saxman1089

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• United States

Wow, this was way more than I was expecting to see when the Discord announcement came around. Such a fun vibe! I'll hopefully have time for a larger review later, but this looks great.

Bux really was the constant on pushing forward this map, would not have been the same without her!

I had a much smaller role than I wanted to, but I was on vacation the entire week before the deadline, and the first week I was on the park we were all still struggling with building on it. Fortunately, the team really brought this one through in the end, and I’m proud to have had a very small piece of it.

DK park was swell. I don’t know the source material that well (I’m more of Zelda/Mario guy), but it was a super fun map that I think would’ve had a decent chance against either of the maps in the other semifinals match. Honestly, who the hell let Leon draft AVC…
I know the DK map was a long time coming, and I hope the builders had fun with it in the end.

DB

Well, you guys nailed it. I love that we got another turn of the century park out of this H2H, and the vibes here are immaculate. Great idea, excellent execution, and everything on the map perfectly elevates the theme. I loved exploring all the little details, and I still can't believe how well you got the coaster integrated with everything else. I honestly don't know what else to point out, I loved it all. Excellent job!

EG

Really love this map too. This park is a really great blend of inspiration, but I totally get the Ghibli vibes from it. The vibes really match the theme too, all the buildings have a great whimsical feel. The new objects are stellar, and the music really sets the park in the right world. The plugin is cool and really well done too, but I feel as though it's not really necessary. I do wish the main coaster was a bit better, the layout seems a bit meandering. The other thing that bothers me is that every time I turn the view, I have to find where I was looking at before. I wish you had build closer to "ground level" in the game, but this may not have been really possible with how thick you made the land below the city. In any case, I think this park would've easily defeated both parks in Match 1, and a lot of other parks this contest. It's definitely up there in my personal ranking!

People might be surprised by the outcome of this match, but I think it demonstrates that macro can still win matches in this competition, even if the park is vastly under detailed.

SJ

People say it was "unfinished" but I'd personally argue that it was finished and just vastly unpolished or undercooked. I loved the ice block shapes and how they projected into and around the structures. The one section of buildings in the park is great. I really see a cyberpunk Kowloon inspiration going on there. A lot of the other buildings on the map were pretty repetitive. Dueling coasters not dueling is another strike. Custom music was bangin', hope to hear more RCT remixes in the future.

 

Canes

 

Upon opening this park, I really wanted to like it. I love realism parks, I love urban cityscapes, and it's got the Golden Gate Bridge in it! However, it kinda let me down as I looked through things. While the land and road CTRs might be useful in niche cases, they don't look as clean or textured as good old-fashioned path and land blocks, and I think 80% of the use in this park could've been normal land blocks or scenery items. Everywhere you look there is slight glitching/vibrating, and it gets really distracting. The relative texturelessness also further limits the use cases. While the archy had some good areas, other areas seemed pretty underdetailed, and the quality was kinda varied across the park. The biggest issue for me however, was that the park seemed created purely to be a road and land CTR showcase, and didn't really seem to hit a narrative for me other than that. I love pushing the technology of the game that goes on here, but if you're going to do it in H2H, it's gotta be part of a larger theme and better execution. Technical innovation won't win a match by itself, and I think that's exactly what happened here. Now, if the archy quality had been great across the map, paired with a more distinct reimagining of San Francisco, more of a narrative regarding what this Ghirardelli fellow is dreaming about, and more textured and deliberately placed road and landscape CTRs, I think this would have been a clear winner in my mind. 

I'm sorry if any of this comes off as harsh, but there's accusations flying all over regarding strategic voting, I feel like I had to justify why I voted the way I did. In the end, the overall package of the SJ park beat out the Canes park.

Told myself I would wait until this one was over to review, so here I am. I liked both parks, but in the end I thought VHS had the better overall package. I don't have much to say that people didn't already, but I'll drop some key points below.

Murder: 
- What a great story that kept me engaged until the end! Loved the scripts, and the ending had me cracking up.

- The mansion was nicely detailed, but also felt a bit dead. Maybe why you guys had so many raking peeps, but I think I would have added some isolated staff members walking around as well. The interiors were impressive, but a lot of the stuff was way out-of-scale with peeps (like the pool table and shower). I know its hard to do, but imo sometimes you just need to build smaller with less detail and hope people get the general idea.

- I thought the best part of the map was the village. Had a nice vibe going, tons of detail to explore.

 

VHS:
- I personally liked the palette. I said this on Discord, but it, along with the opening, gave me the "sitting too close to a CRT TV" vibes. The dualchrome color on the coaster was great.

- I thought overall this map had a higher level of RCT execution. Things were well done all over the map. I greatly enjoyed the landscaping and how it blended in to the overall picture.

- The whimsy of the 1990s direct-to-VHS movie came through fairly well throughout the map, which was obviously the goal. 

In summary, I thought VHS had the better RCT in most areas, while Murder had the better overall narrative and story direction. In the end though, this is an RCT contest, and while narrative helps a park a lot it shouldn't be the primary voting focus imo. Both parks were great additions to the contest!