I wish the endscreen were more subtle.

You do get a few points for the audacity. Take notes, wless.

As for the actual im god? it's fine, comforting to play, visually pleasing. Less is more and all that. Decently therapeutic, but not as good as watching waves roll in. What a deranged community we are for such an inoffensive level to be the subject of such ire.

It's thankfully pretty difficult to actually vandalize levels in GD without mod privileges, so this little artifact of fascist spite is probably the closest the community will ever get to having our own sliced-up Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue canvas. The physical level is of course worthless, but there's an undeniable power in the reactionary paranoia, jealousy, rage within. In this way it becomes a testament to the strength of every creator worth anything and a condemnation of GD's still-rotten creating culture. And they say conservatives don't make good art.

Perhaps ozpectro has a background in painting or collage, because effot feels like it was created by someone who understood the sensibilities of design (and the capabilities of the GD editor, of course) but also had no idea what the hell they were doing. While fexty perfected ozpectro's design balance in terms of instant visual appeal, it simply lacks the overwhelming mystique of this level, so structurally and tactilely forward-thinking or backwards-thought that it feels alien. It's strange, then, how disturbingly clinical effot is at tapping into the universal, primordial rage-game instincts of the GD player. It's that ephemeral fury that makes effot so alluring - especially when it disappears right in front of your eyes, and you remember that no one ever made another one. Fuck. Ten years on and no one's made anything like this, ever.

Can't believe this level never got hit with the "soulless" descriptor given how completely hollow it feels. icedcave's style, self-obsessed and idolatrous to the point where it could more accurately be described as a brand or label, is a match made in hell for this nauseatingly sleek modern aesthetic, complete with plastic Japaneseness and a worthless sped up/reverb soundtrack. Very Instagram level.

I do not typically find myself particularly impressed with "limited" levels. Far too few of them actually reflect the sensibilities of whatever creative ruleset they were built under, the most obvious example being the countless 1.9 revival levels that merely use that update's blocks to (often tediously and not often convincingly) mimic modern design. It's just not that captivating to me, a style explicitly built around compromise. You can go on YouTube right now and find countless videos of creators building with the intention of cramming a "passable" "full experience" (or whatever the euphemism of the day for "rate-worthy" is) into 100, 50, 30 objects. But it's only when the exercise is stringent to the point of absurdity that it becomes amazing in itself, unifying with the physical product to create a beautifully whole experience. So elegant, striking, yet enthusiastic. Supremely satisfying in its totality. Really feels destined to be a formative work in some way.

Before stumbling upon this level yesterday as I was perusing this site's lowest-rated levels, I did not believe in the concept of "so bad it's good". It seems like every time gd community members throw that description out it's more because they can't apply generic labels to describe why something is good (and this certainly could be true of me and this review). This level is different to me from the handful of levels I've given bonus points to because of the absurdity of their terribleness - I don't consciously find Gunslinga Corridor that funny or unbelievable, there's just a certain purity to having every single facet of its composition be completely and utterly unbearable. It's a bit like seeing a really good ragebait post on the internet, it might not be funny or even personally provocative, but the exercise is in itself admirable in some perverse way. There's something monolithic about the way every one of gd's most tasteless, displeasing tropes is rolled into the end product here, complete with an idiotic name, unlistenable song, and status as a remake that does everything worse than the original (not that Death Corridor is some triumph of level design itself). It's almost like a deranged celebration of GD culture. Almost.

One point for every minute this level commits to the exercise, an admirable effort even if I wish this level were about ten times longer. It simply demands far too little from the player to be a worthwhile piece of shock art. If I hadn't been as young and foolish as I was during the era of gd culture in which this level was originally released, it probably would have been more impactful. Alas, sometimes the cards just don't fall that way.