[Extreme Demon] Crowd Control by Movietheaters
This one's kind of been on my to-do list for a while, and recently I had a friend beat this who seemed to have liked it so I decided to finally pull the trigger. I've always liked the clean aesthetic and I like the song as well, so why not? I need to increase the number of skill-based levels I play as well since I want to beat Bloodlust at some point...
Well, this was alright. Firstly, this is the least number of attempts I've spent on an extreme! That being said, it's not by much and Napalm still took much less time thanks to a horrendous fluke I pulled from 11 on that one. Attempt counts are honestly pretty meaningless to compare, but hey, it's fun anyway since apparently nobody in the community cares about total time unless you're racing.
The level to me feels just pretty average experience-wise, there was nothing that enraged me and some parts were actually pretty fun and consistent, but as always with extremes, the level is brought down by certain sections that are unnecessarily difficult, and with this level in particular, a bit awkward as well.
Intro (0-14): Not fun. Honestly, I didn't have much of a problem with this section since it did get consistent, but I thought a lot of timings here were really awkward.
Drop 1 (14-37): The first ship/ball combo would be fine if the transition into the ball wasn't so awful. I'm very glad they put a teleportal there to at least attempt to correct the transition a little bit honestly, a pad would still do better, I just found that transition to be extremely awkward. The wave at 20 is probably the hardest part of the level, in fact, I don't even think this level would be extreme without it, but I did find myself to be pretty consistent at it from 0, so I guess I can't complain too much. That being said, it doesn't need to be this spammy. The memory section from 25-34 is pretty much a 2* level but you can't see the platforms.
Drop 2 (37-60): Probably the most consistent section of the drop for me. The cube at 37 is really easy except for one really awkward and annoying blue orb at 40, the robot at 42 is just plain easy as long as you remember the timings (which for me was to click earlier than I thought), the cube at 48 is actually really hard since there are a lot of timings crammed into it and it feels super awkward when you die but there is a rhythm to it and I thought it got pretty consistent after a while, although that consistency can be a bit on and off. The next UFO is alright although I did die to it a few times, the first few clicks can be pretty awkward, especially since you have to do a really fast triple-click.
Drop 3 (60-80): Would honestly be alright if it wasn't for the first UFO, and to be more specific, just the first 5% leading up to the four spammy blue orbs. I must have died to the pink orbs before the blue orb spam six or seven times, it's insane how different the trajectory of your UFO can change from attempt to attempt, and given how spammy some of the gameplay can be, it honestly does feel a bit luck-based. A lot of the timings also feel super awkward... this section is just downright not fun to play. The robot at 70 is pretty chill until the ending where there are a few slightly annoying and janky timings, especially the dash orb at 79 which I swore went through a gap tighter than one block. I checked in the editor, it wasn't, I don't know why I had so much trouble with that timing. Maybe it's because my cube disappears, which I didn't even notice until rewatching just now.
Ending (80-100): The first cube/ball section is honestly pretty chill, it's really easy to choke since some of the timings feel a bit unintuitive, which is just the nature of slopey gameplay, but I thought it was alright in the end. The last ship is pretty evil, especially the placement of the gravity portals in between the one-block gaps, but otherwise, it wasn't too bad either, at least not as bad as I thought it looked on video. Then you have two last awkward (but otherwise easy) clicks you hope to not choke on, and GG!
So overall, this was a pretty mixed level. I do think this level was less frustrating and more enjoyable than Corrupted Volume, but I also feel like Corrupted Volume was more engaging and maybe that was just because I was more consistent with this than I was with Corrupted Volume. Anyway, I know a lot of this community is amazing at very skill-heavy levels, and for those of you out there, this would probably be a piece of cake because it is actually really easy to learn, but for me, I was unfortunately not good enough to really be able to overlook and breeze past all the small, annoying and awkward timings there are here. But GG anyway, I don't regret playing this at all, it's not bad in the slightest, it's just kinda... alright.
Gameplay: 5.5/7
Deco: 2.7/3
Total: 8.2/10
Personal Difficulty: Very easy extreme demon (5A)