Rating Curve

dude why does the -inator work that shit would NEVER happen in the show

Long have I championed against the immediate boost in praise towards longer levels that results from both the inherent increased amount of effort that it takes to build one and the natural circuitous feeling of playing such an odyssey. I understand why long levels are so revered, and I don't intend to cast a shadow on that reverence; rather, I hope to convey why I feel this level fails in all aspects beyond its conception.

I say beyond its conception because I really do find the idea of an unconventionally long level interesting as a player--I really enjoy playing extreme demons around the 4+ minute range, so seeing someone actualize the logical extreme of playability excited me greatly. However, if you know anything about the editor, you know it is absolutely not built to support something of this scale. The vanilla x-length of the editor can only support about 20 minutes at the slowest speed, requiring exploits or mods to pass this barrier, upon which you encounter the second issue of floating point errors and sync drift that renders building even more finicky and tedious than it already can be.

But I don't feel that the faults of this level really lie in the limitations of the engine, because it would be totally unfair to the creator to judge it based on such. Really, the merit (or lack thereof) of this level lies in the absolutely careless manner it was built. The decoration strikes an uncanny balancing point barely above the extremely minimal; it feels like it is fighting against the constraints of its length rather than embracing them. In the face of the perfect opportunity to create intrigue through color and shape, Renn turns away and chooses shaders and gradients. I'm trying my best here to be civil, but the insistence to entirely neglect two of the most critical artistic elements is absolutely repulsive to me. Because this level isn't interesting in color or shape, and because shaders aren't actually interesting decoration, this level must make up for this total vapid image through its gameplay, right?

In reality, the gameplay is somehow more detestable than the decoration, and I don't really mean in terms of playability here. In fact, this level plays perfectly fine, and nothing beyond exactly because the gameplay never aspires to do more than fill time and space. The vast majority of this level is entirely filler--open sections of ship and basic cube jumps become Renn's crutch for lack of ideas and effort--and when it isn't filler, it's some half-hearted attempt at music sync that, due to being mindlessly pasted across the level, drifts constantly from the tempo of the song and makes me question why Renn would even attempt sync based gameplay at all. I am continuously baffled that throughout the entire 55 minutes of this level not a single interesting gameplay or structuring idea is presented at all.

And yet, people seem to be thrilled, or at least mildly benevolent towards its existence. Even if coerced into emotion by the length or song, the content of the level is so bland and unenthralling that even a blank screen might be preferable, or at least much less frustrating.

A solid contender for the worst concept for a level--the game Osu, which is already insanely flawed when it comes to user-made maps since rhythm gamers don't really understand rhythm, but recreated inside of Geometry Dash, a game that notably cannot maintain music sync due to bugs with song triggers, sync drift due to lag, and a basically nonexistent calibration system that guarantees every user has a different offset. In my eyes, this makes for a horrible game recreated horribly.

This only adds to the frustration that a lot of people experience towards "tech demo" levels that are made basically just for the sake of proving they can be made. No one wants to play DOOM on a calculator, so why would Robtop incentivize people to play this artless exercise in trigger work? This level is nothing but a drop in the watering can that feeds my disdain for equating impressive things with good things.