Z-I-v Summer Contest 2014 [CLOSED]

Are You That Somebody Monolith Remix - 8/10. Speed changes could be very helpful with this song. It also felt a bit overstepped at parts.

Battle (VS Trainer) - 8.5/10. I love the use of the freeze arrows. But some of the eighth streams seem a bit uninspired, I guess.

Black Cat Nero - 9/10. The true shining moments were the two choruses. Those were great fun. They really brought up the quality of the chart.

Boomerang Fighter - 8/10. The jumps were kinda fun.

Breathless - Heavy: 8/10. I'll admit I found a lot of this chart rather boring. The eighth note streams were the best part, especially with the crossovers. Challenge: 7/10. Felt very overstepped and rather... forced. Much like many oni charts in ITG.

Bye Bye Bye - Heavy: 9/10. Very fun, felt a bit like TimeHollow. Proof that 6-footers can be fun to play. Challenge: 8/10. Some of the sixteenth notes seem out of place. The really good sixteenths are the ones that lead into a jump (right before "bye bye bye" is sung).

calling for destiny - 8/10. It was okay. Not amazing, not bad, but okay. Some of the steps in the first half were... kinda erratic. They went to a rhythm, but it was an erratic rhythm. Challenge: 8.5/10. Better. The rhythms felt less erratic and followed more of a rhythm, but some of the sixteenth jump patterns (jump-note-jump) would be very difficult on pad.

Chemical Plant Zone - 8.5/10. It's fun and follows the main rhythm.

Danca Da Manivela - 7.5/10. I'll admit I kinda abhor when songs have forced spins using freeze arrows. Those are irritating. Plus, it's definitely not a 7-footer. I'd say it's an 8.

Doraemon No Uta - 8.5/10. It's fun in certain parts, but when the lyrics don't match the steps it feels kinda awkward.

DotA - 5/10 (failing grade). Quite frankly this chart is a mess. First of all, it's not a 9. It MIGHT be a 7. The difficulty is weirdly unbalanced. The very end miiiiiight be an 8 (though this is still kinda weird, more on that later) but the vast majority is like a 5. The sixteenth notes are completely off at the end. They should be twelfth notes. It's also incredibly repetitive. And most of it is excruciatingly boring.

Eternus - 6.5/10. The triplets can be fun, but there should be no eighth notes except during the slowdown. And some of the patterns at the end do not match the songs at all. The rest was relatively boring.

Finally - Heavy: 8.5/10. It felt more like a 6 than a 7. It's also pretty fun for a 6. The chorus was the best part. Challenge: 8/10. This felt more like a 9 than a 10. It's pretty fun at some parts, but during the verses when the steps go along with the vocals, some problems arise. The streams of yellow (16th) notes are just not fun to play for me.

Giudecca - Heavy: 7.5/10. Watch out for double steps, as well as forced turns on freeze arrows (unless these are intentional). Without those, the song is pretty fun. Challenge: 7.5/10. More or less the same as Heavy. Just take note of that stuff.

Hogging Molly - Heavy: 8.5/10. Pretty fun. Good use of freeze arrows. I'd add more jumps to the accented beats. Challenge: 9/10. This is where it really shines. The steps are really good. I'd highly recommend, once again, more jumps. The sixteenths are perfect.

Hydrocity Zone - Heavy: 8.5/10. It felt like a challenge chart that just had some of its arrows removed to me, as though it wasn't "complete." It was still pretty fun, though. Challenge: 8/10. It was good but it felt a bit too ITG-ey for me. Not that that's a bad thing. It's just not my cup of tea.

Imagine - 8/10. It's interesting enough, despite [mostly] being streams of 16th notes. I'd recommend doubling the BPM.

Independent Women - 9/10. This one gets massive brownie points from me, probably just due to song choice, idk. But it's really fun, too. I wonder if making the steps to the vocals during the chorus would be a better choice.

Kiss (When the sun don't shine) - 8.5/10. This would've gotten a higher rating if it had fewer double steps. It reminds me of DDRMAX-era step charts. Those are all pretty fun to me.

Listen - 9/10. This one's also really fun. I can't say I have too much criticism for this one. I wonder if stepping to the vocals is a good idea, though.

One More Lovely - 8.5/10. This is good as well. I've just never been terribly comfortable with steps at this BPM. I enjoyed the jumps on the piano beats, as well as the gallops. The stream closer to the end kinda made the difficulty feel unbalanced, though. I was wondering throughout most of it why it was a 9, and then I got to that part. It became clear right away.

Pokemon Dance Mix - 8/10. I don't think it's a good idea to step to the vocals in this song. I can understand doing it at the "pokemon-mon-mon" parts, but not in the verse.

Popowhatever - 8.5/10. Close to the end, I had a "more of the same" feeling. Nothing really stood out. I did like the freeze arrows, however.

Quest - 9/10. Really good. My main concern is the slowdown. I feel like it should be slower in the beginning, rather than the middle. It just felt unneeded.

Ridge Racer - 8/10. I had mixed feelings about this one. A lot of it was pretty fun, but I had trouble with it for the same reason I have trouble with Big Band songs, as it had a nature quite similar. The steps are unpredictable because the rhythm is unpredictable as well.

Robot Snares - 8/10. This one's interesting enough, but it's too gimmicky for my taste. There's also a sudden difficulty spike at the end. I wasn't too fond of that. The rest of it was kinda fun though.

Something For The Weekend - 7.5/10. It was just really boring for me. Nothing really notable except for maybe the sixteenth notes.

Spring Rain - 8.5/10. If I'm not mistaken, the double steps are intentional, which is all well and good. I found it kinda repetitive. I like the sixteenth gallop-type things, but that's really the only thing that stood out much to me.

Jellyfish Song - 8/10. I can't quite figure out where the eighth note rhythms come from. I enjoy them but they do seem kinda out of place. And JUMPJUMPJUMPJUMPJUMPJUMPJUMP wwould get painful, at least I can imagine so.

All songs were played on Expert only unless stated otherwise.

Are You That Somebody (Monolith Remix) / Aaliyah

While the file didn't really stand out all that much to me, I will say this; this is WAY better than whatever it is you stepped during the Tournament Of Immortals. You've improved greatly!

Battle (VS Trainer) / Miyazaki Shinji

Singles: POKEMON! Such a nostalgic part of my childhood too, and as a matter of fact I almost chose to step a Pokemon remix instead.

Anyways, I found this pretty enjoyable to play. No complaints.

Doubles: Same as Heavy, really, just spread out across two pads instead of one. The arrow placement in m35 and again right at m38 were uncomfortable, but other than that things flowed decently from one pad to another.

Boomerang Fighter / Lee Young-mi, Kim Moon-seon & Jung Jae-yoon

Very well stepped! No complaints here.

Breathless / The Corrs

Expert (Singles): Wow, I can't believe I actually remember this song. I've heard it on the radio many times but I usually just forget it ever existed shortly after.

I don't know why, but I just found this fun to play. The last three jumps at the end were VERY satisfying.

Challenge (Singles): Parts of this were okay, but for the most part there's really no reason this chart needed to exist. Heavy was the perfect difficulty level for the song. Challenge just tries too hard to push this to a 9.

Expert (Doubles): Not really sure how I feel about those stretch jumps during the chorus. Good chart otherwise.

Challenge (Doubles): Much like singles, I feel this is overkill given the song choice. Expert was enough.

Black Cat Nero (Radio Edit feat.Alvin) / DJ HYO

It's a solid chart. Nothing more to say. Good job as always!

Bye Bye Bye / *NSYNC

Expert: Of course it wouldn't be Nostalgia Week if this song wasn't here. Decent chart, I guess. I didn't think it was anything great, but it's not bad. The jumps on "ain't no lie" and "bye bye bye" were cool, that was about it.

Challenge: Personally I would have liked to see the steps follow the lyrics more closely during the chorus. Again, the jumps were well-placed.

calling for destiny / NM feat. NAPPO

Expert: I like how simple you kept this chart. Good job!

Challenge: Overall not a bad chart by any means, but some of those jumps were pretty harsh.

Chemical Plant Zone / Masato Nakamura

CHEMICAL PLANT ZONE!!! I didn't have my own Genesis growing up, but the few times I did get to play it I spent much of that time with Sonic 2. This level had great music but damn this level got hard for me quickly. I kept drowning in acid!

Right, the steps. There's a lot of times where I found myself facing the same direction for way too long. Overall it was just kinda boring, and with this song being so nostalgic to me I was very disappointed.

Danca da Manivela / Axe Bahia

I liked this a lot. No complaints.

Doraemon no Uta (1992 ver.) / Satoko Yamano

Adorable chart. Yeah, never thought I'd say that about a simfile but I'm actually calling this adorable (which is a good thing). It just... works so well!

DotA / Basshunter, sped up by some guy that calls himself/herself a "remixer".

This was just... bad. Really bad. It was boring, it had very uninspired steps that often felt they were stuck on repeat, and in the second half of the song none of the 12th notes being played were actually stepped as 12th notes. I can't find anything positive to say about this chart. The fact that all of this is stepped to nightcore isn't exactly helping either.

Definitely not a 9, either.

EternuS / Sanxion7

EternuS probably isn't really the best song choice. Not because it's a bad song, but because it's been stepped so many times. This version doesn't really offer anything new, it's kinda just a rehash of what everyone else has done when stepping this song. Some of the blatant errors and inconsistencies don't really help either. There's a bunch of misrhythms (such as the 8th notes in the very beginning when they should be 12ths) and some weird jump usage that I can't really figure out. Overall, this is just sloppy. Fortunately I have plenty of other charts for EternuS to choose from.

Finally / Ce Ce Peniston

Expert: Okay chart, didn't see anything too remarkable. There were some long stretches of nothing but quarter notes that could have easily been more interesting with a few 8ths to compliment the vocals. As it is, it feels really empty.

Challenge: Again, just okay. It wasn't anything I'd play again. Not sure why this is rated a 10 either, it felt a lot easier than that.

Giudecca -Flashback 2 Rave- / qat itna

Expert: This chart had a lot of random unnecessary double-stepping, and the slowdown in the middle got off to a weird start; I wasn't expecting the song to slow down at the point it did! Personally I wouldn't have started the slowdown until right after the last 12th note, not on the 3rd to last 12th.

Challenge: Same problems as Expert, just that there's more steps involved, which in turn makes this chart even more awkward to play. I don't really agree with this being rated an 11 either; it's more like... an awkward 10.

Hydrocity Zone Remix (Act 2) / Plasma3Music

Expert: Okay chart. A couple of freezes were a little too long, and the chart was obviously a "copy & paste & mirror" job in the second half. In small cases it's excusable (you'd expect repeating musical passages to repeat similar steps, after all) but variety would have been very nice here.

Challenge: Mostly the same comments as Expert; freezes were too long sometimes, had copy & paste syndrome. I also didn't think it was necessary to have mini-jacks, footswitches, and those odd 32nd & 48th notes that popped up a few times. In a keyboard chart, fine. In a pad chart, it's kinda weird.

Imagine / Brunch

For the most part, I liked this. My only problems were the two rolls (which didn't seem to serve much of a purpose; couldn't these just be holds?) and one hold that didn't end until barely a split second before a jump. They're small issues, though.

Independent Women Part I / Destiny's Child

Wasn't the most fun thing in the world but it's decent enough. Some parts came off as being somewhat lazily stepped. There's probably things that could be done to make this chart a little more fun without adding any more difficulty.

Kiss (When The Sun Don't Shine) (Eurobeat Mix) / Vengaboys

LOTS of unnecessary double-stepping throughout the chart. This could have been nice, but bad patterns ruined it for me.

Listen / Collective Soul

Pretty good chart. There was just this one double-step near the beginning that threw me off, but everything else was fine.

One More Lovely / Risk Junk

This song has been stepped so many times, but it's actually pretty refreshing to see a chart for One More Lovely that isn't a massive dump of 16th streams. But... what's with those gallops towards the end? They didn't feel right to me at all. The ending probably could have been toned down too; maybe just stick to a trill the entire way through instead of changing it up near the end. (The way you stepped it actually would have been fine IMO if the rest of the chart were harder. As it is it feels like an unnecessary difficulty spike.)

Pokemon (Techno Remix) / Billy Crawford

MORE POKEMON! Except... well, I can't say this remix is all that memorable. I thought it was a pretty boring remix.

Wasn't anything very memorable, but I think that's mostly due to the song choice in this case. There's nothing wrong with the steps, it's just that the song doesn't lend itself to a very interesting chart, plus the song itself was just forgettable.

Popocatepetl / Fey

It's as if you knew exactly every single BG video in DDR history that creeps me out.

The steps are actually a lot of fun. I can see myself playing this one a lot... Well, after I remove the BG video, anyways. Actually I'm surprised this song doesn't have more votes!

Quest (This Can't Be All) / BLACKGRYPH0N & Baasik

Fairly decent chart. There was one unnecessary double-step in m20 that could have easily been avoided, but other than that I didn't see any real issues.

Ridge Racer / Shinji Hosoe

Singles: This was okay, I guess. The steps are accurate but I think you could have done a bit more with this.

Doubles: This was actually more fun than Singles, good job!

Robot Snares Got No Cadence Or Balance / Prefuse 73

Those BPM tricks were... um, something. The rest of the chart was generally boring in my opinion.

Something For The Weekend / The Divine Comedy

I wasn't crazy about how the very end of the chart makes you face backwards, but other than that this was great! Honestly I'm surprised this didn't have any votes yet!

SPRING RAIN(LLUVIA DE PRIMAVERA) / Remixed by DJ YOSHITAKA

I liked this one a lot. Not much else to say, it's just stepped incredibly well!

The Jellyfish Song / Plus-Tech Squeeze Box Feat. Spongebob

Wow, this has a lot of jumps! Actually I wish you had done more with that one section instead of just dumping a ton of jumps in there. The rest of the chart I thought was really fun.